The Weather and I :)

Anyone who knows me, would know how much of a weather person I am :p…by that I mean that the weather often plays a role in how I am feeling :) and thankfully I’ve learnt to only let it have a positive impact on me.

I like doing things in honor of the weather, such as listening to a song, doing an activity, having a cup of coffee or simply just taking the time out to sit and watch it. Whatever it may be, I work around it :) It simply is my muse time!

However, I never considered how lucky and how good the weather has been to me. It is easy for me to often forget how the weather has drastically affected millions of people negatively. Whether in the form of hurricanes, floods, snow or heat, the weather, in many instances, has left people without homes, workplaces, schools and hospitals. Today, the human mind has found and invented many means that allow a sustainable life regardless of the weather. Yet it maintains and always will be beyond our control. Even with those most fortunate of us, with a good enough shelter, the weather can turn to a monstrous uncontrollable above superpower leaving us practically helpless to it. It makes a lot of sense that the civilizations before the Abrahamic religions came out, regarded forces of nature such as the sun, sky, rain, etc .as their gods. For at that time their survival depended a great deal on the weather and how much they could work around it.

So since it is very important to me, I just wanted to make sure that I am truly thankful for the weather that I’ve had and am experiencing. and hopefully will continue to be!

Info of the Day

There are two types of Jews: Sephardic and Ashkenazi

Sephardic Jews are non European Jews, mainly from Spain, where the origin of the word is coming from, and the Middle East, at least their historical origin, they are the Hebrew Jews.

Ashkenazi Jews are European Jews, largely from Eastern Europe; they are the Jews that have mainly migrated to the U.S. and Western Europe, 1880-1900’s, after facing much discrimination in East Europe.

Loving it short again!! :D

Haa!! I finally got my haircut last weekend!! I’m loving it…I’ve never been one for long hair….this is much easier, comfier and feels lighter :D

Info of the Day

So today I learnt about “Jonestown” something I never heard of before. Not that it is extremely important to know..but I thought it interesting. Well Jonestown is in Guyana which is one of the nation states in South America. Well this name “Jonestown” was given for the “Peoples Temple of Agricultural Project” which is an intentionally formed community. Which is basically a community formed with some political, social or spiritual idea. Anyways so this community is formed by a “Peoples Temple” led by a person called Jim Jones, which is where the name is derived from. He comes from California. So why is this community important…well on November 18, 1978, around 900 of them died in a “revolutionary suicide” which was led by Jim Jones, what makes this notorious, is that it looked like a massacre but rather was willful suicide. I hope I explained it well, I’m not sure I get quite well myself; I’m still looking into it. :p

Someone calling for "identity" :p

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/world/middleeast/12dubai.html?r=1&scp=1&sq=Emirates&st=cse&oref=slogin


This article is indeed very interesting, yet provocative. It adds to some of the points made in the post before this one regarding the economy.

What really pulls the nerve out of me is how one the persons quoted says he is worried about the future of the country and it also says how they like the wealth and fancy cars but not the social change….!! Well excuse me…but if it wasn’t for this massive inflow of expatriate workforce in the country, working day and night…this country would not even have a future…and the statistics presented regarding how little Emiratis work and just “own” is very indicative of this. In addition, they make it sound like they are victims in this whole game…it is by their consent that the economy is operating the way it is, they never cared, they are the king of the castles, however, now that things are getting tough and this castle is on brink, they are complaining about “social change” instead of looking inward and improving themselves. This btw sheds strong light on the article “cursed by oil” even though Friedman puts Dubai as an exception to his theory, I am sure he is not aware that the actual people of the country are indeed cursed and just residing on oil.

And then again we hear “tax free income” yes it is, for the Emiratis it is, not expatriates, for the government does a good job in getting that tax elsewhere, through toll roads, rent, fees etc. so stop displaying this “tax free” as a good characteristic of the country, I can count many other brilliant things this country does indeed have other than that.

Regarding the working hours, I was tempted to post the link for this article which I read last month, http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/10/05/10249843.html it makes me laugh that they have the audacity to even say anything.

However, the first article could have been written in a better way and from a different perspective. Yes it is only natural and true that social change does happen with this great influx of people in the country, and this is not a problem only the Emiratis are facing, but rather everyone here that comes from elsewhere. For this diversity to sustain and benefit, a melting pot is bound to happen, and it is this tolerance and diversity that I admire about U.A.E. It is also important to remember that this identity problem is not only happening in the U.A.E. but rather in many countries, even with majority of the population as nationals, and this is due to globalization. So this calls for finding measures to preserve and flourish one’s culture and identity instead of approaching it with an attack on expatriates, blaming them for this “social change” and finding measures to get rid of them.

Bursting the Bubble

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08/11/12/10258962.html

So after reading this article, I remembered a conversation my dad and I were having on our way to Abu Dhabi, it was just weeks since the U.S. market collapsed and I was speculating that there definitely will be an effect on the U.A.E. economy, yet many seemed to be skeptical, living in the “Dubai Bubble” as I would like to call it.

It is important to note that one of the reasons that this can be dangerous for U.A.E. in the long run is that it is a small country, dependant much on the global market. As you can tell from the article, real estate projects and construction (which is unbelievingly outrageously growing like termites) is going down amongst other sectors, this is a problem as the U.A.E. has no domestic economy to rely on, in contrast to let’s say Saudi, making it volatile to global conditions.

This will have a great impact on expatriates (us) with layoffs; people with no jobs will not be able to get loans hence, unable to pay for rent. The problem is that people are not really aware of these things until they hit and directly affect them, in my opinion, many people will start rethinking staying in the country, especially if the drawbacks outweigh the benefits of staying.

We definitely know that when layoff starts, it will be with the expatriates first of course the high quality work force on the top, that the economy is relying on, such as consultants etc, will probably be kept. In regard to nationals as from what I know and heard, a lot of them own stocks, which don’t look too bright either.

Info of the day

I decided to share any new info that I learn and find particularly interesting :)

I found out that “Yugoslavia” literally translates into English as “Southern Slavic countries ” or the “Lands of the South Slavs” basically the countries that were under the former Yugoslavia; Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I don’t know if many of you actually knew this…I didn’t! :p

U.S. Presidential Candidates 2008 on the Middle East + I learnt a new skill :p

Part of Global Political Economy class requires us to join a programme called Soliya where students from different universities around the world engage with one another through video conferencing once a week for two hours. This programme’s main objective is to draw people from the West and the East helping them to learn more about each other’s cultures, perspectives, identities etc. usually we would have readings for the week we’re meeting that would help us get background and current information on the topics we are covering.

So :) part of this course is a video editing assignment!!

This year’s topic is the U.S. presidential candidates and their stance on the Middle East!! We got provided with lots of background information about the elections plus media clips provided by AP and Al Jazeera, mainly footage on the elections!!

I had put this together :p…wasn’t very easy...there were 97 media clips to look through!! However in this one I have split these clips to the bits I want and trimmed them together.
This is a like a rough draft of what I think I want to include, plus trying out the extra features that are available, so far I’ve only added titles!

Thought of sharing it :)…

It is interesting how the Israelis, both figures within the government, refer to U.S.’s engagement and support to Israel as an “obligation”.