I’m Sharifah, known as Helen or Helly to my best friends, aged eighteen. I’m mixed American and Omani. My mother is American of Irish, Scottish, English, German, and Norwegian descent and my father is Omani, making me 50% Arab and 50% European in ethnicity.

My parents are divorced and remarried. I live with my mother and stepfather and visit my father and stepmother on the weekends. I have three siblings—two brothers and one sister aged 15, 9, and 14—and nine step-siblings, eight which I have not met. We have 3 cats—Miguel, Jesse, and Spiros—and a dog named Princess.

I love reading and writing, music and movies, chatting with people from all over the world and hanging out with my mom and younger sister, my two best friends.

I loved reading since I started reading around the age of five or six. I discovered my love for making up stories and writing them down at age thirteen. I even completed two books, one at age thirteen and the other at age fourteen, but unfortunately lost both of them (one when the computer crashed and the other I forgot the password).

My favorite music is Chinese pop and rock, Japanese pop and rock, Korean pop and rock, Thai pop and rock, and Filipino pop and rock. I also listen to the regular pop and rock, some Latin pop and rock, country, jazz, blues, R&B, nasheed, and nasyid (Malay nasheed).

Some of the movies and shows I like are also international. Two of my favorite movies are Pavilion of Women (Chinese) and Do Re Mi Fa So La Si Do (Korean). I have watched Autumn Tale and Full House, two Korean dramas I love, and I’m in the process of finishing Goong, another Korean drama. I also want to watch Goong S, but have not managed to find any links to the series online yet.