Walking Like a Zombie ... What type of Single are you?

Till when are you gonna stay on the solo side of the island? Without that sweet heartbeat, you’re walking around like a Zombie. Some of you loners have very strong reasons for staying so, but my word is … they’re all just plain reasons and cover-ups! It’s time that you get alive.

Uncover the real reason that’s keeping you from getting into the couple hood zone. Find out which kind of single you are.

The Invisible Type

The probability that you haven’t met the right one yet is tiny. It’s more likely that you haven’t been able to show that you exist. You don’t know how to act or what to say, so you just avoid mingling with the opposite sex. What the heck! Drag that flowing adrenaline of yours and do it anyway. 18 or 80, you’ll still feel scared, but the more people you know, the greater are your chances of stumbling into your sweetheart.

The Picky Type
Can you keep a tally of the number of times you’ve shook your head to someone. Getting familiar with “not good enough for me” hints where you’re heading to. Your problem is feeling too good about yourself. Days flip over while you still wait for the perfect one. The bad news is, there are none :/ Just remember, that if you want it all you lose it all. 7atla2y nafsak metdabes fe qesset ro3b!! Stop looking for the perfect person, and start looking for the perfect match. Someone who’ll makeup for your flaws … and you should find a bunch!

A Career Maniac
So when exactly are you gonna say you’ve made it? I bet you’ll never be able to grasp a real target. Claiming you’re getting settled in your career is a mask, hiding your fear of getting into a commitment. You freak out of failure so you swap that with success at work. Just remember, a job won’t ever hang in with you on a lousy day. Ya 3am kabbar! It’s gonna be twice as yummy tasting success while holding hands with someone else. Even your downs will ache you less.

The Flirting Type
You’re too wrapped up with the flirting fun. So you know how to get into the spotlights; eshta! That’s still a no-win zone. As much as that’s important, you should also pick up the art of moving on to the next stage. Cut out the goofing and focus on your need to get into a real relationship.

The Scarred Type
Whether you’ve just broken up or you’ve witnessed a bad experience, it should be difficult to hook up again. I know it’s not fair, gals don’t really suffer this. That ego-broken guy should do the hard job of approaching a stranger and risking getting rejected. Just remember three things. First make sure you know your chances with your ex very well. Stop having false hope. Then go out, talk, cry and laugh until your friends wanna stuff a sock in your mouth! Stop being a big baby by feeling sorry for yourself. When you lose a love you find a greater one, and past relationships only prepare you for future ones.

Ethical Mindset
Framing your behavior within the ethical boundaries is just ideal. Complete communication cut off is the biggest mistake! How can you judge people without actually knowing people? Ya 3am do it decently. Lay your rules and mix up. Relationships between people who don’t know each other definitely fail cuz they don’t know how to fit together.

Footloose!
“Why the rush? I haven’t taken enough of a free life yet.” Tamam! But if you think relationships are at the tip of your fingers, that’s very untrue. Your best match might just pass by and never be found again. Find a place midway between this and that. Once you find your one, the whole matter will be about knowing how to switch to a couple’s life instead of a singles’ one. Before you know it being on your own will feel so gloomy. All the fun will be in sharing your times with a sweetheart.

The Backward Walker
It’s like every time you take a step forward, you take one back again. Eah nezam el maragee7?? Once you’re in doubt that you’ve found the one, don’t wait. You don’t have to be certain to take the decision. So stop stuffing your feelings inside you and go for it. And whether you’re unsure cuz of a past breakup or little experience, zip it all up. You live to learn your lessons.
Being alone is out of question … it sucks! Your best friend plays a role, family play a role and a career plays a role. But until you set a flame inside, your life is still missing the best part.

An Optimist with a Stain Coat ... A Dozen Drizzle Dos and Don'ts

Am I seriously missing something here? Amnesia sort of hits us every year, mafeesh fayda!! Every winter when you wake up in the morning on the sound of drizzling rain, your mind just goes blank and all you wanna do is to breathe the misty air … then eventually, you end up on the street. Remember the tiny wicked raincloud that followed Pink Panther everywhere no matter where he hid? At the end he had to go to a shrink to get rid of the cloud!! So if you wanna spend a day goofing around in the rain, without the bit about the shrink, you gotta know what to do and what not to …

To start with, 7aga me7ayarany moot :- Why's everyone so sore about the weather report?? The problem is obviously all about communication. Ya gama3a you don’t understand … "ta7asson" means an outburst of rain, and "ertafa3" is obviously a chilling drop of temperature. Ya3ny plain misinterpretation, no more. But if you're no interpreter and have no clue about the secret code, you should always check Yahoo for the weather forecast.

Getting into the core, I recognized what someone had meant when they said, Egypt has a heart. Yep, wesst el balad ya3ny, where the mysteries remain unsolved. I wonder how GPS devices would manage around this place! So imagine, you're driving your car, we kollo beace and then the next thing you know you're ahead of a mysterious swamp. Rain or sewer, this is where you don't just need headlights for horizontal view, but you also need an ultrasonic to get a vertical vision. If you'd like to get an impression of how the submarine works, ettekal 3ala allah, and just drive through. Otherwise, you should keep reviewing your map of Cairo's most famous elevations and depressions … el matabbat ya3ny. That way you'll know the depth of the puddle.

It's sort of difficult though to master millions of bumps all over Cairo, ones that go up and others that go down. With limited knowledge, you'll need highly professional tactics to get across (and a bunch of spare parts!) Always approach a mysterious puddle from the sides. Preferably with an inline car, simply drive on the edges of the street which are usually designed to be higher than the middle (don't ask why!)

If it happens that you're an immature, and can't take maneuvers, you'll get driven into the puddle whether you like it or you don't. In that case, read your shahada, hold your breath and step on it!! If you're lucky enough, the splash will only splatter mud on your upper half. Next time you'll roll up your window, roll up your pants, and even tuck your tummy in! Bard, 7arr, the windows should be closed and the AC switched on, aho cool breeze wel salam. What did you think car fragrances that smell like sea breeze were made for??

But, like all good things, even a rainy day has been transformed by technological advances. Park your wheels and step out to enjoy the mist. With just a little caution, things should go great … unless someone's in a hurry :-S Yeah, that's when you discover raincoats are nothing more than regular outfits, lezoom el sheyaka. This situation can come in two versions, where you're "in" the car or "by" the car :)) If you're in the car, step on the gas and drench that dupe on foot … "loser"!! But if you are the dupe on foot, RUN for it!!

In spite of all this, there's someone who I stand up for on such days, the famous Do2do2 … el wad do2do2 beta3 7'alty negma … me3addy!! If you've driven before by midan rab3a after the rain, you should have witnessed a really innovative attempt to drain the flooding water. Amazing, with no water pumps, not even actual drains!! Just a bunch of workers bema2ashat sweeping the water around, dunno where to, but it seems 7ekaya!! That's why you should never underestimate a broom's capabilities.

Now you're thinking you wanna hit your breaks and turn in for a warm evening instead of all the rush; maybe you'll be able to save yourself some dignity. After all, what can be better than hot chocolate and a snuggle in front of TV. Unfortunately things don't ever go that way. Traditionally, when it rains in the city of seven million people, there's no TV signal, the phone's down, even the water's sometimes cut off. That's when you have to give up and go get dressed, then spend a soggy night out!! There's no need to get devastated; instead, sit and pray that we'd never need to shovel off any snow.

Good ol' buddy … Back Off!!

Have you ever been in this situation… when you willingly choose to step back from a close friend of yours? Sometimes, you mistakenly take a person to be a buddy, and then later you decide it is only wise to back off :- )) but at other times bad luck REALLY strikes you, and there's no way but to keep your distance from your best buddy!

If you have been in that situation, I bet it felt like a great betrayal … saba7 el nadala ya3ny. This is not true though cuz life keeps changing. You can't continue to see your friend through the same perspective forever. One day you're eighth grade buddies, the second day you're married to a couple who hate each other's guts!! At this point, it's in your hands, either everything goes smooth and no one looses anything, or you scramble up everyone to end up in one big 3egga!! Just think of your options.

Your natural scenario is that you decide to hang on to your best buddy no matter what. Your friendship is above all and no one has the least right to make you let go of it :-/ You keep pushing, and with all the awkwardness you end up with a great mess!! Every gathering is a complete silence wel e7rag 3ala wedno :-S Eventually relations get more tense and uncomfortable we eb2a salemly 3al friendship ba2a!! Unfortunately the natural situation is really the bad scenario.

The good scenario is when you decide to keep a little space in between to keep things loose and smooth. You catch up with the gossip every now and then, arrange for one-on-one reunions, but never push for couple outings. This way when there's a gathering, you minimize the embarrassment and frustration. Stepping back here is not a betrayal, but is the only way to preserve relations between you.

All this is when you wanna be faithful, and you should be faithful, but it's just not appropriate. But what if you're being faithful to the wrong person in the first place?? 7aga keda fel goon!! This is usually the mistake of a lifetime behind the wreck of a lot of people I personally know. They just trust a person and consider them a real pal when they don’t deserve to be. I know that feeling you'd sometimes get, that you're getting along, but it absolutely doesn’t prove that you're friends. With the first mingle in that person's private life, you're dead meat!! Trust me and take my word, best friends are made instantly only in first grade! So don’t even think of opening up with someone who hasn’t been your very close companion for quite a long time.

It's just marvelous to appreciate and treasure a friend, but what really counts is to recognize a true friend from a fake. And in order to uphold any old or new friendship you gotta be flexible with changing circumstances and compromise to continue with the superb feelings of being best friends.

An ADSL Mass Punishment, Saba7 el 3akk!!!!

As usual and like all the previous Egyptian attempts to introduce corrective developments, things screwed up with the new limited ADSL scheme. Ya gama3a, don’t get too harsh, what matters are the good intentions ;-) That poor ministry honestly intended a development but the planning guy happened to be on vacation!

Like any new project under testing, the limited packages were introduced into the market a while ago in parallel with the unlimited ones. Even though no clear evaluation was announced the ministry still chose to remove the old structure and stick to the new one!?!? And since we’re a no-census country there is absolutely nothing that can prove how much traffic an average Egyptian family needs now or in the future. In other words, mashyeen bel baraka, we have to admit that.

So who needs their services anyway? There are the low and middle income groups el mat7ooneen who really need low priced internet packages regardless of the speed or traffic allowance. Another group includes average families who only use the internet to check their email and do some minor browsing not needing any traffic allowance at all. Those 2 groups prefer the new limited download structure; and FYI, will still "illegally" share it with others!!

The third group, which forms the real target market, includes professional users who really need the internet to build up their career. While the whole world is opening up to work-from-home methods and freelance jobs, this new ADSL structure is a major crisis to freelancing in Egypt. The third world, underdeveloped country India, is now known by the top US companies as a perfect outsourcing market owing to the power of the net. This definitely requires loads of downloading and uploading. Ya3ny, wa7ed hendy 3ala feel, would take over one of us for a couple of extra gegas!! This new structure totally killed any chances of competition in content development, coding, testing, writing, e-commerce or auctions.

So, if it were really all about the "average" Egyptian family and the low income groups then obviously no plan was done. It wouldn’t have hurt if they just kept both schemes running and kept the choice open with some equipment upgrading. And that mass punishment for illegal sharing and I dunno what, doesn’t make sense either cuz regulatory authorities then would be meaningless!! The ISPs actually ask you when you subscribe if you're alone or if you'll share with a group! How is it illegal ba2a??

Out of "respect", the ministry announced that the old subscribers are going to be allowed to keep their subscription as it is. However, they are not allowed to marry and move to a new house, since a new DSL line will have to obey the new rules. They are not allowed to switch from one company to a new better one, and they are also not allowed to change their telephone numbers cuz then they would have to subscribe to the new rip off packages!!

Nowadays, any whacko gets to dig up a street three or four times and pave it after every dig; and has become a trend to pop up in someone's head to squeeze in a new exit to a bridge regardless of the design, cost or benefit of that exit!! There is just no planning done. I was actually proud that we were moving fast in the IT field and was looking forward to a VOIP introduction soon. But this way I think I prefer we move slow and correct rather than fast with so much 3akk.

Just Gimme a Buzz When Ramadan is Over!

Ya gama3a, I'm one person who truly believes in miracles, but this 29 day phenomenon is quite a stun!! Begad, we all see that snowball coming up, out of a bunch of sleeping freaks!! Never has it been heard of at any other country that there's a whole month where all the commotion takes a snooze. Well not all actually, cuz shisha and night fun really fire up!!

Temporarily Out of Service

See, that's how it goes; one of the shabab can't fast. It's so tough to quit smoke or cola drinks through the day ya 3een ommo ya khooya! So he decides to slip out by waking up with the call of maghreb prayer! That's why I call it the holy hibernating month :-S One night after the other, oodles of teens wake up with maghreb prayer, then stay up all night until fajr. Eah ya 3am ana waraya eah? Maho it doesn’t make sense to wake up every morning and stay all day without a bite or a drink, not to mention that it's impossible to stay without a smoke!! Classes can wait a couple or more weeks. Training, work, family, ommy bettala3 felroo7, all should pause until Ramadan is over!! How more droopy can they get???? Eah el moseeba de! A bunch of people, don’t even see sunlight for a whole month? It's a supernatural phenomenon akeeed. The question is, if I sleep all through the fasting period, would that count? I personally knew a guy who owned a business, and would sleep all day just like those vampire creeps and wake up at maghreb. His recruits rarely ran into him during Ramadan. Customer complaints piled up and of course he made zero sales all through the month.

The Sister Act Flip

It's a great thing to wanna be pious in Ramadan and to improve religious activity. Ma7adesh yefhamny ghalat, but this definitely doesn't apply to those flipping in and out of the religious frame before and after fitar. It just doesn’t feel right to remove all makeup in the morning, and then stay up all night at a café smoking shisha!! Some guys also avoid seeing girls and forbid shaking hands, so ya'7dooh men 2aseero and just stay at home. Well I've got bad news!! Ramadan is sort of a package. So when I believe I shouldn't be doing certain acts, I should hold them all through the month, not only during the fast!!! Plus that my daily duties should continue as usual and even better. Being a lazy bum at home in no way indicates that I'm working harder.


Return of the Pied Piper

The worst of all is the hypnotizing effect of el kheeba el ramadaneyya. El leela we kol leela, as the night kicks off, these shisha, night only gatherings start. I don't really blame el shabab for having to go there because practically there is no where else to go to in Ramadan. It's sort of compulsory:-S but it doesn’t have to hook you up. I swear that at one of those kheemas, that I had been to, the air was almost foggy from the trapped smoke of shisha. When we first sat there, it was sort of a friendly fun gathering … until the music started. It ended up that a bunch of my friends and I, were sitting around a table and could barely hear each other talk!! After some time, and with all the smoke and blasting rhythm I got knocked over. Oh my gosh, I really think people who go there every night are hypnotized or something, because it's not even fun!! But guys seem to find a cheaper substitute for their guy gatherings. So instead of el kheeba el ramadaneyya, it's el kheeba el te2eela awy, common cafes. It's like a routine for guys to meet 3al 2ahwa after fitar every night all through Ramadan. Some head for big ones in malls and fancy spots. Some feel content about the ones on the street, smoking shisha with pollutant, and enjoying the ear-popping music and traffic horns. Dool day3een rasmy!!

It Gets Real Gummy :-O

Stepping into all three habits gets even sloppier if you don't recognize you're getting caught into it. That guy with the business I mentioned earlier, things got worse with him. At one point it wasn’t even necessary to eat with the athan. Made him no harm to sleep until 3esha and start his life from that point. This definitely isn't fasting nor is it Ramadan, it's the stupidest way for self torture.

I Say We Kill the Beast!!!

When things get real messy, it's time to make a plan. It's just so obvious how some teens don’t recognize what they wanna do. I mean if you really believe you need to get more pious in Ramadan then do your best to satisfy your wish. If you think you should be moderate, then don’t trick yourself halfway through the day and then get loose afterwards. I would take it easy and try my best without having to fake anything I am not doing for myself. Above all get serious guys … fun is not only at night and not necessarily at those kheemas. Ya3ny if you make a gathering at someone's house or on a Nile felouka, you'll still enjoy. After all it won't harm to give it a try. Kabbar demaghak and don’t be like those creeps. It would just kill them if you started a new fun and Ramadan friendly habit. If you feel you wanna start religious gatherings to read Quran or to talk about religious stuff, take the lead. Spit it out and don’t feel odd. The important thing is to do what you feel is right. And next time when you need to take some time off fasting by sleeping, it's no harm at all. El mohem don’t give up completely, if you know what I mean :-)

When you're over those habits, Ramadan will feel so much different. You won't need to hibernate until it's over.

The Companionship Mess

Hanging out with a bunch of teens these days calls out for urgent HELP! Teen gangs at college or at clubs seem to have this sort of phobia of being single. It's always about companionships. Some don’t seem to give up and slip from one relationship into another, and some deliberately keep away from relationships!! Others keep trying to connect, but never hook up and successive failures drown them into misery. Conservative teens prefer getting into formal involvement, while others don’t mind being casual, but in all cases, they all share the same worry, to couple with someone.

There are a zillion guys that I know who can’t waste a week without hooking up with a girl. Girls on the other hand are lost between needing admiration and fear of getting dumped! I think it's totally NOT FAIR. Their best years are wasted on the biggest illusion. Yes, an illusion! Those feelings about needing a relationship are not true. Some couples I knew kept struggling for years, between breaking up and getting back together again. Even if they had a chance together, they probably screwed it with that rush; to become a couple. Worse is when best friends mix up between friendship and couple hood. A wonderful opportunity that can only be found at college is having a good friendship between a guy and gal cuz of the natural way they can meet everyday. Friends just waste it by giving up to their false desire for coupling. Then later when they discover it was all a bubble the good old friendship is never retained again.

This other couple I know had feelings for each other for a couple of years at college. Then after declaring to each other, they kept their distance for another 2 years softly getting to know who they are. Just like slowly trying to fit in 2 pieces of a puzzle that will just never fit in a hurry. After those 4 years, they got engaged, and are now preparing to get married.

If you can't do this, if you can't have control over yourself and keep the distance, then you have to forget about the whole coupling issue. Brainwash yourself and start planning for a spring clean. Empty your drawers and arrange your files. Your happiness is all about you, not anyone else. Remember how you had fun in the old days, when you enjoyed your time with anyone and at any time.

What's your hobby - drawing cartoons, writing poems, taking pictures? Howwa da!! I guarantee that ANYTHING you enjoy doing can switch your life. Just like replacing a baby's pacifier with a teddy bear to hold on to it at night. All this junk about getting with someone and breaking up, from perky to blue, all will be gone. Once you start doing what you love. Even the habit of talking for hours can become a success story. Look back at your resume and check out the hobbies and activities section. If you have "Poetry Writing" in it then you should have a stuffed file full of roughly written poems. The farther you become from that hobby the more you will loose your identity and search back for the pacifier. Don’t think of any chance as petty. A chance is a chance and you have to get the best out of it. Soon enough, you will find this little hobby the center of your life and giving you loads of satisfaction. When you least expect it, this might become a money making business!!

Should you just dump this coupling issue, full stop?? Absolutely not. I am not saying that you should get used to being alone or find substitutes for the company of others. Nop. Communicating with the opposite sex is essential and no conservative rules should prevent a person from communicating with the other sex decently. You need to build communication and negotiation skills. Oh yes! I really need to stress on negotiation skills. Having totally different natural needs, guys and girls normally need to negotiate and compromise, and without that skill, they will fail. Yep – it's that third category I mentioned before. Some people are just too scared from getting into a relationship that they DELIBERATELY reject any chance of having one. After some time they become lonely and by the time they get back to normal life and start knowing someone, its too late. Such a person either becomes too self centered that they can't bear someone sharing their life, or busts every chance of having a partner with their icky communication skills. That's when friendship steps in for the rescue.

What happens to those people who slip from one relation to another? They become artificial and loose that heavenly feeling of being on cloud nine. Untangle yourself from that mess and decide to be your own boss. Get a part time job after school, or join a course after your work. Once you get busy, you will be able to reorganize your priorities and will soon find yourself free again. When the day comes and you've true feelings for someone, you'll be able to tell the difference.

What if you keep failing to have a relationship? Why do people who keep failing to have a relationship get so depressed and think they will never be able to hook up with someone? If you ask me, staying single for a while does have its privileges, but it's most likely that you have a communication problem. In that case, throw it off your shoulder. Just like trying to keep your head above water, the more you struggle, the faster you drown. Just let yourself feel secure and get confident, eventually you'll float. Get more social. Join activities where you get involved with more people. Learn the natural way and makeup for those times when you fled away from mingling.

So when I say you should spice up your life, I mean it! Bring together all the little things you love and integrate them into your life. Let friendships take over and if feelings arise, very slowly step towards any bud of romance.

Sha3b el Convodiction

Do YOU get those gossip cravings when you just have to pick up your cell phone? Yeah, driving back home and then deciding to fill up your time with a quick call that wont hurt :S We are chat addicted people, or in other words convodicted!!

For ages, we have been upgrading our methods of communication to keep up the friendly gossips and fill in chats. Imagine with all that, in the old days, you literally had to wait for the weekend to catch up with the news and fill in all the gossip. The girls' buzzing had to pause until the next friendly gathering at someone's place. And if two accidently met in an elevator, yetsallo fel sekka, won't harm! I agree it’s a girl thing in general, but Egyptian girls have got the talent on top of the addiction ;-) the gossips are interesting and funny, unintended for scandals.

With weekend chit chats not being enough, we moved to a whole new level of gossip and side talks. There was a leap in magazines and papers. So between one gathering and the other, girls had a dozen magazines to read through in their free time. Gossip of the day, was definitely the first column most girls would jump to.

After some time, the conversation cravings increased, and so we moved on to telephones. Then houses with a single telephone set ended up with a set in every room, and in the kitchen and sometimes in the bathroom too, maho there's no time to waste! The shock came when mobiles made a boom. Absolutely no one got past the period of launch. The first telephone bill was crazy.

Almost everyone I knew got huge telephone bills.

Thus, ICQ along with cell phones took over, and started a whole new trend of internet and cell phone gossip. The funny thing is how we were able to make up a whole new conversation language to make chit chats real cozy. Heyya de el talent that I mentioned earlier, ya3ny creative gossip kaman :D

So now, with the blast of all the new cell phone packages, sms messages are becoming old fashioned. Video calls are taking place, and some even use conference calls to start an immediate gathering, that can't wait for the weekend :P

Adding up, you don’t have enough time to check all your email account"s". Not to mention the facebook wave driving everyone crazy. I can tell what some people ate for lunch from the crazy amount of photos they post! So we don't just have and ill curiosity to get all the other people's news, but we willingly update others with our own :S which confirms my idea about no scandal gossips :D

Bas with all that … internet chats , emails, social networks, cell phone messages, calls, all in addition to the traditional phone chats … we still can't give up the old fashioned friendly gatherings. Even when there's no time, we still thrive for it and continue to look forward to arrangements.

So if a gossip a day won't do … go for gossips by the bunch :))

The Botox Effect

At the waiting room of a famous laboratory, a couple of girls sat chatting together. Usually I wouldn’t get caught into anyone's conversation because it's rude. So as I waited for my turn I stuck to the seat right next to the TV. The volume was high and a very interesting show was running, but still it wasn’t enough. I clearly needed earphones to avoid over hearing their most absurd conversation. Now, I AM one person who has been at a British school all my life and I definitely know how it is to accidentally slip into English during a conversation, BUT GET SERIOUS! Those two really wanted attention. Sitting in a public place, full of common people – there is no way I can pretend I'm hanging out at Chili's!! People kept looking at them and staring like they're aliens, but those two never seemed to notice they were making a scene. Instead they kept repeating their Nooo and You're Kidding remarks at the end of every sentence.

This foreign language obsession is not just limited to fluent girls. I find it totally hilarious the way a mother would ask her son to get dressed up and "roo7 elbes el shoes beta3tak" What's wrong with gazma or sandal and what's so 3eeb about shebsheb?? Worse is "reglak lonha black" which clearly indicates that this person has no idea about the words dirty or not clean!! For God's sake, what's wrong with not knowing a foreign language or not being fluent? The French people are proud that they know nothing but French and don’t try to squeeze in any English. It's just a matter of confidence I think. Some girls try to mimic the American dialect thinking they would look cuter, but instead it makes them look goofy. The English-speaking French gals sound gorgeous with that French accent. A girl I knew pronounced all the Bs and Ps in all her sentences as P!! A loud PRAVOOOO in the middle of a bunch of English speaking guys looked absolutely pathetic, so why should she put her self in such an awkward situation when she can just say what she knows the way she is used to it?

It's just so sad! Why would any one be so twisted?? If I wanna be attractive, this is definitely not it. Take any guy's opinion about that, I guarantee at least a dozen of embarrassing comments. University gals these days act in the weirdest way, and I really mean WEIRD!! Some will almost hold up a sign saying "I'm a pervert!!" It's getting so ridiculous that scene of girls sitting on each other's laps for fun. Even worse are the artificial "ya 7iaty" or "ya ro7 alby" phrases that girls use pretending to be pure Lebanese.

It seems so schizophrenic to me. It's like wanting to live here but to belong to another world. An American friend of mine came for a visit a couple of months ago. Before she went out, she always asked me if her clothes indicated that she wasn’t Egyptian. Even she wanted to fit in, so why would an all-Egyptian girl want to look odd! For a minute you might think, what harm would a little bit of imagination do any way?? Well let me assure you – LOTS.

I remember clearly a wedding I had been to earlier. I arrived at midnight and the zaffa had just begun. As the bride emerged, it took me a while to discover who the groom was since she wasn’t holding anyone's hand. I asked why the zaffa was so late, so they told me the bride was dressing up. Naturally she wanted to look perfect, but the sad thing - that wasn’t my impression after a couple of minutes at all. It was like watching a Barbie doll with her stiff bent arms and constantly tip-toed feet. That Botox smile on her face is what blew her cover most. Instead of enjoying the happiest day in any girl's life, and living it minute by minute, she was too concerned with what people thought of her. She wasted more than half of her wedding on her looks. Any other couple, even if extremely tense, would look magnificent just being themselves on that night. But that doesn’t come so suddenly, it directly links to the previous habit. If a bride had constantly been trying to be out of this world, then she will continue to be odd and unaccepted – even on her wedding day!

Why is Mona Zaki more popular than Amira Fat7y even though Amira possesses more of the typical beauty specs? It's the way that Mona Zaki is always so natural. Even when she imitates another character, she makes sure not to over act. Even someone like Hend Rostom, with all her exaggerated dala3; people said she was so attractive because that is who she really was. Anytime, anywhere, even alone, she naturally spoke that way.

This means that psychologically speaking, it shouldn’t be difficult to realize you're on the wrong track, because it would reflect on your practical life. Psychiatrists say there are seven essential qualities found in good leaders. The first three are living life with honesty and integrity, being enthusiastic about what we do and being confident. Imagine, three out of seven traits have to do with behaving naturally! Psychiatrists therefore say that a woman, who fails to be her self, fails to build a successful job, fails to influence her husband and fails to raise a mentally balanced kid.

So a girl who naturally calls her dad baba will get much more admiration and attention than a girl who says pappy with a twist. And getting LOTS of attention for something completely silly is a disaster to anyone; silliest of all is trying to imitate something that is far away from one's nature.

So just be yourself, talk in your own way, and have faith that there is something special and cute about the real and natural you.