My brother on his Facebook status said,

“1 Dictator dead (Iraq) 2 Dictator in Hiding (Tunis and Egypt). A few more dictators to go and then we can have a big block party in the M.E ”

And I said,

“Block party?? am I invited? We can sing, “Bye Bye Bye” by N Sync! ”

Blah Blah, Culture, Thank you, They said what?, Whatever!

I have been getting a lot of messages on Facebook and many have started groups saying that Valentines is originally pagan, and blah blah blah it is a sin blah blah blah, and the list goes on and on.

You know what, after so many decades on earth, everything is crap. Anything that is celebrated is crap. The only thing we need to celebrate is our birthdays and thank God we are still walking on this earth breathing. Anything else is a Hallmark holiday. Today is some Hallmark celebration. Just look it up! Every day is a commercial holiday for them and they want your money to buy cards or send e-cards to people who don’t give two shits!

I mean, come on! I decided to be oh so witty, and I declared March 16 of every year as “Kiss me I am Arab” holiday. So what? I am awesome and I got a blog, and I can write anything and make it sound true and enforce the celebration into people’s souls! Why? Because I love you guys and we need to unite together and make random celebrations and spread it on the inter-web, because we don’t want the commercial GIANTS ruling our lives! We rule our selves!

Side note! Anyone read this book? I want to buy it!

Anyways, back to Valentines day. It is sad that people need a day to celebrate love. I guess the other 364 days of the year should be known as “FU” days. I donno people! I hate Valentines not because it is pagan or none Islamic or anything like that. I hate it because no one wants to give me a kiss!! Waah!! Just kidden!

However, I do like wide spread celebrations for the enormous amount of sweets in the stores! Can’t get enough chocolate, and on SALE!

Blah Blah, They said what?, Whatever!

Dear readers of my cute little blog,

I know I have bitched a lot in the past regarding my current employment. They drove me crazy, but I worked extremely hard at this job that majority of the time I worked overtime to get work done. Last week, I was at the edge and it was either me or them if the chaos didn’t change. I made that clear in an indirect way.

Several meetings later, I was told this in a tone of fear:

“Mona, please don’t go.”

They said it two times . . .

I demanded change, and quick change or else. I had several 100 reasons, and in the end, I enforced the change. I had to speak up because I didn’t want all my work to crumble into pieces because of stubborn people who won’t listen!

They made profit last year, 3 times more than the previous year and I knew it, but if I left, they wouldn’t be able to manage. I am sure of it because I have this mentality of extreme organization and rules. I am given a position that 3 people in traditional structured companies have. It was insane. They drove me insane.

So, today we had performance reviews.. yay.. took a year and a half since I started. It was more of bosses evaluation of us, and not self-evaluation at all. And at the end of it all, they talked about raises, and how the economy was bad, but they still survived through a recession as a company, blah blah. Then they said, you get X amount of money extra.

I was like

Wohoo!!!

Wow, I never got such an exponential raise before in my life! Boom shakalaka!

Lessons learned from all this:

1. Work really really really hard!
2. Prove your worth!
3. Raise your voice when you see things going wrong.
4. When rewarded, work even harder the next year!

I shall sleep peacefully tonight! And to celebrate.. I will do what little kids are doing now a days.. I will whip my hair back and forth!

Blah Blah, Happy, They said what?, Whatever!

Isn’t it great to be an Arab now? Raise your hand if you agree!

I dunno people. This surge of pride just hit me. I used to be so devoted into the I am Palestinian who speaks Arabic mentality, but now, being of Arab decent, no matter how small percentage that is, is quite magnificent.

It’s like my dream, what I preached for on my blog for years; Arabs need to come together. I never knew that will ever happen in my life time. A lot of people are skeptical about Egypt, but the events that happened in Tunisia, the scared Jordanian mentality, the upcoming anger of the Syrians, the Yemenis being unstable, and soon that must leave Libyan president, oh my God people. This is history. This is a beautiful time for our culture.

How unstable it will get afterward is something to fear, but always at the end of the dark tunnel is a light of hope.

I just can’t believe that Arabs are uniting, and how? Because of the most important and life changing tool in the world, the internet. Mere communication and sharing thoughts and ideas. Ideas influence change. It’s not wars. It’s not violence. It’s not dehumanizing others. No, but simple words to get the points across.

See what us nerds developed? See why they say, “nerds rule the world?” So simple, so effective, so ingenious!

Blah Blah, Culture, They said what?, Whatever!

Well, this is not a dear Mona moment, but more of you know this is really your heritage type of email.

It’s quite interesting to read.

The email sender wrote to me,

Hi Mona,

I just stumbled across your site and found it interesting. My grandparents are from Palestine also, from a Christian village. We had DNA testing done on them and a lot of research into the land and people. You might be surprised that your heritage is more “Arabized” and less actual Arab. The people of Palestine are a very, very mixed group with a high percentage of European ancestry, Jewish, and other indigenous (non-Arab) people groups from the area. It was not until the 7th century that the Arabs from the south invaded the northern Levant. They spread their language and culture, but there was less mixing than you might have thought. From our research, we found about 25-35% European blood for my grandparents, and also ancient Hebrew, Canaanite, Roman/Greek, and Arab mixture. So, depending on how you use the word, you may be a lot less “Arab” than you thought! Not sure if that is of any interest to you or not, and of course, it does not take away from the culture, but I thought I’d share.

Well dear reader. You pretty much said things in this email that have been said several million times actually. I am Arabized. We all know that. Palestinians are NOT originally from the Arab peninsula or even mixed with them that much. That’s why many Arab countries don’t like Palestinian much and keep saying that we are Arabized. They all know the history. My people are so mixed because of invasions or different ethnicity rule, that we are everyone in one.

Isn’t that funny? All in one! Kind of funny coming from a person that is “Palestinian” and have roots from the HOLY land where the entire world kind of really came from. No real facts that I can base this on, but I am sure everyone in the past or throughout the decades has had relatives that have passed by that area and called it home.

No wonder Palestinians all look different. There are the olive skinned, the blonds, the red heads, the white skinned, the dark skinned, the blacks, the blue eyed, brown eyed, very short, very tall, and everything in between! These are my people! We are like the new world now. This new world, or across the seas western world is quickly becoming that!

I am not sure exactly if being an Arab means that you have Arab roots, but all I know that I speak Arabic. I have lived my entire life in an Arab culture and followed Arab traditions, and really, what does DNA stand for other than Deoxyribonucleic acid which a bunch of genetic code? Do these genetic codes when I was born automatically determined the language that I speak, the culture that I will follow and live by, and the people around me that will influence my future choices? No. DNA is just a Damn Neurotic Annotation.

Blah Blah, They said what?, Whatever!