Thought Clouds
The Digital Bender

So here I am back in Jordan, and I find my self immediately adapted to the moods of living here. Crazy is the new definition of oil prices in Jordan. But these prices lead me to believe that Jordanians are complaining more out of habit than anything else. I mean people are still driving their cars and scooters/bikes are no where to be seen. One positive side to this oil crisis is that my trusty old Toyota Tercel is now worth significantly more than it did 5 years ago. Thanks be to God, it seems I am making money on everything these days. Even by accident. I will start looking for work/job soon. Due to a long bumpy road from Doha to Amman, my furniture is in dire need of a good carpenter. Once that is sorted out I need to sit down and think about Wi-Tribe, UMAX, Zain DSL, Orange ADSL ...etc. Until then, I will try to keep these nuggets of blog posts coming through for my few loyal fans. (bas balash). PS: The problem with driving in Jordan is not that traffic laws are too lenient. It...

Yelsmin Grunge , originally uploaded by LotusGem . This is my daughter Yelsmin. I was not looking through the camera when I took this, I was talking to Yelsmin and resting the camera on my hand to get a more natural expression from Yelsmin. It's post processed in Photoshop for a grunge effect. I found this lying around in my e-Folders and decided to play around with it and publish it. I got the frame a number of tips from spraguelab.blogspot.com/2006/05/come-chat-tonight.html

Just pissed at some work people. How can someone claim to have read 10 technical documents between 30-100 pages each in one work day?!! ITS NOT A NEWSPAPER!! You need to understand what you are reading!!

It's summer of 2000. June in fact. I am in Doha, and I am calling my manager at the time (Sadek) about an anomaly in the server software. But that's not the point. The point is, it was about 1:30pm, which is lunch/rush hour, and I am cruising on the D-Ring road taking one roundabout after the other effortlessly. Skip ahead 7 years a few months to today. I just drove my daughter to school, and spent 50 minutes is a traffic jam. The drive in normal traffic takes about 7 minutes. No body is happier than I am about the progress happening in Qatar. This side of the progress is depressing.

Elephant , originally uploaded by LotusGem . I was surprised with this elephant in the parking lot yesterday. It was parked in the space next to my parking space. That parking space has been empty a long while, eversince my neighbour in apartment 665 moved out. Of course, seeing an elephant there makes you think of a few things and make a few assumptions. For instance, I assumed that the apartment next to me has been taken by someone. And I assumed that that some one is an Indian, because he drives an elephant. Turns out I was wrong. The guy is Yemeni. He is from Yemen. I didn't know they had that model in Yemen. I thought I would post this picture here for you to meet my new car neighbour.

I spent last Saturday having all sorts of aquatic fun in the Sheraton with a friend, and I did a very stupid thing. In fact, I did a series of things that edge on total deliberate idiocy. I spent the hours between 11AM and 2:30PM under the sun, with degrees around 40-45c. In and out of the water, laying on my chair and floating on a mattress in the sea. Needless to say I was starting to feel a little heat beneath my skin, in the flesh, so I decided to spend sometime in the Jacuzzi, which now I know isn't a very good idea. Not that I was clueless before doing it, which puts “deliberate idiocy” above in context. Towards the late afternoon, I moved under the shaded area near the pool which wasn't as bad. But I could feel the heat of the sun roasting my shoulders and legs through the holes in the canopy above. And though it wasn’t really doing that, but in my mind here is it what it all looked like: A blindingly bright laser penetrating through my skin and scorching the flesh and m...

I just had an epiphany. I know now why working from home doesn't work. I colleague got sick and couldn't come to the office today, and while he said he would be available on mobile and email, it is still not the same for completing job tasks. When he is in, I see something in my email and I want to talk to him, I pickup the phone, dial his extension and he is there. Question answered. If not, I will just walk into his office and get my answer. And while I do get my answer through email if he is not in, it is not the same. You loose your string of thoughts and things become lazy and unresponsive and eventually you loose your momentum. There is a certain added value in physical presence that makes sense when you need to make decisions quickly. Which I believe is 80% of daily work. Still, if you're going to spend 2-3 days writing a document. It would actually make more sense for you to do it at home, uninterrupted.

I just have to write about this. I was reminded yesterday while in a meeting of a fact of my daily work routine that I found especially interesting. And that is that I work in a widely diversified environment. The aforementioned meeting was between four of us. My self a Jordanian, one South African, one German and one English man, all working on a project who's team is just as diverse. The project is run in a division run by a Singaporean. The program manager is Qatari. The project owner is Greek but lived in Austria and married to a German (who's sun by the way speaks 5 languages fluently). The project team contains two Nigerian/English guys, a Syrian/Iraqi/English, a Lebanese, an Australian, an Irish, an Indian and three English guys one of which speaks English so posh that you think the Queen is about to walk through the door. When preparing for this project back in December 06, I remember a lunch we had. One Russian who lived in Brazil. The afore mentioned Greek/Austrian. O...

Souq , originally uploaded by LotusGem . A Souq in Doha. Other Souq Photo , originally uploaded by LotusGem . Other souq