Category: Everyday Me

Amman Soon

We just got home from downtown Tunis where we went to the Royal Jordanian airlines office.
And well finally, we got our tickets to Amman / Jordan.
The nice woman there even gave us a student discount 🙂

We’ll be leaving on August 29th.

It’s already been two years since I last visited Amman, in fact it’s also been two years since I last travelled to anywhere.

I was planning to go to Jordan last year, but I had to cancel because of my work, and my wife visited her parents alone 🙁

Anyway 2 years is a long time for a travel freak like me to not go anywhere. I love travelling and I love being in and out of airports and planes. Something I can’t say about my wife 😛 No matter how much she’s travelled, she’s always afraid of flying. I’ll never forget what she put me through during the 9 hour flight from Amman to Bangkok 2 years ago, lol.

Back to Jordan, It’ll be great to see all the family and friends. I’ve also heard that Amman has changed a lot in the 2 years I haven’t visited. And I can’t wait to get there to see it, check out all the new places and see what happened to all the places I used to go to.

Anyway, other than Jordan we’re hoping to get a chance to jump over to Lebanon and maybe Syria on the way for a few days.

Hopefully, the next days leading to the 29th of August will pass quickly and we’ll be on the plane in no time.

My Current Favourites

Just thought I’d publish a list of some of my current favourites:

  • Favourite Holiday Destination: Thailand
  • Favourite Place to Live: Phi Phi Island (Thailand)
  • Favourite Place in my Country: Sidi Bou Said
  • Favourite Perfume: Higher (Dior)
  • Favourite Food: Couscous (Tunisian National Dish)
  • Favourite Fast-food Meal: Burger King’s Double Whopper
  • Favourite Drink: My wife’s Ice Tea
  • Favourite Book: Nineteen Eighty Four (George Orwell)
  • Favourite Singer: Tina Arena
  • Favourite Group: The Corrs
  • Favourite Song: Open Road (Gary Barlow)
  • Favourite Actor: John Cusack
  • Favourite Movie: Lord of the Rings
  • Favourite Politician: None
  • Favourite Pass-time: Watching Movies
  • Favourite Hangout: Home 😛
  • Favourite Car: BMW X5
  • Favourite Airliner: Swiss

You can post your favourites in the comments 🙂

Sidi Ali El Mekki

Yesterday was one hot day.
We woke up relatively early (for a weekend) and we went out for a couple of errands, and by the time we were home we were dying from the heat.

Only one solution to that: The Sea.

So, we threw our swimwear on and headed off to the beach.

Living in Tunis, the closest beaches are: La Marsa, Gammarth, La Goulette, Rawad, Sidi Bou Said and Carthage.
But I personally don’t like swimming in any of those places for various reasons.

My favourite beaches are scattered around the north of Tunisia in the Governorate of Bizerte (My home city).
Beaches there are clean, water is crystal clear and cold, sand is pure and not too many people.
My favourite place among all those is: La Grotte in Bizerte’s Corniche region.

Anyway, being in a rush yesterday, we chose to go to the closest one of those great beaches, and that is the beach of Sidi Ali El Mekki.
Sidi Ali El Mekki is next to a city called Ghar El Melh which is around 50Kms north of Tunis.
I discovered this place 2 years ago when I went there with some friends from work.

It’s a really cool place where the mountain meets the sea. The scenery is great, the water is cold and clear, the beach is clean, and it’s a delight swimming there.

We had a great time.
Man do I envy the fish.

Just laying there floating on the cool water with nature surrounding you not only relaxes your body, it also relaxes your mind and soul, taking away all the stress of everyday life and putting your mind at ease.

Oldest forward in my inbox

I don’t know how or why this popped through my mind.
I just thought: Go to the oldest non-personal, non-legally-dangerous forward in your email inbox, copy it and paste it in your blog.

So here it is, the oldest forward in my inbox on my laptop (I’m sure I have ones that are a lot older on my pc):

DEAR RECEIVER,

You have just received a SYRIAN virus. Since we are not so technologically
advanced in SYRIA, this is a MANUAL virus. Please delete all the files on
your hard disk yourself and send this mail to everyone you know.

Thank you very much for helping me.

FATTOUM
Hacker

> Date: 11/12/1998

lol…

And maybe, just maybe, this could start a meme.
Or maybe not.

My Wishlist

If you qualify as one of the following:

  1. You have this weird itching desire to buy me something.
  2. You have certain “issues” or mental problems and you want to prove to the whole world that you’re the nicest person ever.
  3. You are one cheap ass who wants to buy someone something and keep boasting about it and reminding them of it all their life.
  4. You’re stalking me and you want to keep sending me things to haunt me.

Then, I think you’d be interested in knowing that I’ve just created my wishlist on Amazon, and you can find it here.

Just kidding 😛
I know nobody’s going to buy me anything. But well, it’s good for me to keep track of all the stuff I want to buy. I always forget.

A Day To Remember

July 7th…
Now, that’s one day to remember for me…

July 7th 1998, in the summer course, after finishing my morning lectures, again I was faced with that scheduled hour of nothing to do.
No one I knew was free in that hour, everyone had lectures, and everytime I’d end up wandering around the University campus listening to my walkman or scribbling something down.

But not that day.
As I was walking from the faculty of science, past the square, past the university restaurant on my way to the languages center, there she was.

Ok before I get into that, I have to give you some background info.
Earlier in the year, towards the first semester and as I was sitting around with some friends of mine from the faculty of arts, I saw the most beautiful girl in the University of Jordan.
I didn’t know who she was, what her name was, what she did, nothing. All I knew is that I instantly fell for her.
I saw her more often from that day on, but she was always in a hurry going to a lecture or going home or something.

Anyway back to July 7th 1998.
There was that amazing girl and with her was a friend of mine.
They were walking my way too.
And we met, our common friend introduced us to each other, and things got better and better from that day on.

Now, that girl is my wife.
And that’s all because of that one fine day 😉

Badly in need of a haircut

Man, do I need a haircut!
Dropping by the barbershop has been on my priority to-do list for over a month now, and I simply haven’t had time to actually do it.

What annoys me the most are my sideburns. With these sideburns and this length of hair, I look like a darn hippie from the 70’s who’s lost in time.

I went through this stage before when I chose to try out having longer hair (not the hardrocker wannabe style but more the pop icon style, and no I’m not gay), and after a period of looking weird and out-wearing caps it actually looked pretty good, although my friends thought I looked scary sometimes.

I wish I could just pick up my trimmer and shave it all off, but being a married supposedly-responsible person who also wants to keep his job and not be fired for looking like an ex-convict, I guess I’ll skip that idea.

If my plans go as planned, which they rarely do, then I should be passing by the barbershop this afternoon.
I hope it works out.

Update:
I did it. I got a haircut. hoorrraaayyy…
Now I’m my cool handsome sexy self again 😛
Ahh, it feels good when you’re looking good 😉

Selected posts from Year 1

Here is a selection of posts from the past year in no specific order.

A Year Of Blogging

Today, last year, I started blogging.
Yep, today is this blog’s first year anniversary.
WOW, how time flies by and how much fun it has been…

My first official blog post was about the NDC 2003 (North Africa Developer Conference). And man has it been a long way from there. Long but fast.

It all started with a little blog on Blog City that I never posted anything on 😛 Then I finally started writing when I moved to BlogSpot. And finally, I became a blog addict after moving the blog under Houssein‘s Rundom site.
A big thank you to Houssein for hosting this blog up to this day 🙂

A few days ago, I went through some of the blog posts throughout the past year, and it was so much fun reading all the stuff I wrote last year, remembering all the stuff I went through or thought about. It’s truly amazing.

This blog started as a place for me to make fun of life and the world around me, somewhere I could be sarcastic. Then at some period of time it became more of a diary detailing my everyday life. After that I started adding more and more topics and discussing more and more issues and well here I am today talking about a variety of things from politics to music to technology to cinema to life to Tunisia, …etc.
And I still feel I have a lot more to talk about.

As for the blog design, it has gone through an evolution itself. From a crappy default template on Blogger or Movable Type it has become what it is today.
I posted a while back about getting a new design ready for the anniversary of the blog, and well I do have a new design ready in photoshop but that will be implemented in phases.
I’ve already changed a few things here and there and will be making more changes as their time comes and they become necessary.

Where do I want to go with this blog?
I want to go wherever my mind takes me with it and I want to write whatever I feel like writing in it.
I want it to become an online reflection of my mind.

I’d truly appreciate any feedback on what you think about this blog? what you think about the design? what you think about the subjects I write about? anything and everything…

And as for me, I’ll be compiling a list of my top favourite posts from the past year for you all to check out.