A New Zeal!

From today I have a new zeal! I am starting to learn how to make original Khaleeji coffee or Emirati coffee.

2 years ago at Christmas Eve I successed in making an original Turkish coffee after 20 times of failures.
Now, I am heading forward to make Khaleeji coffee in memory of my years in the UAE as well as a kind of preparation before departing to Ras al Khaimah in winter.
But the first test at 27th October failed!

I asked my Syrian friend (who lives in Vienna for sure!) how to make „Arabic Coffee“ and she recommended me two coffee brands we can buy at „Naschmarkt“. At last Thursday I hurried there but no-one seemed to know these brands and I was tempted to buy „Najjar“-coffee from Lebanon.

I was sceptical because Lebanon is in the Near East and not in the Middle East but the seller was so typical for a seller in an Arabic souq: he assured me that this is one of the best coffees.

Hah – if I wasn´t despaired, I wouldn´t buy it, but I tried it if it´s really the Khaleeji coffee…

At home I opened the packing and saw a nearly black coffee – darker than any Turkish coffee like „Mehmet Effendi“ from Istanbul. My sceptic rosed more!

Well, let´s try and see.

I have to confess something: I don´t drink coffee!

What a laughter – I don´t drink it but I like to make it.

So my parents became my testing animals and the Lebanese-pseudo-Khaleeji-coffee became a disaster. The taste was too thin, to unspeakable!
But I used the traditional recipe from „The Complete Cookbook of the UAE“ of 1995!
Then it was clear that any coffee from Lebanon or any Near East area is not a so-called Saudi Coffee! The Saudi Coffee has an amber-color and mine was pitch-dark. No way!

I searched in the world wide web again and then a wonderful blog of an American expat living with her Palestine husband in Dubai explained everything so perfectly!

A real Emirati Coffee is made of raw coffee beans which should be roasted very lightly so it will have a light brown color – this is it!
But where to get raw beans in Vienna, the capital of the cultivated coffee society?

Again in the world wide web I found a „Caffee Compagnie“ which sells raw beans! Horray!

In the next days I want to try to get there and find a pack of Yemenite coffee or Ethiopian at last. And I will ask how to roast it perfectly.
I remember that there is an electric coffee roaster somewhere in the www too, but I want to stick on the traditional Emirati way. And this is roasting in the pan!

And how to grind the roasted beans? My mom and my grandmother had an electrical grinder, but I remember, it went broken and we threw it away.

To use a mortar and pestle like the old ways in the desert? This will take a long time and a strong wrist! Perhaps I will search my mothers kitchen in the hope to find and grinder which still works.

A new adventure and a new zeal lies ahead of me!

Please wish me luck!
I will keep you informed!

Eid al Adha 2012

Sorry for my long silence!

Last Wednesday I made my comeback to the office and this week I get used to the office noises without getting too tired at evening. I didn´t have the strenght to write some words. Sorry!

 Well, tomorrow will be a National Holiday and at the same day Eid al Adha. I remember an unforgetting, warm and welcoming Eid al Adha in Marrakech in November 2010 when I was kindly invited by Kristina and her family. And I ate the most delicious grilled meat of sheep in my life!

I hoped to join my Moroccan brother and his family at Eid tomorrow, but the surgery of my ear took away my joy to celebrate Eid. I am not allowed to enter an airplane for three months after surgery.

But next year, I will celebrate it in Fes with all of my heart, Inchallah.

 Thus, for my Austrian friends: Have a nice National Holiday!

For my Muslim friends: Eid Mubarak! Have a Happy Eid!

TV-movie "Whispers of the Desert"

With my Sylvanian Families I created something new and different.

I bought them many years ago in the UK and Japan and now I don´t play with them - I display them.

 

Tomorrow, "Whispers of the Desert" will be broadcasted! And not in February 2013 as I mentioned in an older blog.

 



Autumn Impressions

To train my balance organ and to see how much I can bear with the tiredness after having 7 quiet weeks full of up and downs before starting my comeback to the office, I had a walking with my parents to a calm place with a nice forest.
It was also a totally beautiful day with autumn scents and rustling leaves.

For a second time, I could hear a bird!!
And after 10 minutes of walking through the rustling leaves, they were getting on my nerves - rustle, rustle, rustle forever!
It´s a whole new situation for me to hear nearly everything around me and I have to train myself without getting tired because it´s really a lot of informations around me which I am not used!

I love autumn! There are so many small details - lovely too:

At last: a perfect composition of sky and earth.

Day 49 with CI - Day 23 with Speech Processor

Well, after seven weeks after surgery and 3 weeks with the speech processor, I am still impatient!
But I am writing a diary with all the up and downs of my days and all new achievments I experience, so I will never forget the first months of hardship! This will give me a secure timeline for my second surgery.
If I am satisfied with the first CI, I want to have my second CI in July 2013 (it gives me a good time for reconvalescene during the summer break at work).
Because after finding out that Morbus Meniére is also in my left ear, I want to finish this uncomfortable disease! This means to release the inner ear from the fluid which is filling the cochlea - the result would be deafness.
Well, to finish this disease would ease my life more than living with the thought if I would survive the next day without any dizzy attack and to have the fear that this might happen on an open street!
16 years with it is enough!
So I am planning my second CI next year! Gosh, going through all this hardship again! But now I am not alone any more!
I met a lot of wonderful people who really gives me the courage to overcome these days with lots of unanswered questions.

The Dazzy Dizzy Days are over!

Hooorray! The medicine against Morbus Meniére ist working!
From Sunday I am free of this stupid dizziness in my left ear and at Tuesday I dared to try to drive with the tramway alone. From my station 20 minutes to Westbahnhof and then walk 10 minutes at Mariahilferstrasse.
The tramway was no problem - thanks heaven! But the walking was like an earthquake in my head and I found out, I should wear shoes with very elastic or soft soles. No heels, even if they are only 1 cm high!
I learned my lessons to keep my high heels stoved away still.

I went back home via subway, no problem too. Gosh, I did it and I am so happy that using the public transportation is not a problem any more.
I am walking to normality at last!

Yesterday it was my first day to use the subway to AKH, with my mother as aide. Till this day, I was brought to AKH with car because the Dazzy Dizzy Days didn´t allowed me to use the public transportation.

Sooooooo glad about this!!!!! I never thought that I would be super happy for using a tramway alone as if this would be a jackpot at lottery.
People easily forget to be grateful for daily chores and are reminded about it when they are sick or had a looooooong reconvalescene like me.

Next week, I want to start my comeback to the office and be part of the boring daily routine I will accept with a handkiss!
Perhaps I should refrain from kissing the floor of the office like the pope would do ;-)

Soon, Halloween is coming...another Scrapbooking story

All years again, there is the perfect opportunity to become spooky, ghostly, scary and make all these wonderful things made of newths eyes, bats wings, vampire blood, frogs legs and others you will only find in a kind of a Harry-Potter-World in a lurky alley.

It´s HALLOWEEN soon!

The early darkness of the days, the low dark clouds and the dying of the summer nature into winter rest is somehow giving the people the feeling that even the death below the earth will move in their coffins. I know it´s stupid.
I am not a Gotic Freak nor I believe in vampires or other blood-sucking species even if I like to read the Black Dagger Brotherhood or the Midnight Breeds novels ;-)

But October and it´s early rising of the evening gives me the opportunity to grovel my fantasy thinking and run wild with the scary things.
And to warn my friends of the countdown to All Hallow´s Eve, I made these cards in Scrapbooking style.

 

 Details

 

New Handicraft Project

Sitting at home and agonizing about this dizziness and hearing loss, it´s the best way to be hobby-ish.
In my cupboard I found a started crochet piece of a tablecloth or something you can put on a vase. I thought, this time, it would be perfect to finish it!
So I continued with crochetting:

 

Autumn is in Vienna already....

Sorry for my long silence...I am fighting with one of my worst days and it´s getting on my nerves.
While having slight dizziness, my left ear was diagnosed with Morbus Meniére too and I got the order from my doctor to take Betaserc 24mg tabletts again.
The summing and the terrible dizzy attack is holding back now but there is a feeling that they are still fighting against the tabletts.
And this week I got the strange feeling that my left ear is getting worse! I lost my hearing ability to hear deep tones like a driving car, men´s voices or even a TV!
It´s driving me crazy!
I don´t have any clue what this means.
Should I have another hearing loss? No way!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To stay calm and say the mantra "Oooohhhhhhhmmmmmmm" is stupid in this moment! It´s not the time to stay calm!
Gladly I am in the AKH again at Wednesday and I will tell the doctor this strange hearing loss.

While having worries about my future, I try to look out of the window and see this beautiful autumn chestnut tree:

 

Post-surgery troubles

Since day 0 I am suffering of a neck problem. If I move my head up and down there is a dizziness and the feeling of something like a pudding in my head.
I was afraid of a serious neck problem and it was getting worse since 26th September.
Today I went to a specialist of Applied Kinesiology who saved my life in May 2012 after I had to stay in bed for many days and the neck was revolting then.

The specialist explained that it´s a post-surgery trauma of a certain muscle behind the ear. This muscle was cut on the top of the ear and later sewed. The contraction on the lower part pulled the muscle from the neck. And this certain muscle is also connected with the cochlea - this means, if the muscle pull at the neck, he is also pulling on the cochlea! The balance is going overboard.

I hope, it will be better next days after the specialist worked on my neck.

 

Scrapbooking-Card

After a heavy dizzy attack in the morning, I felt smashed. The reason is the neck for sure, but also a new Morbus Meniere in the left ear because my eyes were rotating to the left side. Till this morning, they moved to the right ear.
With the surgery the fluid in the cochlea was removed and the Morbus Meniere ist going to the left ear.
This means, probably after surgery in the left ear somewhen this stupid disease might be over or what?

I am still fighting with nausea when moving my neck and before I die of boringness I made a Thank-You-Card in the style of scapbooking for my Japanese friend.

The last picture was made from a paper shopping bag of BILLA without a mask. I used a scissor for cross-stitching and tried to get the correct shape a little. I was surprised that it became this fine!
I should try it more.
 

A special Birthday Gift

I turned 36 years now - gosh, time flies.

And for first time in my life, I heard a bird!!! When I stepped out on my balcony to enjoy a little sunshine, I was wondering about a high-pitched sound as if somebody was clinking grandmother´s cocktail glasses like "gaa-gaa, gaa-gaa".
I looked around which might be the reason of this sound then I detected a blackbird on the tree opposite of my balcony.
And the sound matched with the moving of her pecker.
I was astonished!

FOR FIRST TIME OF MY LIFE I HEARD A BIRD!

And today´s my birthday! What a special birthday gift! Thanks to the CI and Opus2.

 

Day 7 with the Speech Processor

Yesterday I suffered my fourth dizzy attack after using the speech processor together with the hearing aid and I have the feeling that both of them are kinda enemies. They cannot work together!

Today I didn´t take the hearing aid and I feel far better - but I don´t hear anything except the high pitched sounds.
It´s better than a nerving dizzy attack - gladly tomorrow I am in the AKH again for the next adjusting of the speech processor. I will ask my doctor if this is normal to get dizzy attacks. Because I have to return to work soon and I don´t want to get problems because of a dizziness.

Now I will officially present you my audiogram in where you can see how bad my hearing is. Perhaps some day in the future I may present you the new audiogram of the right ear:

The short strokes in the middle is how much I hear with the hearing aid. Not impressive, because it´s really short!
 

A letter from the Past

10 years ago I wrote a letter for me! A letter which has to be opened at my 36th birthday and this is today.
Gosh, so many things happened 10 years ago!
From my trying to write a doctorate dissertation at the Archaeological faculty and the mobbing of the professors who never accepted my ethusiasm and tried to make me giving up.
Yesterday I had a very bad and low day and after reading this letter from myself from the past, I knew that I don´t have a reason to be down now because 10 years ago it was really a depressive year.
I felt better after reading and from today I will think absolute positive!

 The letter before opening.

 

Day 3 with Speech Processor

Hard days indeed! Nobody warned me of these first days with the speech processor.
Today I have to take step 2 and pushed the button on the remote control. Yes, MED-EL´s Opus2 has a remote controll, thanks god!
The sound became a little louder and with the CI alone on the right ear it still sounds like clinking two extremely expensive cristal classes like my mom inherited from my grandmother.
This is an uncomfortable high-pitched sound which gives me a slight headache and a kind of rheumatism at late evening.

But I found out, I don´t want to use the old hearing aid alone again - only together with the speech processor at the right ear. Together I can hear properly again - somewhat.

 

First Speech Processor Opus2-XS

A big day. First day with the speech processor Opus2-SX from MED-EL!
And day 27 with CI.

The first turning on of the Opus2 was not very comfortable because I am still suffering from dizziness. Then I had the feeling of a sharp bang trough my nerves in the right arm and leg.
Then when the technician turned it step for step, I was really curious if this was ok, because I didn´t hear anything. It was like a feeling of the sound of sharp glass - this high-pitching glassy sound which causes goosebumps normally.
But there was no peeping sound luckily.

Together with the hearing aid on the left ear, I could recognize something high-pitching like loud screams or even a lighter or ripping toilet paper.
For first time in my life since birth I recognize this high-pitching sound.
And it´s unusual not to hear through the eardrum as with hearing aids. It´s something inside.

But the next step will be in one week and I am curious how it will develop.

Together with the bionic ear came a suitcase with everything necessary:

 

Let´s open it:

And here are the details:

On the left are two different kinds of drying boxes for the Opus2. This was not given when I had hearing aids. With the CI, it`s given.



 

First handicraft project finished

Today I finished these two handbags! The first one was a set from Tchibo and the second one was made by myself with the fabrics from IKEA and with the pattern from Tchibo.
I am thinking to make such bags as Christmas gift to my female friends, because it´s not difficult to make and I have a lot of fabrics.

Day 23 with CI

Since Day 15 with CI when my eardrum started to close and the inner ear pressure built up, I am feeling not well. Every step with the foot and even hectic movements with the hands or a simple friendly pat on the back causes a shake in my head as if there would be an earthquake inside.
This week was a hard ordeal for me!
Worried that something went bad during surgery I wrote to Mr. Horak from CI Austria about my problem because a friend of me didn´t have this problem after her surgery.
Mr. Horak is really a person who can help in need with the correct words - he told me that almost 40% of freshly operated people have the same problem like me. It´s the balance of the inner ear and it can last up to 3 months!
At first, I felt so relieved that I am not the only one with this problem. Then I groaned because I cannot imagine to stay at home soooooo long! I miss my work, miss my colleagues and miss my office.
I also miss piano lessons and the joy to play piano.

The only thing which is really positive is the good healing of the scar. The upper scar is still visible because exactly beneath the skin the CI was implanted. Now I can feel the CI but somehow when I touch the skin, it still hurts a little. I still cannot sleep on this side of the head.

 

I won again!

2 months ago I received an e-mail from tripadvisor, the worldwide community in the web about rating hotels, locations, restaurants and everything concerned the vacation or a trip.
For almost 3 years I am registered as BritainGirl at tripadvisor and 2 months ago I was one of the winner of a luggage tag with the logo of tripadvisor as one of the most loyal commentator to holiday places.
But there was a slight problem: I am living in Austria and I am registered at the UK tripadvisor because I know that English is the top language of the world and not German. The luggage tag would only shipped within the UK!
I protested that this is not fair because I am living in Austria and I know about the shipping costs but tripadvisor should be fair.

Without any answers and comments I received the luggage tag from UK today!
Wow!
This was so fair at the end! I was so happy that I am able to show the world that I am one of the top commentator on the world! And I will ad this tag on my bag at the first vacation since March 2012 - I never was on vacation ever because of my ear surgery.

 

Day 18 with CI

Finally, I think, my eardrum is closed from today. Because I nearly forgot that it was open and blew my nose - no pressure came out of the ear. UFF - I was glad for it or my eardrum would fly out of my ear I presume.

But at Friday I got a slight dizziness at morning while lying in bed still and when I got up, I had the strange feeling to fell forward. My balance was messed up.
After 4 hours of further sleep, it became better but my ear stinged from time to time. Something was working.

At Sunday it happened again, but only for one hour. I got the thought that my eardrum is closing and the pressure in the inner ear was building up. So the cochlea has to adjust to the new situation after almost 3 weeks of an open eardrum.

Today I have the feeling that the cochlea is used to the pressure and its trying to work properly step for step.
I still have to stay at home because going out would be too dangerous.

So I have enough time to watch the DVD of the first three seasons of an old TV-serie from my early teenager years: Beverly Hills 90210.

In the past, there were no subtitles in this serie and I couldn´t understand any word but the scenes were great.
On the DVDs there are subtitles at last and I am enjoying what I missed as teenager. Gosh, the clothes are so super 80ties! And somewhat totally fashionable than today´s trashing fashions.

My favourites in this serie were Andrea Zuckerman (because she was a bit like me - not only because we have the same name!) and Brandon Walsh (for his high sense of justice and his love for his family!).