Keep running.

Back by unpopular demand

2011-07-18T03:56:00.000-07:00

I haven’t updated this blog in a while so here is a brief rundown of what has happened in my life since the last update.
1. Finished my MBA from Duke, met some great people and had a wonderful time learning new things.

2. Realized that an MBA in Saudi Arabia isn’t the easiest thing to market. It’s not a very liquid market, people don’t change jobs easily.

3. My sister moved houses, while helping her unpack we found a box labeled “Not spices”. It didn’t contain spices.

4. Bought DDR (dance dance revolution) for my PS3. Played it for about ½ hour and then stopped trying to “learn” how to dance using it.

5. Related to 4, I’m now sure I’m artistically impaired. Found this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen.html

6. Bought a Blackberry. I can now check my email from the bathroom and since I do my best thinking in there, I may post my next blog entry from there.

7. Bought a Vibram five fingers shoe, a unique running shoe that actually reduced the symptoms of my plantar fasciitis. Very counter intuitive, reduce the cushioning your wear and get better results.

8. Had a possible employer poke holes in a paper I wrote for my finance concentration. A very embarrassing situation. On the bright side, I learned more from the questions he asked me than I did from some of my finance classes.

That’s all for now.

Karl Marx ... working at a Bank

2009-07-28T06:25:00.000-07:00

Alright, this is unusual enough to prompt me to write in the middle of my work day. There is a guy name Karl Marx who works in the same bank I work at. Heck, if I ever interviewed a guy named Karl Marx I would be asking him all kinds of questions before I hired him, plus I would keep an eagle eye on him, just in case he decides to bring down the capitalist system from with in. Alright back to work.

running away

2009-06-28T00:24:00.000-07:00

I have often thought about it, running away from everything and everyone I know, just keep going and never stopping. I tried a small experiment once while I was working in Chicago, Instead of getting off at my regular on the green line I would just sit and get off at the next stop. Didn't happen, the day I wanted to do was a day we were doing a big code release at work and I couldn't be late on that day. What kind of a person can loosen his/her mental/physical attachments to the environment so much so that they can just leave their daily life and never look back? Jack Kerouac once said something like If you own a rug you own too much. I wonder what it would be like, to run away. I guess it would be very liberating for a few moments. I read a biography called "The Last American Man", the guy rode a horse all the way from one end of the US to the other end. I guess the heat in Riyadh (close to 50C) is getting to me. I need a vacation in some place cool. Some place nice where I can just relax.
In other news, I was accepted in Duke University for their Cross Continent MBA program starting this August. I'm still waiting for the loan information to come through so that I can make a final decision about attending, I really want to do it and I was pretty anxious about the whole thing till I remembered a Hadees that basically said " The pens have been lifted and the ink has dried" basically meaning our destiny has been decided. How does one reconcile destiny with free will? Bah... too many thoughts for one post, specially one written after such a long hiatus.

A good math review

2009-03-31T07:36:00.001-07:00

It's been a while, 6 years, since I last played with vectors, surfaces tangent planes and extremas. In light of this I wound up going through this relatively simple but comprehensive review of calculas III, go through it if you need to brush up on these topics.
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/Classes/CalcIII/RelativeExtrema.aspx

Why didn't I think of that?

2009-03-24T06:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you come across a new idea or technology and your first reaction is "That's so obvious, why didn't I think of that?" These ideas range from the Google search engine to Velcro. The latest idea that found my ingenuity lacking was OnLive, TiVo for games. Actually I'm not really sure how Tivo works, never having owned it. I don't think it's available in Saudi Arabia but I read about how OnLive works and I think it's genius. Depending on their pricing models and the quality of service they offer they stand to make a killing. I wonder how they will eventually make it work, will they load the games into the PC's ram and then transfer data as needed or will it be more like a remote desktop thing where all the processing will be done on the remote machine and your machine will just be used to log in and view it. I think they should offer both models, higher end PC's should be able to share more of the processing load while lower end PC's will just act as portals accessing the servers processing capabilities. For more information go to
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2009-03-24-onlive_N.htm

In other news, I am reading up on Support Vector Machines & the Monte Carlo method, I don't know how the two would work together but I have some ideas on making them work. My next blog posting will probably serve as an intro to one of the two subjects.

Dirty Stratosphere

2009-03-17T07:25:00.001-07:00

We Indians aren't known for our sense of hygiene, Let's face it, as a group we are not the cleanest. An example one pair of my gym socks, in college, were at one point so dirty that they were molded into the shape of my foot and could stand on their own because of all of the embedded salt in them.
So it comes as no real surprise that Indian scientists found bacteria and fungus growing on the weather balloon they sent up to the stratosphere. It's also heartening to know that they didn't name it after a deity, Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru or some other icon of India, and instead choose to name one of the newly discovered bacterium after the noted astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. It's good to acknowledge greatness in other parts of the world besides our own.
In other news, Singulariy University has started accepting applications. The concept of a university offering a graduate level course in future studies and planning seems intriguing. I would love to see what kind of solutions they come up with for the worlds problems. Things like rice that can grow without water in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, a cheap method to create electricity generating solar panels, a solar water purification system, a cheaper method for mass transportation, real time language translation devices, light sabers, personal relocation devices ("beam me up Scotty") etc. My opinion is, obviously, skewed by the fact that I am a techie and have a vested interest in two countries, India and Saudi Arabia. The former being one of the world's most populous and the latter being the one gifted with the most open space and the most potential for generating solar energy.

My First Excel Macro

2009-02-22T05:01:00.000-08:00

Nothing to write home to mom about, but I have gone from programming in C++ to Java to VBA. My first VBA script does very little but it saved me a lot of time

Dim x As Integer
x = 1
For Each oRow In Sheet1.Range("A:A")
For Each nRow In Sheet2.Range("A1:A244")
If (oRow = nRow) Then
Sheet3.Cells(x, 1) = oRow
x = x + 1
End If
Next nRow
Next oRow
Dim row
End Sub

Basically checks if the the elements from Range A:A (i.e. all the elements in the column) in Sheet 1 were repeated in A2:A244 in Sheet 2. I could have exported the sheet into a csv file and written a perl script or something in java to do it. But it's always fun to experiment with a new language.

The death of destructive innovation

2008-11-17T04:31:00.001-08:00

I have alot of things that I can write about in this blog including my sisters marriage, my new position at work, food poisoning and blood letting. But what I am going to talk about today is destructive innovation and how everyone is out to destroy it.
Fact is, we need destructive innovation. We need to see entrepreneurship at work and we need to see how we respond to adverse situations. If during our bleakest hour all we can think about is saving the rich then the bad guys don't need to win. The global economy will shrink, we all know that. The next couple of years will be tough for nearly everyone. I say nearly because someone always figures a way to make profits. Even now, the companies that sell canned, frozen foods are making a killing. Gun companies are doing really well and "Living off the land for dummies" will be on best sellers list shortly. So where am I going with all of this, My view on the matter is that you can't bail everyone out and if you are willing to bail out the big boys for making bad mistakes than why not the little guys? Little guys can be just as stupid as the big guys. There is something to the argument that if the big guys fall more people will fall with them, but even if the big guys stay standing there will be massive layoffs and people won't see things getting better if the monopolies stand as is. Bailing out the little guys will be harder logistically but it might be better in the long run. I'm not entirely sure where I am going with this rant but I believe that destructive innovation is a powerful force for the betterment of humanity in the long run, and just to be clear "I believe" is not the same as "I know", there are very few things in life that I know and alot of things I believe in.

100th post

2008-11-01T05:24:00.001-07:00

With this post I will celebrate my 100th posting on my blog. I think a great business idea would be to offer people a hard cover bound book of all the blogs they have published, I know the plan will make money since most bloggers are a bit narcissistic and would love to have a book about themselves written by themselves. I know exactly what I would do with it too!, I would give it to some one as a gift on their birthday and watch their faces fall when they realize that it was a book about the other by the author containing his mindless ramblings :)
Anyways, I guess I should mention that my younger sister will be getting married this coming Thursday and that both her and my future brother-in-law are really excited. Another arranged marriage in the family, nothing exciting about it in my view. Exciting would be them eloping and getting married in Taif (think of Vegas but without the Casinos) But they both seem happy so I am happy for them, being the brides elder brother it becomes my task to take the groom aside and threaten him with bodily harm if he ever does anything to my sister that would hurt her, but I get the feeling that this is just elicit laughs from everyone in the family. So maybe I will just challenge him to a wii tennis match and consider my duty completed.
I ran 10 miles with the Riyadh Road Runners yesterday. It was a pretty good run I think, the weather was amazing and brunch afterwards was also good pretty good. I made good time I think, I completed the whole thing in 1 hour & 38 minutes, slightly better than 6 miles per hour which is my goal for the marathon. I also registered for the Dubai marathon yesterday, I had promised myself that if I got to November 31st without injuries I would register for the marathon, so true to my word I registered and without fail I woke up today with every muscle on my body sore. I think my body knows that by registering I will put it through a lot of punishment in training so it's getting back at me even before I start training seriously. Damn mind and body connection..
I really am glad I found the Riyadh Road Runners, gives me something to look forward to every two weeks :)

Riyadh Road Runners

2008-10-18T05:20:00.001-07:00

I recently went on a run with the Riyadh Road Runners in a compound near the King Khaled Internation airport. The run was a simple 10k fare and marked my first race in Saudi Arabia. It also marked a low point in my pride as a runner. I found out, through first hand experiences, at the race that I don't know the first thing about running with others. I tried to run too fast and then got dehydrated and decided to drink way too much water which made me slower and slower till I had to walk the last kilometer or so. Still, everybody cheered so much and so enthusiasticaly when I crossed the finish line that I thought I might as well have come in 1st, and not 2nd last of the whole group. I finished the 10k in about an hour and a few minutes which was not a personal best, though I have no doubt I could have done alot worse. I have compiled a list of things I'm going to try for my next run with the group so that I don't embarass myself, and these are things I know but have to learn to practice.

Start at the back of the group.
Don't try to keep up with the group, go by your own pace.
Drink at ever station, stay well hydrated the day before the race.
Stay upright.
Get a new list of songs for my Ipod.

I should also mention that despite my horrid performance I was very happy to have found a group of genuinely good people to run with. Everyone I met was very laid back and easy to get along with. I definitely think Riyadh has more to offer than meets the eye, but you have to look hard to find it. This group of runners was well motivated and organized, the run was a blast and they even have a marathon planned for early next year. I'm definitely going to try to run that marathon! I have volunteered to help them maintain and upgrade their website, the organizer was happy to have my help so hopefully I can do something good for 'em.

In other news, My brother in law has gone to Oman on a business trip so my sister will be staying with me for a couple of days. She is expecting soon and we will inshallah, translates to "god willing", have a new baby to welcome to my extended family.

laptops

2008-10-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

I need to buy my wife an anniversary / eid gift. You might think that buying one gift for two occasions was a very trifty decision on my part but rest assured it will not cheap, specially in Saudi Arabia. As a matter of fact I have decided to buy her a laptop, depending on how things go I might even buy my brother the same one. Finding a good laptop is no easy decision. I went through all of the regular sites like cnet and pcworld and came up with a list of 5 laptops that I think I should be able to afford without burning a hole in my wallet. Here is the list

Gateway T-6836 $649
Dell Inspiron 1525 $649 - available at Jarir bookstore
DELL XPS M1210 Notebook $599
DELL Inspiron 1720 $750
Dell Inspiron 1420 $599
HP Pavilion dv2915nr $699

Now, the order of preference is there but I seriously doubt that I will be able to find a Gateway computer here. I remember a time when gateway was a joke, I wouldn't even consider using one if it was given to me as a gift but they have done a really good job at re inventing them selves. There is something to be said about brand re-invention. Apple did it, Motorola needs it and Gateway is doing it. The dell Inspiron is available at a local store but I don't know what the price of it will be, I know the price on the Dell website and if I have to pay about $200 more I will be fine with it, but if they charge me $1000 for something that's worth $649 I will probably have to re evaluate my options. I will update this posting when I get the price from Jarir.

The Axis of Evil

2008-10-11T06:23:00.001-07:00

There was once an "Axis Of Evil", it's member countries were to be feared for their evil plans and agendas with which the hoped to sow the seeds of destruction and chaos across the world. The three countries that made up that axis were Iran, Iraq & North Korea. President Bush took over Iraq so now they are the un begotten 51st state. You can't call them a member of the axis of evil any more than you can call the USA a member of that axis, no evil doers there to be sure.
So that left us with two members in the Axis of evil, Iran and N. Korea. I was fine with that, as you probably know the original Axis powers were Germany and Italy. You can have an axis between two points because then the axis would be the point through which those two points would rotate and I was happy, for a while... Things started getting weird when the United States decided to take N. Korea off the list, so now we will be left with one country in the Axis of evil. I want to be the first one to coin the term, point of evil. Since that is what Iran is now. It is the singular point of all evil. Iraq and N. Korea haven gotten rid of their evil doers and replacing them with good doers. Sure we have Syria, Libya and Cuba but they are already called the "Rogue States" and you might be hoping that we might be able to get Belarus, Zimbabwe or Myanmar to join the axis but they also have clique called the outposts of tyranny. So with all this said and done, what remains is that the Axis of evil is now a lonely club with only one member. What we needs is a better class of evil doing countries: Those that won't give up their evil doing ways so quickly or easily. I saw the Dark Knight and was all in favor of having the Joker set up a new country, or take over an existing one like Iceland, which I hear might be up for sale very soon, and join the club but then Heath Ledger had to go overdose him self and leave me without any really good evil doers. Other good oxymorons include "Make haste slowly" and "Military Intelligence".
Well, while I bemoan the loss of the axis of evil we should be grateful that we still have the final four, the fantastic four and other such groups and entities that hold true to their names and functions. Of course you could watch the Axis of evil comedy tour and while it is enjoyable, I don't necessarily find it as funny as some of the other comedy shows out there, They do have this half Korean half Vitecong guy who speaks really good Arabic and is a real riot, but besides him the rest are alright.

The end of the great depression

2008-10-08T02:33:00.001-07:00

So how did the great depression end? Most people understand how it started with the oversupply of money and cheap credit that led to an unsustainable credit driven boom. But how did it end? The short answer is WW2. So if we truly go into a world wide depression how will we come out of it? WW3? It's a scary thought...

Zardari

2008-09-26T00:32:00.000-07:00

Wall street jounal on Zardari's meeting with Palin:

Palin entered the room first followed several moments later by Zardari, who laid it on thick.

“How are you? So nice to meet you,” Palin said, adding that she was “honored to meet him.”

Zardari remarked that Palin was “even more gorgeous” than he had expected.

“You are so nice. Thank you,” Palin said, seeming to change the subject, but Zardari continued. “Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you.”

The slew of cameras present ask the pair to shake hands again, to which Palin suggested they “pose” together. Zardari offered this gem: “If he’s insisting, I might hug.”

and this guy is the elected president of a country, disgusting. I wonder if his speech to the UN was a way to show the global public that he hadn't fallen for Palin or as a way to make ammends for what he said to her. The guy was known as Mr. 10 %. Taking 10% of every deal he ever approved while his wife held office. He is a convicted criminal who spent time in jail, yet still got elected into presidency. Not too many people liked his predecessor, but no one can claim that he was a criminal who spent time in jail and had a sobriquet like Mr. 10 %.

source:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/24/palin-meets-with-more-world-leaders/

Einstien qoute of the day

2008-09-24T02:43:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting quote today made by Einstein "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it". One a personal level this means that I can't expect to solve a problem that I created unless I alter my self. This is a daunting prospect when one person is concerned and I believe it is next to impossible when an organization or a government is concerned. I believe the current bailout plan being discussed in the Congress is not a solution. It seems more like a patch to keep things going until it becomes someone else's problem.
On a different yet some how related topic, Project management is not something that everyone can step into without training or prior experience. In many firms the only way to reward people who do well in technical positions is by having them move up in the corporate ladder into management/administrative positions. This brings me to my main point; Good programmers do not make good project managers. Some skills overlap, like the ability to think clearly but most are mutually exclusive. Moving a good programmer into a position as a project manager turns out to be a double whammy. You loose a good programmer and gain a bad project manager. Some organizations have found a way out of this by giving talented technical people the option of moving into management positions or staying in the current role with additional perks and benefits that would be akin to the one s/he would receive for moving up the corporate ladder. Google comes to mind as a company that has successfully implemented this policy. This is one of the reasons why I would love to move into a company that has software development as it's core business. My current experience with project management leaves a lot to be desired.

Blame Greenspan

2008-09-16T11:02:00.000-07:00

Alan Greenspan was the Chairman of the federal reserve of the United States during the period of time when the financial crises that is now called the housing mortgage bubble crash was perpetrated. He once said in a speech in 2004 that more people should consider taking out adjustable rate mortgages(ARM). The only issue was that when he said this he was already getting ready to raise the interest levels. Why would some one say something like this? What did he stand to gain from making statements like this one?

That having been said I have a lot of respect for the guy, he took some of the blame for the crises when he said that the housing bubble was fundamentally engendered by the decline in real long term interest rates and I really want to read his memoirs.

In other news, Saudi Arabia ranks 40 in the survey of Best and Worst Countries of IT by Business Week. It's interesting that Saudia's rank is behind virtually every major and minor European country including Romania(39) & Lithuania(35). India ranks 46 and when you get to the slide that talks about India you are presented with a photo of a bunch of monks working on computers. I really really want to know what kind of work they are doing or what kind of websites they are visiting. Enough of my ranting,

Ramadan Kareem everyone!

Gold Medals

2008-08-18T13:46:00.000-07:00

So India won a gold medal, population of 1.3 Billion and we are over the moon for winning one measily gold medal. Our first individuals gold medal too, we got one for hockey but that was a long time ago. We didn't even qualify for hockey this time, we Indians should just quit sports. We should stick to becomming engineers, scientists and doctors and leave sports to countries and individuals that have the time, money and dedication to do it well. Our biggest argument is
"We don't have the kind of funding that is needed to do well in sports". A flawed argument if ther ever was one. In cricket, which has massive financial support, the players are horrible we just lost a test series to Sri Lanka and a started the one day series by scoring 140 something and losing again. So money isn't it, it must be something else.
Jamaica, which has a population of about 3 million, already has 4 medals, 2 of which are gold. One Indian city, Mumbai has about 4 times the population of the entire nation of Jamaica. Yet, we still can't find the athletes to compete on a world stage. I'm sure India isn't devoid of world class athletes, I'm sure that we have enthusiats that are willing to train hard and sacrifice things in order to excel in their chosen sport but there is something holding them back. I believe the problem comes down to corruption, my cousin's friend's sister's boy friend gets first priority in the team. If it isn't a direct relation like that, then we can be racist by region/ religion/ aquilinity of nose/ style of jeans you wear/ color of incissor. I mean what is a nation really? An apt description for India would be, as William Ralph Inge said it, "A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbors". So my solution to winning more in the Olympics is to break India into smaller countries. Each country with no more than 3 million people. Ofcourse this means Mumbai/Bombay/what the hell you want to call it should be broken into 4 parts. I can already think of the 4 parts too, the middle class, the poor, the really poor and the ultra rich.
Well as usual this blog is all over the place so I'm going to quit while I can still see the sense in what I'm writing.

Recent Obsession

2008-04-21T06:53:00.000-07:00

Eclipse, Ajax, JSF & profiling java applications in Eclipse. Sigh... sometimes I wish I was a lumberjack and then my obsession would have been the sharpness of the axe I was using. Quick update:
1. I had 10 days off because you can't have left over holidays. I spent most of it driving my parents around.
2. A couple of weekends ago I drove about 1000km. From Riyadh to Hofuf to Riyadh to Hofuf.
3. My dad got a nissan pathfinder with gps giude thingies. I was shocked to learn that they have a working version of it for Saudi Arabia.
That should be all for now.

Credit card

2008-03-18T05:54:00.000-07:00

So I finally went through all the hoops of applying for a credit card which included, but was not limited to, getting
1. A letter from my company saying I'm earn an X amount.
2. A copy of my passport stamped by my company showing them I am who I claim I am.
3. My address in my home country along with the phone number there.
4. The application form itself filled out with my best handwriting.

Nowhere on the application form did it say that these things were needed but that is a whole other story. The thing that I thought was interesting was them asking me for the address of my home in my home country. I have to confess, I don't really know the address of my home in India. I don't know its phone number and I don't really care to find out. To put things in perspective I was born and brought up in Saudi Arabia. I was born in a hospital called the national hospital and except for a brief time (6 years) spent in the USA I have never really been anywhere else long enough to call home. So when they ask me for an address in India I give them a blank stare, not because I'm trying to hide my heritage or because I want to run off with the card with it's amazing $1000 credit limit, but because I have really no idea what my home address is or what my home country is. My mom and my dad both have a home country and a home address in that country but I feel little attachment to India. Sure, you bad mouth India and I will argue against you but if you say it's good I will still argue against you. That's just in my blood. You tell me America is bad and I will argue against you, you say it's good? well I will argue against that as well. I don't understand pride over belonging to a country, I don't get nationalism any more than I get being obsessive about a religion. One is just as logical as the other. I don't hold it against people who are patriotic of passionately religious but I will say one thing, were you born in another country or to another religion would you still feel the same? These are matters of chance, unless of course you changed your religion or your nationality then you could, possibly, be proud of it. For many of us it's just not a choice. I have never met an erudite patriot. Most of them seem like the lemmings in those old lemmings game. You know, where one lemming leads all the others over a cliff and all of them follow because they just don't know any better.
P.S. This rant was brought to you courtesy of a credit card application form, long live mortgage and credit, the heart and sole of a generation out of control.

Disgusting

2008-03-10T02:10:00.001-07:00

The most disgusting story I have read for a while now, makes me look upon the very concept of Government and Justice with disgust. These attorneys should be buried in sand up to their hips in a ravine and let a herd of wildebeests stampeded through the area.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/06/60minutes/main3914719.shtml
What can you give a man for taking away that many years of his life? I think it would have been better if they had just killed him. Send these ass*'s, the jury who convicted the man, the judge and the prosecutors to Gitmo. To me these people are terrorists since I am terrified by the idea of ever being put in the position of having to ask them for justice on the behalf of anyone.

Creating a directory path in Eclipse

2008-02-25T02:16:00.000-08:00

The following snippet of code creates a folder structure in eclipse.
String directory = "ibn.soa.workingfolder";
String[] result = directory.split("\\.");
int k = result.length;
String e = "";
int i = 0;
while (i != k) {
e = e + result[i++] + "\\";
b = project.getFolder(".\\src\\" + e);
b.create(IResource.FORCE, true, null);
}

For example if you had the user enter something like "ibn.soa.workingfolder" and wanted to create that structure in eclipse you could use the above snippet. There are certain assumptions made, like you want it created in the src folder, but if you were looking for this kind of solution you probably know what those assumptions are by this point.
There is another way to do this using the eclipse Java Development Tooling ,JDT, framework but I didn't want to do it that way.

Quotes from Einstein

2008-02-17T06:27:00.000-08:00

"Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest."

Those words were said by Einstein, amongst the greatest scientist/thinkers of our time, he spent his life working on some of the most intriguing problems of his/our time. His quotes are a source of inspiration for me; another quote of his is
"What does a fish know about the water it swims in?"
I am reading a book on chaos called "CHAOS The amazing science of the unpredictable" by James Gleick. I picked up last year in Dubai. It's been a pretty good read so far, with some really though provoking arguments and some really interesting questions. Two of the ones that really seem trivial to start with are
Q1. Does wind have a velocity?
Q2. Can you measure the length of a coast line?
I will let you figure out those on your own but I will provide an answer to another question to help you start thinking about the answers.
Q3. How many buckets of water are in the Pacific Ocean?
A3. It depends on the size of the bucket.

Unfortunately very few bookstores in Saudi Arabia carry good books on science/math. I have been trying to get my hand on a book on Fourier transforms for a while but have had no luck. I applied for a credit card so I could buy it but it online but I was turned down. I applied for a card at the bank I work at, and they turned me down! *Insert explicative here* what the !@#$ do I need to do to get a credit card? There is more than one way to skin a cat... So I will be applying for a card at a competing bank and get approved because I have to enough money in my account to qualify for one. Plus, I don’t have bad credit history, heck I don’t have a credit history, not that it matters in Saudi Arabia. I have always been amazed at how much importance a credit history plays in the lives of people in the USA and how it matters little to none in Saudi Arabia.
Well enough of that, time to go back to writing plugins for eclipse. I can't get my plugin to connect to mysql on my target runtime; I have got to keep working on it.

H1 approval

2008-02-03T06:58:00.000-08:00

So after I give up completely on going back to the UnitedSstates, my H1 visa gets approved. Very weird, it's almost as if they were waiting for me to give up all hope and then they approve it. I found a decent job in Riyadh , got a car, got a house, got a big screen tv, got a wii and now they tell me I can go back. I'm not sure I want to go back now... I mean is there a special place in hell for people who are never satisfied? Because if there is than I will sure as hell, pun intended, end up there. I don't want to spend the rest of my life thinking "what if?" but I also don't want to give up what I have here, Riyadh, either. Bah, decisions decisions, I might go back to get an MBA. I would love to get a masters degree in mathematics, not sure if it's on the cards though. My less than stellar undergrad GPA would bar me from all but the most lowly of colleges, unless of course work experience and those GMAT, GRE exams help. I'm thinking of taking the GRE, but what would be the point? I already have a good enough GMAT score. I mean education is a business, right? I should be able to get in if I'm willing to pay, right? I asked someone at Columbia if I could do their part time distance thingy and they said I should apply. Same degree as a normal Columbia student and everything. I guess international experience counts. Oh well, I'm going to try to stop thinking about it for a while and enjoy the super bowl tonight. Companies were paying 2.3 Million $ for 30 seconds for ad airtime in last years super bowl, I wonder what insane amount it will be this year?
On a totally different note, I think with the way Bush is handling the economy/budget will make sure that no one will want to move to the United States in the future. All that money spent on border security & fancy fences will be rendered useless if no one wanted to get in because the economic conditions were bad. I read this article on this kid from California who spoke fluent mandarin, I think I will make my kid, if I ever have one, learn Mandarin, Hindi, English and Afrikaans. Why Afrikaans? well... why not?

Can't see my last entry

2008-01-22T03:42:00.000-08:00

That's weird my last entry isn't linked to my blog properly. Maybe I just need to dump my browser's cache. Speaking of cache, since they keep adding more processor cores to the new chips
how are they going to manage the cache? I read a really good paper called "What every programmer should know about memory" about this kind of stuff. It had some stuff I think every computer engineer should read in an introductory course. Here is a link to the paper.
http://people.redhat.com/drepper/cpumemory.pdf

my daily schedule

2008-01-20T09:31:00.000-08:00

So what's my schedule look like? I wake up around 8:30 a.m go to work around 9:00 a.m. I stay at work till about 6:30 pm get back home around 7:00 and then I go to the gym for about an hour, shower have dinner and then I'm done. It's already 10:00 or 11 and I have to get to sleep. Just like I have to do in oh about 2 house. So I'm sitting infront of my tv writing on my blog. At work I'm working on a man in the middle filter and my new obsession is digital compression. I am trying to understand how video works. I mean it seems simple enough. There are a few steps to it, and I might be completely off target but here is what I have understood so far
1. Take the image, cut it into small pieces.
2. Take each piece and do a Fourier like transform on it, one called Discrete Cosine Transform.
3. Do some other things to it, like compressing it.

I'm still on step two.. figuring out how DCT works. Will write more when I have figured it out.
Time for dinner.

Chinese toys and nuclear fall out.

2007-11-27T04:39:00.000-08:00

In case of nuclear fall out surround yourself with Chinese made toys. Should soak that radiation right up! Looking for a cheap way to lead line your basement? Use Chinese toys. I should send this stuff to Chris Rock.

Wiiiii

2007-11-24T06:00:00.000-08:00

After about 2 months of nothing I have a few things to report.
1. I bought a Nintendo Wii. Apparently I'm 32 Wii years old.
2. My new place rocks, it's on third floor and I (Almost) never take the elevator.
3. Work is going good and I wrote an article on the Penryn processor for the bank's magazine, The article still has to be accepted, apparently I'm the first person to ever submit an article to it. They usually just get things from Forrestor and other research firms and print it.
4. My gym membership is about to end and I'm going to try and find a place closer to home.
5. The Indian and Pakistani cricket teams should not play each other, actually they shouldn't play regular cricket at all. They should stick to the weird form of the game they seem to be good at, the 2020 thingy.
6. I hate the word "thingy", but I can't live without it.
7. While the rest of the world was busy talking about the iPhone my parents went out and bought me an i-mate Kjam. Apparently the salesman told them that it was the greatest cell phone under the earth. In other news I hate salesman but I am grateful to my parents for the gift. I dropped my Moto v3x and was making do with an alternative Nokia before I bought a new Moto to replace the V3x.
8. For some reason I'm weirdly attached to Motorola, During college we used the Motorola processors to study micro processor design, and a lot of people from my college work there. But I never got an interview even though I applied to every job they had on their web site, including cell phone dropper, so shouldn't I hate them?
9. Bah, I'm bored...
10. Going back to work.

Iftaar at the kingdom towers

2007-10-03T06:01:00.000-07:00

There is a big difference in the way I went through Ramadan in NY and the way I go through it in Riyadh. My company hosted a Iftaar party at the 4 Seasons hotel in Kingdom towers yesterday. The food was absolutely amazing, the decor was really good and the best part about it was that everyone around me was taking part in it as well. I mean I had really good experiences in NY, at work and otherwise, but there are times when being here is worth it. Ramadan is one of those times and I don't think I would be rather be anywhere else. Oh, by the by, the picture on top is of the kingdom towers, the hotel is attached but on the ground floor.

Red Card

2007-09-24T03:46:00.000-07:00

Usually I'm a nice guy, I don't yell and scream and cuss people out. But sports usually bring out the worst in me. I am a horrible looser and during the game if my team isn't doing well I just get more and more tense till I usually snap. This is exactly what happened the other day during my soccer game. My team wasn't doing so well, which is putting it nicely. Our mid field lacked a certain "omph" and thus our game really suffered. We were loosing 2-0 and I was already really tense because our star forward had just missed a penalty, the ensuing goalie kick came straight at me and I chested ball down and already had a pass in mind when I got taken down from behind. Usually I would have let the ref deal with the him but the guy who took me down had
1. Taken me down from behind injuring my right ankle in the process.
2. Scored their teams last goal.
3. Was generally being a jerk on the field.
so I started cussing him out, which went something like " You *insert explicative here*, you are supposed to be kicking the *explicative* ball not me!, are you *explicative, explicative, explicative etc *?" needless to say the ref gave him a yellow card for taking me down and gave me a red for swearing up a storm on the field. Eventually we lost 4-0 and I really felt bad for cussing the guy out so as soon as the game was over I went over and shook hands with every member of their team, shook hands with the ref and went home thinking about every move I made / should have made during the game. Spent about 2 hours in bed with an adrenaline high and finally went to sleep around 4 am. The rest of the week was pretty boring but busy so I don't see much point in writing about it. I'm still limping and can't go to the gym because I can't warm up. So, I got the house painted instead of working out and you guys can expect photos really soon.

Qoute of the day from Calvin & Hobbes

2007-09-17T02:15:00.000-07:00

Every time I have built character I have regretted it.

my own place!

2007-09-15T04:15:00.000-07:00

Just got my own place after moving back home to Saudi Arabia! It isn't the best place in the world but hey, it's mine :-)
Besides finding the new place, Ramadan started so I'm excited about that and there is a soccer tournament at my company that I'm going try to play in. I get to meet the rest of the team for the first time tonight so I don't know how that's gonna turn out but hopefully I will leave a good enough impression on 'em to be on the starting 11. It's going to be a team consisting of people working in technology so I don't expect it will be much a challenge to get into the starting 11 but you never know. Some of those C++ coders look like they could bend it like Bebeto, who by the by used to be my favorite player in my favorite Brazilian team. The team that won the '94 world cup. When he scored in the quarter final of the tournament he ran towards the crowd cradling his arm to show the world that even though he was playing a game he still had his newly born baby girl in his mind.

Sick

2007-09-05T07:31:00.000-07:00

Been sick for a week now. I went to Hofuf, the city my parents moved to, last weekend and then we went to Dammam from there. It's about a 4 hour drive so it's alright but I think I caught something during the trip. It's finally getting better now but it's thrown my workout plan into complete disarray. Dammit, I was hoping to get into decent shape before Ramadan, But it seems like I'm not going to get what I want. 2 Ramadan's ago I was in the best shape of my life. I was getting ready to run the half marathon in Staten Island. Oh well, the Dubai marathon is coming up, I might be able to get into it. Well back to reading up on Java web services.

Author smoking weed

2007-08-28T07:33:00.000-07:00

This is how to tell if an author of a technical book has been smoking weed, the first paragraph is usually messed. I picked up a new book on Enterprise Java Beans, let's call it a programming methodology for lack of a better term, and this was the first paragraph
"One day, when God was looking over his creatures, he noticed a boy named Sadhu whose humor and cleverness pleased him. God felt generous that day and granted Sadhu three wishes. Sadhu asked for three reincarnations—one as a ladybug, one as an elephant, and the last as a cow. Surprised by these wishes, God asked Sadhu to explain himself. The boy replied, “I want to be a ladybug so that everyone in the world will admire me for my beauty and forgive the fact that I do no work. Being an elephant will be fun because I can gobble down enormous amounts of food without being ridiculed. I will like being a cow the best because I will be loved by all and useful to mankind.” God was charmed by these answers and allowed Sadhu to live through the three incarnations. He then made Sadhu a morning star for his service to humankind as a cow."
Interesting story to be sure, but at this point I was completely confused and then the author said "Enterprise Java beans have also gone through three incarnations" This is probably the eirdest way someone has explained the versions of a technology. Plus, I don't think lady bugs are all that pretty anyways ...

Match fixing

2007-08-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

A big problem in the world of sports is match fixing, People get into all sorts of trouble because of it, and a lot of people loose money while making bets. I have the perfect solution to the match fixing problem. Make it legal. That's right, if match fixing is legal no one can bet on anything, there is no motivation to place bets on it, since it's fixed anyways. These are the kinds of thoughts I have when I'm fielding in a cricket match in 50 degrees (Celsius) heat. Cricket was fun, my team lost and I didn't make a permanent spot for myself. I guess I should stick to what I'm good at, running. Not much of a sport as far as teams go, but I am good at it. Any who, back to work.

Today's funny moment

2007-08-22T05:30:00.001-07:00

Telephone: Ring Ring
Me: Hello ?
Guy on the other side: Hello, Syed Wajahat?
Me: Speaking.
Guy on the other side: Hi, I wanted to know why your phone extension was not working.
Me: ????
Me: uhh.. it works now, thanks
Guy on the other side: Your welcome

Buying a suit

2007-08-18T07:21:00.000-07:00

My mom wants me to buy a suit, weird.. I never thought I would be one for suits, but shopping for one is a pretty cool experience. In the end I decided to get one stitched. Not that expensive really, but the guy cut a piece of the fabric I picked (dark blue pinstripe) and stuck it to the bill. Now, I'm wondering what would happen if I changed the fabric on the bill and told the suit maker he must have misplaced my suit. I mean, I am the customer right? Besides having these kinds of thoughts my day yesterday was spent on trying to open a bank account in the bank I work at. It was like I was trying to escape from prison, they gave me all kinds of weird looks and in the end they asked me "Why do you want a bank account?" At that point, 2 hours of waiting, I was thinking of saying "Because I have a cocaine connection that deals only through your bank, so I need an account at your bank to pay him, want to come over to my place later today and get high?" I mean, I want to give them my money!! I wonder what would happen if I applied for a loan? shudder shudder
Anyways, I have been really thinking about taking creatine, it's not a steroid and it supposedly really helps in muscle development. It's naturally found in red meat and some sea food. I'm still debating it, I'm still seeing gains from working out so I'm thinking I will wait until I reach a plateau that I can't get through by just working out harder. Plus I'm really worried that if I take creatine I won't be able to fit into the new suit I just got fitted for.

low fat choclate & wiki

2007-08-13T06:21:00.001-07:00

After having lunch today at an Iraqi restaurant I grabbed a bar of low fat chocolate from a diet center that was right next to the restaurant. I couldn't even tell there was no sugar added to it! and it was all dark chocolate. I mean, chocolate and no calories. It's what the doctor ordered. Oh, and I also found out that the movie 300 wasn't exactly 100% correct. The eldest son of the royal family was exempt from the Agoge, the part where kids beat each other up and stuff. Plus they skipped over the whole pedophilia (gross) thingy that were incorporated into the Agoge. Anywho, I got a wiki up and running at work. A wiki is just a software you can use to share information and edit information. I mean everyone has heard of wikipedia, and this is similar but is meant for a more private implementation. I used this one http://www.vqwiki.org/. It worked like a charm. Plus check out their logo, it's really cool. I'm thinking of getting their shirt just because the logo looks so cool.

Java Craziness

2007-08-12T01:50:00.000-07:00

About two months ago I would never have understood the following paragraph.

Annotating the entity’s instance variables directly avoids the overhead of method calls and provides a slight performance optimization, since the persistence manager talks directly to the fields. Annotating the property accessors provides a simple way for the Bean Provider to intercept and perform custom logic during all attempts to read and write property data.
This latter option affords the Bean Provider a chance to lazily derive persistent property values on demand, if desired. However, be aware that any validation or side-effect code on the property accessor methods will be called during entity state transitions. As you’ll see in the next chapter, if the Bean Provider wishes to initialize transient data or refine persistent data at the time the entity’s persistent state is first loaded, or prior to saving changes out to persistent storage, it is preferable to perform these steps using entity life cycle callback methods. Using the combination of field-level annotations and entity life cycle callbacks has the benefit that validation and other code in the setter methods will only be called when a client calls the setter, and not when the entity is being instantiated from persistent store by the framework.

Chances are that anyone reading this now probably doesn't understand a word. All sane people should have given up reading it half way through. I do have a quote for anyone who tries to make any sense of it, ignorance is bliss. Plus it really doesn't help that the author says something like "I'm not not holding a ear that isn't my left ear" rather than "I'm holding my right ear" Welcome to the world of bad prose. I'm sure all fields of knowledge try to hide information from outsiders this way, but is it really necessary? I mean the medical community has it's own style of communication, which to an outsider might as well be gibberish.

Speakingsi Englis?

2007-08-06T04:13:00.000-07:00

It's an interesting thing to note that we Indians (from the Indian sub continent) speak our own form of English. For one thing we tend to use the word 'only' in every possible conceivable, and quite a few unconceivable, place in a sentence. Our vocabulary really isn't all that poor but we do tend to pronounce words in way that render them impossible to understand. For example we usually don't pronounce M properly. When we say it, it sounds more like "YEM". T
here is a whole list of other characters and words that we tend to mess up. To top this all of, our head movements are quite indecipherable to people who aren't used to seeing people shake their heads sideways. The yes nod and the no nod are combined to form sideways rotation. In a way it's action and the emotion it expresses are similar those of a dog when it is wagging it's tail. It means the person showing that shake of the head is in an agreeable mood. Well enough about that, English really isn't the best language in the world but it is one of the simplest, and that tends to makes it highly adaptable. The adaptability is both a boon and a curse to the language, Since two people can be speaking in the same language but would probably never understand each other.

still alive

2007-08-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

So it's been a really really long time since I last posted and I'm under no illusion that this one single post will make up for all those lost posts so I will, for now, ignore the fact that I have not posted in a while and pretend like everything is fine and the world is still as it was when I stopped posting.
My sister has a really bad habit of taking exercise to the extreme, and then giving up when it gets too hard. Her train of thought runs something like this:
I want to walk today, But that won't help me much so I will run today. That won't help me much so I will run uphill today. But that won't help me much so I will run uphill with a heavy back pack today. But I don't have a heavy back pack so I might as well stay home today.
Makes sense ?

Quack with a medical book

2007-04-02T05:09:00.000-07:00

The doctor, I visited, was a complete imbecile. Well maybe not a complete imbecile but an imbecile all the same. When I first got there he asked me what the problem was and I explained the Plantar Fasciitis , the symptoms I noticed, my prognosis and what I had been doing to take care of the problem. (I keep thinking should have studied medicine) He noded his head all this while and then said we need to get you an Xray. My thought was "It's a tendon injury you moron, an MRI would be better". But I played along, after all, he was the doctor and I was just a kid with an internet connection. So after needlessly subjecting myself to Gamma radiation I went back to the doctor. Now, when I was talking to him the first time I got the impression that he didn't know much about the injury at all but when I got back, boy, he was a veritble encyclopedia on it. But he still didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. His final advice was "Continue everything you were doing and you will be fine"
Thanks Doc. The first doctor I have seen in about 6 years turns out to be an idiot. Anyways, I can't go to the gym yet since I'm waiting for the foot to heal. In other news I'm still waiting on the American Embassy to return my passport, it's been almost a 3 months. How long can it possibly take to stamp a visa?

I'm an MCP !

2007-03-29T02:56:00.000-07:00

Well, I just passed the microsoft exam. When I say just passed I mean JUST passed. The passing grade was 700 and I got a 700. Throughout the exam I kept thinking I was going to fail, I spent the whole day yesterday watching the cricket matches and when that was over I watched Office Space. So my preparation was top notch and that was reflected in my results. Plus it didn't help that all the books I had been using didn't cover alot of the things they asked in the exam.
Now that it is over I can pay attention to other more important things, like the Wii. I will probably end up buying one of these little beauties. They have them all over the place now, a bit expensive but not as expensive as the other new systems out there. Plus you get a decent workout while playing games so it's a good deal. I won't have to go to the gym anymore.. well not really. After watching 300 I really need to go back to the gym. I have slipped the past few months because of the exams and the plantar fasciitis. But I am going to see a doctor today and hopefully she can shed some light on why the foot hasn't healed yet then I will go sign up for the gym later today or tommorow. I'm sure I will have more to write when I get used to writing again.

tid bits from dinner

2007-03-08T01:24:00.000-08:00

After dropping my parents of at the airport yesterday I went to have dinner with my Dad's sister and her husband. My Aunt is a bit of a wacko but her husband is an amazing man. He is a doctor and you can always have a great conversation with him on almost any subject. Yesterday at dinner he was sharing trivia and here are some of the more interesting pieces

The part of the body that heals the quickest is the tongue
All mamals have 7 veterbrae in their necks, that means that Giraffes and humans have the same number of verterbrae in their necks.
The part of the body that is the most sensitive to pain is the cornea.

Anyways, I discovered that I dislike chicken Kababs that are not made with boneless chicken. Boneless is the way to go for Kababs.

Parents on vacation.

2007-03-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

So let me start of by admiting that I still live with my parents. But then you have to realize this is quite common in families that originae from the Indian sub continent. We even have a name for it, the joint family system. Anyways, the point of this post was to tell everyone that my parents just left for vacation today. I dropped them off at the airport about an hour ago. I will have the house to myself for about a month. In other news I have scheduled an MCSE exam for the 22nd March. I feel I need to keep myself a busy or my brain will rot. I really don't have anything to keep me challenged at work therefore I plan to keep taking exams until I get to get to my MBA.

How men meet women in Saudi Arabia

2007-02-25T02:54:00.000-08:00

As the old adage goes, A picture is worth a thousand words, and I believe that picture says it all. In Saudi Arabia we can place orders for women at special stores. At first everyone thougth this would be a great idea. I mean a world where you order exactly what you wanted had to be perfect, right? wrong, men quickly realized we had no idea what we wanted.
Seriously though Saudi Arabia has one of the highest rates of divorce in the world, some figures saying as many as 1 in every 4 weddings ends in divorce here. You can imagine the kind of implications that holds in a society where women are not, in any real way, allowed to work.
Anyways, I don't want to beat a dead horse so let me get back to work.

and..... I'm BACK !

2007-02-15T02:35:00.000-08:00

I just got out of the gmat exam, scored 680 out of 800. That's a 89 percentile so I am happy with the score. The verbal section was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. You know how you think that the practice exams would be easier than the real ones? well this one is just the opposite. The verbal section was a killer, I just guessed the last 5 because I completely ran out of time. But I am happy with the score and will probably apply to the following 5 colleges
1. City University of New York - Zicklin School of Business
2. Illinois Institute of Technology
3. NYU - Stern
4. Pace University - Lubin school of business
5. St. John's University.

The last one I have absolutely no information about. In the mean time I have other information to report. Upper management at work were blaming me for a delay in one of the projects and wanted to fire me. My boss told them that if they fired me they might as well kiss the project good bye :-) it's nice to have a supportive boss. I am still waiting on word on my h1 visa from the American consulate. When I asked them how long it would take the said " It's a process and no one knows how long it will take" . Very encouraging.
Anyways, I'm out to celebrate. Happy new year, to my chinese friends and a happy valentines day to all.

My study schedule for the GMAT.

2007-01-28T23:58:00.000-08:00

Been following it so far, still a while to go yet.
2/15/2007 Test day
2/14/2007 Revision
2/12/2007 computer adaptive test 3:
2/11/2007 computer adaptive test 2:
2/10/2007 computer adaptive test 1:
2/9/2007 paper test 9:
2/8/2007 paper test 8:
2/7/2007 paper test 7:
2/6/2007 paper test 6:
2/5/2007 paper test 5:
2/4/2007 paper test 4:
2/3/2007 paper test 3:
2/2/2007 paper test 2:
2/1/2007 paper test 1:
1/31/2007 Practice test 6:
1/30/2007 Practice test 5:
1/29/2007 Practice test 4:
1/28/2007 Practice test 3: score: 660 better but not quite right yet.
1/27/2007 Practice test 2: score: 550 not paying enough attention while giving the test.
1/26/2007 Data sufficiency revision: done
1/25/2007 Problem Solving revision: done
1/24/2007 Geometry revision: done
1/23/2007 Critical reasoning revision: done
1/22/2007 Algebra revision: done
1/21/2007 Sentence Correction revision: done
1/20/2007 Arithmetic revision: done
1/19/2007 Reading comprehension revision: done

Scary but funny

2007-01-23T05:18:00.000-08:00

My sister teaches two small girls (probably around 7-10) as a part time thing. I had the chance to meet the two last week when I was at her place and she was teaching them. I started talking to them about how school sucks and how all classes should involve alot of ice cream and choclate syrup and after about 5 minutes one of the girls said "You know you look really scary but you are funny" Then the other one said I thought you were here to fix the bathroom. The next day I got both of them ice cream and My sister was furious because I was interrupting the "class" and distracting her students from understanding the rules of English grammar. Anways, back to studying for the GMAT and subject verb agreement for me.

GMAT

2007-01-18T00:14:00.000-08:00

I finally did it, I registered for the GMAT. The test will be on the 15th of February at 9:00 am.
This means I have about 30 days left for the test and I have to start studying. I was started studying for it a while back but I realized that I wouldn't actually sit down and study for it till I had a test scheduled. So from now on I will be breathing, eating and sleeping GMAT. I paid $250 for the test so I better be ready for it. I have decided to apply to 5 schools.
1. NYU (Dream on)
2. IIT (Don't make me go back there)
3. AUS (American university of Sharjah, the name says it all)
4. Pace university (A decent school, stone throw away from where I worked in NY)
5. Backup school, any old school will do.

I will start studying today so wish me luck!

Can't post comments into blogger2

2007-01-09T03:29:00.000-08:00

Any one know what to do about this? I can't post any comments it keeps giving me a "cannot display the webpage" message. Very frustrating and annoying. Until I resolve the problem I have to apologize to everyone for not being able to post comments or replies. To make up for it I have posted two pictures. The above picture is a view of Riyadh from on top of the tallest tower in Saudi Arabia. The one below is my sister in the walk way of the bridge that connects the two towers.

BC & AD

2007-01-06T05:58:00.000-08:00

If BC is before christ and AD is after christ what's the time called when he was alive?
Eid break was fun, Went to the tallest building in Saudi Arabia and got a nice view or Riyadh. It was fun, we then prayed on the 77th floor so I can say I have prayed in the highest mosque in the world world. Well there could be one in the Himalayas but since I don't know of any I will say this was the highest in the world. Anyways, gotta get out of work.

Happy b'day to me

2006-12-27T22:46:00.000-08:00

Happy b'day to me
Happy b'day to me
I live in a zoo
I look like a monkey
and smell like on too!

December 28th folks, To celebrate my b'day I will be spending the day working with motorola trying to launch a service that my company doesn't want anymore. Yay!

My contribution to the world of aviation

2006-12-16T05:49:00.000-08:00

Just an idea, but I think airplanes with see through bottoms would be a fantastic idea. I mean you have the whole roller coaster thrill with the landing and takeoffs and breath taking views when you are way up high. Call me crazy but I think it would work.

Last blog from India

2006-12-14T09:21:00.000-08:00

Waiting for my connecting flight to Riyadh in Mumbai/ Bombay. I never did figure out why the changed the name of that city. It's not like Bombay woke up one day and realized that the name wasn't good enough. The only reason I can think of is, post September 11th, the word Bomb in a city name is cause for concern. But the name was change before September 11th.
Anyways, the CEO of the company I work for came into the office today and I heard him speak about his background. The guy has been in the financial field for over 30 years and got started in the London school of economics. Then did postgraduate work in Harvard in psychology before doing a degree in law. He was asking around about where people want to be in 5 years time and I could think of one thing, I want to done with an MBA in 5 years. I guess that's as good goal as any. I am torn between waning to stay in Saudi Arabia with my parents and moving to NY to do my MBA. I know one thing though, if I were to do an MBA, I don't want it to be a distance education thing or in some crappy college.
I love this executive lounge, I had to upgrade my flight from economy class to executive class because they cancelled my reservations for not reconfirming 72 hours in advance and by the time I tried to book the flight again the economy class seats were all full. I got a great deal though, I upgraded my flight from Bangalore to Riyadh for about $60 or about 3000 rupees.
Anyways, I realized that the domestic air terminal in Bangalore has better stores than the international terminal. Kinda sad, they have no real book stores. They had one measly little store where I picked up an Asterix comic book, Asterix the Legionary.
Oh, and I am reading a book called "A Brief History of everything" by Bill Bryson just started reading it so I won't say much about it till I get further into it. But I liked what I have read so far. But one sentence that struck as being something very obvious but something I have never thought about, We are all composed of atoms that are not alive but we as a whole are, if we were to use a really small tweezer and remove our atoms one at a time we would end up with really fine atomic dust that, and none of those atoms can claim to be alive. In some ways this reminds of the object oriented programming. It is a programming paradigm that basically says small parts come together and interact to solve a difficult problem. Modeling real world objects is easier using this paradigm.
Alright, My next entry will be from Riyadh, about 2800 km or 1721 miles away.

still running

2006-12-13T05:24:00.000-08:00

In college I realized I would never be as fast, as strong or as mentally disciplined as some of my friends were. I worked out in the gym often, and saw people who started with me woring with twice the wiegth they did in 3 months, while I was stuck where I started. So it was with great delight that I found something that I could consider myself to be good at, I was okay at soccer but most of memorable moments were accidents, not related to skill. I got lucky and everyone thought it was skill. I was on the IIT soccer team because I got lucky during the tryouts. Running has been my main sport for a long time. Running is different, I can force my body to listen to my mind when I run. I can tell my body to run faster now, slower now, climb now and stop now. I can see improvements in my workout after 2 weeks. I know all sports are a form of competition but running is something where I only compete with myself. The only reall oponent is the stop watch and if you hit the runners high, even time doesn't matter because you start to enjoy the action of running for action itself. It truly is an amazing feeling, I discovered that I can force a runners high on myself when I've run for about 2 miles, I can think of certain thoughts and then I feel a kind of euphoria wash over my brain, it's like waves of adrenaline are passing over my brain. When I hit that moment in my run I feel like I can run forever at whatever pace I choose. It lasts about 45 seconds to a minute, but in that minute I can really turn up the pace. The thoughts that trigger it can stem from almost anything, Usually though they are motivating thoughts, so I would encourage anyone who wants to experience it to get to that 2nd mile and to think of the most powerful motivational thought that you can imagine . I don't know if it would work or anyone else but I know it works for me.While I was going to the gym in Riyadh I started having pains in the area behind my knee. The pain became persistant to the point that I couldn't walk straight after a run anymore. I was depressed since I couldn't figure out if this was a permanent injury or something temporary, I couldn't find anything online about it and started wondering if this injury would stop me from running permanently. Then the really depressing thoughts started to hit me, what if I couldn't play soccer or basketball any more? Granted there is alot more to life than sports but it has been a major part of my life till now. As it turend out all of that was for nothing, I ran about 5km, a bit over 3 miles, in 30 minutes yesterday. Not the fastest I have been but just a couple of months ago I wasn't sure if I would run again I was elated and just thought I would share this.

Thirsty in Bangalore?

2006-12-04T05:00:00.000-08:00

Thirsty in Bangalore? cool off with a coconut water drink. The real & authentic thing. They just chop off the top of the coconut, put a straw in and give it to you. All you have to do is drink the refreshing, slightly sweet, water like drink. It's supposed to be really good for your stomach.
Next we I shopping and fell for the oldest gimmick of 'em all, put kittens in a shop and 10 times our of 10 I will enter that shop and buy something. But can you blame me? I mean look at them !
I wanted to grab both of them and run out of the store, but I thought that would make the mommy cat really sad so I didn't do anything. Next, I went book shopping, I'm like a girl (yeah U.A. I said it) gone shoe shopping when I am in a book store. Oh well, back to work. I can write more about my weekend but I will save writing about my other adventures for a boring day when I won't have anything else to write about.

The perfect job

2006-11-30T02:02:00.000-08:00

So this is an idea I had while writing a email to a friend. One of the greatest jobs has to be being a bicycle richsaw driver. You get excercise, plenty of "fresh" air, get to meet different kinds of people, its a form of public service and after about 2 years of this you can win the tour de France about 10 times in a row. I am going to apply to my local rickshaw driver association for a license and see what happens. In other news it's getting cold here and I will be wearing one the sweaters my mom insisted I take with me even though I protested and moped about it till I got on the airplane. I guess mum does know best but, please don't tell her I said that.
rats I knew I wanted to write about something else but I just can't think about it right now. Oh yeah, Bangalore is quite the mix of life styles, you have the ultra modern office buildings owned by big corporations like CAT, SAP, IBM, Infosys etc and right across from them are the shanties where people are living in slums. I wonder how long such a clash of lifestyles can exist next to each other. I mean there has to be a tipping point before such inequality has to lead to something ugly.

Breakfast in Bangalore

2006-11-28T06:30:00.000-08:00

Colorfull isn't it? All I know about it is that its the stuff I had for breakfast yesterday and today. and most of it is made from rice. South Indian dishes tend to be spicier than north Indian dishes. I read somewhere that the closer you get to the equator the spicier the food gets. I noticed that fruit juice is way more popular that soft drinks here. I asked around and found out that there was a big controversy a while about pesticide content in soft drinks and since then people here have more or less stopped having soft drinks. Apparently some states in India banned soft drinks and the supreme court said that since the level of pesticides in those drinks was below the government recomended limit the states couldn't ban them.
but .. why is there any pesticide in my pepsi or coke at all? I mean there is pesticide and the government knows about it ? why didn't someone tell me ? I mean .. geez I can brew up conspiracy theories up the ying yang with this one. Makes me wonder what else the government knows about but won't tell me. Are there pieces of minced eye brow hair in my pudding ? are there chicken droppings in my vegy burger ? is gasolene really extraced from the carcases of dead cockroches? I mean come on.. I need to know things like this.
On the topic of soft drinks, why are they called soft drinks ? what's so soft about 'em? In a recent study it was reported that women who drink such "soft" drinks are more likely to face orhtopedic problems in life. Went to the gym at the office today, a very very sad gym. Well it had a decent treadmill and a working shower so I won't complain too much. Alright, back to the ho hum of life.

Work an' Bangalore

2006-11-24T04:58:00.000-08:00

Sitting around waiting for people from the ny office to come online. Things have been going well enough so far, kind of boring really. I go to work, come back and stay indoors. Unfortunately the part of bangalore I am in is not pedestrain freindly. It would be really nice if I could just walk down to the interesting parts of the city, but I have to wait till the weekend i.e tommorow to have some fun. Just a note on the pizza here, I think I like t better than the stuff I have had in Chicago, New york or saudi arabia. Ofcourse the fact that I was really really hungry might have had something to do with my opinion of Bangalory pizza.
So some thoughts on Bangalore, it is a nice place, the weather is really good. I get a car and a driver to take me to work and back but the driver doesn't stick around later. I finally got a sim card but I haven't had the chance to find the salsa place, Maybe in place of salsa I will learn how to ride a motor bike. Anywho my first weekend in Bangalore is about to start. hopefully things will go well. The only reason I have not ventured out from the apartment is that I don't know much about the surounding area. A vicious circle, I don't know much about the area because I don't go out, I don't go out because I don't know much about the area. I don't know if I can find a taxi or an auto rickhsaw to take me back after I go some place. It would be easier if I left early in the morning and explored. But what the heck, I will get home today and take off for the city.

Bangalore

2006-11-21T02:40:00.000-08:00

The trip has been fine so far. The best thing about being in India is that there are no separate lines for the foreigners and people who belong to this country. i.e. Indians. Every place I have been to so far. i.e. Every country, has had a separate line for different people. There is an American only line in America, a Saudi only line in Saudi Arabia, a UAE only line in UAE, but there is no such thing as a Indian only line in India. This is really amazing :-). All Indian airports have this distinctive smell, not necessarily a bad smell. It is a unique smell though, oh and before I forget for the first time since 9/11 I wasn't picked for a random search whilst traveling.
Things to do today
1. Buy a map
2. Buy a sim card
3. Check out the gym near the apartment I'm staying in.
4. Get in touch with my aunts & uncles and arrange a time to meet up.
5. Maybe find a place to get Salsa classes ? I might end up making a fool of myself but what the heck.

Privitisation of democracy.

2006-11-20T02:41:00.000-08:00

So this is how democracy works nowadays. A bunch of people get together and pay for someone to run for office. If he gets enough money and he gives enough bribes to the right people, he wins !
now, it would be nice if it all ended here and everything would be great, but the people who paid good money to get this guy elected want a return on their investment, with interest. So the guy who got elected has to give back to the "community" making sure the people who helped him out are the first in line when he is giving back to the community. You might ask, where is all this comming from? I was at a dinner party a couple of days ago. There was an Ambassador, many rich business men & the minister of education present. Why was I there? I have no idea, amongst all the suits I was in a sweat shirt and dirty jeans. lots of fun :-)
Any who, if I never get invited back I don't think I will have lost anything. I will be leaving for Banglore today, I will be sure to write a complete blog of my experiences on this trip. Its gonna be tough working on a vacation but I am sure I will manage somehow. Wish me best of luck for the trip. After all the horor stories I have heard about Air India and the Bombay airport (I have a connecting flight to bangalore) I will be happy if I just get onto the plane. ps I trimmed my beard for the trip, since its no fun getting picked out for "random" security checks.

Ubuntu

2006-11-15T05:53:00.000-08:00

Ubuntu rocks, New york offers a way to socialize while riding a cab. The inventor of this service is a genius. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061113/ap_on_re_us/taxi_networking

SLOW DOWN !

2006-11-12T05:18:00.000-08:00

Yay! will get my ticket for Banglore tommorow. In other news I brought a new laptop and I will have to format it. HP puts the recovery stuff on a seperate partition and I want that space back. Plus I want to dual boot with Ubuntu. A friend told me he learnt alot about Linux during the process so I will emulate him. hurrah for the new laptop. It has a 256 mb nvidia video card, great for games.

Terrorism is the symptom not the disease

2006-11-11T05:20:00.000-08:00

I am amazed by how many people still consider terrorism to be disease that breeds in training camps and madrasas around the world. The fact of the matter is that terrorism is not a disease that people make it out to be. Terrorism is just the symptom of the disease, the real problem is the hypocrisy of how the western world treats the eastern world. By east I mean anything east of the EU. The main battle ground for all these problems lies in the middle east about 1000 miles from where I live. Jerusalem, the land where 3 peaceful religions have shed more blood than all the abattoirs of the world combined. Last week was no different, a family of Palestinians wiped out while they slept in their beds by Israeli army rockets. Ofcourse the Israelis apologized for killing innocent civilians and promised to look into the matter, then they went on bombing the place. Of the 18 killed I remember reading something about 6 of them being children. The youngest being 3 months old. I didn't read anymore, I couldn't read anymore.
There used to be a quote by Mahatma Gandhi in my school text books that went something like ' If you find yourself facing a particularly difficult problem or a problem that makes you doubt yourself do this, try to remember the face of the saddest most depraved human being you have seen and if your decision will have any effect on him or her. Basically will solving the problem you are facing have any affect on that persons life?'. For a long time I did not understand what Mahatma Gandhi was trying to get at, but now I do. I guess it is a sign of me growing up. How does one go from talking about Terrorism to a non violent movement led by Gandhi? I think the two are related in a perverse way..

The soccer match

2006-11-08T04:54:00.000-08:00

The match ended with 17-4 as the final score. 17 in our favour ofcourse. I didn't score, but then again I play defense and I didn't look for any chances to score. Other than that, I have booked my flight to Banglore on the 21st and my mum wants to go with me. Should be a good time.

Nuclear weapons & African American professors.

2006-11-05T04:25:00.000-08:00

The title to this blog is misleading. It's based on two thoughts I had recently and not how African Americans professors contributed to the development of nuclear weapons.
1. My college, IIT, which was located in Chicago and had the largest % of international students of any college at the time but didn't have any African American professors. We had British, Iranian, Chinese, Indian, Caucasian, Mexican, German etc professors but nobody that was African American. I don't understand it. Some of my professors couldn't even speak english properly but they still taught us. Public safety, our personal police force, was almost 100% African American. I just realized this ... Weird.. I am sure there is a lot more that can be read into this but I will have to reflect on it somemore before I can comment on it. The short explanation would be racism. The long explanation would still be racism, but would explain how it affects us in its many ugly ways.
2. The only country in the world that has suffered from Nuclear weapons refuses to obtain them even though its neighbor develops them. A neighbor that has time and again shown its aggressive tendencies towards them. The country ofcourse is Japan, I don't think there can be a stronger message Japan can send to the rest of the world that in face of the new threats that nuclear technology is redundant. Nuclear weapons are not to be kept for whatever reason. They are not the solution to anything, unless the problem is how do we destroy ourselves completely. The main reason some of these countries (USA, UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, China etc) cite for keeping these weapons is to maintain world order and for it, the nuclear weapons, to act as a deterrent. But with the emergence of "terrorism" as the main challenger to the strength of these countries the fact that these people are willing to give their lives to kill others makes nuclear weapons obsolete.
I can write more meaningful thoughts but that wouldn't be in style of my blog, I am starting to feel a little under the weather and need to play a football (soccer for some people) game. I think I will go home and get something to eat and take something for my sore throat.

Skiing in Dubai

2006-11-02T01:17:00.000-08:00

For the past three days I was in Dubai participating in a Motorola workshop. This trip included many firsts for me. I met an author for the first time in my life, Paul Golding, an author and mobile technology guru from UK and for the first time in my life I went skiing in the desert. Other things I did for the first time, I went to a club by myself for the first time and realized I really am not cut out for going to clubs by myself. They are just too weird, plus I don't have the kind of confidence needed to go talk to someone new in a club. So I went there spent 10 minutes at the club feeling out of place and went back to my hotel room to read a book.
Meeting Paul was amazing, the guy has to be one of the smartest person I have met. He reads about 3-4 books in a week and his views on politics, religion, sociology and technology are inspiring. In other news my friend who I keep referring to as Anonymous keeps telling me how being anonymous is annoying. Atleast that's what I think she said :-)
The trip to dubai was fun, they keep putting up new sky scrapers every time I go there. At Burj Dubai, the new one they are building, they keep adding a new floor every 3 days. Dubai is named crane city after the number of cranes that inhabit the city. I'm feeling a bit under the weather and my parents are in Dammam again so I will go grab lunch and head back home. Hopefully I will be able to hit the gym later today.

Eid !

2006-10-28T04:39:00.000-07:00

Eid holidays finally got over yesterday. Eid is our, Muslim, version of Christmas or Hanukkah. It was good to take 10 days off work. I didn't do anything particularly interesting, went for a picnic, played cards with a couple of friends, played a lot of video games, spent time at the gym again & spent time with my younger brother who came back from college for the holidays. We usually get money for Eid from our family friends and parents, but since I have become an earning member of the family I had to pay out as much as I got. It was all good though, I remember how much fun it used to be when I would get money as a kid. Near the end of eid everyone always got together and compared how much money they got. I saw the news and was very disturbed to see that Eid in Sudan, Iraq & Afghanistan would be a very somber affair. The Bush administration now wants to blame the government in Iraq for its failings in that country. What the heck ??? You put them in power and then blame them when they don't have any real power. Accountability without power sucks, I know what it does to leaders. The country is already headed towards civil war and finger pointing won't help.
In lighter news, I have decided to start doing some art. I used to be pretty good at it as a kid but I haven't done anything since freshman year in college. Sometimes I think architecture would have been a fun field to be in. But then again I think that I wouldn't have been able to get through those long reviews and sleep while working on a model. Some of those archi's were walking zombies before their review week. I plan to go to the gym as soon as I get back home today. Hopefully I will be able to get into better shape before the trip to India in 25 days.
Also to everyone who stuck around thanks(yin, uzair, kiat & others that will remain nameless) I plan to be a bit more punctual in my postings from now on.

"The Office"

2006-10-05T03:28:00.000-07:00

I am writing this blog in Microsoft word and will post it up later, I am doing this because at work I want to look like I am writing a document for marketing or I am writing something important for someone. I have also started watching a show called “The office” and I usually watch it at the office. Amazing show…I usually just end up giggling quietly at my desk.. It’s like that laugh that you just can’t let out so your face turns all red from the effort of keeping a straight face and your co workers wonder if there is something wrong with you. The show is a must see for anyone that works in an office. It is right up there with “Office Space” as one of my all time favorite workspace related comedies. I think everyone should watch this show, it’s on NBC and I have to thank a friend, who shall remain anonymous, for introducing me to this show. Thank you, friend, for introducing me to this great show. I just watched episode 2 of season 3 (latest episode out). Having seen all the other episodes of all the others seasons I have to find a new way to feed my addiction now. The show is great because you don’t have to see it to enjoy it. You just have to hear it, it could just as well be a radio show. As all of you can probably tell work has been really slow recently. I spent yesterday comparing server features of HP servers. I came to the conclusion that HP 580 servers are not worth the price unless you upgrade them all the way. Go with the HP 380 otherwise. This is great topic for a blog. The HP 580 vs the HP 380 generation 5. wow… I think I will save that one for when I have decided to kill myself. That will be my goodbye blog entry to the world as it will be proof my social life has gone from zero into the negative.

Another update

2006-09-27T05:56:00.000-07:00

Almost ready to quit.. Not much left to do but say the words. But I will probably wait till after Ramadan. Oh, right Ramadan started. Ramadan is the Muslim holy month in which we fast all day, sunrise to sunset, and we Muslims are supposed to be very pious this month. We pray, sleep, wakeup pray, eat before sunset, pray, sleep, pray, pray, eat at sunset, pray, pray, pray and then sleep. Oh, and we find time to work in between all of that. The Saudi national day fell on the first day of Ramadan so it put kind of a damper on their plans to celebrate the day as it had been planned.
I have a plan for quitting but I will save it till later. No sense giving the plot away.
In other news a bud of mine started his masters at LSE, wish him luck. I hear that school is pretty tough and he is studying math. Good lord, talk about a tough subject. But god willing, a term we Muslims use quite often, he will come through in good style.

quote of the day

2006-09-20T04:08:00.000-07:00

The best thing I heard today was something my friend Bill said "Everytime he says hi I feel like killing myself". There are moments that you can look back on and it always brings a smile to your face. One such occasion was when I was in small pizza place on staten island the weekend before I left ny. I had a couple of friends from college come down to say goodbye and we shared quite a few jokes about the old times and some about the current times. I can think back to that and it always bring a smile to my face. Similarly, everytime I will think of Bill saying that line I will smile.
In other news, people from work are going to China for a training course and I don't get to go. Might not sound like a big deal but I really wanted to go, so did Bill. He is after all Chinese and has been home sick for a while. But thank you government officials for loosing his travel papers at exactly the right time. I was told I would be going on the this trip too, I guess I am not good enough to learn about the new technology... I'm feeling particularly happy right now.(note: that was a sarcastic comment) Oh, well the good news is I plan to leave the company sooner rather than later. Pity too, there are some nice people here. The people being sent are scared of being outside the country. I mean come on, this would be an exciting trip where you would get to learn about a different culture. I wonder if it is xenophobia ? probably, seeing how they think low of people that are not Arabs. Anyways, back to reading about the FIX protocol.

Out of hours

2006-09-17T04:55:00.000-07:00

So the company's owner has been asking everyone but me and my friend, both of us go to lunch at non approved times, why we keep going to lunch at times other than 12.30 to 1.00. Very annoying, we can work over time and not get paid but if you go to lunch between 12.45 and 1.30 it becomes an issue. I'm thinking of quitting... can't take too much more of this kind of crap.
I took my sister and her friend out to dinner yesterday, she got straigth A's in her classes and I thougth she deserved a treat. We sat in the family section of a restaurant and boy let me tell you, the girls there were hottt. I mean I don't know if I am supposed to be looking around in the family section of a restaurant, but .. wow. I didn't know that under the viels the girls would be that good looking. Anywho, the topic of discussion at yesterday's dinner table was how my sister managed to get straight A's when
1. She hates what she was studying
2. She does not put in the required effort to understand the subject matter.
She is studying computer science but she hates the subject. She loves being able to show up my bro in computer knowledge so I guess I know why she took it. But still, if you hate a subject how can you be good at it?
In 11th grade, junior year of high school, I hated chemistry. In my senior year I had an awesome chemistry teacher and I realized I didn't hate the subject, I hated how the old teacher taugth the subject. So I guess she has really good teachers, but some how I doubt it. My experience says a good teacher can make any subject interesting, though in college I took subjects I thought were interesting and more or less taught myself. The professors, not all of them though, were more a hinderance in education than a source of help. But then again college is supposed to teach you how to learn. If you actually end up learning something, consider it a bonus. Not too many people end up working on things they studied. I will never have a job designing computer chips in VLSI. But I studied that stuff all the same. But I am alright with that, what I hate is working over time and being told I have to go to lunch between 12.30 and 1.00

I'm with stupid.

2006-09-13T07:11:00.000-07:00

I saw a t-shirt that said "summer time is always fine time". What happened to all the really good t-shirts like, I'm with stupid, The mountain dew has reclaimed its thrown, buzz off, big smiley face etc. All we are left with is summer time is always fine time. Ridiculus. In Saudi Arabia it's almost always summer time. So is it always fine time ? I doubt it.

another blah day

2006-09-11T03:59:00.000-07:00

Another blah day, after completing email to sms project there really isn't much to do around here. They want me to test mms content.. how exciting. Things were looking extremly glum till I found this gem of a movie review of a recent teen horror flick
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=316323&rel_no=1
The last line, more than anything else, made me break out into a grin.
Now, I don't usually enjoy such things but you know what? sometimes it helps to know someone else sucked at something really bad.

Navaratilova

2006-09-10T05:56:00.000-07:00

She is 49, with about a week left to turn 50, and just won the mixed doubles event at the US open. What an amazing physique. In other news I got back to the gym ,yesterday, after a week of being sick and got in a ligth workout. Today I will hopefully spend more time on the eliptical, should get in a good 1/2 hour on it.
If you are ever around the arab world don't be surprised if someone gives you the air kiss. It's quite a common way of greeting each other. You peck someone on the cheek once on the right, once on the left and, depending on the part of the arab world, once on the left or right. Men hold hands quite often and it is not considered weird at all to have an area demarcated as men only in a shopping mall. In a completely male dominated society with all its opposition to homosexuality I think it would be very easy for someone of that sexual preference to survive in Saudi Arabia. All you would have to do is tame the extragavent sense of dressing. Actually, you know what? Seeing the way some of the guys dress here, even an extragavent sense of dressing wouldn't give you away.
For those of you who don't know where all of that came from, I found out that Navaratilova is a lesbian. You can't really hold that against anyone, I know a family friend that was born gay. When everyone was around 10 years old and playing football on the streets, he was inside playing with his "action figures". He is now in Canada studying fashion design. Some people are just born that way.

o-sama

2006-09-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

Did anyone ever realize that in Japan people refere to Osama as Mr. O ? The word Sama means Mister. I think the next Bond movie should be Mr. O, anyways I thought I should share my only original thought of the day.

sick

2006-09-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

For the past few days I have been sick, and so predictably there were no posts during this period. I promise to make up this lack of communication soon with a joke my dad told me. I try to post it tommorow.

Plans for today

2006-08-24T00:58:00.000-07:00

Parents are in Dammam for a day, brother and sister went with them so I have the house to myself for most of the day. Once I get back from work I will have to take care of myself. Scary thought, last time I had the house to my self I was in high school and had my high school exams comming up. Unfortunately I don't know enough people in Riyadh to throw a house party so I will probably grab lunch at Faisaliyah or maybe I will go to Kingdom towers... Interesting I just considered having lunch at the two tallest buildings in Saudi Arabia talk about your high tastes. There is a restaurant on the 11th floor of Faisaliyah towers that has a pretty good lunch buffet and it's cheap, considering the location. So I will go to lunch, grab a bottle of orange juice for dinner and spend the day indoors. I might have to take a few family friends out today but I really don't want to. I promised to take them out yesterday so I guess I should. The rest of the day will be spent with T.V. and the computer. I might do a little reading, but I won't kid myself, compared to the computer reading comes in a solid 2nd. T.V. comes in 3rd, but the ability to turn off your brain while watching T.V. is great and you can control it like nothing else on the planet. You have a remote that changes channels, controls the volume, can turn it off, turn it on and do lots more. I mean who invented the remote? Such an amazing thing... I wonder if we can make something like that for people too. It would be nice to mute some people or just turn down the contrast so you can hear them but won't have to see them.. Or better yet turn them off and turn them on when you are good an ready to deal with them. This song kicks ass Trans-Siberian Orchestra feat. Metallica - Carol of the Bells. I know it's a Christmas song ,but if you are in NY during the winter and stop by Rockefeller Center there is a place, I think it's Macy's but I might be wrong, that has a light show co-ordinated with that song. It was very cool, not to mention cold, last winter when I played host to friends who came to NY and we went there almost every day. I love tuna, I used to hate it before I went to Chicago but after eating it for about 6 years I have come to love it. So even though I am in Saudi Arabia where all the meat is supposed to be halal, Muslims eat halal food just like Jews eat Kosher, I still find myself getting tuna sandwitches everywhere. Sad but true, Tuna is my new chicken. But I have to get my protien from somewhere and being a vegetarian is not an option in an Indian family. If you saw the movie "My big fat greek wedding" I would like to draw your attention to the part of the movie where the girl tells her aunt that her husband to be is a vegetarian and so, he doesn't eat meat. The aunt says, what do you mean you don't eat no meat? Everyone in the house looks at him like he is an alien. Something similar would happen in my house if I ever tried to turn vegetarian. Btw, if sea food is so good for you why are whales so big?

Pet peeves

2006-08-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

So I know I hate people that smoke in a 5 mile radius of me, but I just found another thing I find exceedingly annoying. People that wear dark sunglasses in buildings are annoying me to death right now. I don't know why that bothers me, it doesn't harm me like second hand smoke does, it just erks me for some unknown reason. I go the the Faisaliyah towers for lunch almost everyday. Its got the closest food court to my office so I go there very often, soo much so that I can find Panino's sandwitch place blind folded and order a tonno (Tuna sandwitch) without moving my mouth. I can do this because the guy looks at me and automatically knows what to make, I get the same thing everyday. So the latest trend amongst men and women at Faisaliyah is to wear dark sunglasses inside during lunch time. WHY ?? It serves no logical purpose indoors. Are their pupils so sensitive to light that they can't even take a little bit of light? And even if it were so, it would be for one or two people folks, not the entire female & male population in one go. Could be that I am being very insensitive to their sensitivities.. Right then of to meet a high school bud.

Rascism

2006-08-16T05:05:00.000-07:00

I was born in Saudi Arabia, though I am not Saudi. My parents were Indian and so I am Indian as well. I wasn't given the option of choosing my nationality at birth, none of us are. For the rest of our lives , usually, we are branded by the color of our passports along with the color of our skin. I have lived in Saudi Arabia for the majority of my life, so I guess I can say I have earned my opinion on the place and the people that live here.
Based on a lifetime of experience I have this to say about the people: Blah (This is a generalization, some of them are actually quite nice)
This blog posting stems from what happened yesterday at the gym. Usually during prayer time, Muslims pray 5 times a day, some of the gym lights are turned off. This encourages people to come and pray. After finishing the evening prayers my brother and I decided we would finish our billiards game before we went down to the pool. Just as I started lining up the qeue to try and corner a ball one of the desk guys, there seem to be about 6-7 of them for some reason when 1 or 2 would do, started shouting at one of the workers. The worker just happened to be Bangladeshi and the guy screamed and yelled at him for about a minute for turning on the ligth 10 seconds too early. I was too dumbstruck to say or do anything. He made fun of his Arabic accent when the guy said "Aasif", sorry in Arabic. When I say shouted and screamed I mean public humiliation, the gym was full of people and this guy was shouting his head of just because the other guy wouldn't say anything in response. What an as**ole. I should have stepped in but I didn't. Next time, if there is a next time, I plan to step in between and just stare at him. If he throws the first punch, great! I am a customer after all and the customer is always right.
In other news I have started programming in php, not that bad really, I think I like the way it declares variables.

Rest in peace Nikunj

2006-08-13T03:38:00.000-07:00

A friend from IIT and a great guy passed away a few days ago. I just found out, he was a great guy. Excellent sense of humor, quite around new people but once you got to know him he was a blast. He made short quick comments which threw everyone into fits of laughter, played poker, laughed hard, played halo with the rest of the guys and was amazing to everyone. It's really sad, we don't think of our mortality often and when something like this happens you think life isn't assured. No one knows what will happen tomorrow, or today for that matter. He was killed by a drunk driver in Houston. It's surprising how something that happens half the world away can so completely affect you and make you realize how people who you are not even in contact with are still connected to you. I had not talked to him in about eight months or so and I still feel a sense of loss and sadness. I guess it's good to know that he had a happy life. It's sad that he had to go when he had just graduated and had his whole life ahead of him.. Rest in peace Nikunj, it was great knowing you. I will pray for you & that God gives your loved ones the strength to bear the loss.
Think about it, the loss of one person can affect you so much, what happens when you loose your entire family? I am talking about Lebanon and Palestine here. Hopefully there will be peace in the world, life is short enough without young people dying in war.
This post was originally supposed to be about how Pepsi is cheating everyone with the diet Pepsi 1 calorie thingy but I am in no mood to post about that now maybe later.

A lull in life

2006-08-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

I'm not completely sure if that is how you spell the word lull, but I don't really care. Been a little boring around here recently, there really isn't much to do in Riyadh.
About every 2 months or so I try to take a week off from working out, that week is approaching rapidly and I must say I am looking forward to it. My body has started to show signs of aging, pains and aches don't go away as quickly as they used to and my legs are starting to complain from all the running. It will be nice to be a couch potato for a week. Though I don't enjoy watching TV too much, my family tends to watch the news all the time and that is pretty depressing right now, the other two alternatives would be to play on the computer, and yes at 25 I still play computer games, or read a book. Reading a book would be the mature alternative but I try to stay away from things that might make people think I am mature. No sense trying to be mature before you are ready for it. I dreamt about skiing yesterday night, I have only been skiing once in my life and I loved it. It was a three day trip and I spent the first day on my back side slipping and slidding down the "bunny slope" it was only after a friend, thank you Basel, convinced me to get on the greeen slope that I finally learnt how to do it right. Getting the tickets for the trip was an experience I will never forget. It was a school sponsored trip at IIT and me and some friends stood in a line all night, outside the student hall, on one of the coldest night in Chicago. We played UNO, had a soccer match, built an igloo and slept underneath the HUB, the name of the old student activities centre, stairs. Despite the misery of being out during the coldest night that year we had an awesome time. It goes to prove that even the worst conditions can be made bearable and even enjoyable by the presence of a few good friends.
I don't think I have any photos from the event but I think it would be cool if I could find some to post here. I will ask around and see if I can find some.

Syed's guide to surviving a Desi wedding

2006-08-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

These past few days I had the good fortune of being able to attend the wedding celebration of an old school friend. Seeing the wedding and searching for a guide online made me realize there are no really good guides online on how to survive a Desi wedding. First though lets start with the word Desi, it means anyone from the Indian subcontinent. Even though the governments might be at odds with each other, the people of the subcontinent have a lot of similarities. For example every wedding has rice, lots and lots of rice. At a regular wedding there is more rice than there is fissile material in all the nuclear war heads in the United States.

So how do you survive a Desi wedding? Well it depends on what you mean by survive, there is no hope for the bride and groom, they are treated like prized monkeys in a zoo. Everyone takes pictures with them, feeds them to death and analyzes their choice of clothing/accessories etc(which btw the bride and groom have no choice in) till its 4 am in the morning and the bride and groom can't sit straight anymore and the fake smile is etched into their face forever. So my goal at the wedding was to be as self effacesive as possible, I didn't want to draw any attention to myself so I situated myself as close to the groom as possible. This strategy works rather well, the closer you are to the centre of attention the farther you are from it yourself. If you don't want to be force fed till you feel like you are about to explode in a fury of rice and sweets you have force feed others. If you sit around silently someone will come around and put a feeding tube down your throat and pass rice into you till it backs up and flows out of the tube. This actually isn't too far from the truth, A Desi wedding means gaining about 5lbs in one night, and then there is the singing, god help us. The women folk start singing old wedding songs, these songs have been around for about as long as anyone can remember and have been passed from generation to generation at weddings. After the course of many millennia something that, in all probability, started out as a simple song has ended up becoming a full orchestral ensemble with a choir group an everything.
I survived this one and many people asked when I would be getting married, with the looks of horror the poor groom gave me at being made to sit through a 100 photo sessions I don't think I will be doing anything quite that stupid anytime soon, why put your self through all that trouble?. I plan to elope, that is I plan to elope as soon as I have someone to elope with. Probably go live me life out in Timbuktu or some thing.

In other news some one rear ended my car. It’s like when your little finger gets hurt and you try your best to avoid injuring it further. You usually end up hurting it in every possible way.(ohh the little bunny couldn't possibly hurt me if I pet it, but noo, it has bite the little finger) The more careful I try to be with my car the more I seem to scratch it.

weigth...

2006-07-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

So just like everyother person in Saudi I'm starting to get fat, my weight is 77 kgs now. That's about 170 lbs and I used to be around 150 lbs at one point(just a year ago actually). My goal then is to get to 75kgs by the end of the month. Don't get me wrong alot of the gain has been muscle but there is still a fat component that I need to get rid of. Anyways I have decided from now on I will post one picture with all my posts. Something funny, I'm copying the style of one of blogs I frequent. I will post her link soon. Anyways lets see, the weekend was good, I am getting better at swimming and work is going alright. I took Bill, my chinese friend from work, around riyadh over the weekend and he wanted to see the inside of a mosque so that was our last stop before we called it a day. Hopefully next weekend I will get a chance to play basketball, Bill has a ball court in his compound and it has been about a year since I last played. War in Lebanon, America giving Israel precision guided bombs while giving Lebanon humanitarian aid is hypocritcal. Am I the only one who remembers that it is a facr that the American Indians recieved blankets with small pox? The lesson should be plain for everyone to see. anyways I need to start working, its too early in the morning to be ranting on like this.

My car....

2006-07-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

I just found out that my car got it's first scratch yesterday :-(
It was all I could think about for about half the day yesterday, then I found out it was my Dad's fault and then suddenly I stopped worrying about the scratch completely. I wonder why that happened? kind of weird anywho. My car is not a virgin, in a matter of speaking, anymore. In a way it is a relief as I can now enjoy driving without worrying about scratching it. I saw Kumar and Harold go to whitecastle, again, yesterday night. I laughed harder than last time I saw it because I can now relate to some of the things these guys go through. Perhaps the most disturbing thing I can relate to is listening to really feminine music in the car with a bunch of guys. Happened in florida, I won't say more. Don't want to embarass anyone.

the new car

2006-07-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

So the upside is that it is a very nice car, the downside is that the cd player on it sucks really really bad. It can hold just one cd and it skips everytime the car goes over a small bump.
Have a headache and need to get out of work.

Swimming

2006-07-23T06:08:00.000-07:00

I still suck at swimming but I found out that I can stay afloat without too much effort. If I try to get from point A to point B in the swimming pool it's like a mini hurricane just hit. Leave me in the pool long enough and more water will be outside then inside the pool.
So how do you know if you have a decent workout? well your muscles will be slightly sore the next day, and I am happy to report that my muscles are sore today. Its the nice kind of sore, you know they will get bigger tommorow if they are sore today. Don't get me wrong it's not all about size, but size does count.
I get to pick up my new car today, wish me luck and pray that I don't crash it on the way back home. Such nice thoughts, no wonder my world if so bright and cheerful.
Do you know what is the common element with all your problems? You.
Great thought to start the day with. Anyways gotta go pick up the car. I will post pictures of the car soon.

triathlon plans

2006-07-22T00:02:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, since I had not recovered from the strained calf muscle completely, I decided the best way to get some excercise was to go swimming. About 3 minutes into the swim I realized my younger brother was about 10 times better at than me. I spent about half an hour swimming and since I suck at it, most of that time was spent catching my breath. I really need to improve my efficiency. My problems are that I don't breath correctly, I don't use my legs enough and I waste too much energy trying to keep my head above the water. So needless to say at the end of each lap I am gasping for breath. I really do want to get better at it since one of my goals in life is to take part in a Triathlon which involves a significant swimming portion. So here is my workout plan for this week.
Saturday - swim 20 minutes & weights (upper body, back & biceps)
Sunday - bike 30 minutes & weights (lower body, quads & thighs)
Monday - run 5 km & weights (upper body, chest and triceps)
Tuesday - rest day.
Wednesday -swim 30 minutes & weights (upper body, shoulders and calves)
Thursday - bike 20 mintues.
Friday - long run 10 km.
I will try to post on how each of these events go. In asian families, as a general rule, being fat is a sign of being healthy. Being thin is seen as a sign of being weak. We had guests come over this weekend and they started the dinner conversation with "wow you have become weak". Now I really wouldn't mind someone saying " you have become thin" but just assuminig I am weak is annoying. I didn't really mind it soo much but they kept going back to the same topic and my dad decided to join them and then it really started getting on my nerves. Then everyone was surprised when after dinner I excused myself and went back to my computer game, world of warcraft. Lovely escape from the real world. Books, computers games, music and the gym. Aslong as I have these I can live in Saudi Arabia.
The business manager came over and took my pencil. He was explaining some new service and borrowed my pencil to draw a diagram. All I could think of during his rant was "He wants my pencil". At the end of it he said "Please let me know what you think by the end of the day". I have absolutley no idea what he wants me to get back to him about and I want my pencil back. I have other pencils but that one was my favorite. I will sneak into his office and get it back. Stay tuned for further developments.

to add to a bad week --- something great

2006-07-19T06:23:00.000-07:00

to top of a bad week my parents bought me a car. Well I pay for half of it but it's still very cool. I will soon own my first car. It would be called a Chevy Impala in other parts of the world. Here, in Saudi Arabia, it's called a Chevy Lumina.
I wrote about 3 business proposals this week, I am getting better at it so it will take less time but I have a big one to do next week. They want to see 30 pages for this next one. It's not like I don't want to work but I expect to be told to do it in a proper way. I expect a proper working enviornment. So one of these day's when someone says something in a particularly rude way I'm going to say if you don't like how I did it why don't you do it. 8)

to add to a lousy week

2006-07-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

I sprained my left calf and now I have to hobble around. I need to get back into SHAPE !!!!! and I'm stuck at work doing another proposal.. Sometimes it gets a little frustrating. I would love to have had the chance to run that half marathon on staten island I had worked my way upto 12 miles over 8 weeks but now I have to start all over again after this injury and start at 20 minutes on the treadmill. Well even though I will be hobbling on one foot I will still go to the gym today and workout. Upper body ofcourse. I will really be glad when this week is over.

venting

2006-07-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

working overtime without having the luxury of over time pay. I have a big flaw, I need to atleast feel like my boss knows more then me otherwise I loose all respect for the work I'm doing. Which seems to be the case right now. Half my implementation plan for a project was crossed out and they expect me to complete it on my own time. I don't think this post can truly capture my frustration or my anger at being forced to work on something boring and mundane.. oh well the sooner I get done the sooner I get out of here.

keeping it short

2006-07-13T00:25:00.000-07:00

It's really hard for me to keep my blogs short. I mean once I start writing it's hard to stop. All these wonderfully weird thoughts keep popping in to my head. This will be my attempt to write a short blog.
Yesterday I went to bed right after getting my second world of warcraft charachter upto level 21 and yes, I am a nerd. It was around 12:00 am, got up around 7.30 am and got ready for work. worked till 4.30 pm got back home. went straight to the gym. Spent a good two hours sweating, came back had dinner and got on the computer again. Watched Hood Winked and got to bed.
If I keep this routine up for too long my mind will probably melt...

high school friends & the brown beard

2006-07-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

I met up with a couple of high school friends yesterday, had a great time reminiscing about high school, soccer and life in general. The general consensus was that growing older would be alot better if we could all work in the same company where we could slip out of a meeting and go play soccer. My friends seemed to be more interested in why my beard was a dark shade of brown and if I had colored it then anything else I did in the past 6 years since high school. I never have and hopefully never will color the beard. The brown color came about by itself, I never did a thing to it. So I have to admit I look kind of weird . Black hair and brown beard.
Speaking of soccer, the french are in the finals ..... crash and burn fifa, crash and burn.
I fell asleep on the sofa in the womens living room on saturday after work(in my house), I woke up to the sound of my newphew repeating the same word, "Ian" his version of Iron, about 50 times. Why is it that little kids can repeat the same word over and over again without tiring of it ? My newphew calls me Paapi instead of Safi,which is kind of like my nick name at home. The funny thing is that paapi means sinner in Hindi. So my newphew calls me a sinner, I wonder if he knows more then he is letting on.
If there is one thing I hate more then people who smoke it's people who smoke in lavatories. If smokers should be shot on sight people who smoke in lavatories should be sent to a death camp. This death camp would have no cigaretes and therefore I would enjoy watching them suffer without cigarates. The death camp would be a 5 star hotel which had rooms only on the 50th floor and no elevator. The other 49 floors would have large posters of people smoking.
back to work.

4th of july and more random thoughts

2006-07-05T00:58:00.000-07:00

So I just bought a new book titled "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" Great book so far, even though it is about grammar. Has anyone ever wished they could capture all their thoughts and put them away for review later? I mean wouldn't it be great if we could get a short list of our best thoughts from the day? I think this should be made into an IPRO project at IIT. The IIPRO projects at IIT, my college, were anything but interesting. For one I had to sit in class and come up with a market research for my professors consulting company. Yay ! how exciting,

Ever wonder if there was more to life, I mean you spend most of your childhood years looking forward to being a grown up because it was would be so cool, but now that I'm at 25 I spend time thinking about how cool it was being a kid. The human condition I guess, sad huh. I wonder if I will ever be satisfied with what I have. There is almost always a reason to complain, always a reason to be sad.

On the bright side of things I will be running 7km's today. I finished harry potter and the half blood prince. Here is a spoiler for everyone, Harry is going to die in the next book.

Enough ranting, a friend of mine was watching Monty Python and the holy grail, man I wish I were back in Chicago. Though if I had my friends here I wouldn't really miss Chicago. I have always thought it was the people and not the place. NY was good because I learnt how to be alone without being lonely. As long as I had a good book, good music, choco puffs I was fine with being alone. What do chinese fire crackers, chinese beer and hot dogs have to do with American Independence day? What does the a bunny and colored eggs have to do with easter & cruxifiction? What do WMD's have to do with the invasion of Iraq?

Back to work... I am in the middle of a political battle at work between the marketing manager and assistant general manager, each trying to prove to the general manager that they are more vital to the organization. I don't really know if I care to take sides on this one. I would have preferred a good old fashioned duel between them myself. Take 10 steps turn and fire. Last man standing is more important to the organization because the other is well.. not around to complain anymore.

2006-06-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

wikipedia is blocked in saudi arabia, in the words of chris rock "what kind of ignorant a** sh*t is that?" Why would you block wikipedia ? why? why? why ?
I wonder if my blog will get blocked because I'm complaining about them blocking about stuff. That would be like catch 22. They would say change your blog, and I would say I need to access it to change it and they would say change it and we will let you access it. Sounds just like something they would say too....
Anywho brazil is through to the next round, not very convincing but they still got through. I hope they crush the french in the next round. I have had some bad experiences with people from france... and praying for Brazil to win will be my way of getting back at them ... Muwahahaha.
Haven't been to the gym in 2 days so today Im going to do 3 days worth of sweating. If I don't write again for a long time its because I broke my hands at the gym today. I bought a pair of swrimming trunks so on thursday I plan to go swimming. Other then that it was my brothers bday to day so happy bday bro. Hope you'r next 18 years are better then the last 18. I mean lets face it, who would want to run around in there own crap (dipers) puke on themselves and have me for an elder brother. Hopefully the elder brother thing won't change but other things will.
Which brings me to the next random thought have you noticed how diapers can be called pampers? tissue paper can be called kleenex ? coke for softdrink ? sharpie for a marker? weird huh... I wonder if I'm missing stuff in that list. If you have any more please feel free to leave a comment. alright back to perling.

higher standards

2006-06-26T04:24:00.000-07:00

So I have been trying to figure out why I have such a hard time making new friends in saudi arabia, I think it comes down to one thing basically. I am very choosy about who I talk to and who I don't talk to. An example to illustrate the problem, my brother goes to the same gym as me, infact I have been going there for about 2 months longer then him. In 1 month he makes 5 friends in the gym while I don't know a single person at there. I think I know what it is, at IIT I had such great friends and people to hangout with that now I automatically assume no one will live upto those standards. Darn you IIT for spoiling me with great friends. Have I become an elitist? When I got to Chicago everyone there was like me, trying to fit in and find new friends. That was the great thing about the freshman floor and part of the reason I always choose to be an ra for freshman. We all went through the same things, shared the same sense of humor, saw the same movies.. it's hard to find replacements who share all those things with you. So maybe it's not elitism but rather a cultural thing. I would like to sit down with someone and watch family guy and not have to explain why Stewie hates his mother, or why marge has blue hair. Is that asking too much ? I want someone who would understand why Chicago Bulls will be the only team I will support in basketball no matter how many times they loose in the playoffs. well enough of my self pity back to porgramming in perl and figuring out why it won't see my directory properly.

Pilgrimage to makkah

2006-06-24T03:23:00.000-07:00

So I never wrote about this but about 3 weeks ago me, my bro & sis went to Makkah for Umrah (short pilgrimage) My parents were supposed to join us but their flight information, for lack of a better explanation, got mixed up.
We took the bus, I prefer riding by bus since I have had enough of planes. I have spent about 12 hours on a flight once and I don't think I will ever miss anything about sitting on the tarmac for an hour with a kid crying his lungs out sitting next to me. So about the pilgrimage.
We got to Makkah no problems, it was a fairly decent trip my sis sat besides me and my bro sat a few seats up. (He was supposed to sit right in front of us but he moved to accommodate another family, such a gentleman) The trip was uneventful and I bought a national geographic with details about the world cup and Mormon life. Interesting stuff. Eventually half way through the 8-9 hour trip I took out my gmat book and started reading up on the gmat exam I plan to take for my MBA. With about 2 hours left I finally got serious about the pilgrimage and started reading a book on the proper procedure for Umrah.
Here are some facts about pilgrimage. The bus stops at a place called Meeqat and we get of there to make the intention for pilgrimage and offer prayers before we begin the actual pilgrimage. We also shower and change into an Ihram. An Ihram, for a guy, consists of two pieces of white cloth. It has to be absolutely plain. No stitching or design of any kind is permitted. It's a weird experience once you shower and put that on, you are transformed, you now have none of you fancy clothes or ways to distinguish yourself from other people. All the individuality that modern culture so stresses on vanishes. One of the first lessons you must learn here is that all are equal in the eyes of god and that no one is better then another person because of color, race, sex, creed or nationality. We then offered a prayer of intention and Fajr(early morning) prayers.
With all this done we returned to the bus which, much to my relief, was still there. I have this weird paranoia of being left behind by a bus. Must stem from some deep psychological problems but that’s besides the point.
So we got on the bus and everyone starts chanting:

"Here I am, O Allah, at Thy service. Here I am, Thou art without partner, here I am. All Praise and blessings are thine, and Dominion! Thou art without partner!"

it sounds a lot better in Arabic of course. Eventually everyone in the bus is repeating this saying this loudly and we reach our designated hotel. We drop of our things get a quick bite to eat and start Umrah in the Haram ,the holy mosque. The mosque consists of 2 levels and a third level that is opened only in Ramadan ,the month of fasting, and Hajj. The first steps consist of going around the Kabah, the big black box you all have seen in pictures. We consider it to be the house of god, no not literally. We make seven rounds of it and at the end of each round we say " god grant us in this world the very best and in the afterlife the very best and save us from hell fire". The best part about this prayer is that I feel I am praying for the whole world since the word us is used and no one every specified what us exactly stands for. I take it to mean for all of humanity. I always make a short prayer for peace all over the world when I pray and did so during the Umrah as well. I usually try remember my friends, family, relatives the poor and the rich of the world when I pray, this time was no exception. Any who the next step was going up and down safaa & marwah 7 times. I will post on the significance of this in another post hopefully. But we finally get done and I go to get my head shaved & my bro gets a fancy cut. We are supposed to get our hair cut after completing umrah but before we remove our ihrams. My sis just takes a scissor and cuts a piece of her herself. She doesn’t really trust me or Saad, my younger bro, with a scissor. Hey, what’s the worst that can happen ? I mean it's wasn't like she drooled on my shoulder all the way from Riyadh to Makkah and I wanted revenge. Actually she did drool on my shoulder.....
alright so long story short we spent the next two days in Makkah praying and eating , there being plenty of time for both in makkah. We took the long trip back, I was sick but happy for the next week. Apparently walking around in the hot sun for four hours with no hair on your head and eating ice cream can make you sick, who would've thunk it? alright that’s enough for now back to "work"

parents

2006-06-21T05:48:00.000-07:00

So after parent bashing in my last post, here is a gushy mooshy one about parents.
Dad & mom have always been the glue in my & my siblings life. They keep us held together, when they are gone who will keep tabs on everyone and make sure we actually have a family life? I mean they had the same thing while their parents were around they had a place where the entire family would gather. Now its like everyone for themselves which is what it will eventually come down to for all of us. It will be a very sad and lonely day when their generation passes on as all generations eventually do.
So work has been looking up a bit though I hate having to deal with nepotism. In Saudi Arabia its mostly who you know and not what you know. To hell with qualifications and ability, if you are related to me you get the job. All this resentment stems from my current predicament.
I was told to use a specific software company, the company just happened to be related to my boss's family. The contact person can't communicate in english. (in any meaningful way atleast) Here is sample, I had asked if they had a standard software requirement specification elicitation document.
what do you mean...do you mean if we have any requirement specifications for the system??
If yes No... Just UNIX or any BSD system with web server (ie apatche) and php core installation for unix...avaiable at...
God help me, I'm supposed to explain software requirement specification to them now. Here is a link to site I will probably use.
http://www2.ics.hawaii.edu/~johnson/413/lectures/5.2.html
Its a good site and it more or less follows pressman's software engineering 5th edition.
enough ranting, back to work.

2006-06-13T02:36:00.000-07:00

Havent posted in a long time again, work has gotten to the point where I want to shoot myself, and no it isnt because Im very busy its because I dont really have anything to do right now. I have been talking to this guy on face book about religion, he is one of those atheists folks. He also happens to be a philosophy major. Presonally I feel philosophy is a waste of time and anyone who takes it as a major has
1.No talent in science, math or anything that helps make the world a better place.
2.A tendency to talk too much
3.A high probability of being a raging drunkard by the time he is 30.
The best thing philosophy has ever given us was the idea the watchowski brothers took from Descartes for Matrix 1. The whole, what if someone is tricking the mind idea.
Anywho, work is pretty boring, social life is non existant ( I am in saudi arabia after all), my soccer team in the fantasy league is doing alright (93rd %tile) and I havent blogged in a while. So whats up with my life ? Im frustrated at my parents, can't wait to get out of saudi arabia and can't wait to reclaim my life in ny. Not that it was much of a life. I really like the idea of living alone, no hastles to deal with not family problems. Everyone around me seems to be obsessed with marriage. I mean there are worse things then getting married and I would pick it over being boiled alive in tar, but it would be a difficult decision. I mean you want the right balance of things. Someone who has looks, (not miss universe but something that is atleast attractive and wont scare you when you wake up in the morning), likes the same things you like, is easy to get along with, has a personality ... and when your parents get involved everything usually goes to hell anyways. I mean do you want your parents to choose who you will live the rest of your life with ? I mean I dont even like my mom's choice of kitchen cutlery... Should I let her choose my life partner? Maybe I should pretend to be gay... but then again I would be a very very bad gay person. With the exception of Matthew Walker gays are supposed to be clean and care about their looks. Willie walker was probably as messy as any straigth guy can get. eh, this blog is all over the place. oh well more to follow later I guess.

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2006-05-24T01:51:00.000-07:00

Blah blah and further more blah