The latest water park on the block in the UAE is the Yas Waterworld, Abu Dhabi. I was extremely lucky to get to attend the grand opening on January 19, 2013. Getting there is quite easy, it's about a one-hour-and-a-bit drive from the Dubai Media City end of town, and signs on the road will … Continue reading Yas Waterworld, Abu Dhabi
Category: Everything Else
Save The Humans
Love this post by my friend Shaahima. It’s simple, but gets across the message instantly.
The stateless Palestinian. The Rohingyan asylum-seeker. The Syrian refugee. The defenceless in war zones. The unwanted girl child. The Dalit. The raped. The gang-raped. The child being molested and too afraid to speak. The starving. The ill-treated labourer. The discarded orphan. The jailed without justice. The physically abused. The emotionally beaten. The homeless. The victim of hate. The children killed at school. The children killed for going to school. The soldiers dying in a war they don’t want. The voices silenced. The journalists white vanned. The cheated sports fan. The innocents killed at the hands of an authorised weapon. The political scapegoat. The unpaid worker. The jobless. The addict. The woman unmarried for lack of dowry. The misunderstood disabled. The philanderer’s spouse. The trafficked. The citizen of an oppressive regime. The mothers of children who never returned home. The misrepresented. The uncounted.
But before all else. Save the apathetic.
My magnet obsession
It's hard to remember where it started. I know I had the "Underground" magnet when I went to the UK on a holiday in March 2009. But it really took of when I bought the "Dubai" piece for when I was moving to Sheffield, UK for my Masters degree. I wanted a piece of the … Continue reading My magnet obsession
How to cosplay like Princess Leia
Photograph courtesy Muzammil Majeed A historic event happened just two weeks ago - the first Middle East Film and Comic Con took place in Dubai, UAE. See all the pictures from the two-day event here. I won't go into detail about what happened; I'm hoping the pictures are sufficient. I will say though, that if … Continue reading How to cosplay like Princess Leia
Flying towards my Star Wars obsession…
When I was a little girl, watching movies about something called the Force, and a black-clad man who breathed as if through a ventilator, and watched a little green thing mix up his sentence construction, little did I know my passion obsession for it would leave me on a plane on a journey 7-8 hours … Continue reading Flying towards my Star Wars obsession…
A quick lesson in science fiction by Alastair Reynolds at Emirates LitFest
(Long post ahead, but I guarantee sci-fi fans will enjoy the read) This year, I seemed to be taking all sorts of chances with the Emirates Festival of Literature...picking authors I hadn't heard of. Whatever will I do next? So why did I want to go for Alastair Reynold's session? Simply because the topic said: … Continue reading A quick lesson in science fiction by Alastair Reynolds at Emirates LitFest
Writing tips & wholesome scares from Darren Shan at Emirates LitFest
I stumbled on Darren Shan quite by mistake. I was hunting around my library for books to borrow (I took home seven, yes that's right) and I saw a little card next to a row of books that read: "Emirates LitFest author". That piqued my interest along with the books in question being in the … Continue reading Writing tips & wholesome scares from Darren Shan at Emirates LitFest
Book-to-movie adaptations; what do authors think about it? An @EmiratesLitFest panel.
An author, whom I must admit I hadn't heard of before this year's LitFest*, said something I whole-heartedly agreed with: "It’s almost blasphemous to say this in a panel of writers, but a bad adaptation is when the movie is literal." - Tom Rob Smith *I shall add, Tom Rob Smith, that I've since purchased … Continue reading Book-to-movie adaptations; what do authors think about it? An @EmiratesLitFest panel.
A Day to Remember, with Nicholas Sparks
Ridiculously enough, I can't remember when I first saw the movie, A Walk to Remember. But I can recall how much I bawled when I saw it. And when I saw it was based on a book...well I had to read it, didn't I? I'd never heard of Nicholas Sparks before this. A Walk to … Continue reading A Day to Remember, with Nicholas Sparks
Event roundup: One Night Standup
The doors shut in our face. "You can't enter right now," the waitress said. A posh voice said: "Let them in." And the gateway into the new local comedy night: One Night Standup, was opened to us. The posh voice belonged to Hisham Wyne, whose accent, most of us thought, escalated to a grand scale … Continue reading Event roundup: One Night Standup