My Life

OK, folks. So it has been a rather long time since I last posted. Let’s just say that my life has been a little more complex and busy after my graduation from university. Last week on Sunday I started my new job at Maktoob. My official title is Web Designer, isn’t that a mouth full. I work with a team that design tools to enrich Maktoob’s network.
Even though I was starting on Sunday, I basically had not computer but had a desk to set on. I was very glad that I’ve brought my laptop with me to get myself busy with something. I’ve started to explore the new environment. for me, the hardest part in starting a new job is developing relations with my colleagues since I’m not that good in relations, it took me two days to start communicating with them!
Anyway, by the next day I had finally gotten a computer to use, an email at Maktoob, and an account at Skype (the primary instant messaging medium between employees). I was amazed by the number of employees in Maktoob, I think they exceed 250 employee, I’ve even recognized some of them who were with me in my elementary school! Generally, People I met in Maktoob were very nice.

So I didn’t go into a lot of detail, it has been awhile and I just don’t have the time to go into the kind of detail I normally would if I was just recapping a day. I’ll do my best to get back into a few more posts each week.

I‘m having a serious problem these days; my problem is that I’m having a major sleep disorder. I sleep at daylight for few hours and then stay awake the whole night. This causes me not only a physical problems, but also social problems: I don’t see anybody including my family, everybody has this bad image of me as a “Sleepy Head” although I don’t get enough sleep (I’ve never slept more than 4 hours a day for the past two weeks), and I forget any phone call I answer during my sleep which means trouble with the people who call.

What is this “Sleep” anyway? And why the hell do we need it? Isn’t it enough to just rest your body while you are awake especially that we don’t do the hard work that our ancestors used to do? My dad defined sleep in one of his novels as a down-payment for death. It makes sense to me, aren’t people that don’t sleep threatened to die early? It’s like being forced to sell your mortgaged house because you didn’t pay the due-to-date payment. Of course this makes me a broken guy!

Anyway, today I decided to find out a solution for my problem. First I wrote down the questions I need answers for, and then I went to my infinite source of information … the internet. I was surprised how many website out there dedicated to sleep; there is even a foundation for sleep called the “National Sleep Foundation” which helps solving sleep problems!

First thing anybody should search for when having a problem is the problem definition. And since my problem was “Sleep” I wanted to know what sleep is and why we need it. I find out the following:
Scientists define sleep as “a reduction in voluntary body movement and decreased reaction to external stimuli”, It’s more like “switching off” most of the body and brain units. Scientists also describe sleep as a dynamic time of healing for organisms and replacing damaged cells.
I’ve also found interesting information regarding forgetting phone calls while sleeping. Scientists found that People awakened after sleeping more than a few minutes are usually unable to recall the last few minutes before they fell asleep. This sleep-related form of amnesia is the reason people often forget telephone calls or conversations they’ve had in the middle of the night.

Now that I’ve found what I need to know about sleep, I’m moving to the next step: finding a solution for my condition. Most of the visited web pages are trying to express that if I follow the next rules my condition should improve:

- Regulate your sleep hours
- Don’t consume caffeine before you get to sleep
- Make some physical exercises during daylight
- Sleep in a quiet/clean/cool room
- Avoid doing intense-activity jobs before bedtime
- Do a hot bath, read a book/magazine

I will try to follow of the above rules. Hopefully, things will be better and i’ll rerturn to my normal life.

For those who are interested in sleep, below are some links related to this issue:

- National Sleep Foundation
- Wikipedia article about Sleep
- Understanding Sleep

I don’t know about you guys but my friend “Eyad” among others didn’t like the previous skin of my blog because it gives a feeling of depression. I do agree with him especially that I design websites so I don’t think it would be appropriate to use ready-made templates while I do design for others, don’t you think so? So, since I am a designer, why don’t I just sit and start the design process?

Well, there is a small problem … the blog’s engine uses PHP technology and I’ve never worked on such technology before since I am prejudice to Microsoft technology. Someone might say: Since you are a Microsoft freak, why don’t you use another engine that is based on their technology. The problem here is that I can’t find any! And I don’t have time to build a new engine. So I left everything as it is for the time being.

However, the problem started to irritate me especially when more friends wondered if I created that “depressing” design. So yesterday, I decided to swallow my “Microsoft” pride and go through the internet to learn PHP. To be honest, it didn’t took me long to learn what I need to replace the design with my own, it was an easy language and pretty close to ASP technology. Having the feeling of a Big Winner, I grabbed my design tools and start designing the new skin. It took me one hour to design the new skin and TA-DA! My blog has a new skin and Eyad will not complain about the “Depressing Red” design anymore.
It’s good to have your own cool skin at last …

Or maybe I’m just a crap designer.

It’s strange the realizations you can have while being bored. It’s my last few days at university and I’m having my final exams. However, I can’t stand studying for my exams since I don’t really care anymore if my semester marks will go up or fall down because they will not make that much of impact to my GPA. So I procrastinate and write stuff for my blog.
Suddenly, while I was bored and surfing the internet, two thoughts flashes in my brain: one I got from a website and one that just popped into my head, and both thoughts have to do with writing blogs, to be more precise, the difficulties of writing blogs.

The first one is actually a sentence I read in a website. It was something like:
“Writing is putting your fantasies on paper. However the process of writing destroys those fantasies because in your mind they are fantastic and magnificent, but as soon as you put them on paper they just lose their impact.”

This is very true! I’ve started many times to write things which were great ideas I had in my head, only to think to myself as soon as I start writing “this is ridiculous, it will never work”. But when I go through people’s blogs, I just enjoy reading almost everything they write even if the main idea is stupid.

It does make sense. You have this “perfect” image in your head of whatever you want to portray in your story. A passionate love story with someone you love, a great breakthrough you achieved in some field or even a magnificent spaceship travels in the speed of light! But when you start writing this image down it always starts “lacking”. You feel as if whatever you put on paper isn’t enough to represent that brilliant idea you had in your mind … “It will never work”.

I really respect all these magnificent writers I read for (including my father who is a novelist). They must be masters at throwing away that “it will never work” feeling and write down those fantastic pieces of thoughts.

The other thought I had had much to do with the previous one; it came to me while I was thinking about the reason of writing this blog. Of course I’m trying to keep in touch with my friends by exposing something from the inside, but again, this seemed so boring to me. Why would anyone actually care about what I’m writing? I don’t do anything exciting!

But then I realized: I live this life. It’s boring to me because I am the subject of these writings. But when I read the other’s blogs, I am fascinated with descriptions of even the silliest events in their life. Maybe that’s the power of personal blog … they peek in all of us!

Since this is my first post, I feel obligated to explain why I am starting this blog. I’ve tried to start several blogs unsuccessfully before. Maybe because they dealt with “things” that I’m not good at. And I have no time to gather information about those things

That leaves me with the only two topics I can write about reliably: My Life and Computer technology.

However, there were a few more sparks that gave me the incentive to start.

The first is the death of a friend three years ago. He was about the same age as I am, and without any prior warning he had a car accident and died. For his funeral some other friends suggested we collect our memories of him like photos and videos and burn them in a CD which we are going to give to his family and friends. A nice thought, but it did show me that my memory isn’t permanent. I really had to struggle to remember some of the details about things we did together. So reason one is primarily to keep a diary or record of what is actually happening in my life for myself.

Secondly I have a lot of friends that I don’t talk to often enough because of life’s demands. Some of my friends have (rightfully) complained that I don’t stay in touch enough. And they’re right. I’m a bad communicator. I don’t think ‘Oh, let’s call …’ - It’s just not in my nature. So that gives me reason 2: Keep my friends informed about what is happening to me.

Finally, I’m going through some exciting changes in my life at the moment. I’m almost done with university, and I’m getting ready to kickoff my real practical life and who knows what else is on the horizon. And there you have reason 3: keep track of all the exciting stuff happening to me.

There is more I’d like to do with a blog; Track news about computer world, but that will be a low priority. I think this blog will be more of a diary for now.

A diary about My Life.