Thought Clouds
The Digital Bender

I was torn between extreme happiness and utter sorrow as my son came into this life and my father in law left this life with no more than 7 days between them. This combo event put thing in perspective and I have hopefully taken the lesson learned and using it to better center my self in this life. A side effect of this is that blog about Jordan day dropped from a very important event to an insignificant and short lived blimp on my radar.

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.

Pipe dream , originally uploaded by LotusGem . Pipes. I call this "Pipe dream". One of my favorites. I don't know which category of photography this falls under. But I'm guessing abstract is probably the closest. UPDATE What is a pipe dream? A pipe dream is a fantastic hope or plan that is generally regarded as being nearly impossible to achieve. The term derives from the opium pipe, and dates to the late nineteenth century when opium smoking was common in the United States. More specifically, the term derives from the euphoric optimism that is one of the effects of smoking high quality opium. Depending on how much opium is smoked, intoxication may last from eight to twelve hours. During this time smokers go through a period of euphoria followed by a more relaxed state of contentment and well being. Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, popular literature and music began using the term "pipe dream" to describe any idea or plan whose...

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...

To every one reading this comment. I need help. I am hoping for someone with experience in BMWs. I am offered a BMW 540 2000 model for an amount of money I can afford. The car is red which I dont like and comes with Automatic gearbox which I hate. Still undecided on whether I should take the plunge, I need your help to tell me what too look for in the car (positive or negative) that could help me take the decision. Knowing that in Qatar, overheating and A/C condition are most important. Please comment here or send to my email sarihiari(at)gmail.com.

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...