Like all cowards, I sit and watch the news everyday. Devastated by the horrible scenes of the Israeli massacre in Gaza. Besides donations, protesting, writing Facebook status messages (in hope that my European and American friends would notice what is going on), and grief i don't know what to do. To be honest, I feel that everything I done, is useless. What can we do? Can someone give me a proper solution on how we can do something that actually makes a difference?
My problem with most pro Palestinian songs is that they have lots of religion, violence and annoying thoughts. But two artists have remarkably created a very nice form of art based on the cause. Marcel Khalifeh and Ahmad Qabour are my favourites in this area. For many, many years, I have been enjoying and feeling the strong emotions in the fantastic songs the two composed. I love how they focues on the human issue above anything else. My favorite song happens to be a song by Qabour which I found on YouTube today, I really hope you enjoy it, and I highly recommend you check his other songs provided below the embedded video:
Growing up in Jordan teaches you to be tough, and sharpens the art of hiding your emotions. As a male you are supposed to be mtamse7 (). I'm not ashamed to show my emotions once a while (whenever my Jordanian pride lets me). Yesterday, while checking out YouTube, I found a video that received over 20 million views! I thought I should check it out. It happens to be an audition for Britain Got Talent, which - not surprisingly - is the counterpart of America Got Talent. I thought this would entertain me for few minutes. So, I played the video and to my surprise it let my eyes drop few tears. I'm sure it would be very hard to understand as there's nothing emotional about it. But, to me it is. I'll let you watch the video below, then read what I have to see below.
There you see, a sub ordinary human, not very young, who most of us would never be interested in from the way he looks. He's modest to a degree I can't comprehend. He shows up on stage, with obvious lack of confidence and a rusty suit. Then he completely leaves you in shock! It's very hard to believe. The words are failing to describe my interest in this situation, I wish I was a better writer.
Then, you get to see that because there was a platform, this very ordinary man will become the next Pavarotti. Oh how I wish we could have a platform one day for someone to solve the humanitarian issue in Palestine. How I would love to see some ordinary man revolt, overnight, and solve our misery. We need Paul Potts, we need a hero.
Life has a weird way of balancing things out. I'm a very scientific person that loves technology to the max, and I spend all my day interacting with advanced technology. Even when I run, I have sensors, remotes and hi tech crap over my body to tune and benchmark my runs. You would expect me to trust science when it comes to my health, not that I don't, but I love organic things. I happen to hate medicine a lot, on average I take 4 Panadol pills a year, and that is it. I clearly remember a few years when I didn't take any medicine at all. I'm sort of an old 7ajjeh (old woman) when I have a flu; I keep myself warm, relax, and drink lots of orange juice. Never medicine.
Even when it comes to food, I like healthy food, not because I'm on diet (god forbid), but it's actually tastier. I find processed food usually disgusting, I grew up in a healthy family. I would assume that my family are helth freaks, we're thin it's not a joke. I don't even like sugar that much, which is a weird for half a Nabulsi.
I just wonder for how long can I keep my hatred to medicine before I have those bags of medicine all around me.
It's not a joke, I'm as scared as you are. I will be running a marathon in 10 days! It may surprise those who know my bad habits of smoking, partying like there's no tomorrow, and lack of physical activity. Fortunately, I quit smoking almost 3 months ago, and decided to become a healthier creature. I've been practicing for some time now, and hopefully, my team will be able to finish the race.
Dead to Read (D2R) is an annual event for psychos, you get teams of 10 people to run 242KM from Dead Sea to Red Sea in under 24 hours. we start running at 3 PM Thursday Jan 31st, and finish (hopefully), by friday morning. I don't understand how I will be awake for 24 hours running. Let that not worry you, as I'm sure a lost hyena will find my sweaty meat tasty on the way down to Aqaba.
My team is a combination of not-bad-runners, horrible runners, ballroom dancer, gimp and a friend's wife. Since the friend's wife is the only woman on the team, we decided to call our team "Sarah and the Sausage Factory". I already heard the not-so-funny jokes of "small sausage, and 4 inch sausage factory". The bad news is that if we win, we won't get any press coverage, I'm sure any editor who grow up in a nasty family would understand the nasty name.
I'm currently in Italy, in a quiet industrial town called Ancona. I will be heading to Rome in few hours, hopefully I will get to see the Colosseum. The thing I'm loving about Italy is food, it's so freakin' good. Gotta run, will write more when I can.
I just tried to book a hotel on expedia.com. The site keeps refusing my credit card, although my bank made sure I can do online transactions. I called the credit card dept. of the bank, and the guy told me that on his screen he can see that it's being refused of possible fraud. Why the hell can't this guy call the online payment company and tell them everything is OK, and that this client is Legit.
Anyhow, I called the hotel directly, and had no choice but to book through the phone, this way I will be paying $100 extra every night! That's so unfair.... I really feel like hitting someone
Anyhow, tonight I will be leaving Lyon and heading to Paris around midnight. I will try to go to Amesterdam to spend a day to enjoy the wild city...
Introduction: The other day in the quiz night, Adel (3adoola) asked me about my todo list which I totally forgot about. I can't thank him enough for reminded me about a todo list which I wrote almost a year and a half ago.
The old list: So, let's take a look and see how things went:
I want to graduate from University, because I have been there for too long, soon, My mates will become my lecturers. Done
Improve my spanish & go to Cervantes( Spanish cultural Center ) My Spanish sucks now. I have to do something about it when I have time.
Learn C Didn't have time for it. I still want to do this maybe after a year from now
Accomplish my secret open source project (PHP related, would take 2 years of work at least) Cancelled
Shut down my current business and move on to the next big business I wanna start in no more than 3-4 years Done. Hopefully I will announce my new venture sometime around mid-late January
retire by the age of 27 and start working on my crazy experemntal projects Rescheduled to 30
Gain weight Done, still need more though
Start playing basketball again. Haven't played any sport in such a long time
Visit every country in Europe. I still need 10 years to do this, but I'm planning 3 new countries this year.
Go hiking again in Wadi Al mujib Done, and also planning another hike next summer
Write a PHP book in 2 years Almost there. What's even equally important is that I finished a technical review for one amazing Linux book. I will be writing about this very soon.
Get certified, I only need a day or two to read the guide! I don't have the time to do that. No longer interested.
Evaluation: I'm quite satisfied with what I was able to acheive in 2005 & 2006. I managed to focus on what I really want to do. This list doesn't sum 20% of the major acheivments in the past two years. I do know, just like any other human, that I could have acheived more. I will not stress myself, and blame myself for not acheiving more. I will learn from my mistakes and do things smarter in the future.
Future:Although it's tempting to write a new list for 2007, I'm going to hold my horses for very simple reasons:
Most of my future goals revolve around work/business
Although I'm an open person, most of the goals are not for sharing due to confidentiality issues.
My two main areas of interest have almost stayed the same
Improving my technical skills (especially software architecture)
Managing IT the right way (I beleive people don't understand IT, the apply classical management to something that is not classical. I'm learning/researching alot about this issue)
I've been working for almost 7 years as part timer/free lancer. It never made sense to me to work full time. As of Sunday next week, a big change in my life will happen, I will start working full time with Al Bawaba. I will be working as the CTO of the company. Al Bawaba seems to offer most of the exciting things that define the kind of work I want to be involved in.
We have so many fresh and exciting plans that are so challenging. A few web 2.0 ideas that we're working on. And above all, Albawaba supports open source, and 95% of the technology is open source.
At the same time, I will be running my own company (still under
construction), where we will be doing heavy web development, and some
customized software for inancial services companies. I guess my social life is gonna kiss my ass good bye.
It's gonna be a hard change in my life, I will start having to sleep early, waking up early, no more swingers night-life-style.
Writing, writing & writing. For the past two days I've been writing quite alot, wrapping up a book I'm co-authoring on PHP. Hopefully, by the end of this week I will finish everything. Will keep you posted!
In few hours I will be heading to the airport to fly to Norway. I'm going to spend 7 days in Norway to participate in a conference & an unconference later on.
Almost everything is ready, I really need to double check. Got lots of stuff to carry, big ass bag, back pack, laptop carrying case & a sleeping bag!
Today was really terrible, I will write the details later...
Everytime I get on a plane I can't but listen to "Leaving on a jet plane" by Frank Sinatra.
