Ammar Ibrahim's blog - Personal

The Video That Made Me Emotional

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:10:26 -0600

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.

I Hate Medicine

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:18:02 -0600

Disclaimer: this entry is pointless.

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.

Running a Marathon - litrally!

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:47:40 -0600

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.

Wish me, and the sausage jockeys some luck.

Blogging from Italy

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 14:40:17 -0600

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.

What the hell is wrong with Jordanian Credit Cards

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 17:17:33 -0600

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...

Back Home

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 19:55:46 -0600

I got back home yesterday. Spent new year's in Aqaba, it was really nice!

Re-evaluating my Life

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:30:00 -0600

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.
Go to Spain in Summer
Planned summer 2007
get a digital Cam
Done
finish my website
Done
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)

For the First Time in my Life, Working Full Time

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 18:27:58 -0600

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.

How to spend your Eid vacation

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 08:28:47 -0500

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!

Ammar the Tourist

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:10:55 -0500

I just found quite a nice photo on Aaron's Flickr account from my trip to germany last summer during the world cup...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaron/176906515/

Photos - Germany

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 04:21:02 -0500

Didn't have much time the last 3 weeks to upload the photos of my last visit to Frankfurt. Here you go...

Allez les blues....

Nearly 100,000 people were watching France-Spain on this huge screen.

Braziiiiiiilllllll

Some dude dancing Samba in the middle of the street almost naked.

Egyption food!

Brazilian dude who bounces the ball on his sticks, very impressive.

Weird things in Germany

I have no clue who they are...

The only brazilian in this photo is the girl in the middle

A sad spanish fan

Frankfurt at night

Singing at 4 am in the streets

To Norway

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 23:49:32 -0500

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.

24

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:24:55 -0500

Few days ago I turned 24. I'd like to share some photos with you that were taken by Damdoom

Blogging from Hamzeh's Room!

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 16:06:53 -0600

Had a nice day so far, and had lunch with Abu Hamarneh. At the moment, we're sitting in his room relaxing and planning for the night

Guess who Graduated!

nospam@example.com (Ammar Ibrahim) — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 08:30:07 -0600

Known as the dinasour to his UJ colleagues, actually some insisted to replace Science's square dinasour with his statue, the 23 year old finaly graduated and got his BSc. After 6 years of suffering mainly from teachers & the system.

But wait, damn it doesn't feel like it's over, Asfour told him nothing feels like it( It took Asfour also 7 years to graduate ). But he swears, something is missing, maybe because he spent so many years in that freakin uni, and never really cared about it? But he's glad the burden is over.

He had to pass 126 credit hours, but the records say he took 195 hours. Some stats through the journey.

F's in the 6 years: 16( 48 hours )
A's in the 6 years: 9( 8 of them in the first two years )

Number of semesters with semester average of Zero: 3

Average of all semesters during the first 2 years didn't go below 3.33
Average of all semesters after 2nd year was below 2.8

GPA after 2nd Year: 3.6
Total GPA: 2.89