This blog is moving ......

Hey all,

I've decided to change the address of my primary blog to my own name. I'm moving my updates to a different blog, http://www.farah-faisal.blogspot.com/, since it's an easier address to remember and spell. It's been a great ride updating this blog, hope you'll follow me on to the next chapter!

Lots of love,
Farah

Blogging on the Bus ( or BotB for short)

Why is it that I didn't find out about the joys of blogging via email
earlier?? This is so convenient! Would have saved me from that one
year no update thing .....

I am currently stuck in a clusterfuck known as Seattle traffic, which
is so bad that I'm not even in Seattle yet and I'm in it. Uh huh, no
kidding. We are moving at a slow, snail pace, which basically means
that the bus driver hits the brakes every 2 seconds. Have you ever
felt that super nauseaus feeling you get when you're in a car and
someone else is driving and they keep accelerating and braking? Yeah,
I'm developing one of those right now. The whole physics of "a body in
motion tends to stay in motion" is knocked into my brain everytime I
get these vehicle-induced migraines.

I miss driving. At least when I was traffic, I was mad but i wasn't
nauseaus. Good thing I'm fasting; nothing to puke out. On the other
hand, bussing means I get to blog while we're stuck in traffc, which
is pretty cool :)

I'm going to start assigning words to my day that reflects how my day
was. Today's word is "sardines". Why sardines? Well, I need a couple
of the canned ones, for one. And for another, I feel like a sardine
packed in a can based on how closely seated I am to the lady beside
me. Note to other people: my ass is big. I am a big girl. If you are
similarly big, please sit next to one of of the skinny people. I don't
need to simulataneously be in a sauna while I'm on a bus. It is not
cute for me to get out of the bus and the whole side of one leg looks
sweaty because it has been in constant contact with yours for the past
hour.

I miss having a car. I need one of those Mini Coopers. Now if I can
just scrape the money for it .....

Starting off a fasting day with a workout

When you're fasting, it's not the easiest thing to get your body to do more than the basic necessities; brush teeth, take shower, put clothes on, get to work, get back from work, heat up dinner, eat. This morning I started off with a workout with my personal trainer Bri from SassyFit. A less strenuous workout in the morning is actually just right when one can't drink water or eat until 8pm, and that's what we did. Less strenuous cardio plus lighter weights equals still a workout but something I can handle while I'm fasting.

This isn't the first time I've worked out while fasting. Last year, when the fasting month was during fall and breaking fast was at about 7.30pm-ish, I worked out with Marissa later at night so that I'm able to break fast by drinking water and a protein shake, and go on to working out. Now that was pretty hard core, but somehow it was easier to push myself to do it when there's a trainer who's waiting for me to kick my butt in gear. as I try to do it myself at home, seriously all I want to do after a day of not eating is... eat. Sit down in front of the TV and just eat. So I told myself, fine, for this one month, do that. But once Ramadan is over, it's time to get healthy and work out again.

I am committed to getting on the healthy track train and get myself back to my old shape!

Breaking fast Seattle style

Soooo today is a Wednesday and I decided against cooking. So I took
one of my Kushibar gift cetificates and headed over there instead.
Kushibar is a Japanese izakaya place here in the Belltown area of
Seattle, and the food there is delicious. I'll save you the play-by-
play of what I ate, but the bowl over to the left there, the one with
the spoon, is a kimchee fried rice. Yummm. And of course, skewers of
meat and seafood don't dissapoint either. I miss breaking fast with
Malaysian food, though. Hopefully I'll get to do so again soon!

Craziness on the bus

Every morning I take the 550 bus to work (unless I'm working from
home). Usually the morning commute is pretty uneventful, but today we
are joined by two Chinese ladies speaking rapid Cantonese and
apparently not a lick of English except "sorry" and "thank you".
Within a space of seconds they manage to accost two seats from two
unsuspecting people who didn't know what to make of the constant
chatter and the inability to hold on to the bus rails (really the
ladies weren't that old).

One they got to their stop, the bus card they were using was not
working. Cue anouther 5 mins of excited chatter probably consisting of
"crap, card isn't working, how are we going to pay?". The bus driver
patiently tried to explain the fare, though after a while he waved the
ladies off the bus so that the rest of us can actually get to work.

For a second there I felt a twinge of jealousy of the old ladies. I
don't know know if they were visiting or actually living here, buy it
takes some balls to be somewhere where you don't speak their language
and you're lacking a common means of communication.

Maybe one day I can learn to be brave and do brave things.

Cutesey Wutsey Lil' Doggy!

Look at how cute this dog is! His name is King and his owner is one of
the aesthetitians at Spa Noir in downtown Seattle. I went in to have a
facial again and there he is. Such a cutie. Makes me feel extra happy
to come in every month when I get to see this buggy wuggy.

Testing no 2 posting from a phone .....

Bleurgh, test one failed ......

> I just wanna see how this works. If it does, you should see a
> picture of the dinner that I did last night. Spaghetti with black
> truffles and mushroom with a side of zucchini blossoms stuffed with
> goat cheese. Yes, I got fancy there for a bit.
>
> What are zucchini blossoms? They are flowers from the same plant
> that produces zucchini. There's some more info about them that I'll
> save for a later day since I have to run off to a meeting. Byes!
>

And the new lineup for Dancing With The Stars Season 11 is.....

For all DWTS fans (I'm one of them I have to admit), here's the new crop of Stars (or "Stars" depending on how you see it) is....

The ladies:

1. Brandy Norwood (as in singer Brandy, of 'Moesha' fame, also of the song "The Boy is Mine" fame. That duet with Monica was awesome)
2. Jennifer Grey (from Dirty Dancing. Can't believe she's 50!)
3. Margaret Cho, comedian, also on "Drop Dead Diva". I enjoy watching her comedy specials, but she's probably the most tattooed person the show has ever had. She'll be fun to watch.
4. Audrina Patridge, from "The Hills". If you never cared about the MTV cult hit then you won't know her.
5. Florence Henderson, from "The Brady Bunch". Respresenting the Octogenarian Bunch.
6. Bristol Palin. Wait what? This is supposed to be Dancing With The Stars! Granted she was in the news for being preggers (oh and her mom was running for the Vice Presidency) but really? Don't you need to at least do something in the entertainment business to be in the lineup? At least the reality "stars" had/have their own show.I'm perplexed by the choice. She better be interesting, she looked beyond terrified in the interview yesterday.

The Men:

1. David Hasselhoff. I mean it's the 'Hoff. 'Nuff said.
2. Kurt Warner, token sports guy. I don't know enough about sports to comment on him.
3. Kyle Massey. Disney Channel actor/rapper. Oh right, Disney owns ABC. I actually know this kid, I thought the show "That's So Raven" was kinda cute.
4. Rick Fox. Hunky, dreamy actor/another sports dude. Beyond handsome. Was married to Vanessa Williams, reportedly cheated on her. Okay, so that takes him down a notch on the hunk-o-meter.
5. Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, of "Jersey Shore" fame. Single-handedly responsible for runing the word "situation" for people everywhere. And don't get me started on how mindless the show is. Having him on the cast means that we'll see abs galore this season, on the account of him pimping out his fitness DVD.
6. Michael Bolton. Yep, that's right. Michael. Bolton. "When a Maaaaaaan Loves a Woman" Michael Bolton. I wonder how many people back in the '90s had sex to one of his songs? I wonder if he's still dating Nicolette Sheridan, a.k.a Edit Britt from "Desperate Housewives"? Maybe he's making a desperate attempt of his own to be relevant again.

So there you have it, folks. Your "dancers". I've use so many quotation marks in this post, but one needs to be accurate when "reporting", lol. Season 11 is going to be EPIC! I'm so excited that none of them are obvious dancers, like the Pussycat Doll last season or ice skaters or gymnasts. They're just regular non-dancers, though I wonder if Jennifer Grey is going to have an advantage despite being 50. I'm actually pretty excited for DWTS to get back to basics!

I miss you, Tom Bergeron! You are the best host on TV right now and I'd watch you anyday over Seacrest.

I've been a bad, bad blogger .....

Seriously, who has a blog, and then doesn't update for 2 years? 2 years?? ADD kittens have more attention span than I do. I think this says something about the last 2 years .... that things have come and gone and happened and not happened, and everything was just too difficult to put into words. To write on paper (or in this case, type on a screen) just makes things seem more .... real. Definite. Immovable. Part of my history. Unchangeable.

The last two years has been an exercise in patience and letting go. The former I have experience, the latter is something I'm still working on. But I've let go of a few things in the past couple of years that I never thought would happen in this stage of my life: my car, a guy I cared about, friends who have been either let go so that either they can be happy, or so that I can.

Oh yes people, I am a carless Seattleite now, and have been for the past year. Make no mistake, I'm not turning into a hemp-wearing hippie, it's just nice not to have to worry about things like how much you're spending on gas, insurance and parking. That leaves you more time to worry about things like when the next bus is coming and are you going to be late for work because the bus is late...... lol, okay, it's not that bad, if it was I would have bought a car by now. The nice thing about living in Belltown is that the bus is always just a couple of blocks away. And the nice thing about flex hours at The Company is that you're never late for work, you're just working late.

As for the boy part .... let's just skip the boy part. I could never talk about him when he was here, anyway, no point talking about him now that he's not. Let's just say that it's never a good idea to want someone who was never really available in the first place. Lesson learned, moving on .....

Friendships have a funny way of working out sometimes. Or not working out. The person you originally befriended can evolve into someone else you don't know. Sometimes the evolution is great, but in order for them to move forward, they need to leave you behind. Or vice versa. There were definitely some case (okay fine, ONE case) where I needed to leave people behind in order to be a better person and not get associated with the negative energy. I needed to love myself enough and do what was better in for the long run. I tried, gave it my best, be the best person I could have been, and since it still didn't work out, move on.

So that's two years in a nutshell. I know, it's not a lot, nothing about the places I've been and the people I've met and everyday happenings in life.... but I want to move forward. Look onwards and, hopefully, upwards. On to the next chapter...

p/s: "bebygurl" is a stupid name for a blog, and I wish I had named it something different, but oh well, stuck with it now!