Posts from — May 2008

I’m sure by now all of you have heard about the whole Rachel Ray might have been wearing a keffiyeh in a Dunkin Donuts ad thing. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin said the scarf was linked to terrorism and all that good stuff.

My coworker found one particular comment on the BBC story that is unfortunately, oh so true:

“Brilliant! Everything that is wrong with America in a single news story. Neo-Con extremism, the inability to distinguish between ‘Arab’ and ‘terrorist’, corporate kow-towing to inarticulate ranting, and huge diabetes-inducing donuts with icing on top.”

Whenever someone in America does something ridiculous, comments in the BBC are usually split - you have the non-Americans saying ‘well, that’s America for you’ while you have the Americans trying to convince BBC readers that they are not all like that.

I bought a black and white checkered keffiyeh for my little sister at a protest I went to in San Francisco a couple of years ago. I always thought the incorporation of this particular scarf into fashion here was a bit ridiculous as I went from surprise that more and more people were publicly displaying their solidarity with Palestine to the realization that the scarf was worn as a fashion statement, not a political statement.

Oh well. What can you do.

After singing to Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” on Rock Band yesterday, I was given the following compliment by my friend Monica:

“That was a pretty good rendition. You really did sound like a snot-nosed punk.”

Thank you, thank you.

When my family and I first visited family in England back in 1995, we stayed mostly at my aunt and uncle’s place in Doncaster in the house that my cousins grew up in. It’s a nice place with a big yard and an actual swing set in the back. And here’s the most important thing: It always felt like home.

See, here’s the thing with me - I like traveling but I always have a hard time dealing with somewhere that’s not home, whether it be someone’s place or a hotel room. But not with this house. It always had a welcoming ambiance about it that never went away from that first time I went there.

After my cousin’s dad, my uncle, passed away two years ago, the house went up for sale as my aunt moved in with her son in Leeds. The house lay vacant as it was put on the market. It still hadn’t sold when my cousin decided to have her nikah there, despite the fact that no one had lived there in quite a while and she herself hadn’t really lived there since she was 18.

In preparation for the nikah, the house was completely cleaned up, gardeners tended to the yard, and my cousin’s family stocked up the house for essentials for the few days we would all stay there, from tea to toilet paper. When I stepped in the house for the first time since I visited in 2003, it was like nothing had changed. The essence of the Doncaster house was still there and every memory I’ve had there came flooding back.

The day after the nikah, we packed away everything in the house with us to take back to Leeds, completely emptying out the house. My sister and I went on the swings one final time that morning. It was sad to leave the house yet again, unsure if we would ever return.

In the end, I couldn’t imagine a better setting for my cousin’s nikah. Her dad couldn’t be there but having the nikah in the Doncaster house was the best way to pay tribute to his memory. May Allah (swt) forgive all of his sins and grant him Jannah, InshAllah.

Here are the Top 5 questions I was asked during and after my cousin’s wedding:

“So when are you getting married?”

“Are you getting married soon?”

“Why don’t you want to get married?”

“When is it going to be your time?”

“Do you have any plans to get married?”

And, well, you get the point

In the end, it was a simple wedding.

There was no mehendi party, no ‘hangama’ so to speak. Meaning, no singing and dancing the night before. Everyone got to know one another instead, with the two sides of the family mingling. The day of the wedding, my cousin looked absolutely stunning in her cream and silver suit. Her silver jewlery looked classy and different than the traditional gold most brides use. She wasn’t the ’submissive’ bride many are used to at Pakistani weddings. She interacted with everyone at the wedding. She talked. She laughed. She was beautiful.

Words cannot express how incredibly happy I am for her. I cried at the wedding during my speech, something that has never happened before. I wish the best to her and her husband. May they have a wonderful life with one another.

I got my first Mac a while ago and it came with all this cool stuff, including Garageband. I always wanted to try it out so I figured I would create a podcast, which I finally did over this weekend. So here it is folks, my first podcast.

Download Bushra’s First Podcast: The Effects of Reading Post Apocalyptic Fiction

Show Notes:
1. Yes, I realize that although I’m a 26 year old girl the sound of my recorded voice sounds like that of a little boy. What can I say. . .
2. This podcast is a bit disjointed, with a lot of “you knows” in there. I don’t have too much time to edit at this point because I have to get ready for England.
3. The books discussed: Y: The Last Man, World War Z, and The Road
4. The song played at the end: Re: Your Brains by Jonathan Coulton. I bought this song legally off his site :p
5. I didn’t really include any musical accompaniment in this podcast. Therefore, you are just really listening to me.
6. I ramble.

It runs about 14 minutes with the song at the end.

Thanks.

(Ok, so you really don’t have to listen to this if you don’t want to. It really is just meant to be a learning experience for me )

Dear Friends,

Do you find yourself ever wondering what Bushra is doing? Do you ever constantly check this site for the latest updates? Well, fear not for I am now on Twitter. With this application you too can follow what I am doing. My Twitter updates, which can be performed via SMS or online, will be featured in the sidebar of this side in the ‘What I’m Doing…” section. Yes, I know, how can your day possibly get any better. . .

Ok, I kid. In all seriousness, I wanted to add Twitter for a while and I got over the fact that I didn’t even have anyone really to follow (right now I am just following a former coworker and Wil Wheaton, haha). I signed up for it now instead of later ’cause I won’t have internet access for a few days next week and it would be nice to keep everyone updated with short texts now and then.

Anyways, I might also make them blog posts, as individual posts or as a post that features all the Twitter activity in that day, in addition to featuring them in the sidebar. I’ll think about that.

Take care folks and have a good weekend.

I can’t believe I didn’t know about this site until I saw a post about it in io9.

Another thing I can’t believe - that I’ve never Dune before. I dug out my brother’s Dune books from the garage yesterday and plan on reading the first one on the plane.

Side Note - It took me ages to find the first Dune book among all of my brother’s books in the garage. I was digging through the multitude of sci fi books (Star Trek, Isaac Asimov stuff, etc.etc.) and every time I thought I found Dune, it turned out to be one of the 50 prequels or sequels. I finally found it after wading through books and dust and then asked my brother why he didn’t have the foresight to put all the Dune books in one place. Because, I don’t know, that would have made things slightly more organized?!

Actually, while trying to find Dune, I found a few other books of his that I didn’t know he had or maybe I wasn’t interested in before, like Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. I’ve never read anything by him and have wanted to for a while now.

So that means that while I’m still really stressed about all the stuff I need to do before England, I already have my plane reading material - Dune and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, which I picked up last week. At least I have that taken care of. Now for everything else. . .

For the first time ever, I got called into jury duty on Tuesday.

I reported to the courthouse armed with my journal and a book, ready to take advantage of any downtime. After we watched a fun filled video about how awesome it is to be a juror, we were told that we would know what group we were in at 9:30am. 9:30 came and went. Then it became 10. 10:30. Finally, the lady announced that the first group could go home while the second group will be breaking for lunch and then will have to come back at 1:30. Problem: I was in the second group.

And that is, how, hours later I found myself in a court room with 38 other people, trying to think of some way to get out of becoming a juror. The judge first asked the potential jurors as a whole questions that could automatically disqualify us from taking part in a jury. He asked if any of us were bigots. Then, he asked if any of us had been felons who had yet to receive our rights back. One lady raised her hand and the judge excused her.

For about half a second, I considered proclaiming that I, too, was a felon but I opted not to make something like that up (yes, I understand that thinking about it for half a second was half a second too long).

After that, those of us who had excuses that we wanted to run past the judge were told to explain away. Alas, he didn’t consider my excuses as hardships. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t picked for the jury anyway.

So that was that.

I did learn some important stuff though. For one, the Oakland court house has a snack bar and even though they offer mochas on the menu, it probably isn’t wise to order one while there is only one person working, a long line of people are waiting after you, and everyone has to get back to the jury assembly room in five minutes. So you see, not a total waste of day.

Last Friday, I conducted a presentation at a class at San Jose State with a few other people on behalf of the media committee I belong to. We first did our presentation, which lasted a half hour, and then the class broke off into groups with one member representing the committee in each group. The purpose of this was to answer any questions a student may have either about Islam, the media, or both. This segment last about an hour. I didn’t know that we would do this (break off into groups) but it turned out pretty well.

Anyways, the professor sent an email to one member of our committee to thank him and all of us for taking the time out to go to the class. Here’s what she said about me: “Bushra really helped the girls in the class understand things from a woman’s perspective and she’s such an open person.” That meant a lot. I wasn’t sure if I was just babbling when those girls asked me their questions but I guess it all worked out.