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Showing posts from 2006

Know if you don't and remember if you've forgotten

I should make this clear. I make a separation between Jews and Zionists. I have no hard feelings for jews, in fact, I wish they would repent and take the rightous path. With Zionists however there's a different story. What I want to show here is how the Zionist agenda is being pushed in the world through the US, and how that is actually being implemented on the ground. The process Hollywood result (1 of many) Update !!

Beautiful recition of Ya Seen

Salam all, Listen to the sweet sound of this kid reciting verses 1 through 12 of surat "Ya-seen" of the holy Quran. English translation is below. Go here for english translation.

The asian games in Doha

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I went with the family to watch some events in the Doha 2006 Asian games that was opened last Friday. It was a great day and the organization is amazing. I mean you can really tell that they spent money and effort on the facilities and the staff. Everyone, from security to guides to ticketing to everyone were doing a great job. Greeting with a smile and offering precise help. The events themselves were typical Olympic style competition that keeps you on the edge of your seat if you could understand what was gonig on. Here are a few photo's from the trip. Sari and Yelsmin Games of your life Streets near the Khalifa Stadium

I need your help guys, who is this?

Who sings this? If you know or may have any idea, please comment below or drop me a line at sarihiari@gmail.com. powered by ODEO UPDATE Here's what I know so far. This is a Chechen guy from Jordan. He was once on top of the charts on Yahoo. Here is one more song he made: powered by ODEO I still need his first name and what other songs he may have. His email would be very good too.

Battlefield 2 : Modern Combat

On my XBOX360 "Battlefield 2: Modern Combat" lags like crazy most of the time. When it is not lagging, I am all over the place, and on top of the scoreboard, when it is lagging, I am usually at 1:5 kill to death ratio, which sucks. Changing the ISP is no option for me at the moment, since in Qatar we only have one ISP. I am sure this will change soon, as HRH Prince Hamad issued a law to stop the QTel monopoly and allow another company into the country. Hopefully with the new ISP, I will be able to get a lag free stream of communication. Meanwhile, I am not playing BF2:MC except with friends who also reside behind the QTel proxy.

Nine eleven

In Jordan we write the date in the format DD/MM/YYYY. Today is nine eleven 2006. It was about this time a year ago that the Amman bombings took place. Before Mr. Bush decided to launch his crusading "war on terror", the word zarqawi meant a guy from Zarqa. So thank you Mr. Bush!

Om il 3aroos

I've been back in Qatar for 5 days now and I still cannot settle down. I am always busy and yet don't seem to really be doing anything, like om il 3aroos (a bride's mother). Before I left to Jordan I had bought a few things for the XBOX360, one of them was Kameo, a family game mainly for Yelsmin. By the time I got back to Qatar, it had already arrived, add to that a few free games that came with XBOX Live Vision and the Vision itself. I also had to install a fresh Windows XP on my desktop machine at home because I had what appears to be a pirated copy. Plus a large number of niggles that I had to sort out. So it's been hectic, .... but not quite so. I am blogging this from work, where it is also the same kind of situation. Hoping to have our priorities sorted out so we can proceed with a number of projects to keep us busy for real.

Back from Jordan

Finally back to my cosy home in Qatar after spending 10 days in Jordan. During that time: My brother got married My parents moved into the new place Met a lot of old friends Met my wife's sister's husband who I haven't seen for over 2 years now Eventful and tiring, but I had a great time. Expect a lot of photos soon.

Hamza Yousef responding to

If you like this, go to google videos and rate it.

Giving 110%

This sentence has always bothered me. By definition 100% is THE MOST you can give. The word by defition means that when someone asks define "100% of your effort" you would reply "It means the MOST you effort you can give". If you wanted to measure your effort in points and say you ended up with 5000 as the most effort you can produce, and then in a game or underpressure you gave 5500, it does NOT mean you gave 110%, it means you mis calculated your effort and the number 5000 was infact 90.9% of your actual effort and the 5500 is the 100%.

The rumor mill

I a new situation in my workplace occurred Thursday morning. I cannot discuss the details. But its the kind of situation where some people thrive in as they enjoy spreading the lies the they make in the form of rumors. To them of course its just a mechanism whereby they can gather pieces of information from people. They would tell you a complete lie that they just made up in hopes that you would respond with some relevant information that was not previously known. What they do not know however, is that some other people of their same sort would take those lies unknowingly and add some lip service into another crowd. Before you know it, the original source receives new information that is in reality their original lie deformed and updated by way of more lies and misinformation. Everyone seems to have all on a reliable source. From now on, I will only listen to unreliable sources!

Stupid Vista broke my XP

I installed Vista RC1 on a separate drive in my machine that I use mainly for OS trials. All of my Linux distros, WinXP MCE and Vista trials go there. When I logged into the pretty Vista and looked in "Computer". I found the drive that holds my Windows XP installation (my main OS) was empty, all 114GBs of it. Stupid Vista!

Russle Peters again

Russle Peters again, this time from YouTube.

موعد في المدينة -- عمر الفرا

This is my way of responding to Tags. I will not directly answer a tag, but I will provide some interesting read and I will reference the person who sent the tag who is in this case TeaLover in this comment. قصيدة للشاعر العبقري عمر الفرا وبقيت منتظرا متلفتا قلقا قد فات موعدها وعقارب الساعه، تمشي على مهل واقول في صمتي هل من هنا تأتي ام من هنا تاتي ولعلها نسيت ولعلها شغلت ولربما سخرت مني بموعدها ولربما قصدت غدرا ولن تأتي هل من هنا تأتي ام من هنا تأتي؟ ولمحتها والقلب جن وطار بي هل ممكن ان لا تجيء لموعدي؟ يا ايها العقل الغبي؟!! كم كان ظني سيئا سأضمها وبلا عتاب. هل ها هنا وقت العتاب؟ سأذوب في احدابها سأموت في اشواقها فلقد يأست من الحياة بدونها ولقد يأست من الغياب وأفقت من حلمي! لا، لاأظن، بل ممكن! لا مستحيل! هل يهرب الإنسان من مقدوره؟ يا خيبتي، ليست هي! وقفت بقربي ترقب المجهول مثلي وتلفتت وتأوهت والساعة الكسلى تمشي على مهل مثلي انا، في وقفتي، في حسرتي في لهفتي وتلفتي وأظنها كانت تقول بسرها هل من هنا يأتي، ام من هنا يأتي؟

How do you center? (I)

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First off, this picture has nothing to do with the article, I just like it and thought you would like it too. Plus, the article is a little dry, so this should make it easier to bear. I've always had a great deal of concern on this idea: "Does absolute right exist?" and if it does, how do you find it? These questions always plagued me for as long as I can remember, and I know the events in my life that made me think about these things. By now, I've come up with my own theory regarding this, but let me first share the problem. Ask any two people about their idea of right and wrong and you are more than likely to get two minimially overlapping answers, the common part being about general concepts of good, and morality and fairness. Get down to details and you start seeing even those overlapping ideas interpreted in differnet ways. It gets more complex when you get to implementation detail of things that touch daily life of people in general. A good example would be the

Abdoun Bridge?

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Is this called Abdoun Bridge? I was surprised by the look of dowwar 3abdoun when I got there. It was the first time I see it empty and construction-ee like. I found my self back in 2000, the trials of driving round and round the dowwar hoplessly trying to figure out the point why people do it. I could never do it, nor get it. I would eventually end up confused and a little nauseous from all the twirling, and sitting a coffee shop paying waaay too much for a double turkish. *Why do people do that?* Neither myself nor a friend (AbuShreek) could tell, really. Now about the bridge, I imagine it would be great once finished, and would take some load off of the 5th. I wonder if it would be finished by the time I go to Amman next summer. More photos here

Death trap

Quick post here out of shear frustration and surprise. A major intersection here in Doha near the Toyota tower was partially closed for a while as they were rennovating the roads. It was opened finally about 20 days ago with brand new roads that make you feel you are driving on roads of marble. Today while crossing the traffic light going from Corniche road towards the C-Ring road doing about 80Kms, I was horrified by the sudden appearance of a manhole extruded about 15cms above the surface of the new road *think trunk of a cut down tree sticking out of the road*. It is accurately placed infront of the right wheel of cars driving on the right lane. Needless to say, running into it produced a horrible bashing sound that is closer to an accident than a bump in the road. Just to think I was going to buy the Honda Jazz a few days ago. I am sure at that speed in that small a car (Honda or other make) would've caused more than an unpleasant accoustic experience. It could kill someone, an

النفاق القومي

يا اخي يعني ايش قلة هالحيا؟ طول النهار والليل هالشله قاعدين بيعيطو من القمع والاضطهاد وانهم مش قادرين يحكو رأيهم من ورا هالديموقراطية المزيفة والظائعة بالظاء. ولما بيجي واحد معهوش خبر بالنفاق اللي هم فيه و بيحكي رأي غير رأي هالشلة، اللي من الواضح انو رأي منزل، بتقوم القيامة وما بتقعد؟! وبيقسمو حالهم واحد متنبي وواحد فرزدق ووحدة تخصص تقيس الرجولة وتقييم انتماءات وغيره وغيره وغيره! طيب ولكو ما لما عندكو هالمراجل وين بتروح وقت الشغل؟ ليش ماحدا بحكي مع النواب والوزرا غير عالواسطه وشغللنا هالولد؟ وين بتطير هاللسانات المدلدلة وهالعبارات المكوية؟ ليش بعدنا هيك؟ بس الصحيح انكم -واحد يقول للثاني- "غنم"، يعني بتسمعلهم صوت مثاغاه بس وقت الجد كلهم عالذبح. طيب مش فاهم انا لما هذول قاعدين بيكتبو اللي بدهم اياه، بالطريقة اللي بدهم اياها وبالمكان اللي بدهم اياه وبقلة الحياء وقلة الادب اللي هم فيها، ليش بشكو من القمع؟! والادهى كمان، لما زعلانين من الاضطهاد والقمع و بتحكو انكو بتآمنو بالديموقراطية وحرية الرأي، حلوا عني خلوني احكي ولما الواحد بيقمع غيره في نفس المكان اللي بشتكي وبيتبكبك فيه من

Civilization East and West

This is an interesting read. A bit of history first, person A is travelling to Canada, person B says "Bring back some civilization", Person C says "Yeah, some fake civilization". Person B writes the following: I'm not really sure where you have lived in the past, nor how long it's been since you've experienced life in the middle east and/or north america. I think you have misinterpreted my statement about civilisation, I wasn't really talking about civilisation in the global sense, which encompasses foreign affairs, wars, politics and so on. What I was referring to is the basic, fundamental principles of civilisation that has been known to man since the invention of the wheel. To be more specific: Understanding the concept of waiting in line Attempting to be punctual, it's nice and dandy to own a $15,000 watch, but it would also be nice to learn how to use it sometimes. Making a simple effort to meet promises and commitments, living by the old sa

The Replacement UN

This is my reading of some political events that happened during my conscious observation of the world in politics. Israel and its larger twin USA managed together to anger enough countries and people to allow for an alternate UN. Just looking at the level of meek submissiveness that the UN is in at the moment, and sighting the ineffectiveness and uselessness of it in the face of the current US/Israeli attack on Lebanon, and on the other hand the speed and efficiency of its move against the Iranian nuclear program. It becomes very clear that the UN is just a tool used to drive the US/Israeli agenda in the world. The power of the UN comes from the legitimacy given to it by countries of the world that subscribe to that model. If enough key countries withdraw from the UN and form a new alliance called FUN (Functioning United Nations) it could restore some political balance in powers. I suggest this FUN be lead by China or Russia and have a number of members that include the countries of t

Who is to blame?

I was having a conversation tonight during the sahrah at a friend's house about the validity of the position that the Government of Jordan has taken regarding the War on Lebanon. A comment was made during that conversation that sparked a thought. Who is to blame? My friend said that the Jordanian people don't follow rules and get politically carried away easily and as a result should not be allowed to demonstrate and should be controlled *these words are me putting politely*. When I look around, the people of Jordan do behave rather impolitely towards each other and do not obey the rules. And the question here is who is to blame? We are certainly not stupid by evidence of the academic achievements and intuitive solutions made by Jordanian companies and Jordanian students ...etc. So IQ is not really it. I blame both the people and the government. I blame the government because the law doesn't seem to apply to everyone, and not all of the law is applied. To explain this, here

What is wrong with everyone?

I am new to the blogging communities like toot and Jordan planet. I need you all to tell me if that's "normal". I traveled to Amman about 10 days ago and as I am staying in temp places, I couldn't find a steady net connection and was out of touch for a while. I was completely convinced that everyone was like me and the people around me. Meaning, tuned-in to news channels all day, watching the news and discussing it with friends and exploring potential events and outcomes. I was also completely convinced that everyone in Jordan Planet and iToot and the few select bloggers -- of whom I have RSS feeds placed in my favorites, would be blogging almost exclusively about the war. Very few are, and some are still writing about stuff that is too trivial to be mentioned in even the most boring days, when watching grass grow may be considered viable entertainment. What is glaringly obvious (especially with Jordanian bloggers) is the near total absence of any mention of the shame

Probably driving too fast

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Probably driving too fast , originally uploaded by LotusGem . Returning to Jordan after a whole year in Doha. This was take while I was driving my car on the long long open roads of Saudi. I drove at around the 200Km/h mark for a while, and was probably doing 160Km/h when I took this. It is stupid to both drive this fast, and at the same time look through an SLR camera to take a photo. In my defence, I was excited about my car since it was the first time I get to drive it this fast, and I was excited about my Camera since I only had it for two months and it was brilliant. So there.

License Parenting!

As I was driving back home from a long day at work and running around town, I was hoping for a peaceful drive home and a peaceful and quiet night, but I knew I was not very lucky that day. In the cross roads near my home, a car accident was slowing traffic. It was a white Lancer with a damaged front that didn't look like it was going anywhere. Now you are assuming that the traffic jam and the disgust induced by watching a fine piece of engineering-hardwork destroyed, you would assume that this bothered me, but you would be wrong. The driver was standing outside the car cleaning his son's bloody face with a piece of tissue, who was seated on the backside of the car. The son's face was smeared in blood and seems to have injured some part of his face. This is a horrible sight, especially if you have children. There was no car seat! But it wasn't that which saddened me and made me unable to swallow the lump in my throat. It was what the kid was doing. He wasn't screami

YUK!!!

I love my time with the World Cup 06. I always have a 7up in my hand. I always keep one half full on the table as an ash tray. Thing is, when you are watching a game like BRA vs. GHA. You don't really remember which is which.

The Jordanian/Arab detachment from reality

There are two huge gaps between the general Jordanian population and reality. First, there's the lack of understanding the concept of economy. The economy is good if you figure out how to make money, not the other way around. I believe the misunderstanding comes from people following the media covering "the economy" as if it were an entity with a mind of its own. As a result you find people hoping for the economy to become better and not really knowing that the economy is at the end the accumulative sum of the money we all made. (Well, more or less). Consequently, you are not really motivated to get off your comfy chair and actually do something, because "the economy is bad". The other gap is in the understanding of the relationship between the citizen and the government. It comes a result of a long history of oppression and ignorance. The understanding seems to be that the government is the entity that controls everything and everyone, and citizens are obliged

To watch or not to watch? FIFA World Cup.

Why is the world cup so important? What's the frenzy all about? I'll tell you why. Since its a complicated issue, I will start at the start. At first, you grow up observing the older men in your family watching the world cup and reacting with extravagant enthusiasm to 22 men in two colors running around kicking just one ball. As a child who is accustomed to regarding those men with respect as wise elders who are at the very least sane, the occasional and sudden outburst of insanity, rabid rants and near foaming in the mouth (though temporary) is so shocking that it burns forever deep with-in your consciousness and beyond reasoning, that this thing is so important it nears being sacred. And then come the layers. At layer 1, you get that you are rooting for a team to win. Winning is attained by driving the ball through one square, but not the other. You also get that there is shouting and jumping, or cursing and sadness. Depending on which square has the ball. Btw, the single per

For music lovers

Top 5 music/songs that both my daughter and I love: Urami Bushi - Meiko Kaji El Bos6a - Fairooz Tania (Enemy at the gates ) - James Horner Ya Ossas - Julia And Finally and most beauitfully Just the Two of Us - Grover Washington, Jr. & Bill Withers She actually makes me sing the song and she takes the chorus.

Never say never

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Never say never , originally uploaded by LotusGem . I am a very fortunate person. I have everything I ever really wanted in life. I've been protected from my own foolishness more times than I care to admit. I've been blessed with tenasity and focus. There isn't a thing I couldn't learn. I have only God (in Arabic Allah) to thank.