Saturday 26 January 2013

Medical Schools

If only I have enough money I would open a medical school, I will have the best faculty, I will let any student who wants to become a doctor to enter it and prove him/her self, I will let any adults who had  thought one day of becoming doctors but couldn't for any reason to study and get to wear the white coat, I will make it the best place for medical research, I will create gadgets that will detect all the problems with the body and mind and produce a vehement report so the young doctors can understand it and are able to cure the patients, I will warn women about the signs of menopause, I will warn men about the signs of Alzheimer, I will find out if children are getting on drugs and misusing their mums and dads trust, I will make it compulsory for people to visit the problem checker machine at least annually, I will make it a free check up, I will find out if a child is having ADD or ADHD or Autism, Dyslexia  Asperger, or any other learning difficulty that if traced from a young age can be cured easily.

Not only that, I will make it a free medical school, students can study there as long as they want, they do not need to have tests that are useless, all they need is to know the material and can answer any question by example or by seeing a patient.  I will have the best dermatology department, so women can have the best skin for ever and eliminate wrinkles and the need to use botox and other types of poison that we inject in our faces, or operations that do not have a lasting effect. I will eliminate the need to wear night guards, as no person on earth will ever clinch his or her teeth, I will create a type of sugar that doesn't generate cavities, or give you cancer if you take it constantly. We will do testing on real cells produced from stem cells taken from the stored umbilical cords of every baby that is born, we will not charge for storing the umbilical cords, as not every parent can afford to pay for the storage costs. We will create organs, limbs, and perfect skin from stem cells and keep the child healthy all the time.

I guess the only thing we will not do is prevent dearth! but death doesn't need to be something that follows a sever illness or a disease that prevented a person from a total enjoyment of ones life. And the other thing we will do is to let the people use all of their brain not just 3% of it, so we will unleash the potential of the human mind.

If only I had money??!!

Saturday 12 January 2013

Is money an important factor in our life?

I still to meet a person that doesn't think so! Money is important not for its value per se, but for what it can do. Everybody works really hard to make a good living for oneself and his/her family, and everybody aspires to have a comfortable life.  The question should be turned around to say how do we get our money?

I was explaining this to my daughters last night, that people do not actually love money, they love what it can do for them. But some people may have a love to the money itself, and when that happens they take all the routes to get it and accumulate it.

If you think about it, there are four ways in which people get the money.  People like you and I will work hard, and excel at what we do to earn a good living, some of the money that we earn will also go towards helping others and of course to re invest in whatever it is we do; we will travel and have fun, but will never be extravagant and spend on stuff that are useless just because we have the money. We are the type that is easily explainable.

Other people want to be rich fast, so they use inferior ways to get rich soon, by stealing, cheating, selling illegal stuff like ivory or drugs, or trade in white slaves.  Most of these things generate lots of cash but this cash will easily evaporate! why? because the saying goes: easy comes, easy goes! not an economic theory but its as true as can be.

The third type are those that inherit money from their parents or families, some of them will be reasonable enough to continue with the family trade and grow it, but some will spend all the money or waste it, regardless on what, nevertheless its all wasted, and they can go back to living a very ordinary life. These are the lucky people, of course other people maybe lucky by winning the lottery, and we all know what happened to those that won the lottery, nothing. I have yet to hear about a person who won the lottery and had actually went into a business and generated more money out of his or her new fortune.

The fourth type is the scary one! its those that are in governments. Apart from the little clerks and social workers, those that work in governments are there because they know that there is money to be earned.  Some hear about a project so they start a company and bid for the project, some skim the cream out of government projects, some get bribes because they will refuse to do jobs for the public unless they are paid and some want to over throw the government so they can become the new government in order to get the money. I am certain that you have all heard of the term "selling the building contract", the contractor that will eventually build the government project would be number 20 in the line, and he will only receive 10% of the money that the main contractor had received for winning the bid. Other projects that we know about have all been won in similar ways. Just answer one question, how come the same road is dug and rebuilt every year? I am not going to answer this question, I will leave it to your imagination.

Please ignore my comments, it didn't come from any scientific research, it came from my attention to details and understanding of human behavior  I can be wrong, and maybe scientific research will also prove me wrong, but because I told this to my kids, I thought of sharing it with you so we may debate it.

Friday 11 January 2013

Are teachers our role model?

Actually I don't have a teacher role model, as most of my teachers were merely doing their jobs without any possibility of inspiration, in fact there was more possibilities of humiliation, irritations and heartache.

Why do I suddenly remembering my teachers? I had a friends gathering, and we were talking about many things in general and of course knowing us we discussed our phobias and deeply hidden psychological problems. one of the friends said that she is claustrophobic and the first time she was on a ten hour flight she started crying! and that she cannot lock a door. I told her that I am the same, I never lock any door or even lock a suitcase; my friend found out the reason of course that a teacher locked her in a dark room when she was little.  The other friend said that her sewing teacher gave her a slap on the face when she was little because she couldn't push the thread in the needle.  of course I also remembered how my teachers used to hit us on the hand with double rulers, and also make fun of my cloths and my running nose.

So who inspired us to do what we are doing? to my friend her inspiration was her dad, and to me its of course my dad. which is a real pity as we spent a very long time in schools learning stuff that we never used and facing teachers that never inspired us. I don't even want to think of my own children and what they felt in their schools? I don't want to think of any children and how they feel about their schools.  You know, I don't want to think of schools at all as everyone I meet these days are complaining about schools.  One of the people I know is suggesting that we open a school and make it high quality and different and surely it will be filled with students. Maybe we should, if you are upto it guys let me know.

Thursday 10 January 2013

What ticks our senses and why we buy what we buy?


I mentioned to you  in a previous blog that the kids and I were clearing my friend's flat, so while sorting the stuff she had left behind we found creams, bags, pens, various types of food, vitamins, DVD's, storage items, perfumes, jewelry, simcards, camera, stuff for the kitchen, home decoration items, candles, few trollies, bedsheets, duvets, and many many items that will fill this page if I listed all of them. Why did she buy these stuff? And what made her decide to take what she took with her and leave all of these things behind? Do we need to buy these things? Are they a necessity for our living and harmony or just a way to spend our time when we are bored? Did she find joy in shopping? Did she have a lot of time on her hand? Are these things part of the personality of certain professions? Or every one would just spend because one has the money to spend?


I am not digressing here, or ranting as some had mentioned to me.  When people leave for good they tend to leave behind a lot of the things that are considered important for the place they happen to live in, once they reach their new destination they will adapt to their new life and start spending accordingly.

I bit you anything that living in Dubai will make us spend every cent that we earn on all the rubbish the stores bring to us, the lights, and discounts we are lured with are sufficient reasons to buy more. We may not have the time to shop, but when we do shop its till we drop. It doesn't matter what we buy and if we are going to use those things! the only important thing is that we buy the item.  I have few items in my own drawers that I don't recall using them for over a year. and when we do not use something for over a year it means we don't need it. so why buy it to begin with?

Is it the advertisers? or is it part of the show off that we can buy? does it matter how we pay for those items? is it cash that we have actually earned or is it cash to be earned one day and now substituted with a plastic card swiped on a little box! there are many reports in the world that says that many people in the world are living on great debts, and the reasons of course are many, one of them is having a credit card.


However, Living in a country will teach us certain habits, even our buying habits differ from one country to the other; I just hope that my friend will not be extravagant and spend on things that she doesn't need just in case she has to move on.

Friends crossing over to the other side


Someone had said once that friends appear in ones life for a reason, a season or a lifetime.  I had a moment of reflection the other day on this saying, and tried to classify my friends into these compartments, however this was a difficult thing to do, as I tend to keep my friends for ever, and love to see them even though we are living in different countries.  In actual fact I can say with utmost certainty that I have friends in every country, so if I want to visit Argentina tomorrow I will have a friend or two there, one of them is Dana whom I met more than 5 years ago during a Uni trip. I feel happy when I meet my friends, and I feel sad when they have to leave, or I have to leave; one thing for sure though, a part of our heart will accompany each other wherever we are.

However I felt really sad in the past two days, as it suddenly downed on me that one of my friends is gone forever. The kids and I went to her flat to clear her stuff and remove the things that were left behind as she couldn't carry them with her for various reasons that I am not going to dwell on here.   I must say that every time I find some thing that she really wanted and went on to purchase it lying somewhere in her flat I had that pain in my stomach thinking of why people come into your life and suddenly leave? What makes the thinking of some people different to the others? Why some become doctors and lawyers while others become politicians? What goes into our minds when we decide to take a profession? I must know the answers as this is my job, but while going through my friend's stuff I couldn't put my fingers on her nature nor could I find out why she chose her profession. Her profession is the reason for taking her far away from her home, and her profession is the reason we are now apart! in actual fact her profession is the reason she parted from her family and other friends in the first place.  I condemn this profession! (Sorry I am just being silly here)

I am not the type who will just waste time in shopping or going for coffees and
Lunches nor do I have the time to do these things even if I wanted to. I have always been a very busy person.  However when the need arises I will be there for my family and friends and will forget my work, or can postpone it; of course I know for sure that if anything happens to me one day everybody will jump to help.  These days however all my friends are disappearing one by one, and my family are each having their own issues so I am selfishly thinking about myself and what will I do in case something happens? I don't mean here that everyone should just stay put and stop moving countries or houses simply because they have friends who want them around? All I am saying is that we can have professions that will not make us depart suddenly.

Of course I still haven't answered the question of why friends cross over to the other side? I am sure their profession is not always to be blamed for that.

Saturday 5 January 2013

My sincere apologies

Dear friends, I am so sorry that I didn't wish you a happy new year. In actual fact I wanted to write a short synopsis of what happened to me, my family, the business, my friends and all the things that I came in contact with in 2012, just to put it on paper I mean so it doesn't get lost amidst the happenings of 2013. So, Happy New year everybody.

The year 2012 started with two historic events, my son's wedding and my daughter's engagement. God only knows how stressful life was at that time, but everything went so well and we had a great pre-engagement party followed by a fantastic Henna party, and of course our famous wedding party which was held in Crown Plaza which was a great finale to all the family gatherings that we had whilst in Bahrain. I haven't seen more happiness on all of our faces like what we felt during that time. I think all of us were giggling and laughing to the silliest joke, and even to a crawling ant. Our son went on his honey moon, and apparently they enjoyed it so much.  In May we heard that a grandchild is on the way.  Then in June we had a grand party for my daughter's proper engagement party at Grand Hayat.  Of course knowing me, I had to complicate things, as I also decided to have a henna party at home. We brought shiny material and covered the walls and the furniture, filled the place with sweets and candles. My sister was the DJ! and she prepared those lovely songs that moved everyone. Overall, it was a fun time.  just to relax from all the parties that we had in the first half of the year, I completed it with a trip to Turkey as a holiday (I haven't had a proper holiday in years, so this was a refreshing start for the second half of they year)

End of October was marked by the birth of our grand daughter, of course we had nights after nights debating the name; but my daughter in law was silent never saying what she was going to call her or telling us to stop looking as she already decided on a name.  The process of finding a name for the grand daughter was fun nevertheless, even though none of the names were used, we found meanings and heard names that we never heard of before.  So when the baby was born all of us wanted to know the name! guess how we found out? the grand mother had recorded a poem and got it sung by a singer! it was a brilliant idea, and the name was very pretty.  Anfal is the name by the way.

The year ended with the departure of our son to go and live in Bahrain, I had mixed feelings, I didn't know whether it is a good move or a bad move, is it good for him or bad for him, is he going to love it or not, is he going to have a better life than what we had in Dubai or not? at the end of the day, people have to make their own lives away from influences, so at the time, he must have made a good decision, time will prove me wrong as I am sure he will be able to have a fantastic future wherever he lives, as future, happiness and all other words associated with what a person wants in life are not really tied to a place, they are inside the mind of the person.

I was taking short holidays during my business trips too, so its not as boring as it may sound.  For example when I went to Qatar, I met with friends in the evenings and had dinners and lunches with them, and when I went to Oman I also enjoyed myself meeting people, attending their weddings and pre-wedding parties.  My trip to New Zealand was also great as my friend accompanied me and we had a lovely time.  We rented a car, drove from Christchurch to Dunedin, then we drove all around Dunedin, showed her the peninsula and all other nice places in that little town.  I also spent some time with friends in Auckland and had a marvelous time with my friend Val at her flat overlooking the city. when I went to Saudi I managed to have a short visit to Mecca and had a great religious day.  My friend Mona showed me her superb hospitality, and her daughters where gracious too, took me to a lovely restaurant and we even had Saudi champagne. In Turkey (during my business trip there) I went for dinner with my friend Marti, and when I went to London I spent sometime with my friend Khawla and her daughters. In Bahrain I had fun with my sisters, brothers and my other Bahraini friends.  Thus even during my work I did manage to sneak a tiny holiday so one mustn't complain really; life is great, and I have a good feeling about this year too.

One last thing I must tell you about is the number of books I managed to read even though I was swamped with work, weddings, trips, engagements, meetings, birth of granddaughter and publishing our book!  7 books, mainly novels and two non fiction.  I also saw at least 365 movies.

Okay, I must stop here and let you take a deep breath.  It must be tiring to read my news hah.