The state

It just comes sneaking to your soul , it doesn't leave a place it just keeps propagating inside your mind , it captivates you with its purity yet devilish attitude , it gives you shiver all the time and reproduce destructive thoughts inside your head , it produce the childish sound that we all hate and drum beats keep playing in your ears, it makes you not able to walk stamped in your place. It's your inner fear that can capture you or set you free.

Déjà vu

Déjà vu , (literally "already seen") is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. wikipedia

I was planning to start the topic with this definition and carry on writing but seems that the definition said exactly what i wanted to say , how many times do we have to keep repeating the same mistakes and ending up stuck in the same memory and same pain. It's at those moments that you feel like 'hey' i felt like this before i was stuck in this dilemma before or that same rock had hit my heart before. In my case it's not a Déjà vu  it's just me repeating the same mistakes.

The parking slot

After a long busy day at work he's back home carrying on his burden all the traffic jams he passed through , now he's facing one last test .. finding a place to park his car. The journey for searching could take him from 1 minute and at this moment he could go and pray prayers of gratitude to God and it could take him 1 hour and then he'd go and curse the day he bought the car. He tried to be one of those luxurious people who buy parking slots on their own , but he couldn't afford it and all he could do is just envy them; carving out part of the street with their money. Some people just park their car outside the street like a street dog that lost its way; careless of the flying danger that could happen to their car, but he couldn't do that to his lovely 'Juliette' , he couldn't stand to harm her or even give her the tiniest scratch , how could he do that.

He remembers his long story of suffering to buy 'Juliette' how he nearly started living on debt for few years to pay the installment , how buying a car was his first step towards the materialistic journey of life , how could he forget the first engine swoosh, the first smell of the air freshener , the first family ride, it just all seemed a perfect dream coming true, with the smell of the new furniture running through his nose and blowing his mind away. All these thoughts seemed so clear and now he can see he wasted 30 minutes, waiting for an angel from heaven to take away one of those cars; so he can park 'Juliette' close to his home, but sadly seemed that all angels already took all the parking slots.

After some time he moved to another part of his life and with each taken parking slot he started remembering all the chances he didn't take in life that could have made him .. maybe wealthier maybe happier or maybe satisfied , he remembered this job he didn't shoot for , he remembered the girl he left with a broken heart , he remembered how he was always too afraid to say 'Yes' while the easy word was always 'No'. He started realizing that all those taken parking slots could have made him a better un-fearful person , but in the end of the day he's back home tired and still left with no place to park his car.

An Alien Dream

I had once that weird dream , that i still clearly remember , i dreamed that a 'UFO' came to visit me by the balcony of my home with its big shiny front lights flashing the sky in-front of my eyes , i wasn't afraid at all from its light i felt as a hope is coming to grab me away , without any talk the Alien spaceship just uncovered its lips and without words the permission was clear , they wanted me on the ship. A mixture of feelings were there within me the only thing i wished for was to wish my family a goodbye but they didn't even want to grant me my final earthy wish. I just smiled to my home and i was flying away to ride on the ship waving goodbye to the home where i always lived, in complete joy and surrender.

I remembered this dream today and i really thought to myself why was i in complete happiness and surrender to the Alien decision to take me away from earth , why i wasn't afraid to be taken away from the land like a tree being chopped off its soil. Maybe i really don't belong here, maybe i needed a cinematic change to my life, maybe because i was ready to give up everything, just to reveal the secrets of the universe and  life in outer space, but i believe the most realistic answer was that maybe i thought i'd find real humans somewhere in outer space as this earth is becoming lately ......... A land full of Aliens.

The Train

 

Mal: I'll tell you a riddle. You're waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you; but you don't know for sure. But it doesn't matter. How can it not matter to you where that train will take you?
Cobb: Because you'll be together. 

 

This quote is from the movie Inception and this post has nothing to do with the movie , but for whatever reason i can't remove these words from my head lately.  The train The waiting The far away place The hope, Those make a perfect mix at this missing piece of puzzle in my life and to conclude my situation now.

I'm waiting for a train

Degree of freedom

In life we have two degrees of freedom , if i can't pass the first degree then i'll never be able to ask for the second 

Proud of ...

"I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again" Benjamin Button

Don't ask me why but these words are ringing in my head day and night lately and it's the most annoying words to ring in my head because I really don't know if am living a life that I should be proud of or not it's a deep feeling of losing directions.

And the more I try to understand what could make me proud I get even more lost in the thoughts directions and deep reasons of life and up-till now to be honest there's no clear indication of what could make me proud of myself. 

The butterfly

Oh sweet butterfly why won't you fly 

with no wings you can even try

you smile and rise in the morning shine

yet you can't reach the skies

Oh sweet butterfly why won't you fly

afraid to fall down or afraid to feel alive

life's gift for you is to live and try

and in the end of the day remember 

 you're a sweet butterfly.

الحقيقة وراء Noha elmasri

A beautiful day on Facebook sitting by my screen and this picture keeps popping to my right side menu.

And as they say curiosity can kill the cat sometimes i wanted to see who's this great person in history that deserve me to subscribe to her news feed so i go into the profile and here's the following 

Just few quick comments a person who has 277,000 subscribers and sorry to say 277,000 stupid person , how the hell does this mix combine with a simple logic .. she went to cairo university and then (sob7an Allah) she went to Alexandria university and at the end of the road she works at Google (google yemken beta3 el playstation) and everyone is happy subscribing to the account. And here's how you can make a successful account in Egypt all you can do is put the picture of a beautiful girl and "voila" the whole Egyptian love and subscribe , this is not the only example i can see many from the style of AUC girl who has thousands of subscribers and for the sake of humanity would a real girl allow this to her profile unless she's 1 of 2 things you name them.

And as i said i became more curious thanks to new technology of Google images actually you can search the web by using image shots .. so i searched by the image to know who's really Noha elmasri.

First result from the page of (فتيات وشباب يبحثون عن الزواج) and guess what with more than 20,000 subscribers you can check and see all pictures of Noha elmasri.

And i found another profile i think maybe that's the real Noha elmasri but this time she's called Farah Osama

I made all this topic not just for the sake of telling people not to subscribe to Noha elmasri or Farah Osama or maybe facebook would stop popping these stupid suggestions and whoever the hell that person is , but what i really wanted to point out is the main problem we're suffering here in Egypt within our community ... guys go get a life.

"تعالي معايا يا حلوة " Group

If any of you have seen the movie "رامي الاعتصامي " and even if you didn't, but i happen to live the same situation that the movie starts with a group of useless people sitting on their laptop and creating random groups to grab attention and finally Ramy the genius end up with the group name that unites the nation "تعالوا نغير النشيد"

Today i was sitting in the club just relaxing, when a bunch of kids came to sit beside me (kids of age : 10-13 max) and they had the very same conversation in the movie "we want to make a group on Facebook" and the suggestions were ringing in my ears and the group name they settled upon was "تعالي معايا يا حلوة" and they kept planning how will they do it and the point is am not telling you a fairy tale i kept just trying to stay focused but this is real a kid 10 years old want to use Facebook to make a group named "تعالي معايا يا حلوة"

So i left them were they were and decided to go back home and while riding the taxi , the taxi driver as usual kept ranting about the revolution and the current situation in Egypt and how life sucks and this country is a hopeless case. So all i did is asked him what do you think can fix this country .. he said its hopeless case we've been learning for all our lives that bad is good and good is bad don't tell me to change now. And after i stepped down the taxi  i remembered the group "تعالي معايا يا حلوة" and i thought if people can't change who they're now what about the next generation.

If our generation is a hopeless case what about the coming generation and they seem to be quite promising with making Facebook group like "تعالي معايا يا حلوة" , i may believe the country situation is worst than ever and maybe life ain't good but what i can't stand is our kids the coming generation falling into the same mistakes !

Let's work on giving them a reason to live and a dream to hope for and a goal to work upon so we won't end up having 10 year old kids talking about group "تعالي معايا يا حلوة"

أنا عايز أبقى تنين

I was searching through some LinkedIn profiles by just a random scan , to see the future of those who dare to dream and suddenly i started looking as well to people at my same age what they achieved so far in life .. some of those profiles were really inspiring to the extent i called some of them " تنين " and  تنين in English means dragon and for a day or two i've been thinking about how to become a  تنين .

The point is while thinking and thinking i reached the point where i really can't define the meaning of  تنين in English dictionary " Dragon : a mythical monster generally represented as a huge, wingedreptile with crested head and enormous claws and teeth,and often spouting fire" 


Which of-course has nothing to do with my case , but really who's the تنين is it the person who achieves career success or life success , is it that person who's miserable at work yet gain loads of money or is it the one who just lives a normal life happy married , is it that person who chose to get married early and build a family or is it that person who decided to travel the world in chase of a certificate or a better future.


Too many choices and too many roads and still the definition of تنين not defined maybe am sure that everyone is special in his own way , but the person who excels and uses what he's special at the most maybe this could be called a تنين. And until i can fine my road and make my choices and choose what i do really want and what does a تنين mean to me .. i'll still hope and got nothing but hope and pray "أنا عايز أبقى تنين"

The song

That maybe life is nothing more than a piano song

with its tunes going in your mind and moving along

That maybe the days that pass are nothing but some tunes

some we play and some we don't choose

Facebook visit

For personal and non personal reasons i was deactivating Facebook now for more than 20 days and today i decided to check what happened in my friends' virtual world and in 1 hour i was able to grasp all my friends news.

It feels really weird that all the news on Facebook for 20 days can be summarized in 1 hour instead of wasting 2 hours each day of nothing  trying to follow up with each news feed , so i decided to summarize what happened in my friends news feed.

Still the same some got engaged and other broke up , there are those who keep sharing the same stupid useless political stuff and those who enjoy being stunning and there are those who graduated and those who still share activities news charity non charity stuff , there are those who had their birthdays and a wall filled with posts , there are those who posted their photos abroad and those who posted their photos at work. There are those who wore veil because of Ramdan and those who set a journey to enjoy summer. There are those infinite amount of scenes from Ramdan shows and TV series (specially el kebeer awy) and there are those profile pictures with arabic words (suddenly we discovered the beauty of our language) and there are still people who talk about Hosny Mobarak trial .. and still there are those people that make you feel like you're nothing .. there are still those who were once your friends and no longer even care.

One of the things i did even-though am knowing i'm going to deactivate Facebook once again is un-friend 1 friend from my friend list and to tell you the truth i felt so relieved doing so.. some people just make you feel they no longer deserve to know them or remember you were once their friend.

And at the end of the visit, the world no longer feels the same in 20 days i can admit so many news happened in my friend list life but the thing for me those were just another 20 days in life , i know being away from Facebook made me miss many events , birthdays and life events. but to tell you the truth .. who cares anyway.

Composition

In school days , there used to be this crazy part of our language class where we write compositions it didn't matter whether it's Arabic or English but i remember i used to like writing those silly childish compositions.

While wandering with my thoughts today i remembered a composition i was really praised upon and it was about imagining life in the near future and i really can't remember more than the title but what i remember is that the teacher liked it alot. Don't know why today i had the thought that i really want to read this composition along side many other compositions that were lost either in rotten copy books or burnt out papers.

And i got this crazy idea that i want to share with any English - Arabic teacher , in the age of technology i urge you to ask your students to write compositions on free lancing basis , they should write the topics they want to talk about and not the cliche' compositions about pollution, peace and mother's day. Students should be given the chance to express their selves the way they want and more than that i urge teachers to ask their students not to write those compositions on paper or class copy book but let them post it in their own blogs , let's teach them how to post their thoughts and let the world hear it comment about it and even share it online.

In the age of digital revolution we're living, students writings can no longer be judged only by their teachers but the whole world around them , just give them the hint and let them go.

عادي

أنا مش فاهم حاجة و ماشي بكلم نفسي و بقول عادي 

يمكن أكون تايه أو يمكن أكون ماشي في حالي 

عادي

ماهو كل شئ في حياتنا بأة عادي

يا عم كبر يا عم نفد و كلو فالأخر فاني 

ناس بتتكلم و ناس بتسمع وأهو كلو فل أخر بيهاتي

و ده مش بس حالي ده حال كل اللي في البلد دي

و مالو برده هرجع وأقول عادي 

منا أصلي يعمل نفسي فاهم كل حاجة يعمل نفسي مش فاهم 

و فالحالة ده أو الحالة ده 

 هدعي ربنا إنو  يصلح حالي

Happy People

A work colleague once wrote on her Facebook status

"I miss being around happy people"

Isolation

What if i was born in another time and another place somewhere other than where i am, nothing but me and myself what if the environment change and the places mingled and everything that seemed real to me would seem different.

What if i was born in an isolated place .... would my life feel the same

Random

That maybe the word Random is the correct word to use at this part of my life , i can't believe how much i want to write these words right now , it's not the words themselves but the act of writing them and since lately every-time i try to write something i get mad of it and delete the post ... this time i won't and that's why i called the post Random, because actually this post is purely random.

The fact is that human beings are like strangers lost on their own world , the thing that really nudges my mind these days is the fact that we're such tiny creatures in this universe and i keep asking myself what's there in this vast space what do these creatures do and how do they communicate how do they act - react .. will there come a day we reach them and if so why did God create this huge universe really huge and how tiny we are i know that logic or human logic don't work with this but i really can't stop thinking about this thought of huge and small tiny and large -- universe and multi-verse.


The other fact is that life keeps going and the question that pops to my mind , why are we here and what's our ultimate goal i used to know answers for sure but now i just don't , few days ago i watched the movie sweet november and i felt exactly that am living keeanu reaves life this life which is only oriented about career as the goal of life .. and i really have the thought of quitting everything for just 1 year but am not brave enough to do it.


That maybe the word random is what express purely my life now just a sequence of random thoughts random hopes and random dreams ... but the most important part is feeling randomly lost.

Snapshots from the kingdom (The journey)

One of the things that Paulo Coelho  used to talk about in his books was the need for a journey to find yourself , in all his novels he always sets the main character on a travel journey and that journey is what makes him find or learn something either about himself or about someone else.

During the next few posts i'll write few snapshots from my (Ummrah) journey because at the end of the day its a journey to the most Islamic religious spot on earth and during this journey i passed through few snap shots that i need to keep in mind either for history or for others to learn from ... (To be continued)

Successful Friends

I had a total shift of paradigm when one of my work colleagues was talking about how life successful her friends are they're so successful with high degrees and working at the biggest multinationals worldwide.

So i asked her don't you feel jealous , she told me that it makes her feel stronger so i asked her why she told me

  "Your friends' success show you where your potential can lead you"

A day on YouTube (انت أنبوبة)

While watching a regular youtube video i found a featured video with the name (Rebecca Black , Friday) and let's go and watch the video then continue our talk.

So that's one of the worst things i ever heard but to be honest i can't get it out of my head but the fact is that thing which is considered one of the worst things i ever heard has 152,815,455  views and the most astonishing number is that it has  2,978,298 dislikes which means the whole world hates the video but that doesn't mean that Rebecca Black is no longer a star she now has a wikipedia page 

 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Black) and if you read on Wikipedia you'll find that the story of Rebecca is weird , somehow her mother paid 4000 $ to make this video.

Now moving on let's go to the Acapella world and watch this video.

So i thought that thing is impossible to do but seems another person knew it was possible meet Alaa Wardi a 24 year old Iranian living in Saudi Arabia who turned out to be a regional star in just 10 days his video uploaded on 17 May 20111 featuring Nancy Agram song getting 400 thousand views.

Quoting from his interview on Filgoal magazine.


"وتابع وسط ضحكات تخللت كلماته عبر المكالمة التي استمرت قرابة نصف ساعة "لم أكن معروفا قبل أسبوع، ولكن الآن صار هناك أكثر من 6000 معجب على صفحة Facebook الخاصة بي، كما لم يعد بإمكاني قبول طلبات صداقة جديدة بسبب الوصول إلى الحد الأقصى، حتى تليفوني لم يتوقف عن الرنين لأنني كنت أضع الرقم على صفحتي، ما جعلني أتلقى مكالمات من دول مختلفة".


And now at this stage of human history it can take just few mouse clicks to be someone entirely different no wonder a nation made its revolution using social media platform. 

25 to 2015

Yesterday i took my decision and decided to write down the 25 to 2015 and what that is are 25 things i want to do and feel before 2015 , i always thought that it's impossible to do those stuff but after writing them down on a piece of paper they seem so simple and so achievable.

There's always a point i always fight for and one of the few things i learnt in my small period in life , is that when you want something and you just write it on a piece of paper they do really come true and i have many examples from my life , but since at this moment i seem to have lost direction writing down new dreams on a piece of paper was the perfect thing to do.

Feeling Null

Null : In computer science and formal language theory, the empty string (or null string)^[1] is the unique string of length zero.  (wikipedia)


At some moments of our lives we reach a point where you no longer understand where you're going or what you're doing leaving your mind filled with thoughts and your life filled with people and your time full of things to do but in the end of the day when you sum all these values together all you get is an empty string... at this point you can proudly announce yourself as "Feeling Null".

Embedding facebook video (trial)

Thanks go to Mina Samir

A Tweet

I wanna be heard i wanna be felt i wanna be seen,

going to write my words and hide them in a simple tweet.

"Remember me in your day , remember me in your dreams"

Maybe a small tweet would replace words we can't speak,

we live in times where a simple mouse touch

can change so much.

Tweet about today, tomorrow and the words left unsaid,

a story begins and another one has to end.

It starts with a tweet with few characters blinking on the screen,

read them feel them .. maybe retweet them

.... but in the end ..

I wanna be followed i wanna be felt i wanna be seen

I want to write it all, even if all it takes is a simple tweet.

In the shadows

Hey , there you don't see me but am there

When the rain falls and everything seems to crumble down on your face

When the light seems to not shine and everything may seem going away out of line

Remember it's so dark before you turn on the light

You don't see me doesn't mean i don't care or lost my place

When you need me just call my name and you'll find me there

Without a sword or a superman scarf to wear

Cause I've always been there .... in the shadows

Customer Oriented Friendship

After starting work by few days there was a really important concept that i needed to learn , The concept is that you have to keep the customer who's having a network trouble ticket updated with his ticket status based on the severity of the ticket , for example if customer connection is totally isolated you have to give him an update in a certain time interval even if it was useless update but you have to always give him the update that makes him feel that you're working on his problem and you're doing something to make it resolved. I haven't felt the importance of this except when i was put in a situation where i was the customer to a certain company and they kept calling me every 30 mins and telling me "Hello Sir, we did this and that and your issue will be resolved within X minutes" even-though the info they provided was totally useless but it made me feel much better to know someone is caring just to give me an update.

When i had a thought today about my friends the ones i gained from life and college i totally thought of the point why don't we deal with friendship as a customer oriented product , why do we get too busy in life to even call and give updates about what's going on in each others' life why the ones that was called your best friends don't care just to give you weekly update about what's going on in their lives ,  I know friends that i don't know quite well but they care to ask every-now and then just to keep the bond between us established.
At this point of life specially after college i no longer need friends that base our friendship on memories we used to have but what i really want is a customer oriented friendship.

Starting all over again

It's my first blog post in a long time , not that long but for me it's too long i had too many thoughts but in a way or another for the first time of my life i was no longer able to hold my pen and write what i think .. call it distraction call it dissatisfaction call it whatever but there seemed to be something preventing me from doing so.

The words are the most powerful thing in human history , it's what define us the words we say and what define us even more the words we don't say, the words that can hurt someone if said or cause pain to either yourself or somebody else.

Through the past few days many things have changed in my life and in the life of many people in my country , i do really hope to change because that's the essence of life and the person who forgets that will live either lost or isolated.

Quoting from the curious case of benjamin button.

" I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. "

May God give me the strength to start all over again

Now They're free #Jan25

You found something else. In that cell you found something that mattered more to you than life. It was when they threatened to kill you unless you gave them what they wanted... you told them you'd rather die. You faced your death, Evey. You were calm. You were still. Now you're free.

Egypt Revolutionize

This blog post isn't written so i can share it to everyone , i actually wanted to write it in my private sections but who knows what tomorrow bring us and maybe this post do document something in my history that i need to share with the world.
===================================================================

On Jan 25 a group of Egyptian youth, (To be honest the people i know) said we'll walk the streets we'll make a difference and we'll no longer be silenced. We want peace we want justice we want freedom.

As for me Jan 25 was an ordinary day like any other day even some of my friends called me to go to protest and i was like "who cares anyway" i'll stay at home and watch TV and i'll turn twitter on and the online video streaming, back then everything seemed to be fine and normal yes normal and for a normal person like me normal is good enough.


" I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of the everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. "

On Jan 28 it's no longer normal nearly everyone i know is going to protest and is going out, there was a weird force taking them and to tell you the truth i wished i could go, and with everyone telling me he's going i envied him because for me this was the impossible to go and walk in a protest and who knows what could happen. The day ended by me running in the street searching for a way back home after work was cancelled and curfew was activated and i went home by a miracle.

Deep inside me at this very moment something was changing , it felt like a dream to just wake up the news channel and see Egypt and tanks in the street , the picture wasn't complete until one day i had to take my car and head to work , i felt a great pain when i saw the streets and tanks. It felt as if something really has changed and it all started with a little thought online, no one could have ever imagined it happening so fast.
I believe that the power of the person is to be able to identify his weakness and am able to do this now and that's why am writing this blog post.

To be honest, those people risked their lives and i mean really risked their lives some where injured others were killed and actually they didn't care, their message was louder than people like me and any other person who enjoyed being normal. It's because they believed in something and the quote that say you must have something you could die for .. and those people - people in #Tahrir - have something to die for. All they deserve is my deepest respect and my deepest regret that am not one of them , they moved something inside me with them being there whether today or tomorrow or any other day. I'm not one of them and never will be but maybe someday i'll be given the chance or maybe take the chance to do something good for this country.

And as many people including me argue with protesters that we should stop protests and get a negotiation phase because Egypt deserve it and i do still insist on this opinion, In the end it'll always be my opinion the opinion of the normal who enjoys being normal. The people who started it all are the ones who shall negotiate believe and break free.

"More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words - they are perspectives."

Where's my shoe ?

Have you ever stopped by yourself in the middle of the street and asked yourself where's my shoe. I remember i used to have this dream of walking bare feet in the street and it always woke me up in bad mood i never understood the meaning of this dream and never will be because some thoughts in our head can't be explained.

But can you ask yourself what if this happen, you actually find yourself in the street with no shoe, how would it feel and how embarrassing would that be .. just think of it for a moment and continue reading.

Now, they always have the saying put yourself in others shoe to see them more clearly or understand the situation more clearly but what about my shoe has no one asked what's its size color or even make did i choose it or someone else did so for me .. am i wearing the right shoe for the right journey or i got the first shoe available to wear .. what if it doesn't suit me or looks nice in my feet what if i got lost with it.

Maybe sometimes in life while running in the middle of the noisy streets and the angry voices and sparkling cars. You have to stop for just one moment .. and ask yourself where's my shoe because maybe you lost it along the road.