Category: Thoughts & Scribbles

Two people are lost in the desert. They are dying from hunger and thirst. Finally, they come to a high wall. On the other side they can hear the sound of a waterfall and birds singing. Above, they can see the branches of a lush tree extending over the top of the wall. Its fruit look delicious.

One of them manages to climb over the wall and disappears down the other side. The other, instead, returns to the desert to help other lost travelers find their way to the oasis.

Moral of the story: Paradise is nothing without others to share it with.

I never understood how some people enjoy smoking their lungs out.
It’s like God created us whole, perfect and healthy and we’re on a marathon to try and ruin all that in the shortest time possible through smoking, drinking, doing drugs, …etc.

Anyway, back to smoking.
Just recently i saw a new Marlboro pack a friend of mine at work had, and which he was smoking cigarette after cigarette from.
The pack’s design has changed a lot ever since i last saw one, and most of it now is warning messages that are bigger than the logo itself.

The messages say:
“Smoking seriously harms you and others around you”
“Smoke contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide”

Now, i can’t imagine how anyone could take another puff after reading stuff like that.
I mean, the people who are making these cigarettes themselves are telling everyone that smoking is screwing them up, and yet they don’t seem to care.

That one cigarette contains stuff that belongs in a car’s exhaust system and not in someone’s lungs !

Oh anyway, everyone’s free to do whatever they want to do with their health, i guess.

On a lighter note, here’s a fun flash animation about how Smoke Kills.

I’ve been getting some hits lately on my old post Fish are friends not food !, and a comment i read there yesterday by a vegetarian got me thinking again about vegetarians and carnivores like me 😛

I agree with vegetarians that animals are friends, in fact not only animals, everything alive, including plants, are friends.
So why don’t we stop eating plants too ??

If we just think of it a bit more, we’ll see that we eat animals and plants to survive. Animals eat us, other animals and plants to survive. And plants eat us, other plants and animals to survive, it’s a whole circle of life, a food chain.

Let me explain.
We eat animals and plants, that’s easy, no further explanation needed.
Animals, either eat other animals that are further down the food chain, or they eat plants, and occasionally if they find a human around they won’t hesitate to eat him/her.
Plants: some plants eat animals/insects and the rest feed from the soil, which is enriched by the minerals of the decaying bodies of animals and humans.

So basically, everything eats everything, and when it’s part of the food chain, there is no problem with humans eating animals or plants, it’s only normal and natural, and in the end of the day, the chain will be completed and each will be eaten too.

I think the main problem is with abusing animals, and killing them for leisure,decoration or whatever else.
That’s the real problem which is against nature’s laws and which is unethical and sick. It’s murder and should be totally forbidden and punished.

I just read this on the Where is Raed ? blog, and it made me laugh my ass off, lol…

“One of the restless questions in my head is about camels, why are camels related to Arabs in the western media? (besides the question of why my italiana girlfriend dumped me, this camel thing is really annoying me)
I mean .. it’s just like me having an image in my mind about canadians and penguin .. Hey! are you really Canadian? Cool! Do you have a penguin in your bedroom? Do you eat them?”

It’s totally true, there’s this very wrong stereotype image of arabs in the west. They imagine an arab as a turban-head with a camel, which is so damn wrong !
It bugs me a lot too, and i think that it’s a sign of how uneducated and uninformed the people who think that way are.

One day Chuang Tzu and a friend were walking by a river. “Look at the fish swimming about,” said Chuang Tzu, “They are really enjoying themselves.”

“You are not a fish,” replied the friend, “So you can’t truly know that they are enjoying themselves.”

“You are not me,” said Chuang Tzu. “So how do you know that I do not know that the fish are enjoying themselves?”

I’ve come to believe that Happiness and Misery in life are a product of the human brain and it’s conception of reality.

It’s all in the way you look at the things around you and how you think of them.
This is not the half-empty or half-full glass idea i’m talking about, that’s more about optimism than happiness, it’s about how you interpret your life and your position in it.

People tend to get carried away by their needs and by their goals, forgetting about the things they’ve already reached and realized, not taking the time to enjoy them or be happy about their successes.
The everlasting need and thirst for more downsizes our successes and makes us feel like we’re still far away from where we want to be.

But if we just took the time and stopped every once in a while, looked around us and savoured the taste of the successes we reached, the little things in life that we have, the beauty of the smallest and simplest things surrounding us, and even the tiny steps that we’ve taken we’d truly feel a lot better about ourselves and our lives. And then we’d look at our other goals as ones that are reachable and doable, and as a life that extends ahead of us full of promise.

It’s great to have a great ambition and to always look into the future, but we shouldn’t get too obsessed with the future and too engulfed in our goals that we forget to live our present and enjoy it.
Keep your eyes on the future, but keep your feet on the ground and enjoy the present for what it’s worth.

For ages and ages and ages, there’s been this one big beautiful marvellous dream all us Arabs have had in common and wished for: Arab Unity.
And again and again i hear the same old talk about how we Arabs are united in language, history, religion, culture and so much more that it’s only normal for us to be united.

But unless we Arabs actually do something, it’ll never become anything more than a dream.
I think it’s true that we are united by language, history, religion, culture and all those other things, but we’re also divided by politics, exterior intervention, greed and stupidity.

I mean, when i just think of it and imagine how it could be, i’m left totally speechless in front of it’s greatness and advantages.
I mean we could reach self-fulfilment so easily through unity as complementary resources (natural, human, industrial, …etc.) are distributed throughout all the Arab countries.

The Arab world has been in a steep fall for a long time now, and day after day, we’re being ignored, mocked and humiliated more and more, why should we accept that when we can turn things around totally ?

Even the countries of the European Union who basically have nothing in common are pulling together and going on a path towards unity, because they understand that it’s for their own good. Why can’t we realize the same thing ?

Just thinking of it pops up a billion and one questions in my head about why we don’t unite, and i guess the only answer is that: if our leaders want it to happen it will, and if they don’t it’ll never be anything more than a dream…

So it seems we’ll just have to keep on dreaming…

I hope it’s not for too long…

SYNTAX: The company i used to work for in Jordan, before taking the decision to leave and come home to Tunisia, have launched their new corporate website and dropped the word “Digital” from their name (they were previously called: SYNTAX Digital, but everyone called them SYNTAX anyways).

I like this new design better than the old one, it’s really true to the SYNTAX style of design and portrays them a lot better.

These guys are truly the best design company in Jordan, and it makes me proud that i once worked there.

To check it out click here.