Collaborative Attitude

I always remember my father, he died (god bless his soul) in 1996, but till today if I want to figure out anything in life I will imagine what he will say about it. He once told me that Islam insists that every person looks after his neighbors. The vicinity of looking after our neighbors does not stop at the one next door, it should be seven houses in all the direction, so if you imagine my house, I would need to have a circle around me of seven houses in every direction; of course this is just a saying; no one applies it today. Imagine if every body applies this principle, nobody will be hungry or goes out of business or be homeless.

That is why I always try to help people in many ways without expecting a return; if I have a student who wants an Arabic teacher, I will give him the phone number of the Arabic teachers that I know, and ask him/her to call them and contract with them directly. I don't even talk to the teachers about this. Also if a student checks with me about a local university I will give names. I don't want the offices next to my office to close down and I would like them to think in the same manner. However I do not find this attitude spreading like fire any where. Why is that? I think its because the people that work in organizations do not have the concept that my father taught me instilled in them. Or maybe they just do not care. People think that they can live in isolation, but no one lives in isolation, we are all linked in one way or another.

For example I live in an area that has few hotels, a shopping mall, 25 restaurants, a supermarket or two and of course more than 3000 housing units. I was thinking of sending an email to everybody to suggest to them that if we all help each other then none of us will lose out. I am sure that every household has a person that is the breadwinner, and that person could have lost his/her job during this economic crisis, my friend who is a well known designer is one of those people. I thought that all of us may have a job or two to be done in our houses, if we give her those jobs, she can be on her feet again and be able to survive the crisis. But is this doable? I don't think so as I am sure the people will not welcome my idea and would think that I am intruding. I would hate to see the restaurants closing down, or the hotel going out of business, I am sure the owners have invested considerable amount of money to make us happy and entertain us, and its time for us to pay back.

I always relate to the movie that was called pay it forward, imagine that everybody does that will we have a block of offices that is empty just because its an economic crisis time? no we wouldn't.

So what do you think we should do?

Dubai Time

i dont normally go to the office early, but last week i had a 9:30 appointment. so i didnt have breakfast, and my son had to drive us really fast to the office ( dont worry not more than the speed limit) as we normally have our breakfast at leasure, and cruise to work without stress. then of course no one was there. at 10:17 someone arrived and my son told him that he is in real trouble as he missed up with my mother, you see i am very strickt on timing, i dont believe in Dubai time, or middle east time, i belive in time. that is why i remembered that email forwarded to me by my sister, she keeps on sending me forwards, until i opened a special folder in my outlook so i could read her emails at my own time.

this email was so dear to my heart, and the most confusing one, is still in my inbox. I read it often but never forwarded it to anyone.

This email shows the difference between rich and poor countries. The difference is not in the age of the country, or the existence of any natural resources. Nor is the difference based on race, colour or intellectual abilities. Two countries in particular were used to make the analogy very clear, Japan and Switzerland. Both are small, with very little natural resources, but are amongst the richest countries. Japanese products are every where, and Swiss chocolate is the best. I will not mention the other side of the story, but would like to tell you the jest of the forwarded email. It lists down the reasons for those countries to be rich. The reasons lie mainly in the attitude of the people. Attitude matters, the rich countries believe in accepting responsibility, abiding by the laws, have ethics and integrity, respect the rights of the citizens. The people also love work, strive to save and invest and are punctual.

We on the other hand (even though we have heaps of money) are not rich. We are still considered third world and poor. Look at our countries. We have oil, and we have natural resources, but we do not produce anything, our oil is mostly processed by other rich countries. Even the brick that we build our houses from is imported, or at least the technology for making the brick is imported. We don’t make anything, we don’t build anything and we don’t produce anything. This is what I mean by attitude. We all feel that if we can buy the best of what the advanced world makes, why break our heads in making it ourselves.

Attitude can be changed when we all think about the infrastructure of our education. I would like us to look deep into the curriculum that we teach at our schools and universities, did we design it?? Or did we get it from a rich country? I am not saying that we have to be self sufficient, or we should reinvent the wheel. There are things in science and mathematics that are taken for granted, we will have to learn them. For example there might be another way to make a light bulb, but it will always be similar to what Edison had discovered. But who says that we cannot get light in another way, who says that we cannot conserve sunshine, or have winters in the summer, or electricity without wires. Why depend on those individuals in the rich countries to think on our behalf, when we can think for ourselves.

We tend to buy everything from developed countries, of course at times, they review and progress their programmes and we lag behind as we will not know that the programme is changed. Also we never think of teaching our children the qualities that will change their attitude. Ethics and punctuality for example are not part of our teaching programmes.

I would love to call this article, Education with an attitude, but I am worried that it might be misunderstood.

The Customer is the king- or are we kidding ourselves

when i find my staff gloomy or unhappy about something, i ask them not to answer the phone, as the next phone call can be from a student and i dont want him or her to feel the gloominess of the staff. the smile can be heard on the phone, and the tone of the voice can tell if the person on the other side of the line is happy to answer the call or not. the staff argue with me about this, so i remind them that without the student we will not be alble to buy cloths, rent homes or even eat, and the only way to distinguish ourselves is by being friendly, friendliness is senonimous to high quality.

that is why i feel really upset when i phone my bank and the person on the other side of the line is unhelpful or impolite. so one day i blow up on the customer service person, i told him that without me and my colleagues the CUSTOMERS he and the bank will collapse, and if they do not start to treat us with respect i will close my account and take my money and run. of course what ever i said went over his small head, and he didnt even apologise, so i wrote an email to the bosses, till now no reply is received.

banks over here are useless, they are trained by baboons in the jungle, in actual fact baboons can be more customer friendly than the staff of any bank in the UAE. but who to complain to? i dont know, and no one would tell me.

so if one day, i managed to get a group going ( from the account holders of one of the banks that i use) and we all agree to close our accounts, then i think someone will notice. so i am starting a movement. i will call it the "customers are kings" movements, and whoever treat any of us "THE CUSTOMERS" badly, we boycot that business. i think that is the only way to make noticable repairs to life in the UAE.

tell me what you think.

Malfunction and Malfunctions but is it a Malfunction

Do you remember what I was saying in my previous posts that I wish that I am the government, well i am going to maintain that I should be the government as I don't like what the contractors are doing in our country. The problems are not stopping and I a not going to go into the bribes or the corruption even, that is for another blog. I just want to compare how other countries build things and how we build things. Take Burj khalifa for instance, we were so happy that soon we will be able to touch the sky, many have planned their wedding to be held there, some planned to pop the questions there, some just wanted to admire the architecture of Dubai. But did we have time to enjoy this? not really as after few weeks, only few weeks the malfunctioning happened. Of course if you read the news you will think that the reason is merely an act of god they show the thunder as a reason, to me its a contractor problem, why build something that is so high ( l love skyscrapers don't take me wrong) without protecting it from thunders? isn't there something called thunder blocker or something of that sort?, even I have it in my backyard??!!

The second thing which is also drastic is the crack in the aquarium, we all got the scare thinking what is going to happen to our sharks, luckily they were not harmed! but the mall is harmed and the shop owners that paid millions to decorate their shops were harmed and lost a lot of money and business. Of course the contractors are not apologizing and i am sure they are not even here, not sure where they are, they've long collected their cash and vanished.

now lets compere, in the USA, and i am not saying that there is no corruption in the USA, they built this nice building in Chicago, it has a protruding glass balcony, in the toppest floor. Ok, now it will be scary if that glass breaks, but does it? or will it? i don't think so, and do you know why? the lives of the people in the USA is more important to everybody than the extra dollar one would make out of the corruption.

When are we going to think in that manner. Is it the government role to instill the love of lives in us? or is it the education? or what is it? i am not sure really, will leave the answer to you.

friday and at home

It is normal for me to sleep late on fridays. But today I slept really late as I was enjoying my dreams.
You see my freind's husband died 10 months ago. His family abandoned her and his three kids' the factory he was running is confiscated by the bank and all the lenders want their money
She was a real housewife, no bank account, no money, she doent have any knowledge of today's needed technology for work and basically her disaster is multiplied ten folds.
I cannot bekeive that in today's day and age there are people that are still too dependant on their husbands or their fathers oblivious to the fact that life has so many unexpected happenings and one has
To be a good boy scout. This reminded me of my dad (god bless his soul) he brought us up in a way that we can live even if we were castaway on an uninhibeted island. He tought us to cook, make cloths, read, write, and most of all know our potential so as we do not become needy to any individual in this world
My dreams last night were revolving around this fact, I would love to be the person that teaches girls that they need to own the basic necessities to be able to lead their lives. Teach them that people may help but one can only savour ones success if that success came from ones own hard work and perseverence.
I am thankful to my father and thankful that I can live wherever I want and be able to have a home and any necessities covered. But how shall I start this?

jason, jason

for the past few nights the name above is repeated in my mind thousands of times; no he is not an actor that i suddenly discovered or liked, its the father in that PlayStation game that my son had just bought, or to put it mildly my son's AVATAR. yes agreed, at last i figured out the meaning of avatar, and the movie that clogged the banks with money. back to the game. in the story the family go to the mall, one of the sons wonders of the father's sight ( my sons avatar again) and the father is looking for him everywhere, and shouting, Jason, Jason, Jason. the movement of the actors in the PlayStation is so vivid as if its a real life. then when the father finds him its too late as he was running after his balloon left the mall, and a car hits him and kills him instantly. the parents and their other son are so sad. the little boy is tarnished and wants to watch TV, the father wants him to go to sleep, the house is sad and the mood of the film (my son is playing) is so depressing. but it doesn't stop there. some people kidnap the little one and the mission of finding his son starts. the language used and the scenes are all so depressing, oh did i say that before, but they are depressing. the thing is, my son waits to come home from work to complete the game. of course i found out later that this game was banned from Dubai, how did my son find it? i am not sure

It rains the whole time in New Zealand

we lived in New Zealand for five years, we have seen some sunny days, but most days we had rain, it can be light, it can be drizzling, but we had lots and lots of heavy rain; one day my wind screen wiper was not working, and the rain started, light in the beginning, and turned to be cats and dogs. so i had to park my car and wait for the rain to stop so i can get back home. lucky me the police didn't see me, otherwise a fine was a sure thing.

wondering why am I telling this story? of course you are. I never saw a slight paddle after the rain had stopped, we never had a drop of rain inside the house, and we did live in many houses, but nothing leaked, and no fuse or triping in the power either. But in the UAE, or any of the other gulf countries, OK why am i cautious, in the whole of the middle east, when it rains, we love it, in actual fact we pray for rain. We of course forget the aftermath. for example it rained on Sunday in the UAE, good amount of rain that washed down the dust that we had from the sand storm. however it was chaos, the accidents, the lakes of mud and the leaking inside most of the if the houses was sickening. If i were the government, i will cancel the license of every road and sewerage contractor in these countries as i am sure their pockets are so full of the money that was meant to be for the sewerage. see these pictures and you will believe. i only wish to be the goverment, there will not be another problem in these countries.