All posts by Yasmine

About Yasmine

I like orange sunshine and blue slurpees.

Even vampire children need respite, sometime

Suckool

When I fall asleep during lecture, do not wake me up.

When I shrug into my sweater – mentally kicking whoever raised the air conditioning unit to such a high level – and then sink down into my seat with a long-standing, comfortable disregard for good posture, don’t you dare so much as blink.
When I put my pen aside and close my eyes and begin to tune out the professor, don’t look at me smugly, critically, and roll your own eyes. Oh, I saw you, even with my eyes closed. I’m slick like that.

And when I finally doze off and begin dreaming of miraculously cancelled midterm exams, term paper extensions, and much-needed holidays, don’t nudge my foot repeatedly until I open my eyes and stare at you. And don’t smile widely at me and explain sweetly, “I just thought that’d be a better idea than poking you until you woke up.”

Because I will narrow my eyes and glare at you as rudely as only I know how, with an utter disregard for your supposed helpfulness.

This is the sort of behavior I don’t take lightly from even my friends. And I don’t even know you. Furthermore, I don’t care if you look affronted and hurt at my plainly obvious lack of gratitude.

I mean, really, what did you expect me to do, thank you?

That’s what you get for waking me up.

Bastid.

what is this dude on? What the heck kind of pr…

Suckool

what is this dude on?

What the heck kind of professor gives his class a handout with the following reading assignment? –

– Skip from the bottom of page 74 to the middle of page 78, from the middle of 89 through the top of 90, and from the bottom of 104 to the middle of 111.

– Page 98, middle: Skip from here to page 103, top.

– Page 84, end of first paragraph: Cross out “…also known…4 and 5…”

– Page 85, Figure 3.5: Cross out two vertical lines above the “O” in the upper left.

– Page 91: third paragraph

– Page 95: first new paragraph

– p.s. Part of the third quote on page 34 is very weird!

Personally, I don’t think this guy even has any real inkling of what constitutes “weird.” (I, on the other hand, as we have all established by now, am a walking example of weirdness. Weirdness exemplified, that’s me.)

Oh, and the abbreviation for this course is PSC 130. It’s been three weeks since the beginning of the quarter, but everytime I look at my schedule, I wonder what I was thinking when I registered for a political science course. Then I go to class and remember that PSC = psychology.

Yes, I am a genius.

I know it.

[Speaking of geniuses, someone should have reminded me that today was Columbus Day – and that Columbus Day is an “observed” holiday. I wasted forty miles worth of gas on pointless errands to and from the bank and post office, which were conveniently closed for the day. Grand. Columbus, Sholumbus. Who cares, anyway?]

[Acknowledgement for this post must go to Somayya,…

Rockstar and Crescent

[Acknowledgement for this post must go to Somayya, without whose generosity and understanding I would not have made it to yesterday’s program, who has successfully put me on several guilt trips over the past week and who has, yes, been quite justified in doing so, but who (I hope) understood why I had to be here and not there – and who loves me anyway, which is always more than I ever deserve.]

Friday, 10 October 2003: Unity Halaqa at Zaytuna Institute

[Subhan’Allah, Zaytuna is such a beautiful place. Somehow, I always feel that the time spent there cleanses my heart and soul. And who’s to say it doesn’t? The soothing environment, the interactions with other Muslims seeking the same sense of peace, our sheer proximity to such a wonderful resource for knowledge, are all instrumental in furthering and strengthening imaan.]

The lecture began. Calmed by the sea of strange faces and familiar smiles, the intimate sense of brotherhood and the cushioned seats, we were all listening intently, some of us busily scribbling away in notebooks or on hastily-gathered sheaves of paper, others simply leaning forward on the edges of their seats with hands clasped and brows furrowed. Absorption and fascination were evident on every face as he expounded on the Arabic concept of futuwwa, or chivalry. The virtue that is usually associated with youth, he informed us. That spirit of courage and self-sacrifice, the willingness to forego one’s needs to help someone else, the bravery required to stand up and challenge.

A few minutes into the speech, I felt a hesitant hand on my shoulder and turned to see the lady beside me – a middle-aged Pakistani woman seated next to a young girl I took to be her daughter – wearing an expression of bafflement as she gestured toward the front and whispered, “Who is he?”

“That’s Imam Zaid Shakir,” I explained. “Ahh, shukriyya,” she said, showing no evident signs of recognition even upon hearing his name. She simply nodded politely, and turned back to face the front of the room. I watched her profile for a moment, admittedly surprised that she didn’t know who he was. And then I was ashamed of myself for being surprised. After all, there was a time, not so long ago, when I myself hadn’t known who Imam Zaid Shakir was, either. I have only hazy memories of hearing him for the first time at the 2001 Zaytuna Conference. Then I heard him speak once more during the beginning of this year, and again at our event just a few weeks ago. And last night.

And yet? “Oh, look, there’s Imam Zaid,” we say casually. And, “Yeah, Shaykh Hamza’s gonna be there.” And, “Oh, hey, did you make it to Ustadh Suhaib’s lecture the other night?” As if we’re on a first-name basis with our Bay Area scholars. Shameless name-droppers, all of us.

Last night, thinking about the lady and my own reaction to her question, I was reminded once more of brother Ali Shayan’s observation that we have a tendency to take our access to such scholars, and their presence in our community, for granted.

Following some convoluted train of thought I don’t recall, I reflected on those who consistently participate in halaqas and masjid- or Islamic center-related events, who belong to MSAs, who help organize fundraisers/conferences/lectures, who travel to speak to fellow believers, who take part in rallies and demonstrations, who stumble and sometimes even fall yet remember to turn to Him during their times of need, who take active roles, who volunteer or intern, who profess to be practicing believers, who seek knowledge for His sake alone…

And I wondered – Are we doing enough?
– To get the word out, to teach others what we have learned, to refer them to someone else who knows more, to pass on knowledge we ourselves possess, to be active participants in society, to make our votes count, to speak out, to share, to listen, to implement what we know and to teach others how to do the same, to challenge, to smile confidently and fearlessly in the face of suspicious frowns, to disprove stereotypes, to speak the truth, to protest, to demonstrate by personal example, to practice what we preach, to take a stand, to tear down walls, to be assertive, to refuse to blend in, to show compassion, to work for what we believe in, to willingly step forward –

What are we doing? What am I doing?

i want a wide-brimmed panama hat! Waiting to bu…

Conversations and Encounters

i want a wide-brimmed panama hat!

Waiting to buy stamps at the post office, I smiled – briefly, impersonally, or so I thought – over my shoulder at the tall elderly gentleman who appeared in line behind me, then turned back to face the front.

His voice, rusty and deep, came from behind me: “You have a very nice smile,” and I turned back just in time to see his two index fingers drawing a curve in the air, somewhat reminiscent of a concert conductor, each finger swooping outward from the middle of his mouth to his earlobes, signifying, I suppose, that my own smile stretched as widely.

“Thank you,” I said in surprise.

Under the Panama hat, a colorful scarf jauntily wrapped around its crown, his wise old eyes crinkled with an answering smile. “You know why?” he asked.

“No; why?”

“It’s because you have happy thoughts.” And he beamed with approval.

I don’t know how it is that, through no fault of my own, I always manage to solicit random remarks from total strangers, but that encounter was sufficiently amusing that I couldn’t help smiling the whole rest of the day.

::happy thought::

Pass it on.

at this rate, who needs the gym anyway? For onc…

Suckool

at this rate, who needs the gym anyway?

For once, just once, I’d like to go to the College of Letters & Science office without them sending me all the way across campus to the Division of Biological Sciences instead. They always, always, do this to me. And my legs hurt now, man.

You know what I need? One of those little golf carts. That way, I could just zip across campus and back. It’d look exactly like that mini-cart we saw on one of our halaqa trips. I gotta scan the photo and post it for y’all. It’s hilarious. But, yes, a golf cart would be wonderful. Maybe I’d even get a discount on parking permit rates. And while other students hastily park and lock their bikes and race the rest of the way to class, I’d just zoom right up to the front entrance of my building, park, and lazily wander in. It’d be great, yo.

[Update: The infamous go-cart (or whatever it’s called.) It belonged to a state park ranger. This was even cooler and more hilarious than the sign warning: “Do not climb bridge.” You know you want one, too. You see the cookie tin over on the front seat?]

My new favorite places to study this quarter:

1. School of Medicine library

2. School of Medicine cafe

3. Benches in the University arboretum, behind the School of Law. (And there’s a duck pond there!)

I like to think of it as being productive and actually getting my work done instead of sleeping on the comfy chairs in the main library. My dad, on the other hand, calls it undercover research into my supposedly vested interest in medicine and law. He’s still stuck on this idea of me going into law.

Watching the med students is fun, though. Scrubs look way cool, too. Too bad that’s not nearly enough incentive for me to remain pre-med.

And in other news, I have discovered that there actually is exactly one person in the whole entire world who is quite capable of successfully giving me guilt trips.

Dammit, Somayya.

Candles, cake, and the crazy family

Casa420 and Familia

My daddy-o had his birthday today.

Whenever we were little and his birthday came around, we used to ask how old he was, and he’d answer soberly, but with eyes twinkling, “I’m twenty-seven now.” And we’d giggle and protest, “Noo, you’re not! How old are you really?”

Twenty-seven is his favorite age. “Why twenty-seven?” we still ask curiously, even now, from time to time. The answer invariably remains the same: “Because your mother and I got married that year! And I was young and handsome, and I had all my hair back then.” And here he always self-deprecatingly pats his bald spot with both hands, while we laugh and roll our eyes, Ohh Daddy.

In deference to his reluctance to grow older, we celebrated his 27½-th birthday last year. That way, he could go up in small increments. This year, we decided to try something a little different. Instead of twenty-seven, we figured, why not go backwards a little? So we went to the bakery and, after the usual hemming and hawing, picked out a cake for him. The lady at the bakery stared at us blankly when we asked her to decorate the cake with, Happy 26th Birthday, Daddy! I explained, “What can I say, we do things kinda backwards in my family,” and she started laughing, too.

The best part was watching him cut the cake. (After he had blown out the candles, of course.) A beautiful rectangular cake, and the crazy man, instead of cutting square pieces like normal people do, instead eyed the cake gleefully and began cutting triangular pieces.

My sister rolled her eyes and shook her head in mock disapproval, then glanced across at me and laughed, “So this is where you get your non-conformity from!”

Yes, it’s hereditary; that’s exactly where I get it from.

In case you were wondering.

break? what break? (or maybe it should be called: money? what money?)

Conversations and Encounters, Suckool

Welcome to Fall Quarter 2003. Start preparing yourselves for more ramblings about my seventeen credits course-load (bearable), my paid internship (time-consuming yet exciting), and the fact that I may not be tutoring calculus this quarter as usual (very, very sad, and no, I am not being sarcastic, sheesh). So not only does fall quarter mean getting used to driving long distances all over again (one week in, and I have a back-ache and sense of exhaustion I can’t seem to shake off), putting up with
the annoying valet guys at the university parking garage, evening classes (what was I thinking?) and irregular dinners (surprise, surprise), it also has a lot to do with money. Mon-ayyyy. You know you like money. Just admit it. It’s good for some stuff.

One week into the quarter, and I still have $29.27 in my wallet. Let’s see how long this lasts. Cleaning out my bag today, I found a stash of wrinkled-up receipts. Here’s a run-down on where my money came from and went to, based on last Monday alone:

– Quick cash as a result of selling back two textbooks from summer session: $24 (rip-off!)
– Paycheck I had forgotten about for proctoring almost two months ago: $30
– Bank deposit slip for scholarship (finally, man): $3,000
– Fall ’03 registration fees: $2,594.37 (up by 30%, as of this quarter. Grand.)
– Books for only two of my courses: $207.76 (Five other books still on hold.)
– Slurpee #1 (cherry-flavored): $0.75
– Random school supplies and things: $40.40
– Parking permit for Fall ’03: $121
– Lunch with Friend #1: $5.14 (Oh, and she gave me all her french fries. Such a nice child, masha’Allah. I ate all mine, too, of course.)
– Slurpee #2 (BLUE RASPBERRY!): $1.00
– Two books from the off-campus bookstore’s comparative literature section: $20.31 (No, I am not taking a comp lit course. And, traumatically enough, slurpee #2 melted at this point, because the bookstore had a “No Food or Drink Allowed” policy; therefore, I had to leave my slurpee at the counter, along with my bag. ::shakes fist in annoyance::)
– Dinner with Friend #2: $6.25
– Chocolate ice cream (happy now?): $1.25
– Gas: $28.26

I should just set up a lemonade stand to raise some money. With a big ol’ sign reading, Help a Kid Out, Yo. For Educational Expenditures Only! No one in their right mind can resist kids with lemonade stands. You know it.

The other day I was at a shopping plaza and was waylaid/sidetracked/accosted by a self-proclaimed professional photographer. Ehh, okay, maybe not technically waylaid/sidetracked/accosted, but whatever the term is for people who are trying their utmost to convince you to buy something you really, truly (cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die) have no intention whatsoever of buying.

Somehow, this guy wanders up to me and starts chattering away in such a nonstop fashion that I can barely get a word in edgewise, much less convey my disinterest in whatever he’s selling. Finally, I just give up and resort to smiling politely, shifting my weight from one foot to another, praying my eyes aren’t glazing over with weariness.

He tells me that I’m an attractive young lady and I should have his granddaughter, a professional artist, paint my portrait. She’s sitting right over there, see? come look. See, doesn’t she paint beautifully? And he thinks I should be painted in pastel, because pastel is a softer and more realistic medium, and I really should take advantage of this opportunity and have a portrait painted, because I’m very attractive and twenty years down the line [when I’m ugly, I presume] I’ll look back and wish I had taken advantage of this offer. And, no, he isn’t flattering me, because he’s a professional photographer, remember? and he’s photographed all sorts of pretty girls, so he should know. See, look at this photograph of his granddaughter on her wedding day. Wasn’t she beautiful? He took that photo, and he’s very glad he did so, because she looked so much more beautiful then (even though she’s still attractive, he adds hastily). And, look here, here’s a brochure with price listings, and I should hold on to it and take it home with me, and think it over, and his granddaughter will give me a call, but remember, there’s really no need to think it over too much. I should really get this done today, and here, now he wants to introduce me to his granddaughter the portrait painter, who patiently interrupts her work to smile quickly, confusedly, while he chatters on and asks her whether I’m not an attractive young lady.

And, good lord, she now somehow has my cell phone number, and I don’t even want a pastel portrait in the first place, especially not if it costs $180.

If I had so much money that I could afford to throw it away on pastel portraits, I’d buy myself my very own personal blue raspberry slurpee machine instead. Heck, I’d buy everyone a blue raspberry slurpee machine. You know you want one. Just admit it. And then I’d take over the world and make sure that no one (and I do mean no one) ever enforced those annoying “No Food or Drink Allowed” policies.

And that’s a promise.

Vote for me.

Tales from the kitchen (a.k.a. the chicken wars)

Casa420 and Familia, Salaam Namaste

My dad, baffled, a week ago: Yasminay, how can you be my daughter, and not know how to multi-task?
Me: I’m sorry, but I just think there’s just something wrong with the idea of cooking chicken and eating ice cream at the same time.

This was after he came home from the grocery store and gleefully presented me with a little pint of ice cream, my very own ice cream. I was washing dishes at the time, up to my elbows in soapsuds as the daddy-o shoved the carton of ice cream in my face and crowed, “Look what I brought for you!”

After I had laughed and explained that I was quite obviously washing dishes at the moment, and no, I did not want to eat my ice cream until after I had finished washing dishes, and no, I did not think it was possible to wash dishes and eat ice cream at the same time, the daddy-o shook his head sadly and carefully put the ice cream away in the fridge. “Ten minutes, Yasminay!” he warned me. “Eat it soon, or it’ll melt!” I glanced at the piles of dishes, sighed, and, true to fashion, soon forgot all about the ice cream. (Remembering to eat is not one of my strong suits, as you may recall.)

An hour later, the daddy-o wandered by again while I was cooking chicken for dinner, and after a few pointed questions and comments about my having not eaten the ice cream yet, the above conversation ensured.

Which reminds me, this post is supposed to be about chicken, not ice cream. Okay. Please pause this weblog entry while I scramble to recover my train of thought.

Umm. Chicken. I like chicken. A lot.

However, my sister and I were, just a couple days ago, accused of being “soo non-desi.” I’m assuming this is supposed to be an insult, regardless of the fact that we’ve never in our lives referred to ourselves by the term “desi” in the first place. And this coming from a guy who, a few minutes after he called us “non-desi,” laughingly admitted, “Well, they call me Halfghan.” Yes, so the “non-desi” comment stemmed from the fact that I had some issues differentiating between the chicken curry, chicken tikka masala, tandoori chicken, and karahi chicken menu items at Berkeley’s Naan ‘n’ Curry restaurant, and also because, unlike the abovementioned Afghan brother (one of the most desi non-desi people I’ve ever met), neither my sister nor I was all that impressed by the movie Devdas. The fact that he willingly sat down to watch the movie with his grandmother, and enjoyed it enough to rave about it to us and be personally affronted when we didn’t share his enthusiasm, was enough to make me laugh for several minutes though. Hecka cute.

Oh, yeah, chicken. Sorry, I keep getting sidetracked.

My point was, I like chicken. And I cook some pretty damn good chicken, if I do say so myself, even if I may not know a specific name for the type. It’s just chicken, for goodness sake. And it tastes awesome, alhamdulillah. So who cares what it’s called. Hey, even one of my aunts told me last week that she liked the chicken I had cooked that weekend. My jaw almost dropped, because I’m the rebel child of the family and, more often than not, my relatives are far more concerned with pointing out things I do or say that they consider wrong or strange than they are with actually patting me on the back. She even repeated the compliment when I saw her a few days ago. And asked me for the recipe. Whoa.

She laughed when I told her there’s no recipe, that it tastes different everytime. S’the truth, yo. She asked what I put in it. I hesitated. “Umm…everything?”

This weekend, I was one of several women in the kitchen, including my cousin and her three sisters-in-law. And this is the part I refer to as the “chicken wars,” because, dang, I nearly had to shove people out of my way in order to cook my chicken properly.

Let me explain this, in no uncertain terms: Any attempts on your part, no matter how apparently good-intentioned and helpful, to stir my chicken or add spices to my chicken or to otherwise even so much as breathe near my pot of simmering chicken will result in you getting perhaps even more hurt than you would if you were to call me “Jasmin.” And as you all should know by now, that is quite a lot of hurting, yo. Are we clear on this?

They rolled up their sleeves and got to work in the kitchen as soon as they arrived, one cooking ground beef, another, vegetables, yet another, rice, a fourth, making salad. “So,” they asked, peering curiously into my pot, empty but for onions and tomatoes and bell peppers and a little bit of olive oil, “What’s going to be cooked in this one?”

“This is where I’m going to cook my chicken,” I answered possessively, emphatically. I don’t know if they got the point, though, because for the next hour or two I had to maintain a constant watch over my chicken. Someone kept stirring it, even when no stirring was required. Someone else wanted to keep the lid on. Yet another one kept asking me what I had put in it, questioning my use of certain spices and ingredients, the cut of the chicken, the heat level of the stove. Once, I turned around from washing my hands at the sink just in time to catch one of the girls about to pour some water into my chicken. I lunged at the stove. “No, no, no!” I said, panicked. “No water!” She stared at me wide-eyed, whether because of my alarm or my forceful demand or because she finally realized she might be in serious danger of being attacked by me, I have no idea.

Don’t you dare touch my chicken, okay?
Thank you.

And you know what, I never did get to eat that ice cream. To be honest, I forgot all about it. And now I just went and checked both the fridge and the freezer, but it’s gone.

Someone ate my ice cream.
I can’t believe this.

randomness, to make up for the insanely long posts…

Conversations and Encounters

randomness, to make up for the insanely long posts down there

“So,” asks a girl who’s known me on an acquaintance level for a year by now, “do you go by Yasmine or Jasmin?”

I raise an eyebrow (I do a lot of this, in case you haven’t noticed). “Let me put it this way,” I say. “You call me Jasmin, and you will get hurt.”

She blinks a few times, then giggles nervously. “Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”

“No,” I say. “I really don’t.”