I won’t forget one of my first cars in England. It had alot of memories for me. Just thinking about it now makes me think about so much. I remember my flat on Forest Road, I remember my room-mates there, the accident I once had, the time I spent cleaning it, how excited I was, the drama behind buying the car and so much more.

That car was a good memory.

These are difficult times. In a world that seems that it doesn’t care at all, it’s important to find the one thought that gives you a smile and hold onto it. No matter how sad, how confused, or angry you get, that one thought will always change any emotion into happiness. Think about it. Have you ever been so sad, tears were falling from your eyes, and you remembered a moment, a moment like your boyfriend saying something stupid; I’ll bet your lips started to shake and eventually turned into a smile. You probably couldn’t even understand how your emotions changed. That’s your internal positive power; and that’s why if you just have ONE thought, you’ll never feel like you want to give up.

But now imagine, yes imagine if you had more than one memory. Combine them together and you’ve got enough to pull you out of even the deepest moments.

Have you ever seen a child crying and automatically try to hug his mother? The funny thing is, even if the mother made the child cry, if she opens her arms, he’ll still run to her. That’s purity. That’s a pure heart. No matter what happens, the heart is in her hands. It would be nice if everything could be like that. People can try though right?

Alright, back to work now. Hmm I just thought of something to give me a little smile.

(To some of you my words may seem corny, but ah well)

I think I’ve had a pretty good day today in terms of work. Every single moment of my time was used; except for the ten minutes that I lay on my bed.

Gone to work, came home, worked on ILQ, updated some sections, worked on another site, shifted some URLS to another FTP account, cooked some chicken, organized part of my schedule for my Japan trip, organized my desk, fixed my files, had a shave, nice shower, and that’s pretty much it. Hardly any relaxation time, but that’s ok.

The harder your work, the better the reward.

The finger, as in giving someone the finger, is a hand gesture made by extending the middle finger of the hand while bending the other fingers at the second knuckle.
The Finger is a silent way of saying “feck you”, using the finger as a phallic symbol.

A story that refers to the gestures of longbow- men fighting in the English army at the Battle of Agincourt in particular is often mentioned when we speak about the Middle Finger history.

Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers.
Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future.

This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as “plucking the yew” (or “pluck yew”).

Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waving their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, “See, we can still pluck yew! PLUCK YEW!” Since “pluck yew” is rather difficult to say, the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to an “F”, and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter.

It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows used with the longbow that the symbolic gesture is known as “giving the bird.”

I was listening to the new Madonna song featuring Justin Timberlake.
She stole the beat to her song from Hamutsan Serve. I’m sure of it!

Listen to them and tell me what you think.

Edit: I just watched her video clip (because I had only listened to it), it turns out Hamutsun are IN the video, so I guess they collaborated. (or they out them in the video in return to take their background track). Still they got hardly any face time in the clip, if I was them I’d be pissed off.

I went to watch Indian Jones today. I was so excited because of how good the old movies were. The thing is Steven Speilberg directed this movie.

BEFORE READING THIS, YOU SHOULD KNOW I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE MOVIE SO STOP NOW.

Steven is famous for his Alien movies, and that’s just what he turned this movie into. He did things which didn’t make sense. First of all there wasn’t much of a story, second of all too many things happened in coincidence, and finally there were too many things that didn’t make sense!

The whole movie is about a crystal skull. The skull isn’t crystal though. It’s an alien skull. At the end of the movie, they put the skull on the alien body and it becomes alive. The alien says he’ll give them a big gift. But finally he kills most of the people (except for the heroes who escape).

Also, how did the skull leave the alien body in the first place? Nobody knows….

In one part of the movie, a NUCLEAR BOMB falls on Indian Jones head, but he’s in a fridge so he survives…. I know this is a movie, but they made it TOOOOOO FAKE!

Oh when Indiana Jones’ son was in the jungle he got stuck in a tree and saw monkeys so he started to swing around like tarzan… what the hell?!

Basically it’s supposed to be one of those good old steam punk movies but turns out to be a guy and his son who search for a lost city of gold which turns out to be nothing more than an old museum of artifacts collected by ALIENS from another world. The big finale is that the whole area is sucked into another dimension, the aliens fly away in a space ship and the area is flooded in water. Then the whole group relax on top of a small mountain. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!

Indiana Jones is cool… sadly…. Steven messed up the movie.

One thing that I guess I can say I can be a bit proud of is the fact that I’ve been told that I have a likeness to Tom Cruise.
It’s odd. It started when I was in university and my friend Hussain Al Aali said, “Hey man you look like Tom Cruise”. I thought he was joking around until a few weeks later someone else said that.

I was a bit surprised. Well two months ago, a guy named Husam said the same thing. “At a certain angle you look like Tom Cruise man”.

Last weekend a bunch of us went out. It was Aasim, his wife, Antoinette, Dima, Laeek, his friend, Husam, and Aasim’s cousin. It was after the little get together at Ras Al Nasa that Aasim told me his wife things that I look like Tom Cruise.

Now how should I take this? A compliment? (most people would).
I don’t really see a resemblance if you ask me.

Today was an extremely odd day at the office. The secretary had to leave. She’s a very nice girl, works hard, follows the rules, but sadly she didn’t have her work permit authorised so was forced to leave the office. Everyone, included our head, was sad to see this happen.

We’re also in the middle of transforming our department into a subsidiary so losing the secretary (and friend) is going to set us back a bit… I’ll do my best to see if I can help sort things out for her…

Some other things happened as well which kind of made my future plans for investment out of whack. Ah well…

I’m in a really bad mood today. I went off to westbay near the Salam tower. There was a TON of construction. I had to go there because of a meeting with a client. Now their parking was packed. There was no room at all. So I thought, ‘Fine I’ll park outside with all the others’. So I see these cars parked nicely on the side and park next to them.

Now bare in mind that I did not obstruct traffic, there were no “no parking” signs, and I parked with at least 6 feet from my car to the road.

When I got out, I had a damn parking ticket! So I call the Traffic police to ask what it was for, this is the conversation.

Me: Hello sir, can you tell me why I received a parking ticket?
Police: What’s the code?
Me: 1/78
Police: Illegal parking.
Me: But I didn’t park illegally, I have a picture to prove it.
Police: The picture means nothing.
Me: But I’m telling you I didn’t break the law. I’m a Lawyer myself and believe in upholding the law, in this case I didn’t do anything wrong.
Police: Where did you park?
Me: Westbay
Police: Yeah that whole town area is no parking.
Me: But it’s a huge construction yard. Where do people park to get into the buildings that are ready with no parking?
Police: It’s their tough luck.
Me: But there’s no ‘no parking’ signs.
Police: Alot of people use that as an excuse and complain about it, but too bad, thats the way it is.
Me: But I must be able to appeal the ticket.
Police: No you can’t.
Me: Yes I can, why do I always have to ask someone else.
Police: Don’t even think about was6a.
Me: I’m not thinking about wasta at all. I want to do this legally and fair. What do I have to do.
Police: Get a letter from a head, take it to the head of traffic, he’ll book a court date, then you can appeal.
Me: What’s the penalty by the way.
Police: 500QR and 3 penalty points.
Me: What?! 3 Penalty points!!

Now he was speaking to me in an agressive and rude tone. Like I was a murderer. Where are these police when there are those that don’t drive properly, those that flash you and drive 140, those that don’t signal, those that park on sidewalks, those that veer into people’s lanes, etc…

Ministry of Traffic is a joke. The people that follow the law get punished. Hope the head of their department slaps a few of these people on the head to wake them up. Pisses me off. The people that care about the country get this in return. They should get stricter on people’s licenses before handing them out, not after.

The points for parking in an area where there was no ‘no parking’ sign. *sighs*

Even hate can be positive.

All in all it was a pretty good day. We were around 10 people that were supposed to meet up however different people had different issues and a few were not able to make it.

We met up at the City Center and ate at Pizza Express. I had this chicago pizza which was delicious. There was a mix of mozzarella and cheddar. After a bit of walking around it was time to go to the movie. We watched Iron Man. I didn’t know what to expect because most of the comic movies weren’t that great. I can say without a doubt that this was one of the better ones. I really enjoyed it and the movie was surreal but left you with “Hey that could happen” in the back of your mind.

After finishing we went of to Suhaim stadium. The olympic athletes from around the world came to Doha to practice for the Beijing 2008 Olympics. There were some hot athletes! We chilled, relaxed and all boasted how we could run faster, jump higher, and throw farther than any of them. (of course that’s what guys do!)

We then headed off to Al Sharq Village. It’s a village thats designed to look like a modern and elegant souq. Very very nice. The pool had some sparkling leds at the bottom which looked amazing. Dinner there and some sheesha was simply relaxing.

A really great day out for ILQers.

Here you guys go, look at this super awesome gift that I got. FINAL FANTASY POTION LIMITED EDITION!!!

I’ve been so amazingly busy these days. Working at QNB is a bit tricky at times, especially when there are alot of people that don’t want to answer their phones. It kind of annoys me at times. My team’s great though. Always working seriously and joking around now and then to lighten up the atmosphere.

I ended up leaving around 4:30pm and finally getting home. I only had around 30 minutes to go to the bathroom and chat online before having to head out.

Nancy from Triniti gave me a call and let me know about the Qtel advert and that they needed someone to basically star in it and be the face of Qtel. I quickly asked around to see if this would cause any conflict with my current job but was given the green light.

So I reached the studio where I took a quick video and did my lines. Sadly though I wasn’t in a thobe but in a suit, and I had just shaven. I know that these guys like a stereotypical Qatari. (that means thobe and beard are a must). Let’s see if I was able to hit the sweet spot though.

Nancy has always been so friendly to me and I’m greatfull for all her support. Think I’ll ask her to join us this weekend when a bunch of the guys go to the cinema. (Don’t worry darling of mine, it’s going to be me, Nick, Laeek, Husam, Thang, and two cousins)

After finishing I had to quickly drive to the Ritz. I was invited to this special event called Art Marine. It’s a new company set up by NBK and supported by the Italian Ambassador. THey basically sell luxury yachts. It was a great site to see. My father kind of hinted that he wants one and might be getting one. I suggested buying one and renting it out as a business. I imagine 10k QR a day would be acheivable. A small sporty one costs around 1.2 million Euro (which is less than I expected).
They had this amazing show where they spit mist into the air and projected onto it, it was followed by a fountain and lazer show. I wanted to take pics but they didn’t show up nicely. Ah well.

Anyway, I’m home now. Time to sleep.