Status Update on the Reading

Every year I make a list of the books that I want to read. Most of the time I have way to many books on that list and usually I never finish all of them by the time the following year comes by. Well, New Years is coming soon, and that means it is time to reflect on the accomplishments and possible downturns of a year gone by and make new resolutions for the upcoming year. Here is my update whose purpose is mostly directed towards me.

Reading List for Year 2010
• The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (totally forgot about this)

• The Cheapest Nights by Idris Yusuf (Yes, read it but was not so impressed)

• Das Kapital by Karl Marx (still on the radar)

• The Discovery of India by Nehru Jawaharlal (started reading it
but did not get past the first few chapters, its very heavy)

• Death and the Dervish by Mesa Selimovic (totally forgot)

• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (I started at LEAST three times
reading this book and for some reason I always get diverted. I know it is a
classic and a must read therefore, it is still on the radar)

• A long walk to freedom by Nelson Mandela (did not even start this
and do not own it)

• City of Love and Ashes by Yusuf Idris (Done)

• Tears of the Desert by Halima Bashir (Done- an excellent read!)

• Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Oh god, please save me, in the book
club we came half way through and I just couldn’t take it anymore)

• Ernesto Guevera Che Biography (started and still working on it)


I also was reading the following books just out of the spur of the moment:

• Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevski (I started reading this for
the second time but did not finish because I realized that I had already over
analyzed this book and I perceived that there was nothing new to discover)

• Three Cups of Tea (started on the airplane going to a monitoring
visit but did not finish it)

• My son’s wife (started but got bored and really frustrated)

• The Moral Landscape ( I am currently reading with the intention
of finishing and than giving it as a gift to my friend whose b-day is coming up)

• The Kite Runner (Finished- the beginning is excellent but than
somewhere in the middle the story falls apart and becomes to predictable for me)

• The Iron Wall (Started for the second time but did not finish due
to frustration)

Fortune Cookies

As some might know I really enjoy reading fortune cookies at appropriate times and collecting them. Here is a list of fortune cookie quotes I have collected over the years. Most of them come from a restaurant I like to frequent called Chino Latino. But few are from Chinese take out foods I have ordered over the years.


Next time you get a gut feeling, take an antacid.

Your big break is coming. And a bus will be to blame.

When your mother told you not to be a slut she spoke from experience.

When was his last STD screening anyway?

That new mole isn’t malignant – but if it’s an egg sac laid subcutaneously by a parasite it’s hardly benign.

Bothered by her feminine irritation? Tell her about Summer’s Eve soothing gel.

Well. You certainly did YOUR share to contribute to the restaurant’s liquor revenues.

Why can’t you be more like your sister?

You will soon be crossing warm waters for a fun vacation.

You’ve changed your look.
You’ve changed your hair.
Now change your locks.

He has a blog and you should ask to see it.

That dirt under your date’s fingernails? Looks like a fungal infection.

Stop wasting your time with these people!

Your therapist is crazier than you are.

It’s getting late and your outfit is tired.

Your server has had it with you.

How about a mint?

When he says you make him crazy, believe him.

It’s not you, it’s me.

You are more intuitive than logical. You often learn better b y doing than by theorizing first.

What’s with all the Clay Aiken on your ipod?

The beginning of wisdom starts with deleting your Web history.

Damage control is no longer an option.

Your past is going to catch up with you. Then it will pounce, sink its talons into your back, knock over and set you on fire.

Generosity provides a solid foundation for mindfulness practice.

Memoirs

Sitting at the JFK airport, hearing different languages and seeing all kinds of strange people. Hearing the announcer over speakerphone announcing the flight to a place I never heard in Ghana. Seeing a very long line with German passengers for a boarding line for a plane to Frankfurt Germany. Right at the next gate are more Europeans chatting, laughing and waiting for their flight to Amsterdam. For some reason my flight to Mpls will be at a gate that is among the gates of these international flights. On the overhead flights to destinations such as Prague and Moscow are announced and passengers called. I perceive all of this and think about next summer. Next summer, Alaa, I and my entire family will be going to Bosnia. I can see us already waiting for our international flight to take us across the ocean and ultimately to Sarajevo. We will be surrounded by other Bosnians and we will be so happy to be on vacation, to be together and to be going to see our family and friends and the country that we love so much. It will be Alaa’s first time in Bosnia, and first time to meet most of my family so we will both probably be a bit nervous and wondering how everything will go and what first impressions will be imprinted. We will be looking forward to an amazing vacation and the possibility to visit even Croatia or Turkey. If we were leaving from Chicago during the summer going to Amsterdam, we will be undoubtedly surrounded by other Bosnians, all going to the same ultimate destination. This reminds me of the story I vividly recall to this day. My family and I were going from Chicago to Bosnia many years ago. We were at the gate in Chicago waiting for a flight, and Emina who was just a toddler at that time, turned at one point to my mother and said: “Mom, there are people here who speak the same language as you!” We all burst out laughing at that comment. When I hear people speaking German or Bosnian there is just something that makes me attracted to their language, something is lit up in me and I remember my childhood and start to associate emotions with that language. That is something that I miss the most in English. English is my third language, after Bosnia and German respectively and it is also a language that I started learning when I was in my teens and when most of my childhood had already passed. It is also a foreign language that I was forced to learn with the assumption that it will be the last language forced upon me. As we always assumed that we will stay in the United States, and maybe because of that or maybe because of other reasons, I cannot associate warm, cozy memories and emotions to this language when I hear it. It is not that the language is ugly, it is just maybe because I was not raised here and have not grown up from an early age speaking this language. Or maybe it is just that I was born to be a European my entire life. As my thinking, perceptions and convictions lean more towards how a European would think and not so much how an American would think. I just can’t wait for summer 2011 where I will be surrounded by people that look similar to me and speak the same language. I can’t wait to show Alaa the place I grew up, where I went to school and where I used to play before the war when I was a child. I can’t wait to have ice-cream with him at a place that has been in Sarajevo for ages called “Egypt” and where I used to throw fits at my parents to get me the ice-cream even in the cold winters. There is no ice-cream that compares to that in Egypt, it is made different and there is only one flavor but that flavor cannot be compared to anything else in this world. It is the ice-cream I was searching since my childhood in other places and could not find even a small resemblance. No one knows what it is made of exactly since it is a secret recipe believed to be owned by a man who came from Albania. Thinking about all of this I start to board my plane this evening back home, to Minneapolis.

Personal Statement of Why I Want to go to Medical School

The following is what my habibis advised me to write as a personal statement of why I want to go to medical school. He made my day that time, really he did.


WHAT ABOUT THIS AS LETTER OF WHY YOU WANT TO JOIN MEDICAL SCHOOL ..... MY NAME IS ALMA, I WANTED TO JOIN YOUR SHITTY MEDICAL SCHOOL SO I CAN CURE THE SHIT OF PATIENTS AND IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF THEIR SHITTY LIVES . I ALWAYS WANTED TO SEE THE LOOK ON A PATIENT'S EYES THAT HAS BEEN CURED THANKS TO ME , I THINK THAT THIS IS THE REAL SHIT !!!. I CAN HANDLE ANY KINDA SHIT AND CAN OPERATE UNDER NOMATTER SHITTY CIRCUMSTANCES ... I PERSONALLY THINK THAT I WAS BORN FOR THIS JOB AND IF YOU DON'T ACCEPT ME THEN YOU GUYS MADE THE SHIT HIT THE FAN .... I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR CRAPPY LETTER TELLING ME THAT I JOINED YOUR PECE OF SHIT SCHOOL I THINK THAT YOUR ACCEPTANCE WILL MAKE MY FREAKEN CRAPPY DAY .. REGARDS , THE FUTURE DR. ALMA

Vacation Pictures

The above pictures were taken at the Savoy Resort in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.



It is always nice to have a geography re-fresher

City of Love and Ashes

I am reading at the moment the City of Love and Ashes by Idris Yusuf. There are a couple of excerpts I thought are very interesting. The first one below I believe describes the city of Cairo with such vivacity and accuracy.

"Cairo's streets were day, its lane dawn, its alleyways jetback night. The many districts -Shubra, Abdin, Sayyida, Zaynab, Old Cairo, al-Azhar, Tulun, Fuad Street, al-Darb al-Ahmar; enromous buildings of five, ten, twenty stories; hundreds of throusands of windows; thousands of doors and doormen; apartment blocks whose residents had gone to sleep, blocks that had not yet slept, and blocks that never slept, people out for the cinemas, people out for a good time on the streets and in the nightclubs; evening dress and afternoon wear, suits, woolens, overcoats, bright colored gowns, beautiful women decorated with powder and lipstick, wrapped in pelts of fox and bear and possibly tiger and lion; red, green, yellow traffic signals and neon lights of all colors; cleaning workers and workers far from clean; black soldiers and white soldiers on bicycles, on vehicles, and on patrol; prodigious bank buildings resting solidly like pyramids of the modern age- the National, the Misr, the Credit Lyonnais, the Arab Nation, the Bank of the Colonies and Overseas; Europeans, Turks, Greeks, people of every faith and color; garbage collectors, hawkers, and beggars; people ending their day and people beginning their day; people dying and children being born; radios broadcasting the latest news, reports, and announcements; prices tumbling, prices rising, and people tumbling and rising without price; drinks being mixed, hashish; customers enticed and bargains struck; negotiations over the formation of the cabinet; horse-cabs waiting, and Cadillacs, and taxis piling up like flies whenever a nightspot disgorges its clientele; drivers heaping curses on each other; greeting eachother, joking with each other; they all have a place to go, and places not to go, places they do not even know. Fawziya and Hamza were stealing into the middle of all this, surrounded by the black night and the light of the cars. What frightens people is seeing this, and living among it, but knowing they have no place in it." p. 114

"The night progresses with no thought for the city, and the city lives with no concerns for the night. Its great buildings appear small, its houses like ants' nests, its streets narrower than the eye of a needle, and people, people, people. Fawziya is at Hamza's side and in his essence, her arm through his arm, her breast close to his, a glitter and a challenge in her eyes all around them, and danger every step."

Medtronic Twin Cities 10 Mile

It looks like I will be running the 10 mile at the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon Sunday October 3rd for the second time. This time, however, my friend Merima has also decided to join me. We have put our group in the lottery and if we are selected that we will be able to run, if not well than we will be missing out. I like our group name I think its super cool, our group name is Bosanceros: Alma i Meri. :) My time last run was 1:41 this time I will need to do better. I was wary of running again this year since last time I found it to be tough, but decided to give it another shot anyways. This means that training will need to begin soon and long runs in the heat.

Med School

It is that time of the year and I am applying to Medical Schools!!! It is a really exciting time for me but it is also so very stressful. I need to get my application in as soon as possible and although I have a draft of my personal statement I still have to modify it and on top of that I need to chose schools. I just started yesterday the primary application process. And have emailed my professors just today. I already received many positive responses. I just want to get into med school and get past this burden of worrying and thinking. Since the competition is so high I will be applying to about 20 allopathic medical schools and about 10 osteopathic medical schools. Hopefully everything will go well and next year I will be writing as a medical student.

Reflections of May 30th through June 5th 2010

I am back from my honeymoon. I must say that I am not so excited to return back, although I glad to see my family again. But coming back without my Alaa, was very difficult to do. And while I was waiting six hours at the airport in Jordan for my connecting flight to New York, I was deeply contemplating to return on one of the many flights back to Cairo that were being announced through the speakers. I was running like a mad woman trying to find a phone booth that works. I finally found the only phone booth that works in the entire airport, only to discover that it does not take any credit cards. Then the challenge was to find a phone card to buy. I finally found a kiosk that sells very expensive phone cards, and on a different occasion due to principal I would not have let someone rip me off. But this occasion I had to call Alaa, I had to hear his voice and I had to make sure that he is ok. So I purchased the phone cards and got through to Alaa to hear his voice for those 5 minutes.

Although I did not discuss this with Alaa on our short phone call, during those long hours at the airport I kept on playing in my mind how things would work out, if I return back to Cairo and call him to pick me up at the airport. I know he would be overjoyed and he would rush to the airport. But where would life go from there? What would I do and what would he do? And would life become boring if we just went to the beaches everyday and go out every night as we used to do for the past three weeks. All of these things were going through my mind the entire time at the airport. At the end I decided not to take any risks and to go with the plan and board my flight to New York. But maybe some day, I will look back and read this entry and think to myself, what if? What if I had returned to Cairo that day? How would our lives be different? Well, I will never know and that is life.

During those amazing three weeks everything went well and it was an amazing time. Both Alaa and I would agree that this time was even more special than our time together back in 2007. As you can imagine I was so nervous to see Alaa after three years! I didn’t know what to expect at the airport. And although I was overjoyed to see him and couldn’t wait, I would be lying if I said that I was not apprehensive. But once I landed, got my bags and walked out of the Sharm El-Sheikh terminal and saw Alaa all smiling and happy, I was taken aback to the time three years ago. And Alaa and I started from where we began a long time ago, as if there were not three years that separated us from each other.

After the airport we went to a small but very nice apartment that Alaa rented for a week. We ended up going to different beaches everyday and went out at night to a different lounge and/or restaurant. The following Saturday it was time to go to Cairo, in order to get married. We reached Cairo very exhausted and checked in to our amazing suite at the Sheraton in downtown Cairo. We had an amazing room, with two balconies, one of which over looked the Nile river, we also had a living room and than the bedroom. That Saturday evening his parents invited us for dinner. As most people eat dinner late, we arrived at his parent’s house at around ten in the evening. We talked about the wedding plans the following two days and we had an amazing Middle Eastern dinner prepared by his mother. By the time we returned back to our hotel room it was early in the morning. As we could not sleep from the anxiety of having to go to the US embassy the next morning in order to get a permission for me to get married in Cairo, we ended up having a class of wine on the balcony overlooking the still alive city below. Usually, drinking a class of wine helps me sleep but apparently that did not work that day. I could not fall asleep due to anticipation and apprehension of the next day.

Wedding

I went from relationship drama in January of 2010 to planning a wedding in June! My life is full of surprises and spontaneity. I am getting married to my soul mate in Egypt this summer. It is going to be an amazing three weeks of my life. Most of it will be a surprise for me anyways, as he is planning the wedding and the rest of my stay there. The only big draw back is that I will not be able to return with my habibi to the US, instead, when I return I will have to petition for him to come. And at that point our fate will depend on someone else.

When I return I will however, put many pictures of my vacation in Egypt. I am really looking forward to everything as I will be with my habibi in a very magical country.

For the majority of our time we will stay in Sharm El-Sheikh but will also be going to stay in Taba, Egypt. Taba lies on the border of Israel and overlooks Jorden, Isreal and Saudi Arabia.