The effectiveness of my blog as an interface

It's not effective. I barely post 25% of what I write.

Sometimes I write things and lose them, sometimes I'm too shy to post them (or too polite to do so). Sometimes I keep on postponing posting something until it's complete and it takes me a lot of time until I find the time and also the way to elaborate by writing on a thought I had.

I prefer written communication, but I'm not really communicating much through writing either. I generally use it as private self-expression, just like the scribbles I keep in my drawer, or on the floor in my room.

Exercise Note 1

This is not really the first note that I take after jogging. I love what happens to my mind when I stimulate myself through exercise. Most of the times I start thinking and imagining good things. Sometimes smart things, funny things, things that I find inspiring, or things that require guts.

Today I was inspired by an oasis, not in a desert of sand, but one of concrete. I was jogging amidst the building, some of them are interesting from an architectural point of view. The most important part was the fresh air. I was awake since dawn and the cool air is revitalizing.This is why I love the song Night Air by Jamie Woon; I can totally relate to it.

Before I entered the oasis I was delighted by the scent of flowers planted in front of one of the houses, I'm not sure where I was at first, and then I felt lost (still knowing the general direction I needed to take). I found myself behind the Prime Minister's residence (or is his office? near the 4th circle). The scent was beautiful, and I tried to keep its beauty in my mind as I was trying to ignore the smell of cars as I was only a few meters away.

I suddenly found myself in the oasis, there is nothing special about grass and olive trees. But I loved the green surprise. The vibrantly green and tall grass with a delicate sun shining through it was soothing to my soul that is getting worn out in an urban environment. The grass made the ground softer on my tired legs, the sun and the green made my mind arrive at a peaceful state.

I jogged from Jubeiha where I live, to Rainbow street in Jabal Amman where I had a delicious Chai Latte on that beautiful morning and had a chat with a friendly stranger who knows Farsi.

I hope this becomes a more consistent habbit.

Graduation or salvation

From the University of Jordan. Unprofessional employees smoking everywhere underneath the No Smoking signs. Rudeness and dismissing inquirers are the standard behavior. I don't know where all this come from. The registration office doesn't care how long I wait, how long I walk from this place or the other repeatedly. Selfishness is at an extreme here and I got used to it unfortunately, I'm surprised that I am not surprised and I remind myself that I need to ignore it.

People who live under the fact that they are objects in a system in which they have no control and as thus behave as if the worst-case scenario that defines the shape of the community isn't worth the effort of making tiny improvements since 'a little white dot doesn't show on a black page' is one of the dominant negative quotes people embrace.

On another front, I am reminded of the importance of leaving the University, and the country. I met great people here but it's time for me to respond to the fact that my efficiency, my productivity and my spirit has been hindered by the values and lack thereof of this community. I no longer want to be a hero whose goal is to save people who don't want to be saved. I'll dedicate my leadership efforts into something of a higher nature than just telling people to stand for what's right, which is a very basic intuitive thing that in a dogmatic society like Jordan, people easily forget.

The humanity of the human life, which is what I have and of which I am reminded constantly with every heart beat and every wandering thought, is beyond the primitive societal struggles of imprisoned people jailed by there refusal to make amendments that facilitate communal progress. It's a spirit and changing it need more than a software developer. We need more cheerleaders, to cheer up who do good.

I am taking a rest before making yet another trip to the registration office to get my certificate. I hope I will be able to get everything done today, to happily say good bye to this place and all its good, bad and wonder.

I am embracing a new life, I had embraced a new life since a long time actually, but now it's done. It's here not as a wish, but as a reality that empowers me to take more solid steps towards what I want from life and I want a lot.

Edit:

Another 5 minutes. I don't want to reach the employee again too early; he said it'll take 5 minutes for the data to propagate the system. It's nothing compared to the time I wasted here running from place to place trying to add courses, or know where my classes are (they used to change them from what is reported in the class schedule almost everytime), struggling to create schedule (finding classes) and then have them cancelled almost every semester, and it goes on and on.

There are absolutely lots of things I'm going to miss here. Lots of cute girls is one of them, unfortunately, most of them are until-marriage virgins. I'll miss my naivety and the simplicity of my behavior at times; I was freerer. Time to unlearn, relearn and then learn.

Suppaplex!

The memory of this game still crosses my mind. I miss the great feeling that I use to have when playing video games.
Suppaplex was great in that it is a puzzle game and also one that requires skill to control the character and run away from those scissors or protection modules.
It is an amazing game. Surely I'll install it once again on a VM on my machine and live nostalgia!

This song reminded me of the style of the music in Suppaplex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gBB8RVZ3a4E, which reminded me of the game itself. Now i'll search for Suppaplex soundtracks on Youtube!

Amazing! http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hB9h6LHYgN0

Too many eager electrons

Today I was shocked, literally. I wasn't counting but I think it was for 3 seconds or so. This is what I wrote this morning after the happy electrocution.

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It came as a surprise. My mental system became ‘literally’ shocked wondering what is happening.

I lifted my leg as fast as I, or my spine, realized that that step was a bad move. I jumped on the bed staring at my victim foot wondering why the fierce and painful buzzing persists! The wires where actually stuck to my feet like they’re so insistently sucking life, like someone clinging to what is theirs.

For a second I thought I was going to die because of all that intensity. But that didn’t matter at the time. What mattered was the infinite number of bites per second causing pain to my foot. Then I was able to see the eager wire sucking life, I grabbed it and threw it away saying “Jesus!”

I think I said Jesus because I’m used to. Simply cultural effects of western movies, shows and video games. And it’s my family name translated, that’s surely the reason.

Then I was calm but still surprised by all this unexpected intensity. And how thrilling it is to get electrocuted, how horrible it is to think you’re going to die.

220V, I’m not sure about the current, maybe 50-60mA, but it is painful. But it is not as scary as I thought it should be or maybe I was lucky not being stung in my chest or somewhere higher in my body.

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The pain was localized. Of course the whole of my mental state was in shock but I was capable of conscious thinking making the decision to look at what the mess was happening to my leg and then realizing the problem to finally grabbing the wire to throw it away.

Deb deb deb...

A simple physiological response or wait the cause thinking in higher level terms is. In high level terms, a cute girl, your particular kind that you think suits you and for whom you would actually try to do things to get her attention, her attraction and finally her admiration of you, enters the room and you simply, become dumbfounded.

My internals are bursting with things I don't understand. My arms feel heavy, I'm more dance ready moving like a fool on the chair on which I'm sitting while typing this. She's infront of me, in the background behind the screen. I'm not staring, but it makes me happy to look every once in a while. I told her she is cute 15 minutes ago, just to let her know why I look so she wouldn't have to wonder if she has something funny on her hair.

I don't want to try. The commonality of human feelings should deal with things.. but we're not objects but things get complicated so easily because of all the things that we think about. Some things should be simple, no sophistication, not headache necessary. Keep the great thinking for science.

Advanced C++ and responsibility

I was a really focused person. I didn’t pay attention to the people around me with all the interfering psychological elements of being a part in a group, except when I had to show some manners like when I was revising some of the concepts of that Advanced C++ class after the lecture: there was me and a guy (who wasn’t a friend at the time) and we were separately experimenting with the clunky Visual C++ 6 IDE, way before .NET, there was a girl sitting shyly with a smile looking at me and doing nothing. So I decided I will just keep her company since she so politely asked for it. The other guy joined the conversation and then I’ve let them enjoy it and got back to what I was doing. I really enjoyed that class and I’m not recalling some interesting moments.

Dr. M A, let’s call him so. He was an enthusiastic lecturer and I enjoyed his class. After the class finished I kept meeting people who were very interested in me (I thought it was because of some superficial reason) and then I would realize that they have taken that class with me. After a while I thought that interestingly, my behavior in that class wasn’t so common and commanded lots of respect from all those people that I don’t even remember (since I was so focused-but unfortunately I missed on many relationships that might have proven to be interesting).

I was the accurate kind. In one lecture the professor was giving an example when he said “let’s say we have ‘Seen’ [the Arabic letter that corresponds to ‘S’,] the ASCII code of which…” that’s when I interrupted (some of the lectures had a more casual interactive format) saying: “You mean Unicode, there is no ASCII for ‘Seen’”. He smiled saying that is if I want to keep track of such subtle matters and continued. I felt satisfied.

The lectures continued through the semester and one day he was late. So I’ve written on the computer which was connected to the projector something blaming him for being late. I was just joking, with the professor with whom I felt I started to become friends. But when he saw it, he got upset and decided to punish everyone saying that he is the one in charge of the lectures and no one had authority to blame him. I think he thought it was disrespectful. Feeling guilty, I was waiting for him to finish to apologize. And when he said that he was going to punish everyone by taking off marks, I stood up and said that I am ready to take responsibility for what I have done. He asked me to sit down, ignoring my admission.

I saw him after the lecture and I asked him why he didn't take it simply as a lighthearted joke. He told me that people here (in the University of Jordan) were the kind that takes the opportunity to disrespect and the kind the schemes and talks behind one’s back. There is rarely pure and simply honesty here. I apologized and we remained on good terms. It was easy for me, someone who loves what they study, to get along with his professors.

He also gave me one of the most important social interaction advice that took me years to understand: “dealing with people through layers of indirection, or interfaces.”

Now going back to my colleagues, I think they admired my readiness to admit and face the consequences. Another clue of having the incident attracting attention is one guy’s remark saying that the blame should be on the person who did it even after I have admitted it (the professor insisted on punishing everyone) and it was obvious who that guy to blame was. I don’t like to deal with people who just like to make provocative remark and my response was just mere short eye contact.

BSc times, I had to do lots of maturing up…