Month: February 2011

Statistics Class

Malek6 Comments

Well, it is 11:42 am and I am stuck at a statistics class. So I thought writing a post will be more useful. I already missed a class this morning, as no one knows I have a class every  morning at 8:30. I know, I do not know how I make it usually to class, well, I do not. The statistics class is worse though, in the last lecture we worked on model of students happiness and number of snacks and number of homeworks. The result turned up that students are happier with less snacks and more homework. This bullshit result only reminds of Mark Twain words: “lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Thank god it is Thursday.

On a different topic, I went with my friends camping in the desert last weekend, I will post the pictures soon-ish. It was freaking cold, but it was a clear sky with a full moon. The original plan was to camp in Hatta, which is a mountain area in the eastern part of UAE. However, it turned out that we needed to past through Oman to get there. So without passports, we head back with no clue at 10 pm looking for another place to camp. We had a small outing book and we checked it for the nearest camping site, it was called Big Red. Big Red as the name gives out it was the desert as in big dunes of sand. It was awesome. However, it turned out that people go their to drive crazily in the desert. So all we saw were big pickup trucks and SUVs climbing dunes. Our driver was not experienced enough so we got stuck twice and we needed help to get it out. It was a funny disastrous trip.

Recent travel plans, I am planning to go to Spain in June. I am coming home in mid March. Also, I might go to Sweden for a environment summit in May. I sound busy, but i am really not.

only half an hour gone, damn it, half an hour to go. I am playing facebook poker.

Tales of Yore #7: Dramatic Landing

Haytham Essam4 Comments

So, in 11th grade they decided a good step to be taken towards widening our cultural horizons was through improvising a new Drama class. We were to choose between that or painting. Needless to say, all of them guys chose the drama thingy. This drama class might ranks, without a shadow of doubt, amongst the richest sources of tales of yore. I have selected one that involves a friend of ours that is officially declared MIA.

On our very first Drama class, the teacher thought we needed some sort of exercise, game, that would help us get started + help us meld together into a teamworking form for whatever was supposed to wait next. So, we were told to form 2 parallel lines facing each other just at the edge of the stage. It should be noticed that the class took place in what was then considered the school’s official theatre. Back to the two lines of students facing each other at the edge of the stage; a random student was picked at random and was asked to run across the stage and dive-jump in between the 2 lines.

I cannot remember who the first one was but it was kinda fun, especially when it takes place after 5 hours of routine classes. So, more people volunteered, one by one, to take the run and jump. Soonish afterwards, the heavier students were compelled to give it a try. I remember Slvador running towards us with that crazed laugh on his face and started thinking this might be getting lamer by the minute. We absorbed the shock of his crash, somehow. To our astonishment and horror, or more precisely, astonishment-by-horror we saw Deya’ charging towards us. I’m not about to describe Deya’. He escapes description through words. Few steps away from the edge of the stage, every single one of us realized that no just God would require a mortal being to concede such a sacrifice and unanimously decided to step out of the way.

Two seconds later we had a raging lump of meat panting on the ground swearing vengeance upon all those who failed to face the harrowing of the first Drama class. And thus, started the escapade of a whole class from what was later known to be Abu Sheera.

حيوان

Haytham Essam6 Comments

“على الأرض حيوان، له قامة طويلة، و أذرع قريبة الشبه بأذرع الشيمبانزي، أما الساقان فضامرتان و في نهايتهما أقدام عريضة، أما في القمة فكتلة صلبة مغطاة بالشعر، و فيها ثقوب عديدة، في المقدمة و على الجانبين. و هذا، الحيوان يستخدم الثقب الأمامي، و خاصة العريض في أسفل الكتلة الصلبة، في القرض و الغناء و الصفير، و أيام الشتاء يستخدمه للتنفس، أما أيام الرعب فإنه يستعمله لغرض واحد فقط، و هذا الغرض لم يعرف له اسم محدد بعد، قال بعضهم للدفاع عن النفس، و قال آخرون للقتل، أما الكثرة الغالبة، فتؤكد أن الاستعمال الوحيد لهذا الثقب في زمن الرعب، يكون للقتل أو الانتحار!

هناك اعتقاد واسع أن هذا الحيوان سوف ينقرض خلال فترة قصيرة، و في حال انقراضه ستحتفل الحياة، لأن ذهاب هذا الحيوان بداية السعادة الحقيقية على الأرض!

متى نشأ هذا الحيوان؟ كيف نشأ؟ لا أحد يعرف. أفاقت الحيوانات، ذات يوم، فإذا بها تجد نفسها أمام شيء جديد، لم تألفه من قبل. و قد حاولت كثيراً أن تقيم صلات عاقلة مع هذا الحيوان. وافق في البداية، لكن مع الأيام، أخذ يوقع بينها و يقتلها، و قد تسبب في انقراض أعداد هائلة من الحيوانات الرائعة التي كانت تعيش على الأرض، و لما تكشفت نوايا هذا الحيوان الجديد، ابتعد عنه الجميع، ذهبوا بعيداً و تركوا له كل شيء، لكنه لم يكتف، بدأ يحاصر الحيوانات و يقتلها في كل مكان، و لما يجد شيئاً يقتله أخذ يقتل بعضه. و هكذا بدأت المجازر، بدأت منذ آلاف السنين و لم تتوقف. و لذلك يعتقد أن انقراض هذا الحيوان، أصبح وشيكاً خاصة و أن الطرق التي يتبعها في القتل الآن تطورت كثيراً، و أصبحت فعالة بحيث لا تخطئ أبدا!.”

وصف استوقفني كثيراً كتبه الشاعر عبد الرحمن منيف في مستهل روايته “شرق المتوسط”. وصف و على الرغم من تكوينه الخيالي يقترب حد التصوير من الكائن الموصوف، ارتأيت مشاركتكم إياه في أولى محاولاتي التدوينية على موقعكم، ربما لما تركه من بالغ الأثر في نفسي عند قراءته أول مرة و لكثرة ما استحضرت جوانب تشابهه مع أحداث حياتنا وحياة أحداثنا.

سعيدة بانضمامي لموقعكم و أتطلع لمشاركة أكبر في المستقبل القريب.

Sexist culture or sexist religion?

Slvador5 Comments

Hello people,

As any muslim in a western land, the question about islam demeaning women is a constant subject whenever religion topic is discussed.  The first word that any typical muslim would say is” no, islam is not sexist”, but the the argument goes into hijab and adultery and often the muslim guy will be on the defensive. On top of that almost always all the current data/news will be against the muslim. Many will, then,  resort to mentioning prophet time and how things were awesome for muslim women then, but usually people are not convinced by history examples or convinced that old tricks will work now.

I thought about this long and hard. Thinking about this more and more, i came to the conclusion that we ARE indeed sexists, and actually big time sexists. The trick is, our sexism happens by sexist selection of advice, not by sexist advice itself. like some people practically force their daughters to wear hijab, or prevent them from playing sports since there is no good islamic sports clothing for women( never understood why no one thought about that actively yet). These will be hard to strongly counter islamicly without adding stuff like , “weeeeell, islam doesn’t REALLY force women , it just recommend it very heavily, or women can play sports if so and so and so and so conditions apply.” These kind of sentences make it sound like that islam is what preventing the women and NOT men from playing sports. But in actuality, there are rules for sports for btoh men and women, same thing with dress code. While the rules might differ, but they exist for both. The REAL sexism comes from the fact that the people doesn’t care if a man/son abide by these islamic rules. when was the last time you heard a father preventing his son from going out wearing shorts, or when was the last time people complained about the soccer shorts being over the knee. Of course the other famous sexist example is the boys who dates girls are alright as long as the girls don’t date boys; I never truly understood how that logic works, yet our people somehow made it possible. We were able to indict women for an act, by definition, has to be done by men and women.

The problem lies within our culture. We are, like most people in the world east and west, sexist. It differs in levels, but all in all, we are all little bit sexist. Islam didn’t put down women, but we only try to implement islam or any other restrictions on women and not on men, that’s where the apparent islamic sexism come from.

I do have to admit that law-wise, there are some gender laws in our countries(not islamic), but they are not by any count the main factor of the sexism in our countries. It is the people, and ONLY the people.

I think we need a culture revolution to stop singling out women for implementing rules and restrictions. Unfortunately I have no idea how to do that except by giving the same amount of permission to the  sons as much as the daughters, curfews, rules, privileges…etc.

Do you have another idea?

Apologies for the delay…let’s hit it

Malek3 Comments

Hello all from AD,

So I have been here for 4 months now and I am starting to feel used to be here…which is not easy. Masdar Institute is pretty interesting in concept, but in reality it is an unfinished project that needs a lot of work. The #1 description of projects in UAE in general is DELAY. Everything gets delayed, whether for technical difficulties or mismanagement. The institute is pretty cool, it runs on renewable energy and it has self driven vehicles. I will upload picture in a different post.

I am working on systems optimization of hybrid solar/wind systems. Basically it is creating math models and solving it with different programs. It is pretty cool in concept but I am starting to realize maybe all of this is just bullshit. I do not know. I am trying to figure my next step but it is vague at this point.

Dubai is awesome. It is a city from the future. Forget about all that showing off. Having a city in the middle of the desert resurrected is awesome. I recommend visiting it.

This is a short catch up, i will try to bring more to the table