Shreef

Stories, opinions, and useless things about me & my life. Go to shreef.com for the professional me

[a-shreef]

V2.0 of the chicken dish comes with new enhancements, features, and bug fixes. There're still some known issues we are planning to fix in the next release. This new version was inspired by @ahmedelasra 's recipe, still I'm lazy as hell so I skipped a lot of the steps and added my own touch. The new features include fries, and a hard to find Egyptian-like bread. This dish guarantees your taste buds a spectacular orgasm and an experience as awesome as falling in slow motion from a flying plane and right into a big pool filled with chocolate and vanilla pudding. All this is just for $99.99. A fraction of a fraction of what it really costs to get that mind blowing experience. Pre-order now, and give yourself the pleasure that you really deserve to get.

[a-shreef]

Rainbow view from my window #nofilter #rainbow #winter (at Hilversum)

[a-shreef]

Nothing Impress you anymore?

I think nothing impresses me anymore, or just let's say it's very hard to impress me - to be more accurate -. 

I'm not currently depressed by any means. Not even close to depression. I work, have short chats with random people, and walk around; either with other people or on my own. This describes my life generally now. 

I have the chance to try and experience many new things, and each time I do, I become impressed for a very short time, few minutes or seconds, then nothing. I fall back to the "umm, ok!" mood.

I think it's not possible to be excited or extremely happy all the time. People who claim to be always extremely happy are liars. They say that as it's part of making other people envy them. 

We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like.

That famous quote explains it.

I currently believe that it's ok to be .. just ok.

If I was still trapped inside the "I need to impress everyone" mental trap, maybe I would have said "It's ok to not be ok" like in that song. 

I think that as much as we shouldn't try to care about impressing others, we shouldn't either care about getting impressed all the time. 

It was once said that

The secret to happiness is low expectations.

Actually this sentence is a science proven fact. Read more about that in this article from PsychologyToday.

I used to see that sentence as a kind of cliche like the many others we see everyday, but now I can claim that I understand it as it fits what I learned from my experience.  

The image is from Alice in Wounderland. (from PsychologyToday) 

Like everything I learn in life, I don't fully manage to apply on my life, but hopefully this one will stick as I think it's one of the important rules in life. 

[a-shreef]

[yooo-gehn]

يعني ايه علوقية؟؟

أوه، ليبدأ المرح. العلوقية هيّ السبب أني ابتديت أقرا رواية كنت اشتريتها في معرض الكتاب 2010. العلوقية هيّ إن ملك الهكسوس يقول لسقنن رع “إن أفراس النهر تزعجنا في أواريس” فتقوم حرب تفنى فيها أمم كاملة. العلوقية هيّ لمعة عين الطفل بعد ما كسّر اللعبة اللي كان بيعيّط عليها. العلوقية هيّ أنك تسلم دقنك لفودافون وتستلف 4 مرات، وتشحن بعشرة، وتستلف 3 مرات، وتشحن بعشرة، إلى اللا نهائية وما بعدها. العلوقية هيّ اللي وقت الإمتحانات بتخلي أي نشاط إنساني أكثر جاذبية من المذاكرة حتى لو كنت هاتقرا في اقتصاد تنزانيا. العلوقية هيّ السبب الرئيسي اللي بيخلي خطة اليوم تتغير من السيطرة على العالم للرجوع -سالمًا- إلى البيت. العلوقية هيّ اللي بتخليك تقرر تبطل السجاير عشان خايف على صحتك بس ماتعرفش تعدي اليوم من غير حجرين معسّل. نفسك تصارحها بمشاعرك؟ نفسك تغير مجال دراستك؟ نفسك تغسل سنانك قبل ما تنام؟ نفسك تجري كل يوم وتتعلم تعزف على آلة موسيقية وتحضر خمس حفلات في اليوم؟ أنت مش قادر عشان أسباب كتير، تأكد إن منها أنك علق.

في جملة أكاديمية واحدة، العلوقية هيّ المماطلة والتأجيل المستمر للحاجات اللي قبل ما أنام لازم أعملها، وفن القيام بحاجات تانية خالص غير اللي المفروض أعملها، مع قدر لا بأس به من المرقعة الإنسانية الجميلة والدلع المِرِقْ العزيز.

[a-shreef]

Good answer!

[a-shreef]

Saw that warning billboard this morning while walking near the centeral area in Amsterdam. For some reason or another, I found it funny and took some photos to record the moment.

مبقاش فى ضمير، ولاد الحرام مسابوش لولاد الحلال حاجة

[yooo-gehn]

[a-shreef]

on being wrong and being ok with it

[a-shreef]

I know nothing

Socrates once said, "I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing".

I try to always remember that piece of wisdom. The man put it clear and ended all doubts. We know nothing, and whatever we know, it will still be nothing compared to the amount of information available in that universe. 

I decided to write about that while I was brushing my teeth last night. I'm staying currently at a hotel till I find a new apartment, so the room service lady/man come everyday while I'm not there to clean up the room.

That day I found my stuff organized in a different way. I'm not a messy person, still I'm not perfectly organized. I just have habits when it comes to putting stuff around.

That cleaning lady/man (I don't know), decided to rearrange my stuff in a different way. Actually it was a much better way than I'm used to. I was looking at my stuff and thinking "Why I didn't think about that before?!".

Maybe society thinks I'm smarter than that person and have more knowledge, but the reality is that I couldn't figure something that this man/lady knows.

While It's always good to know that we know nothing compared to all the available knowledge in that universe. Also, it's good to remember that our amount of knowledge is nearly as equal as the amount of knowledge obtained by every other person alive.

The quantity is nearly the same as we all go through different experiences during the same amount of time. Each experience teach us something new.

From the society's own perspective, one kind of knowledge can be more valuable than another. That's the only reason some of us get paid higher than some others. Still this doesn't deny how smart and knowledgeable those other people who don't have the knowledge that can be currently highly valued by society.

I'm always looking forward to learning that new thing, from that unexpected person, during that not planned situation or time. The things that you most probably won't learn from books, you will most probably learn from those who didn't have a chance to read a lot of your books.

If they have read the same books you read, most probably they wouldn't have learned that thing you gonna learn from them.

[a-shreef]

Vegetarian burger

He was sitting there near the window with his wife. The waitress arrives with his wife's meal. A vegetarian burger sandwich, fries, and BBQ sauce. She takes a bite of that sandwich, followed by some fries. 

He keeps looking at her in silence. She notices it, and suddenly stops eating. "Why are you staring at me like that?!", she said.

He smiles. "How does it taste?", he said.

She pushes the dish toward him. "You can try it", she said while crossing her hands.

He pushes the dish back toward her. "No, thanks. I was just curious to know if it tastes like a beef burger!", he said.

She waits for a second. "Yes, this restaurant makes the best vegetarian burger in town. I come here only for that sandwich", she said.

"Interesting", he said.

She leans back in her chair and keeps looking at him in silence, a long suspicious look. "Tell me what you have", she said impatiently. 

"Nothing important", he said.

"It's just an unimportant thought crossed my mind". He looks a way through the window near their table watching the people crossing the street, as a try to avoid moving on with that discussion. 

She keeps looking at him in silence waiting for him to continue.

He realizes that he has no other options. He has to continue talking. So he looks back at her and say "So.. you only eat vegetables as you believe that killing animals and eating them is an evil thing".

He pauses, then continues, "Still you like the taste of the dead animals' meat. So you make us drive for 2 hours each time just to get a vegetables sandwich that perfectly tastes like a grilled dead animal?!"

---

That wasn't a 500 word as promised. I was trying to write about my experience eating vegetarian burgers. I just ate 3 recently. One tasted perfectly like meat, the other 2 were fine but weren't perfectly mocking the taste of meat like that first one I ate. 

The thought of why we are trying to make vegetables taste like meat crossed my mind. I tried to write a blog post about that but it felt boring and sounded like a try to sound deep and genius. 

I thought maybe I can try to use that topic to form a short story. I've no experience writing stories, and I don't even read a lot of stories. I always say that I'm a non-fiction person, but I decided to give it a try anyway. 

I know it looks like it's written by a 5th grader, but the 30 minutes I used to write those ~300 words were fun. The first version was very ugly, and I gradually started to find ways to change the writing style and details to make the thing sound better.

It can't be called a story as it doesn't have the elements of a story, and it has no value or message, so I think of it as a written image. I'm sure there's a better definition for that but I don't know it. Let me know if you can describe that better.

Anyway, gladly with that followup to the story, I hit my 500 words target for today.

[a-shreef]

Isaac Asimov on Creativity: How do people get new ideas?

.. Once you have the people you want, the next question is: Do you want to bring them together so that they may discuss the problem mutually, or should you inform each of the problem and allow them to work in isolation?

My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it. (The famous example of Kekule working out the structure of benzene in his sleep is well-known.)

The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.

Nevertheless, a meeting of such people may be desirable for reasons other than the act of creation itself. ...

[a-shreef]

Why no more using Facebook and many other apps

I totally quit Facebook for 2 weeks. Deactivated my account to get used to it, but reactivated it again yesterday to be able to log-in again into some apps that only support logging-in using Facebook, but not planning to use Facebook itself again.

Spending the last 2 weeks without Facebook was a first step on becoming not attached to anything. I did also go through my installed apps and removed most of them, those I don't need, and those I don't want to use again.

Facebook was on top of the list as I was very attached to it, and it was the go to place too whenever I wanted to know more about the other things I'm attached to. 

Noise, and bragging 

I was tired. I was tired of reading all the noise generated by people around me, and myself. Everyone was competing to look smarter, more successful, more happy, more pretty, and more funny. And by the end of the day, no one really gives a damn what you ate, where you've been to, or who you met today. 

We want to feel important by seeking the attention of others and making them jealous by posting the interesting aspects of our lives and hiding our disadvantages. 

I removed all the apps that came with no benefit other than the benefit of bragging. I know my life isn't bad nor perfect. Your life too isn't bad or perfect. So let's act normal, and keep the bragging for those who has nothing else in their lives to care about.

Consuming more, creating less

I used to believe that Twitter was the main reason I stopped to blog. It was an easy medium to write whatever thought that came to my mind in as short sentences as possible. All the smart people were there to follow on tweets and turn them into interesting discussions.

Twitter lost its shine long time ago, and it became a place for sharing links. Facebook now is where everyone share their life. It's a perfect medium for sharing unimportant stuff. And people are not that smart, so sharing important stuff or ideas wasn't as important as sharing a photo of your dinner. And for my surprise, all that bullshit was addictive.

I felt like I'm becoming more of a consumer and less of a creator. I wanted to get back to writing, reading important things, building stuff, and exploring things I never cared about before.

Offline conversations are better

I wanted to have more offline conversations with people. I found that sharing a lot on social networks makes having conversations with people less entertaining. They know where I've been to last week, and with whom, what I ate, and my latest news. If I know everything about them too, then why would we need to talk?!

I wanted to feel connected more to the people that care about me and I care about. And wanted to be more aware of my offline life. 

The number of people I communicate with now is way less than the number I used to communicate with before, but our stories and discussions are becoming better. And I now finally know who are the people I should be giving more attention to compared to everyone else.

#500WED

500 Words Each Day is one of the things I'm trying to use to fill my life after removing a lot of the unimportant stuff. It fits my "write more" goal. It's a challenge to find an interesting topic to find about everyday, but hopefully that will be fun thing to think about everyday.

I crossed my 500 words target for today, so I will end this here and continue tomorrow.

[a-shreef]

A call for opinions: Should I merge this blog into the other one at shreef.com?

I found that I write here more than I write at the other one. This blog was supposed to be for my random non so professional thoughts, but I was thinking that .. Why do I need to have 2 faces? A professional one, and another where I can be relaxed and open?! They all represent me at the end of the day.

I was also thinking about moving the other one anyway to tumblr as

1. Tumblr is so easy to use. I no more care about the advanced features provided by Wordpress. 2. I want my posts to stay forever, even the embarrassing ones. If I die and stop paying for the other blog, it will just disappear. A free blog on tumblr should keep my writings forever (hopefully, unless Yahoo decides to shut tumblr down!).

I was thinking too about creating a new tumblr account where I can have no followers. So old followers who are no more interested in my long writings, won’t get annoyed. And those who are interested, can follow the new one.

Opinions?!

[a-shreef]

Why so Consistent?!

I once read that most people believe that being Consistent is a good thing, and that's why politicians during elections will put a lot of effort into convincing people that they are so consistent. If the politician is so consistent, then people we will be sure that he won't change after winning the elections. This gives a false sense of security to the voters who agree with his thoughts. Is consistency really a good thing? I don't think so. I change my mind a lot. It happens that I look at my old blog posts, articles, and emails and think.. "What the hell is that?! That was so wrong". I'm sure that years, months, or hours from now, I will be looking at this blog post and the most recent ones and say "what the hell was that?!". Maybe I will be noticing the weaknesses in my logic, writing style, or my english. It will mean that I did evolve into something better. I believe "now" that consistency is 100% wrong, in all situations. Maybe in few hours after publishing this post someone will convince me that it's good to be consistent in some specific situations, still this will be good. It will mean that I learned something. I evolved. I believe that I know nothing, and life is a scientific experiment. I'm here to experiment, observe, and learn. I think that's why our DNA only records the body features of our ancestors but never records their thoughts, ideas, and believes. Each one of us has to start with zero knowledge to find new, or better ideas different from what the ancestors had. If you think you can change my mind about something, teach me something new, or show me the way to a different way of thinking .. I will be more than happy to listen to your ideas. Just don't be so sure. If you're so sure, maybe you need to rethink what you're trying to talk to me about first.

[a-shreef]

The joy of being exhausted

There’s some kind of joy in being exhausted. A joy I can’t understand or explain.

I always noticed that my favorite days are those when I go home exhausted. I don’t mean the days I go home feeling killing pain. Sometimes I feel pain in my right leg because of a problem with my backbone. I think it was the result of sitting for long hours during the last few years. That has nothing to do with being exhausted.

Being exhausted is what you feel when you have spent a day investing a big amount of energy into accomplishing something. Sometimes you don’t accomplish it, but the process itself is what makes you dead tired by the end of day and ready to have one of your best sleeps.

For me -and I think for many others-, no matter how exhausted you are when you arrive home, you stay awake for long hours. It’s expected that you will head to bed once you arrive home, but a new rush of energy starts going through your body and it keeps you awake for more hours. Dopamine? Don’t know.

And the more exhausted you’re, you keep going, making one more small goal to achieve, then another, and another. Just to keep the joy coming.

I first noticed that when I was serving in the army. It was that damn task. I had to take that damn box from point A to B then back to A. It was 10+ km walk.

The box was heavy enough to be annoying, and didn’t have a nice shape that can allow you to hold it comfortably.

At first, I used to stop every few 100 meters to take a break for a minute or two, but breaks usually expanded to be 5 minutes. The longer the break, the more I lose the joy of my most recent achievement, and start to think about how hard it would be to reach my final destination, and how annoying that box is.

Later, I decided to just set the few 100 meter goals, but never take the breaks. Just keep going and achieve the next small goal. One small goal after another, non-stop.

To my surprise, I was able to do the 10km walks while carrying that box without taking any breaks.

It was a little feeling of joy, after another, then another, till I accomplish my task and feel the bigger joy of accomplishment.

Tried to apply the same to the rest of my life, and I usually got the same joy. Achieving one small goal after another, and pushing harder to over achieve and accomplish more than what was planned.

I decided to write about this, as that’s what I’m feeling now. I just arrived to my parent’s house in Alexandria to stay for a couple days.

4 hours from NJ to JFK airport. 12 hour flight to Abu Dhabi. 4 hour transit. 4 hour flight to Cairo. 1 hour to my Cairo apartment. 1 hour emptying travel bag and refilling it with new stuff to take to Alex. 1 hour to Train station. 3 hours by Train to Alexandria.

30 hours on the road. Listened to long hours of podcasts. Read a lot. Had a lot of coffee. My socks stink, and I look dirty. Arrived 4 hours ago to Alex, still sitting there happy, reading stuff and not wanting to sleep.

Felt the same when I arrived to my NJ home last week after spending similar but fewer hours on the road.

I think my life needs more exhausting days like it used to have before.

[ihatepicasso-deactivated2018092]

Évolution inversée

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” ― Pablo Picasso

[a-shreef]

Rosemary Clooney - Mambo Italiano

[a-shreef]

Arrived home, opened my travel bag to find a women deodorant. Imagine it's a married man's bag and it was his wife opening the bag to find this. Costumes officers didn't check my bag at Cairo airport. Maybe the invisible airport security guys messing with travelers' bags should take care next time!