Tag Archives: Katekatharina

Confessions of an Arabic student: Ordering Falafels And Sounding Like A Pirate

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Monday was a very important day for me. It wasn’t Christmas, or my birthday, or the day I competed in the Slovakian jousting championships. In fact, it was an occasion of much greater significance.

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, and she-who-serial-googles-‘snails’-to-land-here, last Monday evening, I learnt the last four letters of the Arabic alphabet: ط, ظ,
ع and غ.

Those final four characters had been hanging over my classmates and me for a full three weeks. Our Mudarrissa (مدرسة) kept promising we’d get to them the following lesson, but we got tied up learning how to attach possessive pronouns to objects like chairs, bags, chickens and doors and how to ask for falafels.

The four offending letters had been left until the end because native English speakers tend to mispronounce them because we lack an equivalent sound. The most felonious one is: غ.

“Who wants to pronounce this one?” asked the Mudarissa, pointing at the lone-standing, three-shaped character with a hat she’d printed on the board.

(Teacher tip: Never, ever ask open questions)

An eerie silence descended.

“How about …. you. Kate?”

“Agggghhhrr”, she said.

“Aaarr” I replied, as if I was at the dentist. She shook her head.

“Agggghhhrrr” she repeated.

“Rrrrrrrrrgh” I tried once again, only to cause her to shake her head more violently.

“No. It’s AGGGGHRRR. Not “RRRRRR”.

“AAAAGRRR?”.

“No.”

This went on for some time. I estimate that I voiced the letter incorrectly seventeen times before she gave up on me. I was prepared to continue indefinitely but the other students were beginning to shift in their chairs and smother giggles.

It might not seem like a big deal to seasoned polyglots, but I am pretty glad I’ve got this far. You might remember that Arabic has twenty-eight letters, which change shape according to their position in a word.

What’s now happened – since Monday- is that I can look at a word and actually read it –albeit incredibly slowly. Of course as most standard Arabic script doesn’t mark vowels, what I’m reading could have a myriad of actual pronunciations. The point though is that I’m now in a position to consider those possibilities.

Today I started using facebook in Arabic. My profile picture was immediately transported to the other side of the screen and the ads offering me Masters Degree Courses in John Hopkins University switched to the left. In an effort to learn new vocabulary, I diligently copied and pasted some of the Arabic characters into Google translate. The Arabs, I’ve learnt have a way with words. They may not have the time to mark their vowels, but they do translate ‘unlike’ as “cancellation of admiration”.

H-A-L-A-L

Life for LSB has become yet more tedious since my initiation into the Arabic language. We can’t pass a kebab shop without me reading “H-A-L-A-L” (حلالا) extremely slowly while missing the English translation that accompanies it. The other evening, on Camden Street while we were on the way to meet a friend for a hot port and a natter, I reeled off everything I could say in Arabic complete with elaborate supporting gestures.

“That is a beautiful and new car!”, I said pointing to a rusty 1993 fiat punto. “I am Kate Katharina.” “Pleased to meet you.” “Give me a falafel please”.

Beauty? I just can’t nail it.

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I found myself eating a sourdough sandwich alone on a bench in the Jervis Shopping Centre last week. From where I was sitting (right outside Forever 21) I had a perfect view of The Nail Bar, where two ladies were being treated to a French manicure and the attachment of gel nails.

The two clients, perched on stools with their hands stretched out in an arc before them bore an uncanny resemblance to a pair of begging lapdogs. The more I gazed at them the greater my desire to laugh and when I could bare it no longer, I let out a little giggle, which caused the man next to me, who was minding his teenage daughter’s shopping bags, to turn and stare.

I’m pretty confident that I’m the least nail-savvy woman in Ireland. I’m not sure if I even own nail polish, after my recent mass exodus of make-up of age ten years or more from my room. I’ve never had my nails done and the two or three attempts to paint my own in my early teenage years resulted in odd splashes of green glitter, which still pepper my carpet.

image from ftv12.tk

In case it seems as if I’m condemning the common cuticle, I promise you I am not. Sure we couldn’t do without them. They’re an anatomic necessity. Wikipedia puts it just beautifully:

“A nail is a horn-like envelope covering the dorsal aspect of the terminal phalanges of fingers and toes in humans, most non-human primates, and a few other mammals”.

Personally, I find them useful to pick at when nervous or for opening tricky plastic packaging.

I just don’t care how they look.

Don’t get me wrong. Perfectly-shaped contours are always nice. Anything well painted is a pleasure to look at.

The problem is, I don’t look at nails. I do not take sneaky downward glances to check out other women’s fingertips and I very rarely seek to improve the condition of my own.

Truth be told, their appearance is a matter of complete indifference to me.

It’s not for lack of vanity. I love clothes and good eye make-up and a gentle foundation. I flick through photographs of celebrities before I choose a haircut and I always turn to stare at interesting-looking people or those with beautiful clothes. I guess the reason that I’m indifferent to nails is that I think their cultivation is of little or no consequence to the overall appearance of a person.

I know, I know: I can already hear the cries of despair. It’s all about the detail. A real lady pays attention to her body from head to toenail. Each nail is a tapestry waiting to be coloured with exquisite strokes of blood red, deep blue and neon pink. A lady with fine nails is a lady with a well-kept mind.

Maybe so, but I just can’t see the point of it. Nails are tiny, breakable and their pinkish hue makes them naturally delicate and petal-like. Making them longer, or sharpening them or attaching sticky stuff to them seems to represent an awful lot of effort with little promise of reward.

I guess you have to be a connoisseur.

On my way out of the Jervis Centre I watched a pretty Spanish girl being stopped by a salesman in a black t-shirt. He asked her whether he could see her nails. She laughed a little and put out her hand. He took it in his and pretended to examine it carefully. Her nails were short enough, with a glimmer of pink sheen. He wasn’t pleased. He whipped out a special little square gadget and began rubbing her nails with it. Judging by his facial reaction, and her reluctant smile, they had been transformed. He swept her away to his stand, where she bought his tool. He popped in into the bag for her and she was on her way.

Talk about nailing your market.

Am I the only one that doesn’t get the hype? Are you a perfect-nails kind of gal? Are you a man with a penchant for well-painted lady-nails? Does the idea of breaking a nail fill you with fear? Is this another example of my inability to see the trees for the wood? Answers on a postcard, please.

Katekatharina’s Blog is one year old today!

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Today Katekatharina’s Blog is one year old. To celebrate I am working late and going to my Arabic class. In my head though, I’m in a hammock clutching a yellow balloon with “Happy First Birthday” written on it in Comic Sans.

Blogging is terribly fun and at first it was terribly hard to keep up. I set up at least three different blogs on various sites before sticking with this one. WordPress’ format is foolproof. Believe me, I have tested it. It’s easy to use and it makes the things you write look quite pretty. The photographs you upload know intuitively where they should land and in what size they should appear. Critics say all our sites look the same: I say: “but look at the selection of themes we can choose from!”

This time a year ago, I was in the same bed I’m typing from now but in a different place. Then an indefinite void lay ahead of me whereas now I have an -albeit dangerously short-term- plan worked out.

Birthday Rainbow from Dublin Contemporary


The best bit about blogging is when someone reads what you’ve written. That’s why people write on the internet. It’s not like a diary, where you reveal your innermost thoughts but it’s confessional all the same and looking back over a year’s worth of entries, I guess I can see some characteristic themes emerging.

I seem to write a lot about things I see. For me, images form an easier structure than the course of events. I think that’s why I favour feature writing over news reporting. I seem to like write a lot about language and quite a bit about LSB too. These are two of my favourite things I guess. My tone has become less formal in the last year too. My aspirations of maintaining a crisp and detached tone were tempered by the realisation that even very serious journalists enjoy copious use of the personal pronoun.

The most popular blog posts are not the ones that I have sweated over. They are the ones which were fastest to write and which were “tagged” with terms that searchengines were a fan of that day. I get a lot of referrals to a post I wrote about the closure of Waterstone’s Bookshop last February, a piece about brain plasticity, LSB’s Valentine Day surprise and my Confessions of a teacher. It is a great pleasure to skim the search terms upon which people are referred to my site. As I told you last week, a disproportionate amount of my hits come from people googling images of snails and phrases like “inappropriate teacher-pupil relationship”

I have a wonderful friend who lives in Bayreuth in Germany. Really, she’s my mum’s friend but I have applied for joint custody because I like her very much. She sent me an e-mail last week to let me know that she occasionally reads my blog. And on the same day, a boy I’ve never met dropped me a line from where he was too. We’d connected over our blogs a year ago only to discover we graduated from the same college in the same year and both wanted to get into writing. Things that like can transform your day.

Ironically, my first blog post was titled “A last resort” and was in fact taken from a column I had in Trinity College’s The University Times (then The Record). You can check it out here.

Happy Birthday to my wonderful readers, especially to you that has googled ‘snail’ again. Thank you so much for all your comments! Have a slice of cake sometime today for me. And please, let me know what you’d like to see on Katekatharina’s blog before she turns two. Got a challenge for me? Something you think I should investigate? Try out? Get over? Let me know.

Bridging East and West: Katekatharina needs your help

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Last weekend, LSB and I got the DART to Dalkey. We stumbled across a charming independent bookstore and I found just the title to assist me in my continuing quest to familiarise myself with the Arab world and its beautiful language. It’s called Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News challenged the World and is written by Hugh Miles, a young award-winning journalist who was born in Saudi Arabia and studied English Literature at Trinity College (there’s hope for us all!) and Arabic at Oxford.

I first mentioned Al-Jazeera in a column for Teen Times in The Irish Times five years ago. Then as of now, I knew very little about the network, but since we used to pick it up on our makeshift Satellite dish from Aldi, it became something I’d watch when in a curious mood. Part of the reason I want to learn Arabic so badly may be because I associate its sounds with Irish, or because learning it poses much more of a challenge than acquiring a European language. But I know a big part of it is my wanting to be able to understand more about the Middle East and to find out how ideology, the human brain and culture interact.

The first Arab person I got to know was a Syrian asylum seeker, whom I met when I was volunteering at Hatch Hall . His English was quite good and he was very kind. The differences between my worldview and his began to emerge over time though and the nature of these fundamental oppositions fascinated me. He once gave me some sweets, which he had bought with a large part of the €19 a week to which he was entitled. I accepted them gratefully but was perturbed to find later that my mere acceptance may have been an unintended indication of my special regard for him. Since then, I have come into daily contact with students from the Middle East, particularly from Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait. I have had some fascinating discussions with them and invariably these talks have left with the desire to find out more about this large area and its people.

I wish I had the time to devote myself to study but I feel these days that what tiny, little precious time I have left over from work and writing, I am inclined to spend with friends and with LSB rather than over a book or in front of a screen. I’m determined to fit it in though, and over the next few weeks, I will be sharing some of my attempts at learning more about the Middle East and the Arabic language. I need your help though. Would you prefer to join me in learning some basic Arabic or in learning more about the politics and geography of the region? What do you know about Islam? If you played Sporcle, could you name every country in the Middle East? What assumptions do you make about the Arab world and do you have any Arab friends? What about the Uprisings? Suggestions on a postcard, please or – alternatively – if I’m not worth the stamp, do post them below.

We Just Clicked: Why Internet Dating is a Hit and Miss Afair

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KJKJ2 wishes there were more women like me in the world and Makemyday tells me I look amazing and adds, “you defo must be run off your feet here big time”. Having joined the dating site plentyoffish.com a few hours ago, I’m already navigating a swarming inbox of amorous epistles. I am one of 11 million users of the world’s largest free online dating website and as I write there are 101,482 of us online. My details have been cybernetically ordered so that my profile appears primarily to local gentleman. The number of Dubliners that have already contacted me is startling. 

Preconceptions are dispelled when I meet Anthony: a sandy-haired 22 year-old graduate of Business at DIT. He joined two online dating communities in November 2007 after the break-up of a relationship. “Initially, it was a reaction to that”, he tells me, “but now it’s just a way of putting myself out there”. ‘Putting himself out there’ is evidently not something Anthony has difficulty with. We meet on a Friday afternoon and he’s craving a night in after being out socializing every other night of the past week. “I need an evening off”, he says and laughs when I suggest curling up to Ryan Tubbers with a tubbers of Ben&Jerrys best cookie dough.

“It’s not a case of not being able to meet girls” Anthony elaborates, “it’s more the matter of finding it difficult to gauge what they’re looking for”. On a dating site, intentions are selected from a drop-down menu. In person, you need to attend a traffic light ball for the boundaries between stop and go to be established. Anthony refuses all communication from those looking for the euphemistically-described “intimate encounter”. “I’ve no interest in people seeking casual sex… I’m looking for dating that leads to a relationship” he tells me.

Looking for dating was seemingly also Dippy_Duck who contacted Anthony about a year ago. Their first encounter was “a really quick conversation as I had to go out-we swapped numbers quickly so we could keep chatting”. After exchanging texts and phonecalls, Anthony and Dippy_Duck decided to meet in person: “From her pictures, I thought she was cute, but to be honest, her photos were a bit different from what she looked like in reality”. Anthony (nice guy) is quick to qualify “I don’t mean that in a bad way, she just literally looked a bit different in real life!”

So how was Dippy_Duck in real life? “I’m sorry to say it”, Anthony says “but she was an absolute nutjob”. “She only met people online”, he recalls “and she was just looking to hook up casually…she had extraordinarily low self esteem and I was uncomfortable with her calling me seven or eight times a day”. Needless to say, they did not meet again.

The duck’s approach of Anthony is uncharacteristic of the politics of dating sites: “these places very much follow the rules of engagement.. it’s up to the man to make the first move, that is to send the first message”.   In line with expectation therefore, the gentlemen writing to me make their advances with varying degrees of charm and evidence of good character:

hi…

was just wondering around on website search looking for online people. and i saw you online so just wanted to throw hi….

ya can read about me in my profile.. it aint that bad neither am i. so hope you will consider messaging me back and that really would be more than appreciated.

peace to you

cuteypie3

Hello Anna,

My Name is William, and I too enjoy the poetry of Milton. I haven’t been on this site for too long, but I suspect that there aren’t too many others out there that read metaphysical poetry.

I’m also someone who enjoys writing, even if I never fully seem to get the time. So what sort of stuff do you write?

Dreamman14

Just browsin, haven’t been on here in a while but saw your pic and..well just have to say hi. And what’s the bets you’re cuter in person J go on say hi J

Durlangon

It’s never easy to know how to begin. Anthony usually picks up on something that was listed as an interest or hobby (kudos, Dreamman14) and makes a comment on it. It’s also important not to sound too dull: “hello, how are you?” is a bit boring, muses Anthony, “you don’t want to sound like everyone else”.

Flattered as I am by these poetic pursuits, what are the chances that cuteypie3 is in fact pseudosuitor72, creating a fraudulent identity à la ‘Anna’ (who does, incidentally, share many of my interests and personality traits)? According to Anthony, it’s quite easy to identify the scammers: “pictures that are very obviously photo-shopped and very general descriptions are a sure sign that you’re not dealing with a genuine person”.

Regardless of genuine people, there is genuine money to be made. The Online Publishers Association (OPA) reports that cyber dating comes second only to pornography as the largest segment of ‘paid content’ on the internet. In 2005, Americans paid in excess of $500 million to become members of online dating communities. In Ireland, users are split between paid services such as maybefriends.com and match.com and the free global sites financed exclusively by advertising such as okcupid.com and plentyoffish.com. According to a 2002 Wired Magazine article, finding a partner online is akin to a searching a library catalogue for a book rather than hoping the perfect title will fly off the shelves and into your hands: “Serendipity is the hallmark of inefficient markets”, they say and the marketplace of love, like it or not, is becoming more efficient. It’s no wonder that Anthony’s business acumen and openness combine to put him ahead of the crowd. Searching for a soulmate online beats naval gazing and it takes resolve to make your intentions be known. 

With more and more envelopes appearing in my inbox for “Anna”, I begin to feel uneasy. I consider myself a conscientious correspondent and I feel a pang of guilt at each unanswered missive. It’s all about passion though and to Dreamman14, if you are reading, this is the kind of thing I like to write.