Odd days at work

Mentioning the emails that I receive on a daily basis  in my previous blog didn't actually explain what types of emails I receive from students.  I will share with you one particular email that is a riddle rather than a request.  Its from a student who has a sick child, are you feeling empathetic already? then read on:

مرحبا Hello

بداية اتقدم لك بالشكر الجزيل على التواصل معي , و اود ان انتهز هذه الفرصة لأتقدم لكم بالمباركة بحلول الشهر الفضيل اعاده الله علينا عليك بالصحة والعافية . I wish you all the best in the Month of Ramadhan and hope that you will have health and happiness in it.

كما اود ان اؤكد لكم بان طلبي يجب ان يتم تحقيق فيه الطلبات التاليه دون نقص وهي كتاليI would like to emphasis few points as follows:  

1-المدينة كبيرة و امنه . The city has to be large an safe

2-المدينه رخيصة .The city has to be affordable

3-قبول في الماجستير في تخصص من تخصصات المحاسبة .I want an acceptance in masters of accounting

4-القبول يكون مشروط باللغة الانجليزية لا يزيد عن 6 في ايلتس .My acceptance has to be conditional on IELTS of 6.5

5-القبول بدون شرط GMAT ( استثناء من GMAT). 
I don't want the acceptance to be conditional on GMAT

6-الجامعة والمعهد في نفس المدينة . I want to do English and university study in the same city

7-ان يوجد في نفس المدينة مستشفى كبير  او مدينة طبية  متخصصون في علاج ضعف السمع والتأخر في النطق والكلام .There must be a hospital in the same city for children with special needs

8-عدد المواد في دراسة الماجستير لا تزيد 11 مادة او 30 ساعة او بحد اقصى 36 ساعة  The number of courses in the masters not more than 11 or 30 hours and maximum 36 hours.

9-ويكون برنامج الماجستير في المحاسبة  هو عبار عن كورسات تدرس فقط بدون رسالة للتخرج  The masters programme has to be taught not research.

10-الجامعة والمعهد يكونون معتمدين من قبل وزارة التعليم العالي في المملكة العربية السعوديه Both the language school and the university has to be approved by the ministry in Saudi Arabia.

مع ملاحظة التالي  Please note the following:

• بداية دراسة المعهد سوف تكون في شهر 6 من عام 2015م وبعدها بسنه كاملة تبداء دراسة الماجستير للمحاسبة I want to start in June 2015 for a year and start the masters in September 2015 

• دفع الرسوم مرتبط بتوفير المتطلبات اعلاه كامله  I will only pay your fees if you can satisfy all the above conditions

فضلا تزويدي بأي اقتراحات او ملاحظات please provide me with any suggestions or notes?.

Where are my mathematicians to solve this riddle for me.  and by the way, this student wants to go to USA

This is just one example of the emails that we receive on a daily basis.  I love them though

How I waste my time or is it invest in my time?

My regular/normal/obvious/etc day is nothing but me, my laptop, my phones and ? do you know I went blank for a minute thinking what else does me normal day entails?i was hoping it will entail going out with friends, having coffee, going for a walk in the mall and shopping; but that is not my normal day.

This is true, its my laptop and my phone messages. In the past, students used to call, so I would receive on average 20-40 calls a day from young kids who want to study abroad.  Nowadays, I will receive a hundred messages on whatsapp from kids, not the same kids of course, as those are already in university, or graduated and working! gash I cannot believe how fast time flies.

I would wake up in the morning and start my day 9after showering and changing to my work cloths) by checking my phones for messages, tweets, links, facebook comments, linkedin requests (these are endless and mainly for those that think that I have a reruitment company) and so on.  Then I would go down and have my breakfast, while watching a TED show, check on the cat and the turtle, see what is there for lunch, and go to the office.  My office is anywhere I decide it to be, it could be my office, or the room at home I call my office, or the cafe next to our house.  Actually these days, anywhere with wifi is an office.  Work for me had become very electronic, which is fun really, as you hit the send button, and soon another message gets delivered to you.  An endless supply of messages and emails and life goes on.

Sometimes I try to start my laptop but it doesnt work so I hold it and pray, or restart it and pray, sometimes I even give it a kiss!  it does work eventually.  So when my emails start loading, I notice that there is one with a survey, oh and there is another one, so I gather all the ones with surveys and work at them until I finish them all, we cannot keep those researchers hanging there can we now? most often than not, i also tweet these surveys so other people would participate too, I have no way in checking that they did, but at least I cleared my conscience.  Sometimes something purposly takes me to facebook or twitter, and when that happens its Pandora's box.  I will be like a butterfly trying every flower and sucking the goodness from every rose, going from one place to the other.  Even if I decide not to go on any of the sites, I had to do that at the end as one of the emails would say please like our page, so I have to do that otherwise I am breaking the email-social media bylaws.

Many a times I will go through my documents just to arrange them into folders, so at least my laptop is more organised than my closet. That too can take me for ever as I will be reading something that I had seen few years ago, and it would break my heart to hit the delete button, its like getting rid of your prettiest dress that you doesn't fit anymore.

Of course the new things that are happening in the electronic world are amazing, I am now a member of Cursera translation team, so I translate the courses to arabic, and that too goes haywire at times as I find something intersting so I register for it, or I like the subject that I am translating so I will be reading and understanding instead of translating.  The eternal learner, that is me. How Bizarre is that

At the end of all of this, my husband (who is a partner in the company and fit to be a commander in an army) shouts as we (the staff and I) are being slack, and don't go to the office early morning to answer every phone and every email like normal human beings.  Is this what life had become?

Hot, cold and normal- What a graceful feeling

I turned fifty eight years ago, suddenly I felt hot, not a normal "hot", its that sweaty hot, sticky hot, horrible hot that makes one feel disgusted about life.  I took many showers that day as I thought I am coming down with a flu or something like that.  The next day more of these flushes continued on and off.  As usual, I ignored it completely, and went through life as if nothing is happening, but when these feelings got worst and sometimes while driving the steering wheel would slide off my sweaty hands and I could have had an accident, I thought I will visit a doctor.  She told me "welcome to the menopause club my dear".  The hot flushes are not the only signs of course, one would have thinning hair, tantrums and mood swings, lack of concentration and focus, dizziness at times, short of breath, aching bones and last but not least ability to read something and remember it vividly which is the only positive thing, I guess, from this extraordinary condition.

That was that until few weeks ago when I started to feel freezing cold that starts to run from my shoulders down.  I am carrying a shawl in my bag to cover myself, all of this happens when our country is supposedly in a summer season with temperatures going as high as 45 degrees centigrade.  The heat flushes almost disappeared unless of course one is having really hot tea or coffee, and it got replaced by longer periods of feeling too cold so I would go to the garden and wait in the heat for it to go away.

I wonder at times why are we not prepared for these things that are outside our control? for example when we know that we are getting the flu, we buy cold stop and treat it that way, when we have stomach ache we take herbal drinks or medications, when we have a headache, we take panadols! why can't we take a tablet and make the heat-cold sensation go away? where is all of that money that is pumped into medical professions? why do students pay so much money to study medicine and why isn't part of that money being kept aside for menopause research.  Where are those women doctors who became 50 and started their own menopausal syndrome, are they in denial? is it an age issue? are all women in the world still refusing to tell their real age and menopause is a first sign of aging so they hide the pains of it?

I see billions of dollars being pumped on AIDS, or facelifts and so on, why isn't there any money spent on developing appropriate medications for menopausal problems? who wants to live for I don't know how many years with problems that cannot be taken away? Doesn't women representing half the world? isn't this percentage worthy of some expenditure from those that are considered husbands, fathers, brothers, friends etc??

I wonder.

The environment, recycling and smart cities

I was involved with the smart city conference in which few students came to our office to discuss what makes a smart city as they had to do a project to win amongst the various participants of the conference.  I am actually intrigued with the relentlessness of the organizers of that conference and how they kept the youth occupied and share ideas to make our world a better place to live it.  Of course the consensus in that conference was smart city is synonym to a clean city, the one that cares about the future generation and the world that we live in.  The students were then grouped into many groups to discuss what is next. Top executives including myself were asked to listen to the groups and give them some advice to see if that idea can be put into practice.  

Basically the consensus of what makes a Smart City is to help humanity, its People, its Kids, and the Education system by educating them on Energy Conservation in order to protect the Environment the students agreed that we can create an Application (since everyone holds a smart phone these days) of some sort of a Game to be played by school kids by using Echo currencies. The game will be developed by obtaining CSR Money from various companies especially those that are damaging the environment. 

The people will have the Awareness by having a Public Wifi everywhere including parking places and by attracting the youth to play the game, start from the roads. 

The game will later on be developed into a proper Course and the teachers will be encouraged to use that game in the classroom.  And what starts in the primary schools will go on to become an inter-school and inter-universities competition.

This is a very ambitious plan, obviously the students that where at the conference were all from a high socio economic background which gave them the freedom to think outside the box.

I was thinking about this fact since the conference happened in April, so when I went to Bahrain I was looking to see what is happening there about protecting the environment when one artist invited me to a talk on recycling. 

This talk was an eye opener, the artists is relentless on gathering items that are abandoned like bottles, tires, broken doors, windows, tables, items that has no value but can be used somehow, and she managed to create works of art that is sold for large sums of money.  She also gathered a lot of her materials by asking the kids who are out of school to provide her with the recycled materials and once her art is sold, she would pay those kids a reward.  This reward made those kids bring her more items from many places. So basically she killed few birds with one stone. 

Noof Alrefai is one of the art geniuses in Bahrain, she is a lawyer, born to a father who is an artist and lied all her life in Bahrain, she cares about her community and refuses to believe that things cannot be repaired.  She is working now with th united nations to do a park from recycled materials, as she started one on a smaller scale in the center that she rents her studio in.  Some of the pictures can be seen here from her art and the garden.

 

 

The lads who looked like Ronaldo

I was driving towards Nabih Saleh, a stunning little island in Bahrain that can be Portofino- Italy if we wanted it to be, listening to my usual classic music and enjoying the country, when seven giants with muscles stopped me as they were putting the barricades to block the road.  I begged them to open one barricade so I can go to my friend's house to deliver her paintings.  They were all wearing head and face mask, one cannot enjoy their faces, I rolled the window down, called them to come close to me, and asked if they had finished their exams! They all replied at once that all of them had been kicked out of school.

Well of course they will go up to mischief if they cannot go to school, I guess.  So I resigned myself and turned back to go home.  I was so distressed to see that and hear it first-hand.  I think it's their revenge, they must be thinking if we cannot go to school, let's create havoc then.  They poured their anger at the streets and burnt the tires as I can see them from my mirror while waiting at the traffic light; suddenly I see few police cars coming out of nowhere, I was lucky that the lights turned green when the first tear gas was activated.

Let's take a different scenario, since it's World Cup time I suppose, let's imagine that these hefty gorgeous looking lads where at schools, and they are playing football, minding themselves, suddenly they shoot that goal that not even Pele in his time had ever shot. Suddenly our imaginary football scouts notice these lovely boys and decide to offer them football scholarships to attend the best university in the world, where they can study and play their favorite game too.  Imagine the returns to our country if we had allowed these young lads to do what they are best at!  Just imagine?

I think it's our responsibility to make this imaginary scene a real thing, we must stop this madness and change our country to be amongst those that are going to be playing for the World Cup.