I wonder

I wonder why is it that some idiots get a life out of superficial jobs, while other people struggle with sophistications just to prove that they deserve their salaries!!!

The horizon tells it all

alexandria_wallpaper, originally uploaded by sharaf_m.

I was urged to abandon Alexandria years ago, seeking the hard earned paycheck in Cairo, which is an every day scenario for alexandrians, living in a cerntralized country like Egypt where every aspect of life -well the bare necessities for most of us- is only found in the Capital.

Having to go to Alexandria every weekend to restore my dignity and self respect there, I turned to lose the feeling of home. I couldn't be so sure whether I am a native proud Alexandrian, or accept the fact that my official Address is in one of the most polluted cities in the world, Cairo.


This time it was a nice quiet friday in Alexandria, on the great Lord's month of february, with all the features of an adorable winter in sweet Alexandria, my home town.

My mom decided to visit her sister after the Prayers and I had to be driving -well it makes sense to drive my family on my day off in return for the years of suffering they had had to raise me up- although I really don't feel well going there because of the biter memories I have of this house, my aunt's husband's continous fights with everyone. I was not an exception.

Going up the 80 year's old notorious elevator that has been a major cause of lots of accidents I was really worried about my mom and sister, they would not bear to fall down the 8 levels we were climbing!! well neither would I survive as well, but I don't care about me, not anymore.

We reached the door of the appartment, and my sister rushed to ring the bell, and after a while that was as usual not acceptablly long, here comes my aunt with her slow steps and vague look to open the door for us, and again there was the usual odor of some food that is being cooked, and it smelled!!

Reaching this limit I was really as frustrated and depressed as most of you who are reading this right now :)

Well, now comes the bright side of the story, It happens that a virtue of my aunt's place is that it is located directly on the sea, the generous furious sea of Alexandria, with this nice balcony that allowed me to escape everything for a while, well a little while.

Looking at the infinity and tracing the horizon to the right and left is not only good for your sight, it is also one heal for your soul. Now look for a little while at the photo above, that was captured with my mobile phone, and imagine that Antonio Vivaldi is playing his four seasons in the background, and see yourself standing at this location with a cozy coat and a steaming hot mug of cafe mocha, while you are lighting a marlboro*.... Well I was there!!

It was a perfect mood to wipe out most of the burdens of life, and the stress of being an alien in my very own homeland. A mood to make me forget for a while that my own personal stuff are not safely located because my grandmother is most probably ditching them somewhere in this very moment. A mood to give me the freedom of virtual mobility in the vast space to cure the feeling of restriction with no decent means of transportation in Cairo, and losing 16 percent of my life in a low grade raptured disk proviking bus.

One needs a horizon for a very little while, every once in a while.

* They say that smoking kills, well, we are gonna die anyways.

Kids below 25

ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
i dont get along with kids

ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
below 25 years
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
dont u know this?
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
i just feel hostile
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and they feel frightened
Mother Nature says:
laih basssssssssss
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
because little kids are usually causing lots of noise
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and secretions
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and i hate both
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and they just dont know when to stop
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and when to hit the road
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and when to stay and cause more trouble
Mother Nature says:
laih bass
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
i only managed to be a friend with a little girl, she is around 4 yrs old
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
she is the daughter of a friend of mine.
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
she is exactly like her mom, so I could manage
Mother Nature says:
hahahaah
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and this is the only girl i could deal with
Mother Nature says:
YA RAB ASHOUFLAK 5 3iyal kida
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
I would say , ya rab 1 only.
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
i dont like lots of kids
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
they are resource depleting and an overhead on the mom.
Mother Nature says:
mate2la2sh ...they are the most pure things in the world... loua il atefal fil doniya di kanet il 7ayh teb2a sa3ba wi gaffa..
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and their efficiency as a closed system is below 10%
Mother Nature says:
laih baaaaaaaaaaaaaaas
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and their payback is very late
Mother Nature says:
ya sater laih kidaaaaaaaaaa
ANTI_KIDS_NERD says:
and not guaranteed

Ticket Granting Ticket... Chicken Fried Chicken

Java RAD Vs. Microsoft .net

During my working years as a Java developer, and holding the flag of Java on Oracle(well even before I became officially an Orcle Staff) I was always tempted to know how is it going at the other side of the competition, how do you, Microsoft Guys work?

I was really neither convinced that I had to change my belief and work for some company as a "Microsoft developer" to discover this, nor was I convinced that I have to purchase, download, or borrow a book on .net and start at my free time, because my free time is for me, not for Microsoft :) and I was not convinced to sacrifice it.

It happened that I ve got the golden opportunity to help a friend with a project with my expertise as a developer, and guess what? it was a .net project, and I had to roll up my sleeves and get down into the .net development environment to discover the fantasies of microsoft.

I have found that when you need to display a table's data, you just drag and drop what was called a data grid, then a wizard appears and voila, you have got your table. In literally 15 seconds!!!! Amazing, really it was.

Wait, wait. Don't speculate. I am not by any means deciding now that it is microsoft that prevails. On the other side, i have known the reality about it all :) It just prevents unexperienced developers from getting experienced, and make them stick to its wizards and remain as such.

On the other side, to do this in Java, you had to do this by yourself, to the latest details, and I mean it. Most of you understand what I mean so I won't get into technical details.

I was just amazed by the idea that I can finish a .net project in a tenth of the time if it is a straight forward with some lists and lookups, which is the case for small projects. so what the heck? why don't I just be somehow unethical, and buy this?

Then I thought that if I am going to buy it, I would buy it smart. I would search for a counterpart for this within my side.

What I have discovered then that I have a typical similar environment to build applications like the .net development environment called Oracle JDeveloper 10g.

JDeveloper as an IDE is not more than a fancy editor that I really admire(well, I have go to do this as an Oracle staff anyways :). But digging down in the Oracle ADF framework, and its integration into JDeveloper 10g, I have displayed the data of a table into a web page with all the whistles and wheels (a.k.a. paging and navigation) in less than 3 minutes. And I have not wrote a single line of code. It was all drag and drop of objects into GUI and here is my first page in the application up and running, hot, straight and normal.

You can discover this for yourself.Point your browser to:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/obe9051jdev/adftojsp/defaultendtoend.htm
and do the tutorial. You will like it.

You could also check the page suggested by Steve Muench in his comment to this blog via the url:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/adf/learnadf.html

In my humble opinion, it gives an edge over .net because it is as easy as .net, meanwhile I have the full power and flexibility to tweak, change, modify and enhance my old plain java code sitting behind.

Translation

Fly me to the moon- and let me play among the stars

طيرنى للقمر - و سيب الحبل و شد

The transformation of the city

As I was walking the very typical daily path that I am used to walk, since I have learned how to walk,on my way to work, and my subconscious is "aware" of every single detail in the streets; the way people look, the color of buildings, and the bumps at both sides of the road, It has sent me an alert today that there is something missing, and it was not small to overlook. Another villa was destroyed.

Alexandria is presumed to be a beautiful city. Some people claim that it is beautiful for the sea, other say it is because of its citizens, and most of them believe that buildings are the real reason. Comparing to Cairo, Alexandria is still not a Forrest of cement, dust, and pollution as is the case in Cairo.

Nowadays, someone has decided that there has to be equality between Alexandria and Cairo, and both must have the same Forrest, so the law to ban destruction of villas is outdated and everyone with a heritage is selling it to a building tycoon to raise a 20 story building to gain more money, make poor people just poorer and make this city as ugly as he can.

Rabena 3al zalem wel moftary we ebn bent el .... :-)

SWIFT

Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication; an industry cooperative that provides a standard format for transmitting payments, stock transactions, letters of credit and other financial messages to more than 7,500 member banks, broker-dealers and investment organizations around the world. A SWIFT code is widely used to transfer funds between banks.
ANB SWIFT service allows customers to perform money transfer outside the kingdom with any currency or inside the kingdom with a foreign currency.

Lebanese Colors

When you live in a small town like Alexnadria, there are very small chances to find a nice place, that is not crowded all the time. For me, a place that serves shisha is a prime place. I used to be enjoying the famous cheap shisha at Sa3a le2albak, made by Alaa, the one and only, and enjoying the company of my entimate friend abo 7ouda. But guess what? Abo 7ouda is gone to the gulf, and Alaa has left town too. So sa3a le2albak is not an attraction anymore.

Lately, I have discovered a very nice place, called Lebanese Colors. It is located at this new area beside acacia and county club. One of the virtues of Lebanese Colors, besides the cutie chicks of course, is Shisha. :). Shisha is really good, balanced, served in a nice way, and coal is changed regularly.

Although, the prices are a little bit high, and sometimes you just can't find a nice place on a soft, but their moonlight(cocktail) is a milestone. :)

How to Remember Lists of Words With the Memory Trick - WikiHow

How to Remember Lists of Words With the Memory Trick - WikiHow

To cap it all

To cap it all = اللى زاد و غطى
An example from the dictionary:
"He spilled red wine on the carpet, insulted my mother, and, to cap it all, he broke my favourite vase."

Hyundai

I was chatting with a friend this afternoon, when he told me about an episode he just watched on Discovery, about the origin of Hyundai, this Korean Auto manufacturer.

A farmer who decided to leave his parents and live in the city, started a rice shipping company. At that time the Japanese were colonizing Korea, and they stopped anyone from flourishing a business. This farmer was no exception. His business was stopped.

A stubborn and ambitios one like this farmer decided to start over with an auto repair garage, where he used to repair the Japanese cars and sell used spare parts as if they are brand new.

Today, This garage is one of the biggest Auto manufacturers globalwide!!

God Father III

Money and Friendship, like Oil and Water. -Michael Corleone (Al Pacino).

Cuba Cabana

Last Friday was a real nice experience for me. I went out with my friend Ayman.

Ayman took me to a place that is new to me; it is called "Cuba Cabana". Cuba cabana is located at the heart of Maadi, a place that is very nice to be in and very difficult to navigate through.

We reached a place that immediately reminded me of "Tijuana", where I used to have nice time there with my friends from IBM.

Both places are similar, you get the same feeling as soon as you slide in, a feeling that all your problems are gone, and that you are a filthy rich man, whose sole problem now is to indulge one self.

You find a place that is totally Cuban, short palm trees, cozy couches, fire spots exotic colorful juices, and lots of smoke, mostly from shisha, though should be from cigars.

Cuba cabana is richer than Tijuana, because it has this wireless LAN, those big TFT screens, and the correct type of music.

The menu is really nice, always head for a fajita pronounced "Fahita".

You will get all what you need for a price that is really cheaper than its counterparts, much cheaper.

Spin Doctor

A term used to refer to someone whose job is to tweak facts and realities to be used in favor of someone or some goals. The term comes from Pinball, when you “spin” a ball is when you guide the ball to go in a specific direction.

Rain man

It's been a long time since i hit my blog, actually since december 2004. The last couple of weeks were so hectic, disturbed, and full of stress that would not allow for anything else but trying to get away of troubles.
MBC 2 was playing "Rain Man" by Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise, an old but authentic movie. Last time I saw it was about 5 to 10 years, dont remember, but it is really a nice one, and affecting as well.

It is raining in Cairo.

Today was one fine day for me, although it was completely different for most of the citizens of Cairo. For the first time since centuries, Cairo is experiencing rain, and I mean rain. As an Alexandrian, it is such a normal thing for me to walk and live while it is raining, something we experience annually. But in Cairo it is totally completely another story. People don’t know what to do when it is raining here, as if they are in a scene of “Deep impact” waiting for the particles to fall over their heads. Streets get instantly crowded, people run quickly to their homes and pick up their warmest coats, although the temperature is over 15 degrees.
Then you look up at any building to find people looking out of their windows, stretching hands and heads in a childish manner to experience the rain fall over them.

Wonderful people !!! :)

Tabasco - The heavenly place in Zamalek.

Samir will be my star in this note, again. While trying to get his visa to France to visit his friend Hassan, he had to stay a couple of days in Cairo, sweet Cairo. He had discovered a nice place in Zamalek called Tabasco, and this time we decided to spend a couple of hours there.

Tabasco is a nice Cafe, basically an underground corridor, i.e. a long and narrow place, in the nice district of Zamalek, somewhere near the dorms of the AUC.

Despite its dimensions, the owner of the place knows exactly what people want from a place such like this, so he has arranged the place and equipped it with everything you would need as an AUCian -the premiere guests- or as a normal persion ;-)

You will definitly notice the Red neon light at the facade of the place, which grabs the attention of people passing by, well, I think that was the way samir got to know the place.

You get in to find a shelf to your left, with magazines that you can read if you are alone, then two rows of tables with different types of chairs and sofas, and you can suit yourself.

Pick up the menu and take the notorious Cafe Mocha.


You will really like it.

If you have your laptop, like everyone else in this place, you make yourself comfortable that there is an internet access point there, so you can check your mail or even flirt online ;-)

I really liked this place, and wish you can pay it a visit one day.

Rewsha is wicked

Wicked is the slang word in UK that is equivalent to Rewsha in egypt.
That is what my brother said. I believe him.

Shahrzad

Samir came from alexandria to cairo, specially to pay Shahrzad a visit. If you think that it is a musical, think twice. Shahrzad is one of the oldest milestones in the night life of cairo, a night club, or "cabaret" as they call it in Egypt.

Samir picked the wrong person to accompany him, he picked me. He tried the whole previous week to make it simple for me to go to such a place. I was really convinced.

Then came the D-day, and we are standing in front of the place, and here comes the doorman, or the club tender, you name him, we all know what do they call him ;-) and he started doing his work on Samir, convincing him to enter. We entered......

Just three steps inside, to find a red dark place, with very low light, dark red chairs, and black tables, then a third degree belly dancer going from one table to the other, greeting the guests, and we were received by another lady that was most probably a man and converted, i.e. a trans-sexual. And here I decided that I have got enough of this. I returned backwards.

We have spent the whole night till 3:50 AM searching for another place that was not expensive and was not that low, but we didn't find.

For me, I was satisfied to see such a place, and know that there are real mean places in this city, Cairo.