Ayman Elkhidir

These things just make me feel good.

Thank you Mr. Sarkal. You just made my day!

And I thought I’ve seen it all. Sudan just can’t stop surprising me.

I’m not translating this to English, for the sake of keeping the little face my country’s people still have.

Will there ever be an end to this misery?

A song has been on the top hits charts for some while now that it got me hooked. It has a smooth reggae beat that gets me moving right and left whenever it is aired. It goes like:

You’re way too beautiful girl
That’s why it’ll never work
You’ll have me suicidal, suicidal
When you say it’s over
Damn all these beautiful girls
They only wanna do your dirt
They’ll have you suicidal, suicidal
When they say it’s over

So before I got suicidal myself, I downloaded the song and was looking around for who this Sean Kingston guy was. Guess what, this is him…

Yep.. Sean Kingston is 17 years old and he looks like a fat boy in junior high school. He doesn’t look like a superstar at all. But the boy can sing. Believe me he can. And it gets better; he’s Jamaican and he makes it clear when he sings.

Amazing enough, this fat boy is really capturing young girls’ hearts and minds around the world. Could Sean’s voice be a voice of hope for the clan of the fat?

Anyways, the video of “Beautiful Girls” is not less impressive than the song itself at all. Enjoy!

We have been hearing and reading about the “Burj Dubai” Project for quite a long time. This proposed 808-meter 160-floor tower sounded like a fiction. Even residents of Dubai didn’t really believe this was going to happen. But with construction works starting and going on in front of everybody, it was a different story. Every time you pass by SZR and have a look at the “Burj”, you feel it’s a bit higher. This was true because these guys kept building one floor a day.

Now with the tower reaching the height of 510 meters by today, it would be the world’s tallest building (overtaking the 509-meter Taipei 101 Tower) while it’s not even two-thirds the way up.

The landscape of Dubai will change dramatically after the construction of this tower is finished. With a height of over 800 meters, the tower will be seen from far far away.

I still remember when we used to drive from Al-Ain to Dubai. We used to know we’re almost there when we see Sheikh Rashid Building (a.k.a Dubai World Trade Center) which was the tallest in the UAE at 184 meters height. That tower could be seen from as far as around 15 Km. In the last few years, the first towers to be noticed clearly were the Emirates Towers at 355 meters height.

Now when this monster tower is done, at a height of 808 meters, it is claimed the tip of the tower will be seen from a distance of 95 Km (according to the this page) on a clear day. Knowing that Al-Ain is about 120 Km from there, that means the Burj will be seen sometime 10 minutes after leaving Al-Ain city. The same applies on Abu Dhabi. This tower should be seen all the way from Shahama!

Don’t believe it yet, even though it is mathematically correct, even taking earth’s curvature into consideration. Will have to wait till it’s done to check that in reality.

You might have noticed, but I have a thing with old stuff. I like 70s and 80s movies, music, and fashion. I like digging into history and comparing how people used to live in times when I wasn’t there.

In Sudan, my generation has suffered a huge disconnect with the music history of the 70s and 80s. I still don’t understand why Sudan TV doesn’t play those old videos of songs by Mohammed Wardi, Mustafa Sid Ahmed, Khojali Osman, Abdel Aziz El Mubarak and all the other musicians who formed the identity of Sudanese music.

This song in particular is one of my favorites. (Ya Salam) is a song performed by the chorus of the Institute of Music at the Third Festival of Culture in 1980. I like that era, with the tight shirts and afro hair being very popular in Sudan as well as the whole world. The lead vocalist is Abdul Latif Abdul Ghani (a.k.a. Wardi Al-Sagheer or Wardi Junior), nicknamed after the original singer of Ya Salam; none other than the great Mohammed Wardi.

Another note on this video is the intermittent messages of (Eid Saeed) that come in between as it is obvious that this song was aired in an Eid back in 1980. It is interesting to see people back then were able to create such animations when there were no computers and they had to record each frame at a time while moving the pen to create the animation. I’m sure this animation of 5 seconds must have needed a full day of work and editing to get it done.