Category Archives: Best blog posts

Dec 04 2011
15 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Lists, Three minute read, Wedding

Dear Sister: Prepare for Defeat

Only one will win

My triplet sister is getting married at the end of next June, and my other triplet and I are co-chairing the maid of honor. Neither of my sisters realizes that this kind of sharing is impossible. There can be only one maid of honor. The other one is just “nice sister.” Therefore, I’m viewing the entire affair as a competition to see who can be the best maid of honor, where the greatest contestant will win the title at the end of the wedding and strip the other contender of all honors. It will be a heartwarming ceremony for all who attend, especially the victorious bridesmaid.

By way of good sportsmanship, I have drawn up a list of the reasons I will make a formidable challenger in this competition. May the best sister prevail.

1. I have literally nothing else to do once I get back from Egypt in May. While my opponent is busy reviewing flash cards, I’ll be yelling at the caterers and handling all phone, email, and material communication regarding the wedding for the bride. My level of availability is unbeatable.

2. As a special service to the bride-to-be, I will be live-blogging and live-tweeting the entire wedding. People usually pay thousands for this kind of coverage, a fee I’m willing to forgo, and the publicity could even result in our entire family or just me becoming famous. No one else is willing to invade my family’s privacy as much as I am.

3. Having spent roughly 6 years studying Arabic, or should I say preparing for my sister’s wedding, I am ready to use these language skills during the ceremony in a number of ways. I could deliver of my speech completely in formal Arabic, recite a few verses from the Qur’an and/or the Arabic Bible at any point during the service in conservative Oklahoma, or translate the wedding invitations and bulletins into Arabic. My Arabic skills know no comparison (to anyone in our family and friend circle).

4. I am willing to put myself into extreme amounts of personal discomfort in order to help my sister through the wedding process; I can thrive on trivial amounts of sleep and peanut butter for months at a time provided there is an unlimited supply of Nescafe Gold. I will punish myself for my sister’s happiness.

5. As a public speaker of average talents with a great passion for being the center of attention, I promise to limit the length of my speech to 20 minutes, no more than half of which will be in Arabic. Furthermore, I pledge to put on fake accents throughout the speech, including the two I can do okay—Slavic and British—and a host of others of which I know only a phrase or two. My other sister’s speech will not be nearly as memorable.

6. Since I attended a secular school for my undergraduate degree, I have more experience in both drinking as well as getting my groove on in public and private spaces. To that end, I will make sure that everyone knows there will be no alcohol at the wedding and that they’d do best to get smashed beforehand. I will also be in charge of keeping a good vibe going on the dance floor. No wedding in Oklahoma has seen hedonism like this.

After seeing these qualifications, I wouldn’t be completely surprised if my other sister doesn’t drop out of the competition. If she’s foolish enough to remain, I look forward to the thrill of a drawn-out competition that will slowly tear our family apart.

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Nov 16 2011
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Best blog posts, Humorous, Three minute read, Travelling

Get Out of My Desert

We found it first.

(My trip to the incredibly beautiful White Desert continued, with more details and complaints.)

Civilization either exiles you to the desert or it wastes your sanity until you seek the desert as a refuge. For me, the desert was the latter: an escape from the mouth breathers and the metro pushers, the exhaust sniffing and the car evasion that scents my daily Cairo existence.

In the White Desert, rolling over the dunes and scrabbly rockscapes in the Jeep, I felt like not only had I escaped from it all, but “it all” was actually fake. Cairo, along with the entire world and its issues, was only a dream that paled in comparison to the stark reality of desert life and the landscapes formed by nothing but geological upheavals over the past couple of millennia.

Occasionally I would sink into reveries and imagine myself as the first person to have ever walked on this rock, or touched this grain of sand, or fallen down on this boulder. These thoughts, however, were likely folly. We were not alone. Other “people” had somehow found out about the White Desert. Was it the fact it’s a national park? That it’s discussed in detail in the Lonely Planet guidebook? That there’s a separate guidebook for the Western Desert of Egypt that outlines the nooks and crannies of the White Desert? The real reason will probably never be known, but the fact remains that though we spent much of the time by ourselves during our desert escapade, we did come across an unfortunate amount of intruders.

In theory, these humans were normal, fine people. Yet I despised them nevertheless. First of all, upon spotting another group in the desert, the air becomes electrified with tourist tension. I resent the other with a passion approaching my love for mushy, hot cereal. The other group is a reminder that my experience is not singular, that others have seen these things and taken better pictures than me. It’s kindergarten all over again: “Kids, you need to know one thing. You’re not special. There are 7 billion people on this planet. Your main purpose in life will be to serve as a statistic for marketing purposes. Half of you will divorce.”

Second of all, eco-tourists are filthy creatures that create waste, both natural and artificial. Despite encouragement from many reputable sources, including Lonely Planet, many tourists do not even attempt to burn their toilet paper after doing their despicable duty. Friends, let me tell you this: toilet paper does not stay buried in the desert for long. Like your shameful secret of eating 3 bags of peanut butter M&Ms before bed every night, it will be blubber to the surface. There’s nothing more unpleasant than realizing what you thought was a pristine campsite is littered with the unspeakable trash of inconsiderate patrons.

So, if you must disturb my desert, please remain quite shameful about your bodily functions and do everything in your power to prevent others from knowing that you have ever done anything so embarrassing.

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Oct 23 2011
5 Comments
Anecdotes, Best blog posts, Stories, Three minute read

The Coffee Grinder Saga, Part 1

possible bane of my existence

Have you ever done something you regretted so much that you would give anything to undo it? Have you ever wanted nothing more than a time machine in order to go back and roofie yourself to prevent something horrible from happening? Have you ever felt remorse welling up in the pit of your stomach, a veritable fountain of bile waiting for any excuse to spew?  Many of you will not be able to relate to the dire circumstances I have found myself in, but I will relate them nevertheless.

Last night, in a fit of delirium, I thought it would be fun to go over to the apartment my friend was apartment-sitting and take advantage of the espresso maker there by having a late night coffee. Little did I know that only 2 hours after suggesting this idea, I would rue the very moment I ever thought of the words “go,” “espresso,” and “tonight” in the same sentence.

In times past, I relished going to said apartment in order to enjoy its civilized air, an air that comes the breath of a person living off a real salary and not the peanuts of a student stipend. This apartment has nice things in it: mixing bowls with rubber on the bottom, a digital oven, a flat screen television, etc. In hind sight, these were all indicators I should never have been there in the first place.

Amongst the fineries of this apartment are an espresso machine and a coffee grinder, two appliances that go together like Cairo tap water and hair loss. In my ignorance, I thought I knew how to work both of them. Step one: plug them in. This proved very easy to do with the espresso machine. I just plugged it right into the converter box that adapts the electric current for appliances made to work elsewhere i.e. the U.S.

Having plugged in the espresso machine, all I had to do was grind up some coffee beans. There was only one knob on the KitchenAid Pro Line coffee grinder, so the actual grinding part seemed essentially fool proof. Unfortunately, the machine was dealing with no mere fool. I am a fool with a college degree and a passport, a fool of the most dangerous kind. You see, the converter box had two sockets: one labeled 110V and the other labelled 220V. The numbers appeared to be meaningless afterthoughts, more decoration than anything else, but I soon found reality to be quite different.

I went to plug the coffee grinder in. The only plug open on the box was the 220V one, and I thought, “Well, I might as well try it to see if it works.” There are a few things wrong with this line of reasoning. First of all, why didn’t I check to see what kind of voltage the appliance itself called for? Even if I had the pathetic excuse of not knowing where to look, any dum-dum can check the bottom of a machine where these nuggets of information are usually hidden. Second of all, I had unknowingly begun playing Russian roulette with electrical outlets, one outlet leading to freshly ground coffee, and the other descending to a coffee-less pit of despair and self-loathing, a pit that can easily be avoided through the least amount of research. I didn’t even ask my friend for his opinion even though he was standing literally a foot away from me.

I went to plug in the coffee grinder and…..now that you’re burning with suspicion, this story will be continued tomorrow. It will involve international statecraft and the fall of capitalism, so stay tuned.

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Oct 17 2011
3 Comments
Best blog posts, Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read, Wedding

Say Yes to the Toothpaste!

“the one” was still being shipped

The search has finally ended. Today I found “the one”—the one toothpaste that fits me perfectly, embodies my personality, and makes me look better than everyone else. It’s a little out of my budget range, but I think we all can agree that no price is too high when you find the paste that takes your breath away. I’ve known people who have taken out second mortgages, sold vehicles, and rented out less-favorite children’s rooms to strangers just in order to afford the perfect paste. Personally, I dropped out my fellowship program in order to give this search the time and focus it deserves, and my efforts have not gone unrewarded.

I started with the go-to Crest®, Colgate®, and Aquafresh® collections. I was particularly interested in seeing what Crest® Tartar Control Whitening Plus Scope® Liquid Gel Toothpaste would do for my gum color, and I wasn’t disappointed. After a quick brushing, my gums felt as taut and healthy as a well tuned guitar string. The Aquafresh® number was also a strong competitor with its new Extreme Clean® toothpaste with Micro-Active Foaming Action and Whitening, a product developed in part by NASA. But even though the Extreme Clean® looked and fit wonderfully, it just didn’t feel like “me.” So then I tried on Colgate Total®: Enamel Strength toothpaste that also has 12 hour germ fighting protection. After brushing only once with the Colgate®, I bit through a kitchen table.  I had never felt so powerful. My friends and family also thought Colgate® was a good fit for me, but even so, I still yearned for something else.

When was at my hairdresser’s getting my bangs redone and and talking about my search for “the one,” he asked me if I’d ever tried Sensodyne®.  “It’s America’s #1 desensitizing toothpaste” he said, and “It’s been taking the feeling out of people’s teeth for over 4 decades.”“Wow.” I said. “I had no idea.”

I left straightaway and went to CVS. Standing in the oral care aisle of the drugstore, I felt a calm descend over me as I picked up what I knew would be the last brand of toothpaste I would ever squeeze onto the soft bristles of my toothbrush: Sensodyne® Extra Whitening: Maximum Strength with Fluoride. I headed for the checkout with my prize, grinning like a convict with a secret. The cashier said I’d picked out a nice toothpaste and I knew he was right. This was “the one.”

When I tried on the toothpaste at home, it felt as though it and I were one soul, long separated but at last rejoined. I took pictures of myself brushing my teeth and sent them to my entire family and posted them on facebook so everyone could know just how beautiful my teeth were going to be. The flood of comments and support was overwhelming.

All I can say is that I’m incredibly thankful to have a group of people in my life willing to stick with me and give me honest feedback throughout this process. I refuse to stop now that I’ve found “the one” toothpaste, and will continue similar searches for “the one” toilet paper and “the one” deodorant, and very soon my life will be perfect.

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Sep 28 2011
6 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Open Letters, Two minute read

An Open Letter to the Youth Who Said He Loved Me

Who’s that girl?

Dear Motorbike-Riding Youth:

First of all, I would like to thank you for shouting “I love you” at me while I was minding my own business on the side of a narrow road in the mid afternoon autumnal heat. For a moment I had forgotten that I was a foreign woman, and you, having clearly never seen a foreigner or a woman before, were so overcome with true love that it inspired an immediate reaction from you that thankfully reminded me of my feminine, alien, identity. Moreover, I am no stranger to similar feelings of passion, especially for pedestrians, and so I completely sympathize with your socially inappropriate utterance.

However, if you would allow me to critique one aspect of your harassment strategy, I would simply like to point out that your outburst of passion occurred just seconds before you passed me as we were going the same direction. This means that you had only seen the back of my person at the moment you realized you had fallen for me. I, of course, am no Scrooge, and would be the last person to deny the possibility of love at first sight. That being said, in common usage first sight usually indicates some sort of eye contact or facial recognition, which then (if successful) progresses onto the collar bone and shoulder region or whatever pleases the parties involved. In contrast, you were brave enough to display your ardor heedless of what might have appeared on the other side.

I heard your zealous declaration first and then saw you zoom past me, as you continued on into the great wide world of Cairo. Before you turned out of sight, however, you must have realized your mistake. You doubted whether you could you actually love me without seeing my face, my features remaining unknown for eternity. Worse yet, what if I was wholly different than expected? Suppose I were actually an Egyptian man wearing a wig and Chacos? What if I had one large walrus tusk and a furry lip? A unibrow and scaly skin? Three eyes, a peg leg, and tentacles for a nose?

You realized quickly that you could not live with this uncertainty, and so turned around while continuing to move forward, all at once holding onto the past, plowing into the future, and throwing yourself into danger. Once you looked back, you saw that I was a foreign woman, just as you had hoped. It no longer mattered whether or not my features could be considered attractive, since they were non-Egyptian and female. You were content with knowing your love had been real, even if the interaction was all too brief. My advice to you for next time is to be careful of who you fall for, since you never know what they might look like.

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