Danderma's Blog

Hi!

3 years it has been, cobwebs trashing this place. Yet there was not one day that I haven’t thought about coming back and writing something.

I suppose 2020, a new decade and all, warrants a new post?

Can three years change a person’s life inside out? In my past three years it did, I can no longer remember the person I used to be then, on every level of my life that has been. I’ve laughed more, cried more, gotten some of the things I’ve wanted and lost as much in return. I’ve moved house, gone back to college, earned an MBA degree, yet here I am, thinking what next, and all I can think about is my trusty old blog that I haven’t written in for the past three years, and looking forwards to something I am not entirely sure what is.

I don’t even have pictures in this PC to upload to this post, I’d suppose a nice hi post would do for now. I have so much to say and to write down I do not know where to start really so perhaps I should start backwards and continue on from there? We’ll see.

For now, a loud HI with a big fat frivilous wave would do.

Book Review: The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Shafak

Highly acclaimed and an award winner, I had no second thoughts about picking Elif Shafak’s The Architect’s Apprentice. It took me a while to read through it, so many pages and so much details, tale upon tale you stumble upon and sometimes the details are of little and no consequences, but in the end you put it down and sigh, for this unusual, oriental, mystic tale of old is a telling of the circle of life for Jahan, a little foreign elephant mahout who became the apprentice of Sinan, one of the most renowned Architect’s of his time.

Though at times I was frustrated with the lack of a definite or a thrilling plot and with the amount of details, I adored the personality of master Sinan, who to my delight he is an actual historical character though I wonder how similar the real Sinan is to the one living and breathing between the pages. Among my many favourite quotes of him are ‘Sometimes for the soul to thrive, the heart needs to be broken, son’ and another would be ‘If not put to use, iron rusts, woodwork crumbles, man errs’, Sinan Said. ‘Work we must.’ It cannot be more true, you realise that human nature is basically the same since the dawn of time, and for humans to get along and live in peace they must be busy with something to do, a common goal. It is work, dedication, and tangible progress what puts aside differences and lets peace prevails. Don’t you see? We ourselves live it everyday at work! We come together through our different languages, genders, nationalities, religions, and beliefs in order to get our work done at the end of the day.

Again, as you read on, you also see that human’s progress is often assaulted by ignorance and fear of the unknown. Incredously, it is always the voice of ignorance that is often the loudest and most powerful and sadly the most destructive. However, what really counts is that a human isn’t supposed to be non-destructable, which is not an easy fate by any mean, what really counts is Sinans’ most admirable trait in my opinion: His ability to adapt and rise again from the ruin, stronger and more determined than before being knocked down.

You will enjoy the ride, but you need to be a bit patient and ride it out. In the end you realise that life is life and that history keeps repeating itself regardless of the day and time and century and country.

P.S. The bagels in the picture? Baked from scratch by yours truly! Yes, they look a bit sad but they were good

Celebrating A Year in the Life of Gilmore Girls #GilmoreGirlsRevival

At this moment I’m sitting by the open window, a dark cloud is looming in the horizon and thunder has been rumbling on loudly for about ten minutes now. I’m the dictionary definition of a pluviohile, I literally open my eyes wide and begin to operate on an entirely different level when it rains, rain charges my soul the way Superman charges by the sun, hence this post that has been playing around again again in my mind.

I’ve also decided that perhaps I should have pursued a career in book-publishing. Why didn’t I? I don’t know, perhaps because it doesn’t pay too well? Perhaps I’m going to one day but until then I will stick to writing whatever comes to my mind in my little blog and you, my readers, will be the lucky ones to suffer through :p

It’s raining now. Sunny and raining. We must be in for a RAINBOW! Yesterday, the first performance ever in the newly opened Opera House of Kuwait took place, and last week one of my seemingly far-fetched dreams came true when Netflix had shown four 1 1/2 hour long episode of Gilmore Girls. One of my absolute favourite TV shows back in the days . I’ve restrained myself and kept delaying the inevitable as long as I cold and only this morning did I finish watching the fourth and last episode and got to gasp out loud as the last four words of the Gilmore Girls dialogue were revealed. I won’t spoil it don’t worry.

What are the odds that a beloved TV show, one that had entirely shaped my relationship with poptarts, coffee, and food in general, one that I would have wished it would stay running on forever, one that I had plunged into a zombie-like state when it finally went off the air after a very disappointing 7th season, came back almost a decade later to put things right and let us know how everyone in Stars Hollow is doing? Watching it the first time, I’ve wished with all my heart that I did indeed live in sleepy crazy Stars Hollow and had breakfast at Luke’s every morning. Watching it again, I’m filled with the same longing desire to do so. What am I doing here? living in rent, complaining about traffic, frustrated with society, ignoring the news, and dreading next week every single day? I don’t know.

So, in preparation for the 25th of November where I was going to watch the new Gilmore Girls all day long, I’ve decided on the menu: Bottomless coffee and Unfrosted Strawberry Pop-tarts. I use unfrosted because, believe or not for some reason Kellogg’s decided that the frosting of pop-tarts -and cereal- isn’t complete without Gelatin and since I’m a vegetarian I steer away from it and get only the unfrosted kind. I used to get them from Sultan Center without a hitch, however this time around I’ve scoured all of the possible branches of TSC and even got the customer service to check in their system if any branch I haven’t been do indeed stock the unfrosted ones, no luck. What next? You cannot watch Gilmore Girls without pop-tarts of course, so I’ve decided to make my own. How hard can they be? Right?

On the morning of the 25th I’ve woken up early and started to prepare the pop tarts. Nothing to it, a simple search using Google produced hundreds of recipes but since almost all of them made pop-tart dough from scratch and I wasn’t bothered, I simply got a couple of sheets of puff pastry from the freezer and let them thaw, made me some frosting and filled my rolled out puff pastry sheets with a strawberry jam mix, baked, frosted, sprinkled confetti sugar, and waited by the TV for Netflix to start showing A Year in the Life of Gilmore Girls. It came on about 11 AM Kuwait’s time if I wasn’t mistaken.

The moment, when you see Lorelai sitting in the cold in the town square, waiting for Rory, rambling on, is simply unparalleled. It felt like I was the one waiting for the Gilmores to come back, to give them a hug and ask about their lives. I’ve missed them so much and I can only wish this isn’t the last we’ve heard of them. They simply don’t make good TV shows like these anymore, why Hollywood, why?

Did I enjoy it? Absolutely, after I’ve stopped sobbing that is. I love Kirk! I’ve missed crazy Kirk so much and I’m so glad he appears a significant amount of time. Lane and her mother don’t appear that much sadly. I believe Mrs. Kim -which I adore- appears only once and there is a Mr. Kim appearance too! Imagine, after all these years, he does exist! I’ve missed Suki terribly, and Christopher, and sadly they only appear in a brief scene each in the very last episode. When Suki came, the puzzle was complete and I began sobbing uncontrollably once again. No Suki and Jackson action though sadly, we barely get to see Lane and her boys, we don’t get to see Suki’s children. We get to see Paris only in one episode and I’ve missed her.

Somehow, between trying to squeeze all characters in those four episodes/6 hours, the plot kind of wobbled. We see Rory, the one-time all planned out and so sure of herself, stumble as she reached her mid-30’s and not entirely satisfied with her life anymore. How can it be? How can I, a person who always loved and identified with Rory, be somehow in the same boat as her in what is supposed to be the prime of life? I could totally understand how lost and frustrated she is. After all, you only have one life time and you get to realise at one point that you cannot squeeze every thing you want to do in one single life time, no matter how hard you try.

In a way I wish that instead of four movie-long episodes we got one full season, one last one with no strings attached, even if its something like the X-Files little season, but with more of a defined and developing plot and more time to give to our beloved characters. Wobbly plot or not, the ending, the last half hour of the last episode of the long awaiting a year in the life of Gilmore Girls, is the best and most heartwarming of them all and it so made up for it. The four words, if you’ve made it till then, the four words, OMG! Please don’t let it be the Wookie’s!

Now it’s gone and over with, I’m not sad at all, you know why? Sherlock series four is back in 28 days and I am to plan a Sherlock marathon to rewatch all its episodes and prepare for the long awaited and presumedly last series. 2 years I’ve waited, 2 bloody years!

P.S. I’m praying for a Friends revival, or even a Friends movie. I’d settle for a glimpse of Friends, anything, I simply miss them so much.

Book Review: Landline by Rainbow Powell

I’ve heard so much about Landline, and I’ve looked for a long time for a copy as well and only recently did I manage to find one and settle down with.

To say Landline latches you on the story from the first pages is an understatement, I love how the story flows, easily and with just the right tempo, not too fast and not to slow. Continuing with the trend of flitting between past and present story lines, Landline is the perfect example of how not to annoy your readers going back and forth between time zones! Landline is steadily rooted in the present, but in a blink you find yourself in the past with a story of some sort then bang you are back on track, not lingering for one unnecessary moment too long!

The story is original and pretty much spelled out back, but its sweet and cool and refreshing read. Although at some point I had to flip through three pages of a toddler saying meow on the phone. Also, by the first half of the book many hassled working moms could identify with the day-to-day struggling Georgie, by half the book Georgie’s phone calls to her husband takes on a bit of a teenagery-love and you want to scream at the husband to answer his wife already and stop sulking…

Then comes the ending, was not a surprising one and I was not that impressed with to be frank but overall when I was done I was left with this silly smile on my face and a warm happy feeling, like someone draped you in a fluffy blanket and gave you a cup of hot chocolate… Its sweet, light, and worth the read if you are looking for a pick me up.

Book Review: Fool Me Once by Harlan Coben

This is the third book I’ve read by Harlan Coben within 6 months and I have to say I’m left surprised and constantly guessing at the answer of the mystery again and again!

I loved the leading lady, Maya, a lot! Unlike other women terrorized by what seems to be the impossible ghost of her murdered husband appearing on the nanny cam, Maya is calm, collected, armed, strong, and has a no nonsense no beating around the bush confront and give me the answer I want right away attitude! None of the usual whining call somebody I’m a damsel in distress help me you’d usually encounter while reading or watching a movie. After all, she was a soldier and a fighter helicopter pilot in the army, which also is an important part of this story for it tells of the physiological issues soldiers suffer from after being involved in a war.

An alibi Maya gives for her whereabouts in a murder turns to be she being deployed in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait! It felt good to read the mention of Kuwait a few times, usually its Dubai that appears in foreign publications stealing the limelight.

The ending is spectacular, you’ll never guess at it even though after you finish the book you realize it was right there in front of you, staring you in the face! By the time I reached the quite heartfelt and emotional last chapter, I was bawling with tears streaming down my face along as my favorite character narrates the end. I’d totally recommend it, it makes for an exciting read.

Book Review: Life After Live by Kate Atkinson

I have not one but two copies of life after life on my bookshelves, for whenever I’ve visited a bookstore for the past few years I’ve seen it on the best seller and highly acclaimed list of novels. I also got its semi-sequel, the second novel “A God in Ruins” that is based on another character but its not necessarily a continuation of the original story. The only reason I’ve put up reading this one was its sheer-volume of 600+ pages. I however finally decided to read it and its semi-sequel, for I’m in desperate need of a book that sucks me into its world and leaves reality behind. 

I’m sorry to say, despite the legions of fans and glittering names recommending this book, that I wasn’t very much impressed.

The concept is lovely, Ursla Todd seems to have cheated death when she was born and seems to have the ability to relive her life again and again, and remember in deja vu style how the other lives went. It explores the question many of us seek answer to: if you’ve been given the chance to relive your life, would you make the same mistakes again? Would Deja Vu be able to iron out he mistakes of your past? It does sound like something you’d want to read about, doesn’t it?

It starts off with a mystery as well, a drastic action by Ursla, and you are so intrigued wanting to know what happened to deliver Ursla to this point. Then it starts with the night Ursla was born, and sadly because the theme of the book is repeating the lives of Ursla, you get to read a situation too many times, meet an abidance of characters that you first want to remember should they make an appearance later, then you realise they are as useful as reading people’s names and addresses in the phone book just for fun, and go into a well described yet often mundane details to the point of exasperation.

I ploughed through it, and struggled with the decision of putting it down and calling it a day or finishing it. The I remembered there is a point in the book after all which is the first scene and by the time I’ve reached the explanation of that scene Ursula’s life dissipated again and it restarted in a way that is not relevant to the beginning scene and makes you wonder what’s the point.

I understand that the writer was trying something new out, and it is new and I did appreciate and enjoy some bits, but overall I felt like I was sucked into a vortex of names and details and repeating events, one that kept me dizzy and overwhelmed rather than provide an escapism. It doesn’t also provide you with a clear answer or a revelation of some sort or even when to know for sure that such a repeating life will end for sure.

Would I recommend it? If you want to see for yourself what everyone is reading about then by all means do pick it up, be warned that for the first 100 pages or so your characters won’t be realising that life is repeating or that there is a point in the entire concept at all. You might be among the legions of fans who adored it or, you might be with the minority of people who didn’t much like it like I did. I actually am dreading reading the second semi-sequel now just because I’m afraid it might turn out like the first one.

P.S. food in Ursla’s early twentieth century era? Horrible! Imagine having kidneys soaked in milk for breakfast and boiled chicken for tea!

How to Make a bowl of Vegan Banana “Nice” Cream?

I’m not a vegan, and can never be for my love of dairy is too great to abandon. In the recent year or so the Vegan movement seem to be taking over the planet for a moment -vegetarians, where are you?- and whenever I browse the social media account of a vegan I happen to come across one version or another of something they call “Nicecream” or “Nice Cream” and they keep raving about it the way they were raving about the cauliflower pizza that didn’t score that high with yours truly. Since I’m a self confessed ice cream addict, my blog names means ice cream after all, and my BMI keeps climbing up everyday, I’ve decided that it won’t hurt to give the vegan nice cream a try, it is only restructured frozen bananas after all and those I do absolutely like especially in desserts.

After a bit of trial and error on my part, I managed to prepare the most delicious, and quite addictive bowl of nice cream that not only is vegan and fat free, after a while -several bowls eaten on daily basis- you cannot imagine why you never prepared it earlier or that you’d prefer to eat a raw banana over it again.

How to? Jokingly-easy, I tell you! Do however use yellow and ripe bananas, green bananas would taste weird with a zing of taste that you don’t want in your ice cream and spotted brown bananas might appeal to some taste-wise but the texture won’t be the same. Now, take your nice yellow bananas, minimum two bananas as one won’t mixed as well for some reason, and cut into slices then place on a tray covered with wrapping paper as shown in the picture above. Don’t cover them, just pop them in freezer for about four hours before serving.

Once you are ready for your ice cream fix, simply get out tray of banana slices and let thaw for about 5 to 10 minutes. Get your food processor (not blender, using the blender was a disaster for me) and drop the banana slices in. Give it one initial blitz, then pop open the lid of the blender and add in a dash of cinnamon, a few drops of vanilla extract or whatever flavours you’d like to have for your ice cream. Blitz again until smooth and the texture does resemble that of an ice cream. For some reason just before finishing up adding one spoonful of lukewarm water to the banana mix seems to elevate the texture and give it a cloud like consistency, just a spoonful and lukewarm but you can skip that step -it is my secret tip though-. Blitz for one final half a minute and then scoop out and serve! Voila! As easy as one two three.

How does it taste? Like vanilla ice cream? Well, no not really. The texture and temperature is that of an ice cream but you are definitely one million percent tasting bananas so if you are not a fan, then I won’t lie by saying it won’t taste anything like a banana. It like eating a solid banana milkshake. Or to be more accurate, if you’ve grown up in the Middle East and happen to come across the fruit cocktail drink (strawberries, mango, and banana milk) then it would taste exactly like the banana milk part of cocktail 6abaqat.

The good news about this beautiful recipe is that you can dress it up however you like it! I’ve tried it with coffee granulate, chocolate chips, chocolate powder, frozen berries, a hint of peanut butter, topped it with cinnamon and almond flaked and coconut flakes and those cute colourful confetti like sugary thing and with every bowl I’ve had and every mouthful. My favourite combination is the coffee granules with chocolate chips and I could have this everyday for a meal without complaining. I never once eat it and wish I was eating ice cream instead, and its a great way to economically make use of a good bunch of banana before they go too ripe and be ruined. It is also vegetarian and vegan friendly, fat free, and gluten free.

If you are concerned about having two bananas instead of one, you can split the nice cream with someone else but you’ll end up with a kid-portion-scoop bowl of ice cream. You can however make more than two bananas and then instead of serving up immediately, you can add the mixture to a plastic container and keep in the freezer for whenever you feel like a scoop of guilt-less nice cream.

Have you tried the Nice cream before? What are you waiting for? Try it and be merry

The Rainbow Bookshelves

For a while now almost every bookworm social media account I’m following was rearranging their collection of books in a colour-coded book theme so the end result would resemble a rainbow. I have an ancient photo of my bookshelves when I was a kid back in the early 90’s, my collection of some magazines were arranged Rainbow style but I have to look for the picture and scan it before I can share it with you, most likely in this post. Anyway, since my bookshelves are overflowing and organising the books in a readable manner became one messy affair, I thought I’d dedicate myself to this task and arrange all my books rainbow-style. After all, how hard can it be, right? 

I decided to pick one colour and start with it, since there is a nursery rainbow rhyme that is stuck in my head from I don’t know where “Red and yellow and green and blue, purple and madry shine, I can see (paint?) a rainbow, see a rainbow too” I decided to start with Red. My second least favourite colour which I thought I’d never be attracted much to. When I gathered up all my books in red covers, I was shocked, I had a LOT!

Now how to arrange them? Read unread? Arabic English? Classics, Fiction, Bio, etc? In the end and after a lot of fussing around I’ve decided to go Red Unread English, Red Read English, Red Unred Arabic, Red Read English. Repeat that ten times in a row and you’ll see a rainbow too, its end laden with a treasury trove of good books :p

When I finished the red books, which took an entire shelve, I was blown away by the effect. It was so organised, so easy on the eyes, it made total sense! So I’ve decided to consult the rhyme and it said to go with yellow, my absolute least favourite colour in the whole wide world. It was with yellow, which thankfully I didn’t have much with, that I was stuck. For starters, I couldn’t implement the same book classification of Arabic English Read and Unread. Then, because the idea of the colour coding is to have the shades of the colour change gradually, it was hard to match both the size of the book with the shades, some books that would totally fit in where too big and so on. My dilemma was obvious: I needed more books!

Green, my most favourite colour, had surprisingly a handful of books only! I was left baffled? Why so many reds, whites, blacks, and even yellow but not much green? Either I wasn’t attracted to books in green even though I love the colour, or perhaps authors and book publishers didn’t prefer green for their book covers. That’s interesting. I was also astonished by the amount of white covered books, especially the Arabic ones which were about 80% of the white books and really took up an entire bookcase on their on. The black ones came next, somehow I was reminded of the dresses in weddings and how if you were black you are almost certain that 75% of the wedding guests would be in black too!

After a few days, lots of thinking, and lots of stashing books that do not match in other bookshelves -making an even bigger mess- I let go of my dream of arranging my entire book collection in a rainbow bookcase and simply put together what would visually work together in one test book case.

End result? In reality it looks A.M.A.H.Z.I.N.G.! For a person who loves light and colours and rainbows, this is just the kind of bookcase that I was longing for. It looks like a rainbow had struck my bookcase and the shades of colour exploded everywhere! Whenever I’m in the office and my sight falls upon the rainbow bookcase, my eyes light up in delight

Book Review: The Widow by Fiona Barton

On the cover of this book there is a little sticker stating that reading it will fill the void left behind by the Girl on the Train, or was it Gone Girl? I’m not really sure, but it is being compared to current IT suspenseful crime novel and so I’ve started it with high excpectations. I did enjoy it, it was a good crime with a very gasp-out-loud-surprise kind of twist and a proper ending that lays to rest most of your questions, yet there was something missing from the story that would make it as good as either Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train.

Perhaps its because of the meek widow, who married young and was groomed to be an obedient and controlling dominant of a man posing as a husband? I was frustrated with the widow, couldn’t believe it when she was really and truly surprised when her husband was accused as the monster who abducted a toddler, and couldn’t understand why she allowed the reporter to almost kidnap her as she whisked her away to get the special on a scoop about the monster late husband.

The events of the story weren’t all at the same pace, sometimes it was OK and other times it was just too slow as I wanted to know what really happened. I also am so tired of books that go back and forth between past and present, chapter in and chapter out, but thankfully in this case the back and forth storytelling wasn’t specific to one character. And speaking of characters, almost everyone in the story gets a say in the events of it which is both enjoyable and interesting.

What I’m thankful for is that, even though the crime is heinous you will never stumble into gory disgusting details which frankly I was also dreading. I was also left pondering the state of life of those who are accused of crimes yet are never convicted and how, after the media descends on them and makes sure every one knows what they are accused of doing, how life will continue on for them? What if they are innocent, yet they can never find anyone who’d hire them again? How will they live? Where would they go? Is it really fair? I was really worried for the state of the couple, the widow especially who lost her job along with her husband even though she apparently had nothing to do with it.

Good read? Well, it is, yet not as good as I expected after all the high praise its been getting and I can see on Goodreads that many readers do share the same views as mine. I would recommend it if you wish to read something new, yet I cannot promise you that you’ll like it as much as Gone Girl or the Girl on the Train, maybe you will and maybe you won’t.

Book Review: The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton

Years ago, I read Rosamund Lupton’s debut novel Sister and was mesmerised instantly. Though I was not a fan of her bestselling second novel Afterwards, I did keep an eye out for anything new by the writer and finally managed get a copy of The Quality of Silence. I read the description on the back and though it wasn’t something I’d usually be picking up on my own, I still had a taste of the delicious writing of sister and I hoped I’d come across it again, hence the eagerness I felt as I started this one. 

This time around, my attention was grabbed instantly by the innocent narrative of the sweet deaf-mute 10-years-old girl Ruby, who had just landed in Alaska with her mother Yasmin to meet her father when they realise he was presumed dead in a fire to a remote village. The story is narrated between Yasmin and Ruby, and we see them as they venture into the freezing Northern Alaska on their own to try and find the presumed-dead father since Yasmin, too stubborn to believe or accept her husband had indeed perished, and with no one to believe or assist her, sets out to find her husband on her own.

In the beginning, and during Ruby’s narrative, we learn that she associates words with colours and flavours (i.e. weird feels/tastes like sherbet fizzy) and that she was indeed a child of the new millennia: with a Twitter account she tweets with and a blog she was planning to launch with her father. It is very different, very heartfelt, and the danger surrounding Ruby and Yasmin as they set off in a freezing unknown territory, throated by a stalker who seemed determined to stop them from going on their quest and an arctic blizzard threatening to engulf them all, you are never alone left with a moment of dullness, which is quite admirable considering there isn’t much going on in endless miles of dark and snow, but the writer managed to spin quite a tale and fill the pages without unnecessary stuffing.

However, I have to say I myself did struggle through the pages and it took me a while to finish it. I guess its because of its atmosphere, the description of the severe cold while you are wrapped up in your blanket at bedtime meant you were lulled to sleep sooner than you intend to, or perhaps I was just too tired these past few days. If you are to read it, don’t expect to rush through it, and do keep warm and read it in the winter in front of a crackling fire with a cup of hot chocolate in hand and I promise you, you will be in for a treat. Some books need to be read in the right circumstances, and reading this one on a plane, by a pool, or during bed time would simply not do. Again: winter, warmth, fire, hot chocolate, and the quality of silence, you’ll be all set.