Keefak Beirut!

Posted by rizal on Jun 22, 2008 in Life in Arabia | 2 comments

“Bonjour!  Welcome to Beirut” I was  greeted by a tall young man with a French accent at the Beirut airport.”Let me take your bag” he insisted and carried my bag to his car.  Pancho , is my driver for a week here in Beirut — aged 22, a Germany supporter for the European Cup did this driving work as a part time (He studied Physics he said — I asked him the next day if he’s still studying after seing a PCB at the back of his car . And suggested he should read Feynman books — ” Quantum Mechanics ? “he asked . I stopped  the conversation there  avoiding the details — Hey! I don’t want to mess around with a student of Physics  though I had a book about Tesla in my bag .

He drove the car to Hamra Street and we were lost for 30 minutes before finding our way to the Marble Tower around 12 midnight on that Sunday. The Hamra St.  a one way street like most of the road here, is a popular road in Beirut and the area around it is full with restaurants , bars , apartment and hotel.  At certain area there were road blocks with military people – I told Pancho that Lebanese army are friendly and more human than .. hmm you know

[OK the day had finally come and I can't give any valid reasons for not accepting this trip to Beirut, not that I am avoiding this place as I said before -- being abroad alone without the family is not a fun thing to do--I missed my kids I left Riyadh on 15th June after got the visa (though I could get it on arrival at the Beirut-- but I hate the hassle explaining to the immigration if there were problems) ]

First day, was a tough day to me — I was given a list of tasks to do completed a few but went into some problems that caused me to stayed up until 3am at customer’s place! Thank Allah problem was resolved a day later (man I told my colleague I will always remember my first day there!)

Beirut is only the 3rd Arab city that I had visited after Dubai – French is widely spoken here, indeed they greeted with “Bonjour” and said “Merci” instead of Shukran as a way of say “Thank You”. The Lebanese  had French as their 2nd language and taught widely at school — I always amazed with people who can speak multi-languages. My friend Pancho, spoke fluent Arabic, English,French,Spanish and German too He asked me do I speak Arabic ? — considering that I have been living in Saudi for almost 2 years . Not much I said — though I can read Quran , conversational Arabic is not something that being practised –and the fact that we were taught classic Arabic — I bet that he would laugh if I  said “Kaifa Haluka!” to him  and he burst into laughter and agreed that he last heard of that  phrase perhaps from his Arabic class ages ago !  People greet with Keefak here in Lebanon [ Keef Halak in Saudi!]

The Flight of Time (which can never be recaptured)

Posted by rizal on Jun 14, 2008 in Life in Saudia | 1 comment

Disconnecting TV?

Posted by rizal on Jun 13, 2008 in being a father | 2 comments

Stop! Don’t make assumptions yet, I have a 32 inch LCD TV at home and some torrents in progress in this PC but I also knew that TV did more harm than good to me and my children. It has been a topic of interest to me recently that I ordered a book about it from Amazon. .

Its not easy . According to Paul Graham

Distraction is not a static obstacle that you avoid like you might avoid a rock in the road. Distraction seeks you out.

and

And technology is continually being refined to produce more and more desirable things. Which means that as we learn to avoid one class of distractions, new ones constantly appear, like drug-resistant bacteria.

Bacteria? Tell me about it -passing by the game store on my way back from solah at the office everyday — made me think that I need Archos 605 badly !

Ummi asked me recently if watching TV is haram? . So as usual I would changed the topic and said hmm.. where did you got this idea from? I am no expert in this area to say about halal and haram but the idea of TV is bad for us is nothing new to me indeed I think to most us
As parents sometimes, we used TV as a replacement or excuse for us to get the children occupied.

Jaja! Pi tengok TV lah abah got work to do!

It happened so many times that I don’t feel bad about it (OK until now) and if you see my huge collection of DVDs — maybe you can imagine how serious I am in this “time wasted” profession. Can you teach your children just by letting them watch Sesame Street? No — according to Neil Postman TV only provides passive information transfer without 2 way-interactions and do you realize that most of children’s program today are a series of commercial that make you buy things! (Ernie puppets, Barnie , telletubies .. anyone ?!) — even worse if you’re fan Oprah — I told my wife recently that watching Oprah just made her felt insecure and worse making her started buying things advertise in the programme! I don’t like Dr. Phil too;)

Hey, Mom and Dad! Do you know…?

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics:

• The average child watches 3 hours of TV a day — 2 hours of quality programming is the maximum recommended by the Academy.
• Active play time is needed to develop mental, physical and social skills.
• Children who watch violence on TV are more likely to display aggressive behavior.
• Young children don’t know the difference between programs and commercials.

Sources http://www.aap.org/family/smarttv.htm

Back to the topic of distractions, it is not just about TV anymore – almost all media surrounding us has become an entertainment device. The mobile phone, the computer ,the internet can be one too– I could spent hours doing “nothing” infront of a PC on a weekend morning just to notice that its already time for Zuhr prayer . [Not to mention hours fixing the wireless connection or even waiting for the antivirus completed their scanning].There goes my valuable Thursday! (I live in KSA where Thursday and Friday are non-working days or weekend!). My friend used to say that time moving fast nowadays — where did the time go ? You’ll suddenly notice that is already mid-year 2008 but it felt that New Year Eve was just passing by yesterday! [Later we came to agreement about the wasted time on the computer! ]

So will I disconnecting my TV? Our satellite TV decoder was dead 2 days ago, a hard reset didn’t work and also my son complaint that the TV in his room was not working anymore. I think its a sign ..?

p/s Do read this article about your children and TV.

MIND CONTROL?

Values matter!

Posted by rizal on May 18, 2008 in Current Affairs | 0 comments

Have you heard about Carly Fiorina recently? Me neither .Somehow, I heard that her succeeder, Mark Hurd decided to buy EDS last week to make HP one of the big players in IT services next to IBM . For those who does not Carly Fiorona , she was the CEO of Hewlett Packard Co. from 1999 until she was ousted in 2005 and for the record I have nothing against her of being a woman CEO (once quoted as the most influential woman in IT) , it just that being a typical engineer, I always admired companies who is led by someone with an engineering background –in short things about Carly never interest me much unlike stories of the nerds at Google or even Steve .

But recently upon reading a book that I newly bought, I came across an interesting part of her speech [about Islam] which was given just ~ two weeks after September 11,2001.

Quoted :

There was once a civilization that was the greatest in the world.

It was able to create a continental super-state that stretched from ocean to ocean, and from northern climes to tropics and deserts. Within its dominion lived hundreds of millions of people, of different creeds and ethnic origins.

One of its languages became the universal language of much of the world, the bridge between the peoples of a hundred lands. Its armies were made up of people of many nationalities, and its military protection allowed a degree of peace and prosperity that had never been known. The reach of this civilization’s commerce extended from Latin America to China, and everywhere in between.

And this civilization was driven more than anything, by invention. Its architects designed buildings that defied gravity. Its mathematicians created the algebra and algorithms that would enable the building of computers, and the creation of encryption. Its doctors examined the human body, and found new cures for disease. Its astronomers looked into the heavens, named the stars, and paved the way for space travel and exploration.

Its writers created thousands of stories. Stories of courage, romance and magic. Its poets wrote of love, when others before them were too steeped in fear to think of such things.

When other nations were afraid of ideas, this civilization thrived on them, and kept them alive. When censors threatened to wipe out knowledge from past civilizations, this civilization kept the knowledge alive, and passed it on to others.

While modern Western civilization shares many of these traits, the civilization I’m talking about was the Islamic world from the year 800 to 1600, which included the Ottoman Empire and the courts of Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo, and enlightened rulers like Suleiman the Magnificent.

Although we are often unaware of our indebtedness to this other civilization, its gifts are very much a part of our heritage. The technology industry would not exist without the contributions of Arab mathematicians. Sufi poet-philosophers like Rumi challenged our notions of self and truth. Leaders like Suleiman contributed to our notions of tolerance and civic leadership.

And perhaps we can learn a lesson from his example: It was leadership based on meritocracy, not inheritance. It was leadership that harnessed the full capabilities of a very diverse population–that included Christianity, Islamic, and Jewish traditions.

This kind of enlightened leadership — leadership that nurtured culture, sustainability, diversity and courage — led to 800 years of invention and prosperity.

In dark and serious times like this, we must affirm our commitment to building societies and institutions that aspire to this kind of greatness. More than ever, we must focus on the importance of leadership– bold acts of leadership and decidedly personal acts of leadership.

With that, I’d like to open up the conversation and see what we, collectively, believe about the role of leadership.

Darn! And I thought who this woman really is? While the West was busy condemning Islam in the midst of September 11, 2001 — she couragedly stand by her principle did otherwise. Too late to know her? I hope not!

I found a video on her talking about ethics , something that I think most of the top management up there less interested than getting “the results” . As she said “Values are the only one that lead you when no one’s watching and when you think that anyone will ever found out. Values matter!

Carly rocks — gotta find her book!

The Study Room

Posted by rizal on May 12, 2008 in Life in Saudia | 5 comments

In the prologue of the book The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, Jesse Wise wrote :-

The first day I taught my 3 child at home , I cleaned up the playroom and set up 3 desks . I hung an American flag at the from of the room and led them in Pledge of Allegiance . I was shaking in nervousness.

OK I don’t have any Malaysian flag to hang and don’t even have a clue what in the world Pledge of Allegiance is [until I searched the Wikipedia] but I was so inspired by Susan’s way of educating her children and then finally concluded that seeking knowledge indeed is a serious business — so recently me and my wife decided [ I wish we still have a maid!] to convert our [messy] living room into a study room instead.

Now all the books, desk , computers and my lab [my 2x2620 Cisco routers, mini-itx , EEE-PC,1-wire stuff] are located in the same room. It is just the beginning ..

The kids table

Note: Home schooling is so popular in the west — I always envied the idea of having my very own curricula of education for my children [of course with some proven methodology] . Susan & Jesse’s book mentioned above followed the classical education model of homeschooling — with grammar,logic,rhetoric,Latin and Western Civilization [Duh! being an engineer all those subject except logic had always been my lowest priority!] . I just wished there is such a detail guide for Muslims [perhaps written by Seyyed Hossein Nasr or Hamza Yusuf or they existed and I just missed them?] . Don’t you think Arabic would be a richer language+ the caligraphy is a beautiful art compared to Latin and the Islamic Civilization would be more worthy of learning? Interesting ? Check this example .

The Malaysia holidays..

Posted by rizal on May 2, 2008 in Current Affairs, Life in Saudia | 4 comments

To friends and relatives I didn’t get the chance to meet/call when I was in a 7 days’ holidays Malaysia — I am deeply sorry. I spent 4 days in my hometown Batu Pahat so that I could share my time with my father who got a stroke 3 weeks ago. Alhamdulillah , Praise to Allah All Mighty his condition is better now, I am happy to have the chance chatting and laughing with him while I shaved his beard on my last day in BP, also to see my mom started smiling again perhaps happy to see her son and the family again since last 2007 summer

Some photos ..

Finding the GPS coordinate with my Nokia E90.

Back in Riyadh

Posted by rizal on May 1, 2008 in Life in Saudia | 0 comments

Alhamdulillah my family and I are back in our home in Riyadh . As usual the going back trip has always been a tiring and gruelling sport for me. Imagine this with luggage exceeding 100kg ¹ , 4 kids ² and a wife — I would be sweating until we are finally on the plane and got a place to sit ³

footnote

1. OK I am a typical Malaysian who can’t live without our local food like keropok, cencalok or ikan masin – so we always pack all those food that we could not find in Riyadh.

I also brought back tons of books. See below .

2. Ammar our autistic son , always cries when he is sleepy or when he heard her little sister cried — its like a chain reaction of cries!. It happened few times and did I tell you that we had a 7 hours transit in Doha?!
Also Alysha (adik bongsu la katakan) asyik la nak berdukung — banyak songeh betul. And the boy+girl in the middle — Sabrina and Imran would always been in a continous arguments and poking at each other !

3. I have experienced a random seat flight — which separated the whole family though our ticket clearly indicated we should sit on the same row!