"Türkçe bilmiyorum"

Just returned from the land with the most history I've ever seen. Turkey, or Istanbul in particular, has been a very interesting experience for my family. At times I was bewildered by the amazing architecture of the old Masjids, or 'Çamii' as they are also called, old Ottoman houses, and other buildings as well, and at other times the scenery of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara were always a pleasant sight. Though we tried to enjoy ourselves as much we could, often we were put off by a number of things which left us wondering what Turkey, and Istanbul especially, was really about.

"A Photo I took of the Ayasofya"

Our entire experience there was humbling, enlightening, insulting, and also stressful; one would question if it was a holiday at all. Probably the most thing that bothered us was the way we were treated. Before leaving for Turkey, we were well informed of prices of entrance fees and transport and such things; as soon as we had entered our transport to the hotel, our "guide" offered us some tours for a price that was 7 times the regular. This wasn't the only occasion we were attempted to be ripped off. Other times there were excessive attempts to convince us we had no other choice but to pay them, lying about how the 'Satiş Noktası' (Sales point) was already closed; it was annoying.

"Further down Istiklal Street From Taksim Square"

We did not feel like guests in a country, we felt exactly like the purpose of our invitation (yes tourism is an invitation by a country); to bring our money with us and give it to them. It was very annoying being constantly called "Hajji" and treated with a friendly smile only to be attempted to be ripped off. Being presented with Menu's that had prices rubbed off, while there were perfectly good ones to give us was a clear sign. I know I'm sounding like I'm calling the entire people rip-offs; I'm not saying that, it just felt like the way we looked was a clear sign for everyone to approach us; but clearly it was alright to push us and bump into us, often being told to move out of our places because we were tourists.

What was insulting about that was the way we were constantly tagged by beggars and pimps, yes pimps, even if they could see we were with family.

During the last days I was dehydrated and couldn't see straight, I huddled over my dad to a taxi. As I got into a Taxi the driver decided... "Hmm, these guys look like in a desperate situation, let's charge them more. $10 Dollars, Hajji". Its a metered Taxi that would cost us less than a third of that!

Our holiday wasn't all bad as you can see with that smile:

"Inside the Ayasofya"

It was absolutely wonderful seeing the sites, and I could honestly say, I did not have anything that I ate there that I didn't enjoy. Everything I had was delicious, from the Döner Kebab all the way to the International foods; the Turks know food! We were cautious as to whether we were served pork or not, some places feeling ridicule for thinking we would be, and others informing us that we had the option. We left with a sense of confusion about what do Turks think is right.

Visiting the Ayasofya, Süleymaniye, and The Blue Mosque were probably the highlights of our trip. Reading the centuries of history behind these buildings was amazing. It makes one wonder which of these were built as Masjids and which were built as Churches or Synagogues, this was the case with all the mosques in the city. At times we wondered if the Sultans knew how to build Masjids or did they build Churches with minarets. My brother and I kept thinking of the Planet Naboo in Star wars and kept humming the Duel of the Fates track; hilarious!

"The Blue Mosque"

"Naboo Palace - Star Wars"

The Blue Mosque, although still functioning as a Masjid, was open to everyone to visit. Back at home in UAE, Women aren't allowed to pray in the view of men, and non-muslim visitors aren't allowed in, both of which were happening not only in The Blue Mosque, but every other mosque in the city. It was a bit annoying not knowing how to answer visitors asking us whether they could go in or not. Maybe my family and I are not built for the Tourist Role, and maybe we're just very paranoid, we could definitely say that this holiday wasn't 100%, but I believe we would definitely give it another visit, to Bursa maybe?

"Stepping into the 'Süleymaniye Camii'. My 1000th Photo"

All in all, the whole experience was good for us; we picked up some 'Türkçe' (Turkish) as some people would refuse to answer us in any other language; (the words "Türkçe bilmiyorum" which would get the message through that we didn't know Turkish) , and we became grateful for what we are used to at home. I myself felt glad that a country such as Turkey was getting ahead in this world; its political influence rising, I'm happy; being a Muslim and all, but I couldn't help feel that the Turkish people are a bit confused as to where they belong and their own identity. These were the same sentiments our "guide" at the start was feeling. In places we saw people who called themselves Muslims and were fully clothed in the 'hijab' and answering calls to prayers, in others we found men of the same claim either selling women to others or themselves to gays, Friday is not a holiday and it didn't matter if you wanted to pray Friday prayers or not. We couldn't tell who was Turkish and who wasn't, some were very western and some very eastern. Though I do not judge, for I see the same thing happening right here at home, and we may be bothered by what goes on around us, but so long as we stay true to what we believe in and provide the rights of others (which Turkey does well), then only God can judge us.

The Darker Side Of The Moon

I'm really starting to hate this habit of mine: fixating on things that I don't like about a movie. "Transformers: Dark Of The Moon" was, by far, much better than "Revenge Of The Fallen" in my opinion. There seemed to be a better story line, even though there were many unanswered questions and a lot of things that don't make sense. I guess those are givens when its an all action with lots of damage and destruction flash and bang movie. It had probably one of the longest action scenes I've ever seen in my entire life and all I could think about was "hmm something not right there".

The very first thing that got to me was the American history lesson everyone had to go through before continuing with the movie. Let's think a little here, was there really a need for that whole recap of how Americans reached the moon before the USSR? Did they have to bring in the real astronauts to act in the movie as a commemoration? Couldn't they just skip to the part where they say "we kept it a secret". Shortly after the history lesson, we are introduced to the new female protagonist fan service maiden! What joy! We got to see her bum before her face! Eat your heart out Megan Fox! and too many unnecessary characters; "Deep Wang" being one of them. The boss at the umm- what was it? The yellow floor working place?

I was quite surprised to see vehicles other than American, even though they called them and I quote ''a piece of S%#@'', I don't know if its coincidence but it was a Japanese Datsun that was portrayed as a bad car to have. Interesting to see Maybach and Ferrari in the film; obviously plenty of product placement. It was pretty funny to see somehow, after the final battle was won, there ended up an American flag flying high and proud over the Autobots and the other soldiers.

Being a big Transformers fan from childhood, I was pretty disappointed with 'Revenge Of The Fallen' and was pleased that this sequel was not a repeat of that. I still feel like the first movie was the only one that was close to portraying the real theme of Transformers; don't get me wrong, if you enjoy an action movie, you should watch this one! Enjoy!

Summer Time! Now what?

The hot hazy weather of Dubai is reaching its peaks and surely is a sign of summer! June 21st marks the first day of summer and also the day with the most sunlight in the year! I think I'd rather stay indoors if that's the case. My mind keeps telling me that I shouldn't and that I have to get outside and get some exercise; not in this heat mate!

Living in Dubai, I come across this problem every summer; not knowing what to do. As I am of the many families that don't travel very much. I end up staying at home not knowing what exactly to do. I've always tried to get a summer job until a couple of years ago as my attempts have always failed. Tried thinking of getting some sort of exercise routine that involves swimming and stuff; how much can a person swim? Mall hopping is not an option. Its a problem I think many of our youths here have trouble with. Ultimately, I always end up at network cafes wasting my life on video gaming; very popular during the summer as you can spend lots of time indoors playing games with friends, but there's only so much a person can play.

It really is a predicament for me and my friends. Finding free ways to spend my time has been my goal this summer. I ended up finding a place to watch feature length International and Arab films, I found that the Abu Dhabi Film Festival was screening films at The Pavilion Downtown Dubai; What an opportunity! Then again, it only gets me through 2 hours of my day. Maybe I should check out the Dubai Summer Surprises.

Any suggestions?

Happy Summer, Everyone!

Green Lantern Sheds No Light

Another member of the Justice League gets a movie with this first attempt by Warner Brothers to make a DC comic into a 3D movie; too bad I didn't watch it in 3D. It was still a fun watch though, it made me kind of regret not watching it in 3D. With that said the story had A LOT of unanswered questions and loose ends.

First of all, what was the point of introducing the whole family earlier in the movie? Especially the nephew; it felt like he would be involved in the plot. Next was the antagonist or was he? I can't even remember his name! All I know is he developed a second chin, could read minds and move things at will because he got touched by yellow substance that was consuming him apparently; turns out that was the power of fear. Then, there was the question of what happens to the Yellow Ring that was forged by the guardians. They made a big deal out of it and I think many of the viewers were eager to see the power of that ring. Maybe I don't understand these things because I didn't read the comic? Well then that just makes it a bad script because it was catered only to fans of the comic.

CONSPIRACY ALERT: Notice when the physiologist/antagonist/parallax's human subject? was passing on a disk of information to the other scientist, the symbol on the disk was a triangle with an eye in the middle; very much like the 'all seeing eye' on the US dollar. This obviously suggests Freemasonry/Illuminati and the like. To give an object, which was useless to the plot in anyway, the amount of screen time it got was hard to understand except to believe they wanted to emphasize the symbol.

Am I really uninformed about the comic? Am I reading too much into this? Lemme know in the comments!

Evangelist Camp

As I was looking through a list of documentaries to watch, the words "Jesus Camp" appeared. I immediately thought this was a bible camp where kids go to learn about the bible during a summer camp. Little did I know that it wasn't quite what I was thinking. It was more of an Evangelical Camp aiming evangelical teachings at children.

Now bare in mind that what I'm about to write is not an attack against teaching children about your faith, it is the right of a family to do so, and I'm not questioning the aim and intentions of such camps, I'm just a bit lost at the method in which they are doing so. Also bare in mind that I sympathize with some of the values that were being upheld such as acting against abortion. I'm not even going to touch the 'fundamentalist' word because I feel its a misused word. The thing that didn't make sense to me was, where is everything else about Christianity that was supposed to be taught? Maybe it was a flaw in the documentary, but I honestly couldn't see anything Christian about the camp except that things were being done in a church or hall and that Jesus' name kept coming up. Calling on children to raise their hands and feel Jesus, or to break porcelain cups and plates with a hammer, or passing out fetus dolls for children to see, and then playing a rock concert with dancing and saying that its doing your work for god?

To me it seemed like everything good about life was thrown into the camp from dancing to music, swimming to dirt biking; and then in the end saying that all the fun you had was because youre praying to Jesus. One quote by one of the boys was "I began praying to god because I wanted more from life". Is this God worship or Life worship?

X-Men vs. WoMen!

Another weekend; Another movie. 'X-Men: First Class' was the movie to watch this weekend and as I didn't manage to watch 'Origins' I didn't know what to expect. I liked this one, I would say it was the best out of all five X-Men movies (despite not watching 'Origins'). I liked seeing the young Charles Xavier (Professor X) and Eric Lensherr (Magneto) and their contemporaries. It was surprising to see that the movie wasn't in 3D; it would've had more 3D than Pirates Of The Caribbean. Little mentions of certain characters and even the appearance of some were also nice to see. As I am always critical of movie content, I couldn't help but complain about certain things, one out of all was the fact that the movie had a sexist theme to it. I wondered if people were actually noticing.

Am I the only one that noticed the fact that every single major female character undressed herself in the movie? Think about it; Mystique in bed and after, Frost for the Russian General, Moira in the Vegas scene, Angel and all the other strippers. Why did they all have to undress? Every single one of them? To achieve their goals? Doesn't that portray a message subconsciously? Isn't that sexist? or is that the American version female empowerment? Well, Moira did say she was "using the tools the CIA never gave me". Another scene to add to that is the final scene after Moira was caused to forget the events prior to her final debriefing. She could only remember 'a kiss' and the cheif stated "this is why women shouldn't be in the CIA".

Isn't America and The West supposed to be the champions of women's rights and equality? If their idea of that is for every woman to think that using their body in order to achieve things is ok, then isn't that contradictory to the idea of empowering women? It was like they were trying to push the sexual aspect of the movie all the way down to the female Manikins being used for target practice. You could clearly see the curvature of private parts and emphasis of camera on the 'bust'. Is it just me being a man? Or did they intentionally place that for me to notice?

I know I keep bringing up Movie Brainwashing but seriously, what was all that about in the movie? Other than that I think the movie was good to watch.

Still toy guns?

Another season ends and just as I feared in this post ten months ago, no trophies for Arsenal FC. Although the reasons I cited were off, I wasn't too far. The main reason for Arsenal's problems lie in defense. Our best defenders left in the names of Kolo Toure and William Gallas, sure we had Vermaelen but how can one young defender replace two seasoned champions? Johan Djourou rose to the occasion and Koscielny put in brave performances for many occasions, but it felt like they were still a bit too frail at the back.

Every Arsenal fan likes to make his own deduction of what's going wrong with the team, many blamed experience, others blamed it on quality, the seasons before it was depth, and I myself thought it was because we needed a superstar. Chelsea have Drogba, Barcelona have Messi, Man-United had Ronaldo and now Rooney. It makes me wonder "does Arsenal have someone like that?" a player that would strike fear to all who play against us; we used to have Henry. If you asked me that question half way through the season, I would've told you no. I was proven wrong however towards the end of the season; we have Robin Van Persie. As it turns out, he has made the English record for most goals scored within a half season as well as a record for most consecutive away goals; imagine if he'd been fit all season. Then again we say that every season.

There are so many positives to take away from this season, we have improved collectively, our goalscoring is top of the league, many of our players have become stars with the likes of Nasri, Walcott, Alex Song, and of course, Jack Wilshere who is our player of the season. Great things to come from that boy, I remember watching the reserve videos just to see him play. We are top of the mini-top four league, have a strong team and to improve it will be very difficult, a solid goalkeeping trio. I think the key for next season will be to keep our best players.

So another season to wait for during the summer, and another run to put something in the trophy-less cabinet, another year to try and get something other than the Emirates Cup; this year will be different. We've all been saying that for the past 6 years and rightly so, because we believe in this team just as much as the boss does. We're doing the right things and we are unbelievably close to something really big. People forget that Sir Alex once had a trophy-less run, and look at what happened after. These Gunners no longer use toy guns, and our guns will surely be well loaded and rationed for next season.