Susan & Coraline!

Susan Boyle sang "I dreamed a dream" again at Britain's Got Talent final, another impressive performance but she lost to Diversity, I am not a big fan of dancing groups, it must be my age! but they were quite good and were supported by most young people.

Susan Boyle came second, it must be a relief for her that it is over, she did have a tough week with the gutter British press that had nothing but bad publicity for her all week, still she has captured the world attention and she will, I am sure, become a very successful singer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2xiAQCTy2E

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Today I took the kids to Stratford in east London, we saw some of the construction of the 2012 Olympics city which is in this area, the place is like a massive workshop!

After walking through the not so glamorous shopping centre, we went to watch Coraline in 3D, Aida liked it, Amir said it was OK...ish! I fell asleep at the beginning and woke up towards the end, I was still wearing my 3D glasses! so I cant really give any reviews about this film.

Britain, So Talented!

These are the 40 semi finalist acts of Britain's Got Talent 2009, you can see Susan Boyle in the middle of the picture behind Ant & Dec!
8 finalists performed live tonight, 2 of my favourite acts were among them, the first one was Sue Son who plays the violin beautifully, here is her performance tonight which I thought was fantastic but unfortunately she did not make it as her act did not qualify for the next stage:

If the video does not play then please click on the following link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2-pCHW1ZPs

Of course the whole world has been waiting for Susan Boyle's next performance after the massive success worldwide of her first audition.
We all waited eagerly for her, many watched tonight's show just to see and hear Susan Boyle! She sang live tonight and what a choice for a song! she sang Memory from the Musical "Cats", she must have been very nervous knowing that the world is watching, she even had a makeover and looked a lot better but her nerves got her a bit at the beginning of the song, the start was a bit rough but being the strong person she is, she composed herself and gave a great performance, she really nailed it at the end, obviously she qualified to the next round, the final act that will win this year will be chosen on Saturday, Enjoy:

If the video does not play then please click on the following link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmWCqIVQpEI

Gruesome Gardening!

We all laugh when we see pictures in Libya, Egypt and other countries of spelling mistakes with English names but they do get it wrong here too, I mean Burger King is a massive company with a lot of money to spend on advertising, you would think they would hire some one to write the word YES correctly in Arabic! instead they just put the Arabic letters next to each other without connecting them, its like writing the word YES this way: Y.E.S, in Arabic this is wrong!

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Every year at this time you know it is time to tidy up the garden, after a long and cold winter without cutting the grass, the garden looks a right mess with long grass everywhere, I am still waiting for the weather to dry up few days before I attempt to maw the grass.

Few days ago the kids went out in the garden with their cousins to play, that evening after I came back home, Amir was very excited and could not wait to tell me, he said: Baba, we found a skeleton in the garden, I think its a dead fox!

I didn't take him that seriously but he insisted, he said it had sharp teeth and you can even see the ribs!

There is a family of foxes that is living at the end of the garden, we leave them alone as we hardly use the garden in winter and they usually leave after their cubs are old enough.

Any way, next morning I went out in the garden with kids, led by Amir while Aida was hiding behind me and ... well it was a long dead fox!! it looked quite gruesome, I am not sure if it was one of the fox family or an intruder that was attacked, killed and eaten!

(click to enlarge)

look at these sharp teeth

that's what is left of the body!

The Screaming Pepper!!

Even though I am a very bad cook and can hardly make any food, I do like watching reality cooking programs such as Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares and Come Dine With Me, last night I watched come dine with me which is a program where they bring 4 or 5 people that never met before and then each one has to prepare a dinner feast for the others, they all have to rate the food and how the evening went at the end of each evening, the person with the highest score wins the competition and a £1000 prize money.

Last night's episode had a Vegan lady, vegans do not eat or use any animal products including dairy and fish, mainly for animal rights reasons. I myself do believe in animal rights and do agree that food animals are kept in awful conditions all over the world including here in the UK but I do get a bit angry when vegans start to have a go at people that eat meat, calling them animal murderers and cruel and so on.... I myself am not a great red meat eater, I usually prefer white meat but eating meat and animal products is natural for human beings, we were created that way and as this annoying woman mentioned, she has to take supplements to compensate for the lack of eating meat and animal products, taking a lot of supplement tablets can not be that natural! of course all the contestants in this episode had to make her a vegan dinner while they enjoyed fish, roast lamb and venison.

When the vegan woman saw the roast lamb, she said it was like somebody chopping off their arm, roasting it and serving it to people! I always respect people's opinion even if I do not agree with it but expect the same in return and I thought she was a hypocrite, she even has a cat in her house that she feeds on cat food which is mostly meat! so if she believes that cats naturally have to eat meat, well then people have to eat meat too!

She didn't win the competition, her food was OK but not that good.

This brings me to a story that I read many years ago, I am sure it was meant to be as a joke as I remember laughing when reading it.

A vegetarian scientist invented a machine that discovered that vegetables produce some sort of chemical when they are being chopped off which he says is similar to what people and animals produce when they are in pain!

i.e. the vegetables screamed with pain when he chopped them off! he said that he started eating meat straight away after this discovery :o)

You never know, perhaps soon we will have societies for the welfare and anti-cruelty to vegetables! what would we eat then......

Nakba Day

Another year passes with no hope for Palestinians, today marks the 61st Anniversary of Nakba Day (day of the catastrophe) I think the less said the better!

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Here is a video in High Definition (HD) of Libyan Air Cargo Antonov 124, 5A-DKN landing at Manchester Airport on Monday 4th of May 2009, very impressive. If you have HD on your PC/Laptop you will be able to appreciate the video quality:

Libyan Tourism...

I received an email from a Libyan Travel Agency called Temehu asking me politely if I could put a link to their website on my blog, naturally I clicked on their link and.... wow! I was presented with an almost encyclopedia about Libya, not just tourism. almost all museums have their own pages and the pictures are just amazing, there are even videos about Libya, all information needed by anyone visiting Libya is listed, there was even a page about Libyan food but it was lacking in pictures, I hope these will be added soon. I spent at least an hour going through their massive website and was really impressed with what they have done, it is mainly in English but they have a French section too, best of luck to them.

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According to this website, a man was caught at Cairo's airport by Egyptian customs, he was trying to smuggle an illegal item to Libya, no it wasn't drugs or alcohol, it was a .... LION CUB!

Yes a lion cub and apparently he told customs that it was a pussy cat! the lion cub was confiscated and returned to Cairo's zoo where it was probably illegally bought in the first place! rumours say that the lion cub was on its way to a VIP grandson in Libya! imagine, Libya could have had its own Lion Man!

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Britain's Got Talent continues to find talented people every week, of course what I didn't write about is the vast amount of talentless people as well, some of them are so embarrassing that I wouldn't dream of showing their videos here!

Here is another great talent, Shaun Smith, a 17 year old young man singing "
'Aint No Sunshine", this year the competition is going to be difficult as there are so far many talents taking place, Enjoy:

Here is the link in case video does not work:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLxT5k-sN-Y

The Lost Mummy!

Amir came home very upset and very stressed today, I feel bad for him, I feel bad that Amir at the age of only 8 years old had lost trust in his school mates. it all started this term at school when they began to learn about the ancient Egyptian civilisation, recently they were shown pictures of Tutankhamun, Amir was excited and told the class that he has a replica Tutankhamun casket with a little mummy inside it, the class and teacher asked him if he can bring it and show it at class time, I got him this beautiful little item from Egypt sometime ago and he absolutely loved it, it was always standing proudly on his desk in his bedroom. This morning he took it to school and showed it proudly to his teacher and class mates, by this afternoon it was stolen from his school bag while he was having his lunch, his teacher found him in a stressed state looking all over the room for his mummy, she gathered all the kids and asked them to empty their bags and pockets but it was no where to be seen.

He is angry with the school, angry with everyone in his class, he can not trust any of them any more, he learnt today that 8 year olds can be thieves too!

I have made a fuss, I phoned the school, I sent an email and sent a letter by post to the head teacher, they promised to do a full search on Monday and if the item is not found then they will send letter to all parents asking them if their children brought this item to their home. I myself do not expect it to be found.

This is the state of most schools in London, full of kids from dysfunctional backgrounds that have no manners what so ever, have no respect for their teachers or any adults, most of them can get away with anything as no one has any control over them and here I am not talking about just white kids! London school kids come from all over the world and unfortunately while this might sound bad but the reality is that most bad kids are not white but Arab, Asian and Black, most of these kids come from families that turn a blind eye to their kids bad behaviour and end up accusing the good people of being nasty and abusive to their precious little angels.

The mummy was not an expensive item but Amir loved it and was proud of it and wanted to share it with his class mates, he will not be doing that anymore!

Organ Donation

I have had a request to post about Organ Donations to support a campaign that is happening right now in Libya, I am not a medical person and do not have much back ground about this issue, some years ago an uncle of mine needed a heart transplant when he was in his early 50s, he had eventually the transplant which came from a person a world apart, a heart that belonged to a Swedish woman, the operation was carried out by the world famous Egyptian surgeon Magdi Yacoub, my uncle was very ill at the time, he survived many years after the operation, it gave him a new lease of life, he died about 6 years after the transplant, Allah bless his soul.
This is a very difficult subject and not many including myself like to talk or even think about but the reality is that it does save lives and I do hope inshaAllah that many people would take this issue seriously.

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Here we go again with another talent from Britain's Got Talent this week, here is Sue Son:

Here is the link in case the video embedding is suspended by ITV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMKw-A0hKjc

Today was May Bank Holiday in the UK and it did not disappoint, it was a typical good old fashioned cold and miserable bank holiday, no change here :o)

Here is an old joke: Today is Star Wars day, May the 4th be with you! :oS