Western Arab

It has been maybe 2 weeks of cold weather and it is finally warming up. The cold weather isn’t gone exactly, but at least during the day it is nice weather, while indoors at home is colder than it is outside. The nights have not been as cold as the past 2 weeks were. With a forecast of 53 being the lowest in the next few days, and high of mid 70s, I think the weather is going to be great. I hate when my hands are freezing while I am trying to type. I wear socks and my feet are fine but my hands freeze when it is cold! Go back to NY cold where I left you 5 years ago!

California. Beautiful state. I love it. I have been here 4 days and it is wonderful. In that time I have visited Las Vegas, Nevada, the Hoover Dam in Nevada/Phoenix and San Diego California. With beautiful clear blue skies and impressive mountain views, California is quiet possibly the most attractive state I have visited.

Driving on the winding roads through the mountains and just the overall mountain views is a nice reminder of Lebanon. Lebanon has those winding roads in the mountains minus the guard rails and much thinner roads with beeping cars around each bend warning everyone that they are coming around the bend.

I have taken plenty of pictures and there will be plenty more to take. I will post some later.

I had a fun long weekend traveling from Fort Lauderdale west to Naples and North to Tampa and on to Port Richey, then east to Orlando and south back down to West Palm Beach.

It all started with Bakugan.

Bakugan Tournament

Nearly 300 miles away was a Bakugan Tournament at Gulf View Square Mall, and that was our excuse to take the trip knowing that the tournament would be at most an hour event, but the kids would love it. My nephews that is. =)

Kids were excited and had a great time. They got t-shirts, wrist bands and got to be official bakugan battle brawlers with a card with their picture certifying it! COOL!

Following the bakugan tournament, we headed to Olive Garden for breakfast/lunch. We did wake up at 6am just to be in time for the bakugan tournament so we were pretty hungry. After we found a place called stop and play which was just an arcade and after that headed to Orlando.

We arrived in Orlando and found a Radisson Hotel to stay in. It wasn’t as good as we had expected, but not bad overall but next time staying in a Holiday Inn would probably be the better choice. And from the hotel it was out to Old Town where there is an amusement park. We bought tickets for the kids to play on the rides and were convinced that any adult can ride with any kid on the ride. After smashing and bumping the cars on the race track around which they threaten to kick you out if you do so, we learned that they want kids of certain height to go on rides alone and won’t let an adult go with them unless they pay for the ride again. Alright so we broke their policy of no refunds and got our refund and then just bought individual tickets for the rides. Silly of them, we ended up spending much less.

But the amusement park gave me good opportunities to take shots with slower shutter speeds to achieve cool effects.

Old Town

Do not bump, Do not push

Double Ferris Wheel

I also found a waterfall finally … well kinda.

Waterfall at the Radisson

The next morning we headed to the waffle house, when you are in Orlando, there is some rule that you have to have breakfast at the waffle house. Had pecan and chocolate waffles, eggs, hash browns and orange juice.

Waffle House

Pecan Waffle

And finally from the waffle house, we started the trip to Nasa Kennedy Space Center. If you want to feel very little, this is where you go and see how gigantic things are and the great things that man can build.

Shuttle Dock

Space Stuff

Work Area Viewing

a single ring. caller id says restricted. who is calling me with a restricted number? i haven’t seen a restricted number in a long time.

the call reminds me of a few years ago when i received a restricted call that was one of many to follow. perhaps the call that opened the door.

why was it a single ring? it gives me the impression that someone called and quickly chickened out. the restricted call from a few years back came with a short conversation with an anonymous person, which led to another restricted call, on that same day, that revealed the identification of the caller, and lasted more than 40 minutes. this new call came in yesterday at 8:58pm. will that one lead to another? is this an opener yet again? but an opener to what? or is this just a random call that will fade away never to be thought of again? perhaps i will never know.

note: this post was intentionally written in all lower case letters, i do not know the reason for this but i felt like it should be in this format.

What has become of “our” people. Are they our people anymore?

Many of our people are getting lost. They have rapidly changed. I look at them and what do I see? Young girls dressed scantily. Women dressed scantily. Women with fake blond hair. Women with tattooed eyebrows. Women with nose jobs. Women trying hard to appear as if they were younger.

What happened to our ideals? What happened to our culture? What has happened to our people?

Who are these people now? How do I distinguish them from everyone else? There is only one thing that still connects us. We both speak Arabic.

City Place

Decided to go to city place last night, walk around and take some pictures and so I did. There was a band playing music and a lot of people which made it great. The parking garage was packed and when I was going in I saw the line of cars trying to get out. I figured it would be better when I was leaving but it wasn’t. Still I had fun walking around taking my pictures. I got some good shots which I will include in this post. Of course I had a smoothie from the smoothie king with my request of not including the protein in the drink, I had pineapple surf or pineapple plus. I forgot the name.

The most interesting incident of the night was perhaps me being clawed. That’s right I got clawed. While I was walking a group of 4 girls was walking towards me. They were split in twos and one of the girls in the closer two glanced over at me, rushed back to one of the girls in the second two and told her something, turned her back to me pointing me out to her friend and then dashed at me and grabbed my arm. She then asks me if I can take their picture. I am holding my big camera strapped around my neck and I respond in a wtf tone with “with my camera???”. At which I get that cute extended “nooooooooo” and I am offered one of their point and shoot cameras with no view finder, rather a large LCD. I bring up the camera to my face before realizing I don’t have a choice but to use the LCD to take the shot. I took a single shot of them, and I will never know if it really came out good or not. I got thanked by one girl and then I believe the one that grabbed me said “thank you very much” smiling at me, eating me up with her eyes.

I said it was no problem and walked off. It was then that I realized she had actually dug her nails into me when she grabbed me. Like she was afraid of me getting away, which I can understand how would want me to slip away from their fingers . With that in mind, while her behavior was inappropriate, it was also harmless. She didn’t intentionally claw me, that was all out of her hands … erm well at least out of her control.

Here are a few shots.

nicely lit fountain with ugly wet floor signs around

nice arch

nice building to live in

electric guitar

Yay. Tomorrow is Eid al Fitr. Today is the last day of Ramadan. It was a long month. In a couple of hours I will break my fast for the final day of Ramadan. So to everyone congratulations on completing the month of Ramadan. Have a wonderful holiday and let us all start stuffing ourselves again tomorrow.

May Allah accept our fasting and grant us good health and happiness for many years to come.

Well it happened again. I had my blood withdrawn for my blood test today. I felt a little light headed after the first tube, and the second tube just must of sealed the deal. After it was all done, I started thinking about things, things I can’t remember now. And somewhere between the thinking, I heard a thump.

I woke up not knowing where I was and I saw two women walking in this strange room. I did not recognize them and not knowing where I was, I was on the verge of panicking, but I quickly remembered who the woman was and I realized what had happened. Yes indeed, it happened again. I passed out or as I like to say I took a small nap.

I woke up shortly after I passed out. It took me a few seconds to realize what happened and where I was and I was energized and alert. I tried telling the nurse this but she insisted on putting those strips below my nostrils to wake me up as I tried to shove the away telling her I was fine. They wouldn’t let me sit up and insisted I stay laying down, which was fine. I was very sweaty and they were taking care of me. One of them joked that I do this on purpose so I get all that pampering they were doing . Now they will insist I lay down for any other blood test I take as this was the second time this happened and they want me to remind them, not that they will need to be reminded after this. I am pretty well known at my doctor’s office. For this incident, the one before it among other things I suppose. But I woke up from my little nap energized, and the nurse insisted I eat the piece of candy she shoved into my mouth.

Well just been tired the past few days. Waking up early to eat before sunrise and going back to bed. Feeling lazy and tired. But I go outside and keep myself busy taking pictures of whatever I find. Here are some of the good ones the past 2 days. I am glad I bought the camera, I am enjoying my time with it.

Wasp Landing

Sneaky Squirrel

Red and white plane

The moon

Today is the first day of Ramadan. I went to bed around 10 pm last night so that I can awake around 5 am today to eat a little before sunrise. I don’t know what time I fell asleep but amazingly it did not take too long. I did wake up around 3 am. I am used to sleeping 5 hours, but I managed to go back to sleep and was up around 5 am. I had my tea, some string cheese and strawberries! So welcome Ramadan.

Have a happy and blessed Ramadan.