Another Day in the Countryside

Last week i was visiting the countryside in Anbar, the birthplace of my father and grandfathers. It was my first time there since March 2005. I was invited to my cousin's wedding who he's 19 years old only. Many reasons forced me not go there to the countryside earlier and the most important reason that the whole Anbar governorate was dominated by Al-Qaeda and other terrorist armed groups who terrorized the local citizens there and excuted many of them. My other cousin told me that it was a knightmare for him when a bunch of gunmen attacked him in the middle of the road and forced him to stop and get out of his car. They took him blindfolded to their headquarter and began to interrogate him in a voilent way. He still has faint remarks of bruises and contusions. They were checking if he was a member of the Iraqi police or working as a spy for the Americans. After 5 hours of merciless interrogation, they released him and blindfolded him again and drove him to nowhere, where he freed himself and got back home dead exhausted and horrified.

Another reason I don't like to go there; most of Iraqi villages are pretty sexists. I find that very depressing. I detest sexism! *sighs*

Anyway, I had fun there in "Jezeera" village. I swam down the river although it was a bit windy. I also milked a cow by myself only and without any help from any other person. In fact, it was my 3rd time to milk a cow. The early two tries were done by an assistance of my aunt. :P

I had taken couple of photos and I'd like to show you some of them,

Here's my cow after doing the milking process! I let a cousin to shoot a vid but I forgot to take it later. :(

My uncle's garden! Here where I spent my days in that village. Too bad they didn't let us to play football. :((

Lovely nature, isn't it?!

Green Green Green! Green is the colour!


An ewe and her little baby sheep! Her other Little baby is shown below.

The little lamb to my father: "What the hell are you doing?!".

Notice that the black n white appears above is the twin of this black white-headed babysheep below. Weird!

My father is trying to fool the little lamb.

A view on the river Euphrates. Here where I usually swim whenever I visit the country.

You can see here, the GSM base-station tower (aka base-station antenna) that porvides coverage of mobile communication services for this rural area!

I forgot to mention that I was busy helping my other cousin, Omar, in his new house construction works. Here are some photos....

Here's Omar and he's pushing a cart full of debris. Thanks god, the weather was nice that day! We didn't get exhausted much at that sunny day.

Ok, guys! Let's take a break! Their house from inside! Except the one in the stripy green shirt on the left who is my brother. All of the rest are my cousins but from different uncles and aunts all from my father's side. They are 4 uncles and 3 aunties.

Kids! Those two little goblins didn't let us work in peace. They drove us mad and they didn't care about us whenever we yelled at them. At the contrary, they get more evil! My cousin, Omar, was spending the day chasing them. That was hilarious indeed.

Finally, I want to close this posting with this cute little girl pic, Dima! She didn't leave me, wherver I went she went. Cute, isn't she?!

Lake Habbaniya

I was intending to make my own posting about Lake Habbaniya one day, but I guess you should check this out as it is mentioned in the NewYorkTimes.

LAKE HABBANIYA, Iraq — A few hours outside Baghdad in the middle of Iraq’s vast western desert is a sight that could understandably be mistaken for a mirage: a long, sandy beach filled with thousands of people swimming and dancing barefoot under the hot sun without apparent care. A disc jockey — “Mr. D. J.,” he calls himself — is shouting into a microphone over a thumping Syrian dance song and blurts out something remarkable in its ordinariness.“A shoutout to everyone from Baghdad!” he says in Arabic.“Yea!” responds the crowd that has gathered around him.“Everyone from Adhamiya and Sadr City who came from Baghdad, show me what you got!” Mr. D. J. yells, referring to two neighborhoods in the capital — the first almost exclusively Sunni, the second nearly entirely Shiite.In response, energetic dancing breaks out all around, and Sunnis and Shiites share a rare moment of careless bliss together. It is amazing, but it is real: for the first time since the outbreak of the sectarian war in 2006, Iraq is enjoying a beach season.The water at Lake Habbaniya in Anbar Province is muddy, and today, a sandstorm has blotted out the sun. Back home, few people have air-conditioning or dependable electricity. And already this month, hundreds of Iraqis have died in the violence that continues to envelop the country.All that, say the sunbathers, is why a day at the beach is so important. “I’m here to get away — from the bombs in Baghdad, from the sound of generators,” said Aya Alshemari, a 22-year-old college student who, despite the fact that she was wearing a modest T-shirt and jeans, was drawing the gazes of dozens of male beachgoers. “We’re here to have a good time. There’s no difference between Shiite and Sunni. We are all Iraqis.”Most people had driven their cars right onto the sand, pulling up next to the water. And because it is Iraq, each vehicle has been carefully checked for explosives and every beachgoer frisked for a suicide bomb vest. On this particular August day, though, there is nothing more harmful than 115-degree heat and high-calorie food: beef and lamb kebabs, biryani, fried kibbeh. A few young men take furtive sips of cold beer. Read more!

Lake Habbaniyah, is a shallow natural lake in al-Anbar, Iraq, west of Baghdad. It has a surface area 140km². Traditionally the lake has been used to hold floodwater from the River Euphrates, and in 1956 a barrage was constructed at Ramadi for this purpose. The lake was also used for recreational purposes.

In the late 1930s and 1940s Lake Habbaniyah was used by Imperial Airways as a refueling point and hotel for flying boats flying from the United Kingdom to India. Nearby on the banks of the Euphrates had already been established the Royal Air Force airbase of RAF Dhibban, later renamed RAF Habbaniya.

Habbaniya is now also the site of a major United States military base known as Al Taqqadum.

1, 2, 3 I'm free!

Yeaah! I'm free! No more college, no more study, no more boring books, no more freaky lecturers, no more scary tests or exams. I'm an engineer now, or at least that's what they said! ;)
I'm sorry, I've been so lazy to post something over here. But since most of you know me either from Facebook or Y! messenger, I guess u know about my graduation.
Now after finishing college, I need to find me a job. I went to couple of interviews and they told me to wait for a phonecall but so far I haven't recieved any of their calls. :(
By the way, now I'm available online. I have purchased a wireless internet service at home. Therefore except the times of the power cuts or the times when my PC go crazy, I can be available. ;)
See ya later!

Gradutated as a Grim Reaper!

To disguise as one of the dreariest death symbols in your what supposed to be significant day of your life, is something weird. But since it is a masquerade party, i guess it would be a cool costume to wear. (in the picture below I'm trying to reap out a life of some poor fella :P)

Just to let you in the picture, most of the colleges and universities in Iraq hold two graduation parties for their seniors just before the end of the scholar year.

Those two parties are:

1st. Graduation photograph shooting session (Casual is required); and it is set up usually in middle of April. In that day, memorial photos are taken for the seniors with their teaching staff and college council. After shooting the picture, the students head to a concert hall to continue celebrating this day.





2nd. Masquerade; and this party is set on the begining of May. Each group of students is free to choose a costume to wear. The party is held within the (university/college)'s perimeter. You can enjoy the loud (sadly Iraqi) music presented by the DJ, you can have fireworks in the daylight, and taking photos.





In fact, I wasn't interested much in such parties and I talked about this earlier here on this blog. I even didn't want to join my classmates in this party beacuse most of them are not friends, they are just colleagues. Besides, the first ideas of what costume we should wear was simply sucky. Some said that we could wear fishermen, others suggested sailors, a group called to choose a folk Kurdistani custome. The most dreadful idea is to dress as business-men!Until, I and some dude were chatting about this band british band grim-reaper. And hence, it came the idea of our costume. Of course it wasn't easy to convince the rest of our partners to apply this scary theme for a graduation party. But after bringing a sample of the "grim reaper" costume and let everybody tries it, all were happy to wear in the masquerade.



I tried as best as I could to look like a grim reaper. I painted my face in black and white, I nail-polished my finger nails with black. The scythe was also important. I couldn't believe how many ppl asked me to take a photo with them. I even scared a young child and the more I tried to calm her down, the more she was feeling scared. I hate that feeling, I used to get scared of those damn things when I was a kid.
The best part of the party is that I took many many pictures with chicks. All of them said that I was acting the role of the grim reaper seriously. The number of chicks and dudes take photos with me made me to feel like I was a celebrity.

1 more left

Hey, guys!
Guess what! I passed all my 1st semester exams! *bounces* Now I have 1 last semester left and i get graduated. :)
My semester ends at the end of June. It took me a lotta hard effort to pass those terrible exams. I was worried of failure. Great news before my birthday! :)

My 25 random things

Rules: Once you've read this, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, you have to write them back to me as a mail or a comment. It's because I want to know more about you.

1. I'm kleptomaniac
2. I have such a low self-esteem
3. Ants are my favorite pets.
4. I have never been in love, no matter how hard I tried to find it. And it kills me sometimes.
5. I find myself a better person when I'm in sorrow.
6. I always have this daydream of being a famous skilled footballer.
7. Call me weirdo, but I dislike cars.
8. I had a vid on YOUTUBE of me being kissed by a guy in a swift sudden move. Arrrgh!
9. I'm afraid of heights.
10. When my best friend passed away, I cut myself and I found much relief.
11. I had a temporary blindness for couple of hours.
12. I have the hots for the girls who smoke.
13. I gave oral to a teen girl. It was awesome but I regret it. *sighs*
14. I support death penalty. Rapists and misogynists deserve it.
15. I'm still virgin. *sighs even more*
16. One of my next plans to do after graduation is to learn Spanish.
17. I can hold my breath in water for about 4 minutes. I dare you!
18. Once I gave an anonymous present to a miss in the teacher's day. The present was an old bra and torn pair of socks. :))
19. I used AK47 once, shot one bullet in the air just for fun.
20. My wildest dream is to live in Europe.
21. Cloudy days make me feel depressed.
22. I never had a girlfriend.
23. I don't like to have breakfast.
24. I have never slept with a girl, but I find foreplay and caressing better than sex itself.
25. Happy Valentine everyone!

2009 Provincial Elections

It's 31st of January 2009, the provincial elections. To be quite honest, I wasn't sure that I should vote this year for many reasons;
a. No specific candidate in mind to vote for. I'm not convinced with the majority of the parties and candidates listed in the election card.
b. Being skeptical about the integrity and impartiality of the elections. Rumors say that the last elections in 2005 there were several incidents of forgery reached a percentage of 30% of the whole voting process.
c. The curfew of the motor-vehicles, and the nearest voting center is about 2 km far.
d. I don't want that stupid ink stain to stick on my index.
One more reason to add is that I woke up this morning with a terrible earache. I wanted someone to shoot me in head and release me off from that pain. That reminded me by Melantrys when she had an earache. I wished if she was near to borrow her magnificent meds which vanishes the ache away. I took some eardrops meds but that wasn't good enough. But thanks to the wonderful Panadol, only 1 tablet was enough to draw the smile on my face again. (the script written in bold is not a promotion ad) :P
*is typing this post with an ink-stained index* what the f…?
Honestly, I felt that it would be a waste not to participate in such "democratic" processes. If I wanna criticize the performance of the government, the parliament, or the local councils, I should have at least participated in making the decision by voting for the side or the candidate I like. And to be more honest, I felt so fuckin' bored and it would be a great idea to walk out to get some refreshing air in such a beautiful winter sunny day.
I went to an election site and marked the same old bloc I voted for 4 years ago. They are secular but they didn't win many seats at that time. Hopefully this year they win. In fact, I hope everyone who wants to serve Iraq in real wins.
Iraqi official spokesmen stated over the media that security plans were firm and successful and they were 100% by Iraqi forces. Hmm, weird. Because I noticed the existence of US forces units near most of the checkpoints and main entrances of the election centers. However, they didn't intervene directly. Their job was like being supervisors.
anywayz. *is looking at his watch* it's 6:09 pm Baghdad local time. The voting is over. Luckily, no serious accident has been registered. Again, Everyone honest and wants to serve Iraq and intends to bulid Iraq to be a powerful and prosper country, I wish them all the success to achieve that goal.