the satanic purses

tonight was a cold, rainy night, and yet there was a very long que of students winding through the city center. what was the occassion? salman rushdie was speaking at the Oxford union. eager to sieze the opportunity, i stood in line with the masses, uncertain whether all of these people were attending because they were fans of rushdie or because they hated him. i waited about 20 minutes in the rain only to be denied entry! "members only"... i knew those jackets had to refer to something! one slightly important detail i forgot to enquire about before making plans to go to the event. i'm kinda annoyed right now, hence i am at my computer blogging it away. but it's all good, i'm joining the union tomorrow and then i'll get to attend all of the other speeches they have planned.

i wanted to go to the salman rushdie lecture tonight because i had a question for him. mr. rushdie, how does it feel to be the paris hilton of literature?

that's pretty much all he is, no? ...famous for offending people and causing controversy. his writing is ok, but nowhere near good enough to merit the attention that he gets. likewise, paris hilton can act--put a girl before a camera and that's acting, more or less.

but hey, whatever works. they generated the buzz and they are reaping the benifits. as the saying goes, don't hate the player, hate the game.

who could hate a face like this?

matriculation photos

so here i am in sub fusc. pretty classy. this was the day of our matriculation, where we enter a medival theater hall and the chancelor of the university tells us in latin that we are formally members of the university of oxford community. funny, i thought that happened when i paid them $50,000 for tuition, but i guess they do things differently out in the old country.

sorry there are not more pics. the engineers who we asked to take pics for us did not seem to understand the concept of pushing the button all the way down. therefore half of the pics that we thought that we had are actually not there. next time i get all dressed up, i'll be sure to give the camera to a pro.

scent of a muslim

contrary to common belief, muslims are actually unified. there is one common thread that binds all muslims all across the world, and sadly it is not faith. rather it is something far more powerful: the scent of a muslim. whoo-ah!

but you don't need al pacino's sense of smell to know that you've entered a place of muslim worship. anywhere you are in the world, when there are muslims praying, you know it.

today i went to my first oxford muslim students association event. i arrived a bit late, just as the prayer was finishing. the moment i entered the room i immediately knew that islam was in the air. alas, i had found my people and they were boldly bearing the international of the muslim world: foot funk!

in islam we are instructed to remove our shoes when we enter a place of prayer. we are also explicitly instructed to be clean. now i realize that cleanliness may be relative and perhaps to a certain extent it is a luxury to those living in extreme poverty. but these are students who have access to showers and laundry facilities. there is simply no excuse for such madness. and to be fair, it is not only oxford students. mosques, and prayers rooms across the U.S. and all over the first world all share the funk.

the funniest part was that the room that the iftar was in was not even a mosque. it was simply a room that the muslim student association had reserved for one hour! meaning that in the 5 minutes that the students had been in the room, taken off their shoes and prayed, they had managed to fill the air with their essence. eau de nasty.

now see the logic of certain people insisting on praying with their shoes on. perhaps their argument is doctrinally flawed, but if it means protecting all of us from what is under his shoes, i think i can support it.

and there is more irony still. i themed this posting after the movie 'scent of a woman' for another reason: the last thing you could possibly smell in that room was a woman. why not? because the women were in the room next door. now far be it for me to ever advocate feminism or women's rights (God forbid), but on a serious note, i will say that on a college campus segregation is stupid and hypocritical. this is the opportunity for the muslim students to mingle in a respectful environment, among their peers. anyhow, i won't get into the full argument because i am sure most of you know where i am going with it.

in the end i guess it is for the best. i really don't think the ladies wanted to walk into that room without a face mask. although i wonder... does the women's prayer area smell just as bad???

that is definitely one of those things that makes you go hmmmmmmmmm...

no-class in class...

so let me be the first to suggest a class on classroom class. it's a mouthful, but having sat in so many classrooms i finally realize that it is necessary. today was my first day of M.B.A. classes; my first day with my section who i will share every class with for the next two months. everything was great except for one things--some of these people never got the memo on how to be a student. after listening to one guy make real time comments during 6 hours of lecture today, i have to find some release. so let me write that memo now.

ali shaikley's guide to classroom class:

1. no real time comments--it's called a lecture because the professor is lecturing, not because we are all asking you to give your commentary on every two words the professor speaks.

2. this is not the british parliament! in a classroom silence is agreement. when you agree, you don't say 'ya', 'exactly' uh huh' or anything ridiculous like that. of course you agree with him idiot, he's teaching you the material.

3. don't ask questions that have completely irrelevant answers. when the professor gives an example using widgets, don't ask detailed questions about the market for widgets, what firms make widgets, where to apply for a job analyzing widgets, how the futures market for widgets was looking in 1973. why not? because we don't give a damn and it is completely worthless and irrelevant knowledge. the example is just about supply and demand. if you want to research the most obscure details about widgets, go do so on your own time.

4. and related to the previous note, don't ask a question that is way to complicated for the class just to demonstrate your foolish intellectual curiosity.

5. don't try to kiss so much @$$!!! have some dignity. especially when class participation is 0% of the final grade and this professor is not going to find you a job.

6. don't huff and puff and shift in your chair till the professor calls on you. raise your hand and wait like you learned when you were three.

7. i think there should be a legislated limit on questions/comments/huff and puffs (a huff and puff counts as two things only because it is more annoying than a dumb question) per hour of lecture. if i told you that i one student in my section averages about 20-30 questions and comments and huff and puffs per hour of lecture would you believe me? either he's truly clueless or completely lost in his arrogance.

8. this is not the game taboo. if you know the answer, don't race to answer the question by yelling it out. sorry, but you will not win anything. perhaps we need to install buzzers at the desks and get alex trebek to help the professors out.

anyhow, just thought i'd give my 2 cents (or 1.15 pence) on the matter. maybe i'll publish a formal guide someday. i've been a student for so long that i am a pro, haha.

sustenance, thy name is Kebab Kid

Kebab Kid. a kabab place whose logo is modeled after John Travolta's character in the movie Grease. need i say more? most importantly, it is my ramadan savior. good, halal food within walking distance from my apartment and my school.

at Kebab Kid, they offer "freshly backed" bread. i tend to find an inverse correlation between grammar/spelling and food quality at halal restaurants. perhaps it is because the food is more authentic (one can say, fresher off the boat), or perhaps it is because the restauranteur spent his time developing his cooking instead of engaging in futile acts of learning. i actually look for spelling and grammar errors when i discover a new place. until now my instincts have been correct. the exception to this rule is the entire country of egypt where i don't think i have ever seen a single word of english spelled correctly on a menu and yet all of the food is horrible (and cold!). so i guess my theory doesn't hold all the time, but nonetheless keep your eye out for the typos.

(if i remember some classic restaurant typos i will edit this post and add them. and if anyone remembers any, please post them in the comments)

hala wallah, cheers!

for those of you who don't speak saudi english, my good friend and colleague at the business school, Yazid, coined my new favorite phrase. hala wallah, cheers! the queen's english is a bit of a mystery to me. it feels odd to be in a place where people are speaking english, yet i don't understand it all.

so perhaps we should all do as yazid does and integrate laguages--make up our own. i have noticed that Oxford--and the UK generally--is such a mix of cultures and languages that i wonder if people actually understand one another here. there must be a hundred dialects of english spoken here: saudi english, indian english, greek english, chinese english, amerrrrrrrkin english, french english/euro-english and, of course, proper british english. each is its own language, and i have to sit and think really hard every time i am speaking to a non-american, not to mention a complete FOB (of which there are many around these parts!). so to all i say: hala wallah, cheers!

clubs...

so today i went to the 'Fresher's Fair', which is the day when all of the clubs on campus put a table out and pass out flyers and all of that. now i have seen (heck, attended) many schools across my years, but never have i seen a display like this. i swear to you there must have been 500 different clubs out today. there were clubs for the most random and obscure sports/cultures/relgions/hobbies, etc. i think i even saw an 'Oxonians for Kaysar' table, haha. i proudly joined the 'Iraq Club'! it just goes to show how classy Oxford is... it's the first school i have seen with an Iraq club. God bless this place.

and for the sake of nostalgia (in memory of the good old UCLA days), i joined the persian club too, haha. i wonder if they have BHPs out here and what would they be called? when i find out, i'll post the information.

dat's great...

another surprise i discovered upon arriving at the University of Oxford was the notorious book of Exam Regulations. normally the rules governing exams would not be blogworthy, except when those rules form a book the size of which makes War and Peace look like a quick read. so when it comes to exams let's add it all up: i gotta dress like harry potter, take the test in a 13th century torture chamber and abide by more rules than govern all of africa. in the infamous words of a georgetown student: "dat's great, pass the paper please."

what the sub fusc?!?

yes, that is a lego man in sub fusc. i plan on looking just as stupid as him.

so among my many surprises upon arriving in Oxford, i learned that we have to dress up like a sorcerer or one of harry potter's professors for every final exam (not to mention some of the major academic events like matriculation and graduation)! tux, white bow tie, cape and mortarboard cap. fun times!

first impressions

so after about a week of disorientation, i am all settled in the middle ages. this place is really cool and really interesting. it's like a combination of a museum, harry potter and berkeley, with some globalization on the side. suprisingly, oxford is actually a lot like berkeley--except with smart people (sorry boys, i gotta tell it like it is). it is quite an experience. the business school is a really modern building, but all around us it is like the victorian era has never ended. there's even a trendy cafe/restaurant near my place that is in a building that is probably an ancient ruin (in fact, it looks like a greek ruin--go figure). and when we take our final exams we have to take them in the 'examination school'--which looks like some big, scary, old british school (i guess that's what it is, haha), and we have to wear a tuxedo with a white bow tie, a cape and one of those graduation hats (they call it the sub fusc.--i'll post more on the sub fusc. later), lol. it's pretty creepy.

entering the world of blog...

basically i figure that these days the modern thing to do is to blog, not to mass email. so blog i shall. here it is--the life and times of Shaikley in The OX.

btw, no one here calls it The OX but me. perhaps it's because it sounds stupid. or perhaps no one here has heard of The OC. either way, this is the name i want to stick. it's all about The OX baby!

the man behind the words.