Tribute to Louis -Satchmo- Armstrong.

The phenomenal dream.

Today I woke up remembering my dream. After a warm shower and a cup of coffee I realized that this dream was not a one to be overlooked. On contemplating on that particular dream I figured out that it was not free of signs. I believe that this is one phenominal dream.

I dreamed of me walking -Call of duty style- by the fence of the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria Univerisity, on that street where we used to utilize the many stationeries for photocopying, obtaining handouts and similar stuff. It is a warm sunny winter early morning (a favorite weather to many) people are going past the parked vehicles on the two sides of the street. The ambient music running in the background was not coming from an iPod or a similar player. It was coming from everywhere, comfortably loud, covering the whole place, and I am loudly singing every word of that song.

Till this moment I thought it was just another sweet dream for most of people. Nothing special. I then realized some facts; The music was by my all time favorite band: Pink Floyd, and the very specific song playing in my head was "Time"!! The very distinctive part of this song says:

Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

Another fact: Today is a day in November 2010. Complete ten years has past since I graduated(Mid November 2000).

It might be a coincidence that I dream of such a song as I love it to the bone. But why do I dream of the whole scene at that time specifically at that specific time? Is it a sign that my time is getting wasted? Do I need to put on some more thoughts on what I am doing in life? Or is it just another combination of bitter sweet moments that I should let go?

More fog in Doha

Fog in Doha

Hassan Shehata

Goddess of Wisdom.

“There are two goddesses in your heart: the Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks that they need to get wealth first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with chasing money. But they have it backwards. You have to give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous, and follow you.”

IE connections limit

IE has a limit of 2 connections to the same domain. Why?

Java Ranch - Funny ;)

painting

The Green Coolness and the Land of Thoughts

My review on the Dell Inspiron 1525

Read my review on the Dell Inspiron 1525 on reviewcentre.com

Howa Keda

Howa Keda, Baltaga. Welle mesh 3agbo, yakol bel gazma 3ala afaah. (masheeha afaah, I couldn't write what I really thought of!! :) )

This is the new way of treatment. We rabena yostor 3alena.

Abbas: Guardian of the Cubicle

We live in crazy times

"We live in crazy times. The market rules, which means you won't usually have enough
time to create well-elaborated, robust system designs. If you're not fast enough, flexible enough, and cheap enough, you'll soon find yourself out of the market."

-Nicolai M. Josuttis, SOA in practice

My Cubicle

As you can see, my cubicle is located on a strategic place. It is just next to the main entrance to the work area, so every single person has to pass by me first, distracting me and some even come and say hello. I really can't concentrate at work.

If you look to the left you will find a part of the pigeon holes, which are like the post box for everybody, so people usually come to take their mail and they never come in quiet. They have to chat over it.

Behind the pigeon holes is the kitchen, where people usually talk loud while making their coffee.

Happy me!!

My first self cooked meal

Garlic bread super supreme, Tuna-Pasta salad, fried steak and baladi salad.

Bucharest Airport

This is being written off line as I can't find free Internet access in Bucharest airport. The plane flight was not very nice as the difference in pressure hurt my ears big time since I caught cold. I was really afraid to turn deaf. As soon as I arrived I noticed that all women in the area are so white with blond hair tending to be white as well. Extreme white was not sexy at all.

As I reached the transit desk, leading to the departure halls, a beautiful lady officer stopped me, and informed me that I have to wait for some official from TAROM to come and check my boarding pass, and that my current boarding pass is not good for the flight. During this a male officer (like the old good ones in Egypt) came to me, with suspicious looks in his eyes, maybe just because i am from the middle east. He asked me politely to give him my passport and about my destination. He then started checking every page of the passport to see if I was forging my photo, then he checked every single visa I've got to see if it is forged. He then asked me to wait in my place and he took my passport and went to check it. In a long 10 minutes he was back with my passport with all the frustration in his own eyes, because he was not successful to stop me!!

I was then informed by the nice lady officer that I have to wait here till the TAROM official arrives. That was for 30 minutes after which the arrogant TAROM bitch arrived. Reminded me of the black widows working for some companies or the airport in Egypt. (Why they look similar). An aggressive look, a frown, little talk, and a look that would say you son of a bitch!!

After a while I was allowed to get my boarding pass and pass by the gate only to find a small airport that is much less elaborate than the Cairo airport. Eastern beauties were everywhere, but were not really tempting to me. They were just cheap!!

I tried to figure out what currency do these people use and how much of a Euro or a GBP is their currency but I couldn't get this info. Some shops were selling things in USD or Euros, others were selling in RON (the Romanian currency). Anyways I was not really very interested in buying anything so I went to the smoking zone to smoke a good Egyptian Marlboro then here I am sitting next to Gate 4 waiting for my connection flight to London, expecting a tough entry clearance as usual.

Cairo Airport

Currently I am staying at "The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf" in Cairo Airport Terminal1 (elmatar el adeem) waiting for my plane. The flight is scheduled at 4:00 am i.e. 1:15 hours from now.

On a wide screen infront of me are the breaking news of assassinating benazir bhutto.

I was lucky to find this electricity outlet for my mobile and more lucky to find the mobinil wifi to be working and for free.

will be flying to bucharest (as I am using the romanian airlines). Then will have transit for 3 hours or little less (or maybe more) then another plane to london. Heathrow.

Inspite of the very bad bad flu that attacked me yesterday night, and despite my bad mood of this, I am still feeling excited to this trip. I hope it goes well.

I was expecting the officer in the airport to stall me for half an hour because of the similarity of my name to other people who are wanted, but he looked at my passport, found lots of check ins and check outs, then decided that he doesn't need to stall me anymore. They usually leave me go easily when i am leaving the country, but never when i am coming back in. I just hope things go well this time. :)

The Survival Trip

Long ago back in 2003, it was my first visit to Europe. I didn't know yet that airlines were cheaper than land vehicles.

Western Europe

I was in Hamburg, Germany, and I wanted to visit the UK over the weekend, so I decided to get into some bus that was going there.

I looked at the map and found that the bus would go west to Belgium then a little bit to the left to Calais, France, then via the Channell Tunell to Dover, UK.

I didn't know that this was named the survival trip by people who know it; The bus headed south along Germany till it reached Frankfurt, then to the left, into France, then back to the north to Belgium, only to go again to the west to France once more till it reached Calais. The reason was to load the bus. It started almost empty and went allover western europe to collect people!!

The unforgettable trip took me 16 hours!!

The Unexpected Rain

Those of you who are reading my blog for a long time now, might remember the article I wrote some several years ago, titled "It's raining in Cairo". Since that time, it only rained twice. Usually it boils down to some water dropplets over some regions.

Today was an exceptional day. Thunder, lightning, and real rain was the case. I don't believe that this has happened in Cairo for the last decade. I might be wrong.

Of course, Cairo is not prepared for this. Streets got flooded. People panicked. Some put on winter clothes, although the weather is hot :). For us, Egyptians, rains are tightly correlated with winter, and cold weather. The first effect always goes to traffic.

What makes this weird is that there are no rains in Alexandria, which means that this is not coming from the Sea. In the mean time, news are talking about the rise in the water level of the river Nile. Could it be the case? Well, if so, then this might be a new phenomenon. I will try to follow up and update as I find something.