Sunday, June 10, 2007

Onwards and Upwards!

I had a final exam this morning and when I read the questions I just didn't feel like being examined.

Examination is beneath me. It isn't... I don't know.. Pragmatic.

It's not that I didn't know the answers, I just didn't want to get into them. I get this feeling a lot now. I remember a time when I would strangle someone before I let them walk away unconvinced of my opinions.
Now I'm more indifferent.
It's worked for me, untill this morning.
When, you know, I stared into space for a full hour instead of answering the test.
Oh, well.

Botheration (yes, it's a real word) of the moment:

Those fucking idiots I am forced (well, choose. Whatever.) to converse with. The ones who think it's cool to call everyone "stupid Beduins."
Like they come from a fucking rainforest or something.
Very few people realize (and accept) that we are all Beduins.
It's fucking amazing if you ask me. I wouldn't want to be anything else. I love my heritage.

Anyway, they're the same idiots that think "Indian," "Sri Lankan," and "Filipino" are insults.

I told you.
Idiots.

Good luck on your finals, everyone!

ubergirl

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not everyone in Saudi is a bedouin, it depends on which family you come from. I don't where I come from, but then I again I never gave a fuck. So I take it you bombed the test?

Stephen said...

Did u manage to do OK in the exam even with the hour of day dreaming?

Well when there is modern day slavery in the countries like Saudi, it's no wonder "indian", "Sri lankan" and "Filipino" are seen as insults

Anonymous said...

Well I hate Saudi as much as the next guy, and I'm Saudi Stephen. But please define modern day slavery? I'm not saying what you wrote is wrong, I'm just wondering what you mean by that term. In America you don't have slavery, but you got racial slurs that are used the same way as Indian, Flipinio, etc. Saudi has its problems, and I despise it here, people are fucked in the head here, but you know what pisses me off? When people from other countries are so quick to point out faults in Saudi, that so many other countries share. We've got so many issues to choose from, I wish people can be more original and point out something unique in the many problems we have in this depressing country of ours.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps this will clarify the term modern slavery:

JIZAN, 8 June 2007 — A woman schoolteacher, one of the suspects in the murder of an Asian housemaid in March, has admitted to her torturing the maid until she was dead.

The Saudi sponsor of the maid who took her to hospital and the sponsor’s schoolteacher wife were both arrested in Jizan in March following a hospital report about the death of the maid, whose nationality has not been revealed to the press.

According to the report of the Samita General Hospital in Jizan, a Saudi man brought in an expatriate woman who died shortly after she was admitted. The hospital report attributed the death to internal and external injuries.

The teacher told the investigators that she and her husband used to punish the maid in various forms such as beating, branding and locking up while denying her food and water for days on end.

The teacher said they resorted to crude methods of punishment because the maid was lazy and negligent in her work. The teacher said they had every right to make the maid work because they had spent a lot of money to bring her from her native country.

Read more about this case:
www.arabnews.com/?page=1&...m=6&y=2007

Anonymous said...

They were arrested, which indicates that slavery is technically illigal here.
Just wanted to point that out.

Stephen said...

When I said modern day slavery I was referring to things such as foreign employees not being able to leave Saudi without the permission of their employers and in some cases the employers even hold onto their passports. To me this is wrong.

I know there is good and bad in every society and apologies to anyone from Saudi who I may have offended

Taqo said...

I love how some sort of fight or argument always breaks out in your comment box ;D


Anyways, Bedouins rock my socks.

Anonymous said...

Daydreaming is good for you! There are times when you can and should spend to "organize your thoughts" rather than just write whatever come to your mind. Keep on dreaming!

High school, university (which year)? what area of speciality you trying to obtain a degree in? will you practice after you done?

Anonymous said...

Gee girl, u can't put up with months of that b.s. just to bomb the test at the end of the year.

Anonymous said...

modern day slavery happens in ... modern western europe, where females are sold to pimps to work for them, sell their bodies and earning nothing while they are totally caputured. although it is forbidden these jerks are not severely punished nor arrested. the police doesn't think it has priority... that is slavery! as long as people point to other countries and other problems, they close their eyes for own problems in their own country!

Anonymous said...

Pimpin' ain't easy.

Anonymous said...

"Modern day slavery" is widespread in Saudi Arabia. Few people are ever arrested or prosecuted for it.

The abuses range from the severe like murder, beatings, rapes, burnings,starvation, "slave like" working hours and torture to the more "moderate" like emotional abuse,unsanitary living conditions, denial of medical care, denial of adequate sleep, imprisonment,wage exploitation, off days and vacation leave.

This is not to say that everyone in Saudi Arabia treats foreign laborers like this.
*PLEASE DON"T ATTACK ME*

I don't think Ubergirl would ever treat people like this. But it does appear to be widespread and generally accepted by many if not most.

The following is from a recent Human Rights Watch report. http://www.hrw.org/

“When we filed the case, we hoped that we would get real justice. But after just one week we heard from the Bangladeshi lawyer that the company owner was the daughter of the Saudi king, and our file was closed.”

--Bangladeshi worker who returned home from Saudi Arabia in 2002.

Melda’s Story
Another married Filipina, thirty-three-year-old Melda, was raped twice by her Saudi employer in 2003. Although she was in Dammam, the same city as Fatima, after the first time that she was raped the police returned her to her employer’s house and did nothing to protect her from her assailant.

Melda told us that she left two sons, ages nine and ten, in the care of her mother, and arrived in Saudi Arabia on May 1, 2003, for what she expected would be a two-year stint as a domestic worker with a Saudi family. Her monthly salary was $200. The first inauspicious sign was the lack of private sleeping quarters. Melda said that she was instructed to sleep on the living room floor and was provided no mattress, only a blanket and a pillow. She was not permitted to use bathrooms inside the house but was assigned a dirty exterior facility with a toilet that either overflowed or operated with a trickle. It had no shower or bucket for bathing – only a faucet on the wall.

Melda said that her work day began at five in the morning, when she had to wake up the couple’s three children and get them ready for school. Her female employer, Asma, was a teacher who left the house at six in the morning. Melda did not know the profession of Asma’s husband Rashid but said that he wore a green uniform when he left for work.

On the morning of June 2, 2003, Melda was cleaning the hallway on the second floor when Rashid walked out of his bedroom, naked. “I was frightened. He grabbed me and pushed me down on the floor. I was shouting and crying. He told me that he would kill me if I said anything to his wife,” she said. She could not describe the details but told Human Rights Watch that she tried to fight Rashid as he raped her. “He finished,” she said, shaking, “and then went into his room, closed the door, and ignored me. I washed myself, stopped working, and waited for my madame to come home.”

Melda was upset and frightened, and watched the locked front gate of the house constantly, waiting for an opportunity to flee. Early one morning, Melda noticed that the gate was unlocked and quickly left. When she was some distance from the house, she asked an Arab driver to take her to the Philippines embassy. Instead, he called the police. When the police arrived, Melda tried to explain her situation to them. Her English was limited, but she said one of the policemen spoke some Tagalog so she was able to communicate with him, using both languages. “I was crying, telling him it was not good, that my employer raped me, that I did not want to go back, that I wanted to go to the embassy,” she said. Melda had a photocopy of her passport with her, which she showed to the officers.

Despite Melda’s obvious distress, the police ignored or did not understand her complaints and drove her back to the house. One of the officers rang the doorbell and Rashid appeared. “They forced me out of the car. I was cursing and screaming, saying I hated him, that he was an animal, bad,” she said. She watched as the policemen and Rashid spoke outside the house, unable to hear anything that was said.

When Rashid’s wife returned home and asked Melda why she had not completed certain tasks, Rashid offered an explanation in Arabic. “I did not dare say anything,” Melda told Human Rights Watch. “All I wanted was to go home.” She surmised later that Rashid told his wife that she had escaped, and for that reason they decided to send her back to the Philippines.

On June 11, 2003, Rashid raped Melda for the second time. She said that she was cleaning the guest room on the first floor and Rashid entered, locked the door, and pushed her to the floor. “He pulled down his pants to his ankles. He grabbed me so strongly that it hurt and I was crying. I was fighting him until I felt no more energy,” she said. He raped her and remained in the room with her several hours, until it was almost time for his wife to return home from work, Melda said. She suffered this abuse in silence, with no confidence that the police or anyone else could help her.

On June 25, 2003, Rashid abruptly informed Melda that he was returning her to the Philippines later that day. She told Human Rights Watch that the family driver took her to the airport, with Rashid and his six-year-old son in the car. She had worked for almost two months but did not receive any salary since it was owed as a placement fee to the manpower agency in Manila that deployed her to Saudi Arabia.172

Anonymous said...

I should have kept my mouth shut

Anonymous said...

I think i did well.
On my Test, that is. Incase anyone is concerned, lol.

Anonymous said...

That's a really sad story the anonymous put up there. What is really bad is that the police sent her straight back again. Too bad and what is really disturbing is they probably have a new maid and the cycle continues. Gosh, when I think about it, I can really hate men. Sometimes I dark days I find myself looking at a happy smiling man and thinking 'have you ever raped anybody you bastard'.

Anyway it might interest people to know that slavery is illegal in Saudi but perfectly legal in Mauritania. Another Islamic country which the BBC says is in the middle east, but which actually shares a border with Morocco.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4091579.stm

Anonymous said...

Actually slavery was abolished in Mauritania in 1981. It persists nevertheless. Many of these laws are enacted for PR reasons but are virtually never enforced.

Anonymous said...

Well done Ubergirl, sorry i took the comments away from the topic of your post, wont happen again lol

Anonymous said...

What are you studying to be? I'm just curious, it sounds like you are in college but I could be wrong.