Superwomen....want to be...

The best mother,
the best daughter,
the best wife,
the best sister,
the best cousin,
the best friend,
the best career woman,
the best cook,
the best looking,
the best feeling,
the best the best the best the best the bestthebestthebestthebestthebestthebestbestbestbestb



why? to please who? help...

Violence...

the most frequently used language of the world today

2.0.0.7 - The year that was

With the New Year just around the corner, I need to look back at what 2007 gave me and the world...
I love lists, so I composed one:

In 2007:

1. I turned 29, the last year in my twenties.
2. My kids turned 5 & 3, I need serious parenting tips.
3. I set my mind on getting a new job, and I did.
4. Didn't get a new phone yet, I wanted a Nokia N95, (I heard prices went down to BD 170???)(What happened???)
5. Iraq is still a burning war zone.
6. Gun-totting disturbed teenagers continue to massacre people in schools colleges.
7. Dubai continues to build taller buildings - aka Burj Dubai.

8. Tripoli, Lebanon sees clashes led by the brainfarts, so-called Ansar AlIslam
9. Discovered I have mild reumatism.
10. My best friend Nishani has a new baby boy - Ameer. Wish you both best of health.
11. My brother Hamood gets a new job after waiting for 4 years. Good Luck Aeuturnus!
12. Attended congress in Dubai. Jumeirah.
13. Israel continues to use Palestinians as target practice.
14.No solution for the Darfur problem yet.
15. Clashes in Bahrain during the National day holidays. 1 person killed.
16. No fireworks lit Bahrain's skies this year either.
17. Construction work continues on our house. First stage completed. Finishing in progress.
18. We still use loads of plastic bags. We need to be more environmentally aware.
19. Lost 3 kgs this year.
20. Just heard Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated in Pakistan.

Wishing everyone a peaceful and prosperous year ahead.

May 2008 be better year for the world.

Peace and Love,
SoulSearch

The Secret...

Just finished reading "The Secret".

Good marketing campaign... but blown out of proportion.

Its not that big of a secret...huh?

I guess somebody really wished to make millions, and got their wish!

Peace,

Soul

Cooking 101

Ther's something very therapuetic about cooking... It just lifts your soul and helps you give a feel good factor that I always need as soon as I step home from work. That's exactly what I do, everyday, I get home at around 4.30pm (on good days) and speed into my kitchen to prepare a good hearty meal for my kids lunch the next day! Its hard being a working mother. I end up cooking the following meals:

1. dinner of that evening

2. Breakfast of the next day (inlcudes packin my kids snack for school and my own for work)

3. Lunch for the next day (kids come home way before I do)-(and they need a proper meal)

So I'm always on the lookout for healthy, quick meals to prepare in an hour or two.

Love to cook...I guess I take after my dad who is a chef!!! But surprisingly, never tried anything before I had my own kitchen...

Can't wait to move in to my new house where I will have so much more space to cook up good meal for the kids everyday!!!

Love,

SoulSearch

On shopping and religion

I am so enjoying the 10-day break. It is serious medicine for the soul. I have been so engrossed at work, these past 2 months, that I welcome this amazing alignment of holidays that gave us 10 days of sleeping in late, chicken nuggets lunch with the kids, and an endless amount of mopping around the house in pjs. However, we decided to do a little Eid shopping in our friendly neighbor the K of SA. The overpowering stench of stupidity did not leave my nostrils since the second we set foot on the causeway. Here are 5 reasons why I will not be travelling across the causeway unless I absolutely had to:

1. You can't have a decent two hour shopping spree without having the whole shop shut down on you for prayers. Don't they realize that people should be given the freedom to worship and not have worship shoved down tehir throats 5 times a day?
2. Store managers get jumpy and nervous and would rather kick you out of their shop as soon as they can, than to have the religious police close down their shops!
3. If you thought traffic in Bahrain was a nightmare, think again. Many of our neighborly drivers prefer to jump a red light or claim your lane as their own at any time they choose.
4. There are absolutely no changing rooms for ladies in any retail outlets, even my 5 year old daughter was not allowed to try on her clothes anywhere, because "she's a female". Outrageous!
5. It hurts me to see how women are totally inferior to men on many a level. They are treated in a humiliating way, that I would not be able to take if (God forbid) I had to ever live there!!

I could write a whole load more but my blood is boiling at this point and I would rather stop.

Have a good holiday people...
Peace everyone,
SoulSearch

Project: Dream Home

Its been exactly a year since we started building our dream home. In Bahrain, owning your home has always been a worry plaguing the minds of the people. My husband and I were lucky enough as my late father-in-law had a land from ages ago and gave it to his son, who had taken care of his parents for a very long time. Being the youngest of 8 children, his parents had reached retirement age when he first started working. So he paid the rent, he paid the bills and took care of everything for them. I'm really proud of him for that and I hope his kids will do the same.

He had always dreamed of building a home for himself and his parents, having lived in a rented apartment all their lives. When we started preparing the drawings for the house, his father passed away and gave him the land, which was all they had.

The land is about 70x60 foot. I can't say in numbers how much of that was used for the actual construction but the compound is around 2 meters wide in the front and around 1 meter on the sides and in the back.

We have two rooms downstairs from my ma-in-law, plus a bathroom, a small kitchenette and a separate entry door for her. We have 2 living rooms downstairs and a dining room plus a master kitchen. I wanted to have a connecting window between the two kitchens but the idea came too late as the wiring was already done.

What I really like is the room that we built on top of the garage. You take one flight of the main staircase and enter this room, which my husband calls the Function Hall. He wants to get a huge LCD TV with speakers in the wall and make it the main entertainment room!! We love it. Its also got a small balcony and from the outside it shows as a room between the two floors.

Upstairs, we have 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. A Laundry room and a storage room on the 3rd floor. All the tiling is completed. My daughter's bathroom is pink with a hearts border and my sons bathroom is white and green with rainbow borders! They love it but I think they still don't understand that this is the place we're going to move in to inshallah.

Now that we have finished the first stage of construction, Iwanted to take a step back and see how work has progressed, and what we need to do to complete our dream home.

We started back in November 2006, (so its now been a year) after taking a joint loan from the MInistry of Housing, which amounts to BD 40,000 max, we needed to take 2 other loans from the bank. We also need to take an additional loan to be able to go through the finishing and furnishing of the house.

We handed over the project to a contractor who charged us around BD 45,000 for the skeleton of the house. That was when we were laid back and relaxed. The contractor did everything and we just supervised. But after the initial stage is completed, we needed to follow up on every little detail from door knobs to light bulbs.

The kitchen is still in the back of or minds, we want to first finish all the bathrooms and gypsum work and then focus on the kitchen and its layout. We've already seen a kitchen we love and put a downpayment for it.

The gypsum boards have been put up, the walls now have primer on them. But thanks to Balexco, we still don't have windows. We had chosen chocolate brown aluminum for the window frames and some of the doors. But they decided in the last minute that our project was too small and so cancelled the order. We are now stuck. I'm sure everything will work out, we just need to find someone who has stock or something.

So the initial cost of the house came up to around BD 71,000. We still need an additional BD10,000 to be able to move in.

So until we are able to finance the project we continue to work with what we have.

I'm happy with the whole house, though I never expected it to be the way it is now. On paper, things are totally different!

Can't wait to move in...

Peace,

SoulSearch