Gmail is Raheeb...

Google... are you freaking kidding me? =)

It's my feet... It's my shoes

Yesterday I saw a segment of Oprah's show... it was about fashion crimes... and she had her own set of fashion "police" patrolling the city and looking at women who according to their standards were going against the fashion.
The whole idea of fashion and following fashion is so absurd to me... I mean it is just stupid that what was very fashionable 10 years ago is now considered a fashion crime...
Who cares what others should or shouldn't wear?!
Even if they are dressed in a funny way... who would mind a repressed laugh every once a while...

But what got me angry the most is when Oprah's friend started talking about how wrong it is to wear sports shoes to your work!!
Come on... if I have to work for 10 hours... mostly standing on my feet... I will surely place my feet comfort before someone's eyes pleasure... that's why 90% of the time I'm wearing sports shoes to my work...
Mum thinks that my students are probably making fun of my shoes...

We have enough people trying to dictate so many things on us... Fashion crime or not! I don't give a damn...

my feet this morning!

Hip-Hopping with Violins

In any art form or self expression field [including literature] we have to deal with codes and standards that we are told to respect or even to abide by. But what will happen if we defy those rules? what if we try to break them... not necessarily out of rebellious attitude but maybe of a simple need to experiment.

One of the reasons I love listening to "Nuttin' But Stringz" is due to what they did with the violin. They took the violin out of its comfort zone without abusing it, setting new grounds to how to deal and play the violin. For my ears this is challenging.
One of their pieces "Broken Sorrow" was my musical soundtrack when walking alone in the streets of US... Another piece that I love is "Thunder"... in this piece I can see how the violin is dancing up and down in the street like a crazy spirit running around the city...

Another example of breaking the norms with music is what Nam June Paik did with his TV Cello. In his experiment Paik defied the way a cello is being constructed and consequently played. When Charlotte Moorman played it she said that the sounds being produced are not those of normal cello but of a TV cello! And one time they took another extreme by making Paik himself her cello!!

So what really happens when we defy the rules and standards?
We find new grounds that we were brought up to think they didn't exist. We liberate our minds from worshiping rules that some other people set for us. We interrupt the mainstream and maybe create a new one... or at least we create choices!

Someone once told me that when art seize to be dangerous, it seize to be art!

Memory of Walls!

May all the Walls of Injustice... be torn down... for Human Liberation and Equality!

Images of the Apartheid Wall built across Palestine by the Israeli Government.

**All Photos are courtesy of Stop The Wall

Happy 400!

And I continue talking to myself... in the mirror... that seems to reflect more than just my face...

Amreeka! Movie Review

A couple of days ago I watched this interesting movie titled "Amreeka" by the Palestinian film maker "Cherien Dabis".
The movie depicts the life of a Palestinian single mother and her son struggle in Palestine and then moving to "The Promised Land" of USA.

=Spoiler Warning!=

The heroin" Muna" played by Nisreen Faour is well depicted. Giving an image of a simple Arab woman who happen to be a single mum and her struggle to support her self and her teenager son while dealing with some self-esteem issues... The character is believable and is probably what touched me the most about the movie.

The scenes shot in Palestine is also very believable. The simplicity of the people there and the way they run their lives is very touching.
Again there is a scene where people came to say goodbye to Muna and her mother starts singing and then dancing is very natural and believable and was a touching scene.

Though I'm half Palestinian myself... I have to say that characters like Muna's mum is strange to me... yet I feel close to... [ maybe in an attempt to belong... ]

The plot in this movie is rather easy and with many things happening that you would expect them to happen...

For example that the heroin of the movie Muna will develop a "relation" with a Jewish man. The message that Palestinians are not against Jews is a very legitimate and maybe important one... but the way it was handled in this movie I felt it was a bit in your face... But maybe Dabis chose to show it from this angle... because it is a very human one.

The final scene in the movie was a bit of a disappointment... But keeping in mind that Dabis is herself an American immigrant makes me understand where she is coming from. But again as being myself not a big fan of America... I have to say that I didn't like the ending. It seemed too expected and cliche'...

The music featured in the movie is very efficient... mostly with Fairuz music giving a real Arab feeling to it... which most Middle Eastern audience will easily relate to.

The Cinematography of the movie is beautifully done. The camera angles are efficient and worth an applause...

On a minor aspect there are some mistakes that were mentioned in the movie... like referring to Palestine as "Palestinian Territory" which I never heard any Palestinian use... Usually in official settings it is "West Bank"... or maybe "Occupied Territory"... but as far as I know Palestinians refer to their country as Palestine.
Another mistake was when Muna said that Palestine has been occupied for 40 years... The movie is set to be in 2003 just around the American invasion of Iraq... so if we count the Israeli occupation from 1948 it should be 55 years or if it is from 1967 it should be 36 years! I personally use the first number!


All in All... This movie is a must see movie... it is a very human and touching movie with a hint of comedy! A good attempt and an applaud-able one by Cherien Dabis...

How to Enjoy/ How to Ruin a Good Rain!

How to Enjoy a Good Rain...
:: Find a good walking spot... walk alone... and converse with the trees... their talk is very engaging...
:: Put your iPod on... play your best play list... with a hot mug "the best hot drink you choose" of tea... and look through your window...
:: Find a good walking spot... walk with a good interesting friend... and chat about anything you like...


How to Ruin a Good Rain...
:: Having streets and roads... with floods of water due to bad drainage... either your car, your taxi, your bus or worse Yourself will be splashed and bathed in grayish/brownish cold water!
:: Having panicked people around you... with bad temper and panic attacks as if the rain will cause us a natural disaster and we need to stash bread and supplies for a month ahead...
:: Having grumpy looking people walking by you... cursing the rain... and worshiping the sun which a couple of days ago they were complaining about...


Choose your way! But in any case...

(= HAPPY RAINY SEASON AMMANIS =)

Taken by my iSight cam. at 7:55 a.m. 3.11.09 Jubiha, Amman

Why I didn't become an architect!

Yesterday I read an article by Orhan Pamuk titled "Why I didn't become an Architect" from his book "Other Colors".
In this article Pamuk starts with a journey he took to one of the underprivileged sites of Istanbul where he walks into buildings that had very different past than their current present. He talks about how people came to live in buildings that were built by outsiders of Istanbul... and he had some interesting insights about who at the end the architecture aims to serve!
From this he take us to a decision he made as a third year student of architecture to drop architecture and change his career to become a writer and a novelist... He describes the difference for him between empty sheets that were waiting for "modernist" architectural designs and between empty sheets that were waiting for "his" words...
He ends his article with more reflections about architecture and the-serving-who dilemma as he walks in the ruins of the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Istanbul in recent years.
Through his personal recollections of his decision... he gave me a better understanding of my own choice to stop practicing architecture...

Later on last night I had an interesting phone call from one of my good friends who happen to be an architect though now she is more of an urban designer.
And I was sharing with her my reading... and I found myself expressing my own reasons of leaving architecture...

Probably the first detachment between me and architecture happened when I was taught history of architecture... through these courses I was somehow taught to appreciate architecture and master pieces through their images. So what was designed to be an experiential space was projected through lenses and prints into a see-and-admire experience. I truly understood the depth of this problem when I had the chance to visit famous buildings while I was at the USA. When I went to see the Guggenheim in NY... I was brought into tears... standing there in the massive lobby gave me an experience which I can't put into words let alone images... I felt something...

My second detachment happened when I couldn't relate the big talks and deep concepts that some of my fellow classmates would come up with... and I forcing my self to see the reflections of these concepts in their designs.. but all in vain... I would be standing bewildered and left to think I'm less than the rest of them... because my concepts were not projected as I wanted into my spaces...

This feeling got even worse when I started meeting up with the big names of Architecture at our Amman... and even worse when I did my internship at the company of one of them....

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Being myself the daughter of an architect... my father... is the type of architects that you should make a film about... my father embodies the real architect struggle to be an architect in a society dominated by empty concepts or trendy designs... [coming to think of it... I should make a film about my father... just like Nathaniel Kahn did "My Architect"]
My father supported my decision of leaving architecture behind... though I know that he is much in love with architecture... for him... architecture is creating a place where a person can feel... that is the only concept my father ever followed in any of his designs... His style of architecture has changed according to time, place and his own maturity... maybe one of these days I should blog about his work...
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But now back to me and my reasons of leaving architecture...
I stopped at the big talk of the big names... as I said... after working for one of them... I realized that architecture as it is being used is not in harmony with who we were and who we aim to serve...

After that... I graduated and joined the working force... I began to read for Rem Koolhaas... the more I worked... the more I read... the more a nagging voice inside of me got louder...

Until the day I decided to liberate myself... from "... the obligation to construct..."

I turned all my creative abilities... all the crazy concepts and ideas that were rattling inside of my head into different media which for me made sense.... and felt more natural...

Now, I don't feel any need to be pretentious... to add any glamor to my products... I express myself... and I don't do that to serve anyone... yet somehow I'm serving more now than I ever did... or thought I would...

The way I see it... The problem with architecture is that it is used to glorify the architect's mind and visual abilities... or maybe as Pamuk said to serve his/her imagination...

Architecture as I was taught and seen practiced is creating empty spaces... and for that reason I left architecture....