:D:D:D

ماذا أقول له

من فيلم الشموع السوداء كانت تقرأ له مطلع هذه القصيدة، و كانت الكلمات تنساب في رقة و استسلام المحب المعذّب، هذه القصيدة لنزار قباني

ماذا أقول له لو جاء يسألني إن كنت أكرهه أو كنت أهواه؟
ماذا أقول ، إذا راحت أصابعه تلملم الليل عن شعري وترعاه؟
وكيف أسمح أن يدنو بمقعده؟ وأن تنام على خصري ذراعاه؟
غدا إذا جاء .. أعطيه رسائله ونطعم النار أحلى ما كتبناه
حبيبتي! هل أنا حقا حبيبته؟ وهل أصدق بعد الهجر دعواه؟
أما انتهت من سنين قصتي معه؟ ألم تمت كخيوط الشمس ذكراه؟
أما كسرنا كؤوس الحب من زمن فكيف نبكي على كأس كسرناه؟
رباه.. أشياؤه الصغرى تعذبني فكيف أنجو من الأشياء رباه؟
هنا جريدته في الركن مهملة هنا كتاب معا .. كنا قرأناه
على المقاعد بعض من سجائره وفي الزوايا .. بقايا من بقاياه..
ما لي أحدق في المرآة .. أسألها بأي ثوب من الأثواب ألقاه
أأدعي أنني أصبحت أكرهه؟ وكيف أكره من في الجفن سكناه؟
وكيف أهرب منه؟ إنه قدري هل يملك النهر تغييرا لمجراه؟
أحبه .. لست أدري ما أحب به حتى خطاياه ما عادت خطاياه
الحب في الأرض . بعض من تخلينا لو لم نجده عليها .. لاخترعناه
ماذا أقول له لو جاء يسألني إن كنت أهواه. إني ألف أهواه

Codes Of Conduct

For the last couple of days, I repeatedly stated some principles that I condiser an "unconscious" code I act by in real life. These principles are:

1. Never ever trust anyone 100%! You never know if and when he/she will be your enemy.
2. Always assume "malicious" intentions from people around you and beware and take precautions, but on the exterior, behave as if they have good intentions. "Act good to people until they proove you wrong then get away from them, but in the inside, always be cautious of them until they proove you wrong, then you can trust them."
3. Try to avoid telling the people you love that they did wrong by you!
4. Swallow your bad and black thoughts and keep analyzing inside you head how and why you have them instead of acting upon them.
5. Shut up more than you talk!
6. Don't only listen to people, study what you listen to and try to conclude whatever they're not telling you.

Of course, these codes of conduct didn't come to me from my parents :) , they came the hard way; from bitter experience. But I'm not gonna talk about situations; instead, I'll talk about the principles themselves cuz I kinda like them!!

Number one is really self-explanatory, and as I keep saying: "the most beautiful relief you can have is talk about everything you go through to youl close friends, and the most painful feeling is to hold back your feelings and troubles from your dear ones. BUT the latter is less harmful than the former. Discreetness will never expose your "soul holes" to others, and this makes you stronger."

Number two is my own invention :D, it's really a defense mechanism that I use to avoid paradoxes. Imagine that you first impression about someone "which is by the way 90% true" is that you hate him! if you act clearly upon the hatred feeling, and he's "bad news", then you got yourself an enemy. But if from the beggining you dealt with him nicely while raising your "internal" alerts to his actions, you're relatively safe. If he's otherwise a nice person or at least not harmful, then you'd be rude and lose a potential aly. On the other hand, if your first impression is that he's nice and start taking confidence in him, and he turns out to be "trouble", then you gave away your weaknesses for the enemy. But you can't act rude either, so act nice but don't let down your guard. I applied the same strategy in my research by the way :D:D:D

Number 3 is a bit tricky, but I personally don't like telling people that they're wrong; either to me or in general; cuz people generally tend to justify their actions for their own benefit, and by telling them they're wrong, you're making them feel and accordingly act defensive. They'll try to place the blame on you or whatever other circumstances; you gain nothing. BUT my friend Amira, said that in pointing the people I really care about to what they did wrong, I'm either giving them the opportunity to explain any misconceptions I might have or try to avoid making the wrong actions in the future. Meaning that clearing the air is more important than avoiding to upset people. I have a counter statement which is this: if you really care about those people, you'd even do that for them in you mind before you absolutely need to confront them. Meaning that I'd make a conversation in my head and try to see if the other person is really wrong or if I misunderstood then what the real meaning of the action may be. And if he's wrong in my head then I "cashe" the mistake or wrong action in my back-mind and act normally until he makes another mistake "God forbids", then I'll analyze the now "accumulating" list to see if I'm the wrongful party or he/she is. If the list passes a certain "threshold", then I'll turn my categorization of this person into a "no state" condition; meaning I don't care no more about him/her, but at the same time I'll keep the relationship in a relatively positively communicative nature because I don't like to lose my connections. (Pretty crazy stuff ha?!)

Number 4 needs a complete blog entry cuz it's a constant nightmare and battle inside my mind of good against evil. People don't want to believe it but I'm really evil deep down, I just choose to fight it most of the time.

Number five is a direction given by our Prophet Muhammad (may prayers and blesses be upon him,) It's really a good thing to try not to talk a lot because you'll say wrong a lot.

Number six is something I'm trying to practice even though I don't think I fully master. But I think as you get to know people more, you get to understand their motives, and when you understand their motives, you'll become more knowledgable as to why they act in a certain way. This will ultimately give you the ability to give them a sounder opinion/advice when they ask for one.

Once, when I was talking to my uncle "mother's brother", we were talking about my "accumulative" nature, and I said "But this being part of my character is not a good thing." He said "The charater you created for yourself might be not good, but it's your own, not an imitation of others!"

Exhausted!!!

I'm nearly finished with my Master tasks, although I'm not at all satisfied with anything! But, the fact of the matter is that I'm not willing to put an extra ounce of effort into this project which took so much time and energy. I'm sure this means I'm not a great person, since great people don't quit enhancing their work. But really, the atmosphere in which one works affects his or her ability to excel, to take that extra mile to greatness. Well, without lingering on the bad circumstances that we worked in, I think my work is done in that area. I thought this will give me the willingness to do extra work into the traditional faculty job; you know, the sections and all..but on the contrary!! I'm so tired of half the effort I used to exert a couple of years ago..I'm not enthusiastic about new courses I'm assisting in teaching, nor about the fact that I can work in faculty without feeling guilty about my Master. The truth is I didn't take a real vacation since I was a student in the third year, this is about 8 years!! WOW..No vacation meaning with absolutely nothing to worry about..It's been so long..And I neeeeeed a vacation or the rest of me is gonna collapse! Not that I'm complaning about the job, it's not that hard anymore, but I need a break to renew my brain cells so that I can accept and embrace the job challenges from bad boys to hard excercises..
Can I get such a vacation soon? I think I'm gonna do whatever it takes to have it..or I'm gonna end up doing just like other less lovable people in the faculty do, get in, take attendance, get out!

The other face of Meryl Streep's movie quote!

In "Shall we dance", starring Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon (Oh how I love both), a phrase said by Susan Sarandon's character pops up to compete with Meryl Streep's phrase in "The bridges of Madison county". Again, a simple plot outline is in order to understand the phrase context. The movie is about a lawyer who's caught up in a boring life style inspite of his love for his family. One day he sees a woman standing in the window of a dance school and decides to take dancing lessons to stirr his life a bit. He decides to hide his activity from his wife because he doesn't want to admit that he's bored of their life, he's ashamed of the fact that he's not grateful for their life and that he's seeking fullfillment elsewhere. His wife gets suspecious about his behavior and hires a PI to investigate her husband and finds out the truth. And the husband finally tells his wife why he kept to himself and teaches her how to dance (a symbol that partners should share whatever they enjoy). After the wife finds out about what her husband is doing, she meets with the PI and a discussion about why people get married takes place. She says this unbelievably well-put phrase:
"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness' "
That's why people should get married, and that's why a person should marry a partner who enjoys being his or her witness, enjoys all the simple and trivial details of his or her partner, and basks in the mere existance of his or her partner.
I've always heard statements from my mom, my aunts, even some of my friends, that marriage is "3eesha welsalam", that I shouldn't be so picky in my scrutiny of men who wanted to get married, and I have seen men who want to get married "welsalam". I heard the statements that no matter how much you love a man "or a man love a woman", life will end up being the same as if you married anybody else. But that's not what I want to believe, I want to believe that I'll find a man who will appreciate my desire to move forward and do something important in life, and who will rejoyce in every detail of our life together, I want to enjoy every detail of our life together, his hopes, my hopes, his weaknesses, my weaknesses, our good moments as our bad moments. I want to be a good "witness" to his life and I want him to be a good witness to mine. And I want our ambitions to melt together and form one goal, as our separate lives will melt together and form one life. No matter what the people around me say, I'll keep believing in this hope, because I do not want to live "3eesha welsalam"!

فرح محمد صيام

This was written on 27/1/2007

امبارح كان فرح محمد صيام

و حضرت الفرح

و طول الفرح عمالة أقول لنفسي

طول عمري موش باحب بعض حاجات في الأفراح

الزفة الطويلة..و اصرار الدي جي على ان العروسين يرقصوا..و الصوت العالي

لكن امبارح بس..كل الحاجات اللي كنت باعتبرها سطحية كانت في منتهى الجمال

و أنا كنت في منتهى السعادة و عمالة أبتسم و أضحك من غير ما أقدر أوقف نفسي

و لما حللت الموقف لعناصره الأساسية (زي ما بتوع نظم بيحبوا يعملوا) لقيت ان ده صيام

ده فرح صيام..و فرح رشا..توأم روحه

فعلا كانت السعادة مالية الجو..و الاتنين ما كانوش خايفين انهم يعلنوا سعادتهم ببعض

ما كانش في التصنع اللي بشوفه في معظم الأفراح

كانوا الاتنين بيقولوا للدنيا كلها احنا موش خايفين منك لاننا مع بعض

ولان حوالينا ناس فعلا بتحبنا

ناس فعلا فرحانة بينا من غير مجاملة

و لولا الملامة كنت رقصت من الفرحة اللي كانت مسيطرة على الجو

كانت الناس فعلا موش عاوزة تمشي

و كانت الناس عاوزة تعمل أي حاجة عشان تبين فرحتها

كل الحاجات اللي دايما بتتعمل في الأفراح و باعتبرها روتين كان لها شكل تاني و طعم تاني

لان روح صيام و رشا كانت طاغية عليها فخلتها جديدة و جميلة

و كنت حاسة ان صيام و رشا حطوا بصماتهم الجميلة على كل حاجة في الفرح

حتى الأغاني اللي ماباحبهاش

الروح الحلوة دي ماحسيتهاش قبل كده غير في مناقشة أميرة

و ده دليل على ان الناس اللي روحهم حلوة و ضميرهم صافي ربنا بيكرمهم في فرحتهم قوي بناس فعلا بتعزهم

و الاعزاز أحلى من المحبة لان فيه احترام و اكبار للشخص

أميرة كانت تستاهل في مناقشتها

و صيام كان يستاهل في فرحه

عقبال كل أفراحهم و أفراح الناس اللي بعزهم تكون جميلة كده و أجمل كمان من كده

مبرووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووووك لصيام و رشا

و يارب من قلبي تكون أيامهم كلها سعادة و فرح زي امبارح

و عقبال كل الناس

تكون أفراحها جميلة زي فرحهم

"Everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before"

The title is quoted from Meryl Streep in the movie "The Bridges of Madison County".
"The Bridges of Madison County" is a movie directed by Clint Eastwood and starring him and Meryl Streep. This movie is one of the most romantic and teary movies I've ever seen. We as Muslims will not approve the movie plot one bit, but the movie is filled with so much tenderness and desperate feelings it's worth watching anyway. There is one scene in the movie that made me stop for a long pause and think deeply. But I'll briefly outline the plot for those who did not see the movie. The movie is about a woman married to a farmer and has two kids. Her husband and kids go to a town event and leave her alone. Comes a professional National Geographic photographer asking for the Madison County bridges so he can photograph them for the magazine. She offers him refreshments and a guidance to the bridges, and in the time of four days they fall in love so strongly that she actually packs her bags to leave her husband. On second thoughts, she doesn't do it, saying the phrase in the scene that made me think so hard about what a woman feels when she gets married. I quote her:
"When a woman makes the choice to marry, to have children; in one way her life begins but in another way it stops. You build a life of details. You become a mother, a wife and you stop and stay steady so that your children can move. And when they leave they take your life of details with them. And then you're expected to move again only you don't remember what moves you because no-one has asked in so long. Not even yourself"
This, to me, is a killer phrase. It about sums up what every dedicated wife and mother feels without being able to put the feeling into words. This life of details does not include a woman's own dreams and ambitions, and she's left with one of three choices: live for herself, live for her family, or try to take a piece of both. But that's it, she'll have only a piece of each, not the whole package. The woman decides after all that if she leaves, she'll eventually end up hating the mans she loved and losing her family. So she stays and lets him go, telling him that it is better to have her family and her four days of a love that comes only once in a life time that to lose her family and her love in the process.
That phrase she said about a woman's choice was so moving to me that I had to quote it and memorize its meaning. You see, a man never has to make such a choice because a man's priority is always his job, his ambition, his dreams. No one asks him to give that up for the sake of family. In fact, he's driven even more to pursue his career when he has family. A woman on the other hand, is asked to choose. No one can say that most women would be happy to dedicate their lives to their families. But no one should ask the woman to stop dreaming for herself because there are other more important people to consider. Why is it always that a woman comes last in the welfare of a family. A woman enjoys sacrificing her own welfare for her family, but wouldn't it be nice to have someone else in the family put her as number one? The responsibility of making the marriage work is on the woman, the responsibility of taking good care of the kids is on the woman. Who's taking care of the woman? Not in the sense of food and clothing, but in the sense of feelings and hopes. For a woman to do a good job with her family and not lose herself in the process, she needs a man, and later her grown kids, to say: "I'm listening to you, I know how much you gave up to do this, and there's nothing in the world that's more important that your happiness."
I don't know if I'm making any sense, but this movie has made me think a lot about a lot of marriages I see around me. I know for sure that women are beginning to wonder: Is it enough? Shouldn't I be doing something more for myself? Shouldn't they be doing something more for me?

What do you think?

Old dreams were good dreams, and I'm glad I had them.

Somehow along the way I forgot who I am and what I was. I was pretty much something in the old days of preliminary and prep schools; meaning before I came back to Egypt. I was always the top of my class, and later the top of my school. Teachers were actually fighting to get me enrolled in their classes. I used to be a cornerstone of the school radio team, music team, acting team, painting team, and science team. I used to go to competitions of all kinds; hell, I won a couple of times a best actress and best journal artist. I used to be part of every single event the schools contributed in. I wrote, I played music, I contributed in arabesque competitions, I thought of myself a force to be reckoned with. But I knew deep inside that all this was a way to channel my frustration of the world. Little did I know that the days of glory would soon end to be replaced with days whose dullness slowly killed my potential. Maybe I wasn't that talented in all of the categories I used to practice, but I sure enjoyed versatility in activity. To find today that for the last thirteen years or so I had little to no activity besides studying hard to get myself a place in a respectable faculty, then surviving the years of university and work with no action whatsoever, that was a real down for me. And I found myself to be completely alone if I wanted to practice the old hobbies that once were the sole consolation in my rough days. Am I chasing a wild dream? Am I over and done with the possibility to enjoy what little pleasure I can afford? I try to tell myself that I'll do OK once I restore equilibrium after finishing my Master thesis, but I'll have to wait and see if I can pull it off. I really want to appreciate life more, to enjoy life more, maybe this will lead me to revitalizing my interest in my job so that I can do it the way I used to and perhaps better.

Questions

This week, I began to seriously question my route in life and where it's taking me. I long thought that I had some clue to what I want. Not anymore obviously. Do I want to continue working at the university? If not, then where's my real passion? When I was younger, I thought a lot about acting or a career in music playing. At other times I thought about venturing into the business world. At other times, all what I could think of is going to a small town and work a trivial job that would make me able to read and play music most of the time. But university seemed like an open opportunity that was available and it seemed stupid to refuse it. Well, I'm not saying that at the first couple of years I didn't enjoy work. On the contrary, it was very gratifying to see that you can help students better understand science and give them the incentive to work on their strengths. It was fun enough to read new topics every semester and accept the challenge a student poses when he or she asks a question that's out of the lesson's scope. It felt cool to surf the net looking for add-ons to a certain subject that would make it more interesting for the students and lure them to listen. All that was great, even the sound of it now makes it feel great and makes me wonder; did I really lose interest in this challenging job? Or is it just boredom of the whole thing? There seems to be no clear answer to the questions, but suffice it to say the outcome is all the same. I'm sick to the very tip of my head of working, and that's why I began to wonder about what I really want to do with my life.

Ready To Launch!

Today, I begin to correct the modifications that my thesis supervisor pointed out for me. I also will start refreshing my memory on music theory and principles and start to read the huge amount of history articles and books that I've collected over the last couple of years. Wow!!! All that must begin today, and time is approaching midnight!

The problem with me is that I'm a night person, my energy reaches its highest levels after 6 pm, but the delimma I'm having is the job hours which usually require an early riser. But I'm beginning to handle this problem with moderating my late-nights and trying to sleep less than 8 hours a day. So my day usually starts at 10 am and ends at 4 am.

Now, what's with all these tasks? First of all, the most important task on my agenda is the thesis modifications. Some of the chapters require a thorough review, while some are quite good in their current state. But the problem is that both my supervisors are not satisfied with the results output graphs. Well, what can I do? That's how the results came out! But obviously I have to work my way around this somehow. I still have almost a month before I have to deliver the final version to the discussion committee, so I'm in luck to have sometime to fix the results problem. They told me that one of the committee members is a very knowledgable professor, if only I could ask him before the final show :) .

Now we come to the music theory and history stuff, well, this is only a way to boost my morales because I've postponed practicing my hobbies for too long, because of the faculty pressing hours and the thesis practical part (the application). I've decided to delay these activities no longer, I really need to get out of the work mood for a while. I need to feel that I can live a normal life that's not centered arount my job. Above all, I decided to break the circle of a long depression that's been eating at my soul. My plan is to have two hours for both activitie and increasingly extending the time as I make progress in my thesis modifications.

But, there's another task that needs to be done properly, which is the optimization of my application, I need to put the different classes and modules in order, I need to compress the code more, and I need to build a suitable user interface. I still don't knw if I have the guts to do this, because I don't want to pull what's left of my hair! Writing that code was a living hell to me, because I was totally alone and a novice in Java. But hopefully now that my thesis is almost over and done with, I'll be able to relax when I look at the code once more.

I hope, really hope, that I can pull this off nicely without problems in the thesis deadline. Because, I admit, I'm beginning to like it better to do the fun stuff that to do the work stuff.

Have a good night!