It’s that time of the year again. In fact, today marks a special milestone for me: I’m finally turning 25, that is, two and half decades!

It’s become a tradition here on the blog for me to write a “reflection” post on the year that’s passed by. I always start wondering how fast the year has passed by, and this one is no different. Well, except that 2007, the year I turned 25, has ended on a high note. It was such a dramatic year. However, if I were to make a theme for 2007, it would be this:

2007 is the year I stopped looking at the world in black and white, and starting seeing the different shades of gray within.

More on this later. For now, here’s a brief outline for the rest of this post:

1. Good things happen at last
2. The different shades of gray
3. Major accomplishments
4. 2008: the crystallizing year

Good things happen at last

I mentioned earlier that this year ended on a high note. If you’re wondering what that is, I got some great news: I got an offer for a position that’s a major step up for me!

It just happened last week. For the past few months, I’ve been on the road again hunting for a job that will offer me more challenges than I’m already used to in my current company. The plan was to find one by the end of the year by the time my contract ends. When hope was almost lost and I was prepping myself emotionally for another year here, along came an IT startup that has a solid vision and a plan to revolutionize how IT solution services are delivered in this country. The CEO did a pretty good job at pitching his vision and plan for me and I was drawn by his enthusiastic attitude and the promise for a tremendous experience working with the latest Microsoft technologies.

The best part of it is, it’s a managerial position that’d give me a chance to practice all of what I’ve been preaching on about proper management tactics and ethics. And since it’s a startup, there’s also an overlap of responsibilities that will expose me to numerous challenges in development and analysis along the way. Finally, it pays much better than my current salary. What more could I ask for?

Getting this job has taught me few lessons:

• Network still rules when it comes to job hunting. Even though I kept track of at least 4 sites on a daily basis and submitted countless applications, the job I got simply came from a close friend of mine who just happened to know one of the cofounders. Job networking can never be overrated!
• Enjoy what you’ve got (but always look up). There came a time when I really wanted to quit my current job, even if it meant unemployment. I learned later by talking to my close friend Basheer that given my current circumstances, it’d much wiser to stick with what I have, try to make the best of it and see the positive in it. Meanwhile, I could be looking for next best thing and hope that I land a decent job in the near future, which I did (yay!).
• Believe in yourself. The position I was offered requires much more responsibility and dedication. For the average Joe, this can be overwhelming. But thanks to a recent training course I took in building self-confidence, I wasn’t so much reluctant to take on the new challenge as I was excited to be trusted enough to play this role. I firmly believe I will do a decent job at it because I’ve got what it takes.

Anyways, I’m starting this new job on the first day of next year. A fresh start for a new life.

The different shades of gray

Stepping away from my career life for a second, I’d like to share with you an important “discovery” I made in my personal life front. I don’t know when it happened or what caused it, but I’ve started seeing the shades of gray that lie between the things that I love the most and things that I utterly hate.

What does this mean?

Well for starters by “things” I mean everything in life including people that surround me and experiences that happen to me.

In terms of people, I used to judge them on a binary scale: I either love this person, or I can’t stand to be near that person. Of course, since not everybody’s like me, this has driven more and more people away from me. Out of my firm belief that when you’re gone you’re not as much remembered by the work you’ve done than by the lives you’ve affected, I made a conscious decision to a make an effort to be around the people which I sometimes despise.

I decided to see the good in everyone, to focus on the positives and as much as possible put up with the things that piss me off. I also made a list of things I need to improve in order to build better and lasting relationships with people around me. This list so far includes:

1. Greet everyone I know with an eye contact and a smile
2. Call friends and relatives on regular basis (I’m so bad at this!)
3. Don’t interrupt someone or put down their ideas

Now as far as seeing the shades of gray in the experiences I go through in life, I’ve learned that nothing can be perfect. I’m going to change my perfectionism lifestyle. If I’m looking for that perfect job at that perfect company, for instance, that’s just not going to happen. There’s always a compromise, and when you choose to compromise you’re making a decision to see the positive in what you’ve got and make the best of it while it lasts.

A good example of this type of thinking comes from the CEO of my new company. During my first interview which happened last week, we got sidetracked into talking about meetings and their horror stories. He said to me:

If I go to attend any meeting, I need to know there’s a need for me, an agenda that we’re going through, and a list of actionable tasks that result from the meeting. If some or none of those things are there, I’m usually pretty pissed. However, I still try to convince myself that the meeting is worthwhile. If for nothing, it’s at least good for strengthening my relationship with my fellow colleagues.

This kind of thinking focuses on seeing the positive in every experience. Essentially, that’s like seeing the shades of gray, or the positive things, between a “black” or “white” life experience.

Major accomplishments

From a career perspective, probably the most notable achievement this year is pursuing my newfound passion for the science of usability (more broadly known as Human-Computer Interaction) which culminated in traveling to India for a two weeks training in this field. It was such a wonderful experience. When I came back, I had the chance to prep myself for the certification exam which I successfully passed in September 13th. It was a mission well planned and executed from start to end. But it doesn’t end here, I’m just getting started on this road.

From a personal perspective, I’d say that keeping a healthy relationship with my family and friends all throughout the year is definitely an unprecedented achievement for me. I’ve learned to treat every relationship like a plant which needs watering every now and then to keep it healthy and alive. Do you remember my post about using Facebook for the purpose of strengthening our relationships with the people who we care about? This is where that came from.

2008: the crystallizing year

In my rearview mirror
My life is getting clearer

I finally found my way
Said goodbye to yesterday

I love these lines from Bon Jovi’s song, Lost Highway. They accurately represent the transition I’m going through in life as I move along and learn to be a better person each step along the way.

2008 will be the year I make the full transition to adulthood. For the past several years since I graduated from college, I’ve been learning that some of my characteristics I carried over from college are not appreciated by society. Take for example my ignorance of responsibility and deferring it to someone else or some other time. I must start to take on more responsibility if I’m ever going to start a family someday.

Speaking of family, my goal for 2008 is to meet and get to know my future wife. I know she’s out there somewhere writing a similar post. If you ever get to read this, my future wife, please use my contact form to send me your “resume”. (Damn, all that job hunting has gotten to me!)

Conclusion

Every year I dedicate a song I love to summarize the year to come. Last year it was Better Days by Goo Goo Dolls. I was looking for better days and a better life. And now that I found what will get me there, Switchfoot’s inspirational song This Is Your Life comes to mind. Enjoy!

share your files at box.net

yesterday is a wrinkle on your forehead
yesterday is a promise that you’ve broken
don’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes
this is your life and today is all you’ve got now
yeah, and today is all you’ll ever have
don’t close your eyes
don’t close your eyes

this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
when the world was younger and you had everything to lose

yesterday is a kid in the corner
yesterday is dead and over

this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
when the world was younger and you had everything to lose

don’t close your eyes
don’t close your eyes
don’t close your eyes
don’t close your eyes

this is your life are you who you want to be
this is your life are you who you want to be

this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, is it everything you dreamed it would be
when the world was younger and you had everything to lose

and you had everything to lose

Download: Switchfoot — This Is Your Life.mp3

Related posts:

1. 24: a year in review
2. 23rd already !! or is it about time ??
3. A Judgment Made Too Quickly!

In in my last post about perfectionism, I’ve ended up posing a question: what makes an accomplished perfectionist? In other words, how does one balance the act of accomplishment with a strive for perfection? It’s a pretty thin line if you ask me, and in this post, I’m going to shed light on some of the techniques you can use to achieve that.

Accomplished perfectionism is the fusion of two separate genes: those that empower a person to get things done as quickly and efficiently as possible, and those that compels him or her to do their best possible job on these things.

To illustrate, take a look at the following phrases which are more likely to be said or thought by a carrier of each of these two genes:

Being a perfectionist myself, I totally resonate with the phrases said or thought in the Perfectionist column. That’s why I set out to research practical ways to help me make the transition to be a high achiever while maintaining an adequate sense of perfectionism. I’ve found many resources on this subject, so I thought I’d do myself and my readers a favor by compiling all findings in a comprehensible format which can be quickly learned and adopted to create the best possible mutation of these two genes.

Personal Attitudes

Change starts from within. If you really want to lose your neurotic perfectionism and embrace a more healthy one, then there are few things you need to change on the inside. Elizabeth Scott has set of great tips on how to tackle your inner change:

See the Positive. If you’re struggling with perfectionism, you probably have honed the skill of spotting mistakes in even the best works of others and of yourself. You may just naturally look for it, and notice it above all other things. While this habit may be difficult to just stop, you can soften your tendency to notice the bad by making a conscious effort to notice all that is good with your work and the achievements of others. If you notice something you don’t like about yourself or your work, for example, look for five other qualities that you do like. This will balance out your critical focus and become a positive new habit.

Work Habits

The next things you need to work on are your everyday working habits. Whether you work as a freelancer or at large multi-national cooperation, you need to consider implementing the following changes in order to accomplish more and be happy about it:

1. Do no more than what is necessary. It couldn’t get simpler than that. But since that’s easier said than done, Donald Latumahina at Lifehack has few more tips regarding this:
   1. Set a clear expected output.
   2. Write down the expected output in a prominent place.
   3. Realign yourself with the expected output every now and then.
   4. Stop when you already get the expected output.
2. Work with inverted pyramid structure. This is actually a very useful tip if you think about it. The idea is to do the subtasks from the most important down to the least important.
   
3. Set a deadline. By setting a deadline, you are forced to prioritize the things you are doing. This way, if the time is up you can still deliver the best possible output.
4. Maintain focus on completion, because that’s what matters. At the end of the day, people who master the art of the finish will be recognized, no matter how relatively imperfect their jobs were.

Conclusion

I hope during the course of this and my previous post, I’ve given all of you perfectionists out there a reason to rethink your strategy towards work and life and making appropriate changes that will ultimate lead to a happier and more peaceful life.

I’d like to end this post by sharing a fabulous quote from Stephen Manes’s book: Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days:

Congratulations!  You’re not perfect!  It’s ridiculous to want to be perfect anyway.  But then, everybody’s ridiculous sometimes, except perfect people.  You know what perfect is?  Perfect is not eating or drinking or talking or moving a muscle or making even the teensiest mistake.  Perfect is never doing anything wrong — which means never doing anything at all.  Perfect is boring!  So you’re not perfect!  Wonderful!  Have fun!  Eat things that give you bad breath!  Trip over your own shoelaces!  Laugh!  Let somebody else laugh at you!  Perfect people never do any of those things.  All they do is sit around and sip weak tea and think about how perfect they are.  But they’re really not one-hundred-percent perfect anyway.  You should see them when they get the hiccups!  Phooey!  Who needs ‘em?  You can drink pickle juice and imitate gorillas and do silly dances and sing stupid songs and wear funny hats and be as imperfect as you please and still be a good person.  Good people are hard to find nowadays.  And they’re a lot more fun than perfect people any day of the week.

Further Reading

During my research for this post, I’ve come across few great articles that I think are worthwhile to read. Some of them have been used or linked to from this post:

• Perfectionist Traits: Do These Sound Familiar?
• Overcoming Perfectionism: How To Develop a Healthier Outlook
• Restricting The Creative Perfectionist
• 10 Tips to Be Accomplished and Instead of Just Busy
• How to Become an Effortless Achiever
• The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished
• Top 10 Traits of Highly Successful People –That You Can Learn!
• Productivity Tip: How Not to Overspend Your Time On a Task
• Effective is Not the Same as Efficient

Related posts:

1. Perfectionism
2. Going through the motions: is productivity the key to accomplishment?
3. Do you have to be the jack of all trades?

If you’re anything like me, then you’ll resonate with symptoms of what’s called perfectionism. Being a perfectionist at work and college is something I’ve been very proud of, despite not being fully aware of it. Everybody I came to deal with including my boss and colleagues was impressed by the level of sophistication and professionalism I’d go about completing my tasks.

This, of course, also had its toll on me most of time. Long working hours in the office (by choice) trying to get that deliverable up to my standards and still meeting that deadline was the norm for me.

Then a couple of days ago I came across an article that was like a revelation. It made me realize that now I’m at this point in my career life where I have to make serious changes to my work habits if I want to be an accomplished person. This post is me trying to analyze that change and hopefully helping fellow perfectionists along the way.

I’m pretty sure you are probably wondering now: why is being a perfectionist something you would want to change? How does it ruin one’s professional life? Doesn’t it make you, I don’t know.. better than the others?

If you think about it (or have experienced it yourself) then you’d probably agree with me on this: perfectionism can get in the way of accomplishment. Well, at least a certain kind of perfectionism.

Neurotic perfectionism

In this life, there’s always the good and the bad, and when something good turn into a bad one, it’s because someone’s abused it.

Perfectionism works along the same lines. When abused, it turns into neurotic perfectionism. You’d know that kind when you notice:

1. a constant need for approval from others.
2. standards too high to achieve.
3. endless anxiety about making mistakes with no way to cope.
4. no role models of others who handle failures or successes well.
5. your coworker’s office looking like this:
   

A common mistake people make is to associate any kind of perfectionism with neurotic perfectionism. As you’ll see later on, there’s a healthy kind of perfectionism that I think we all should strive to embody.

Does the world need perfectionists or achievers?

Think about this: which one of the following two (hypothetical) people is more likely to get hired in, say, a high-profile fortune 500 company:

1. Niddeala is a college graduate, experienced .NET developer who has very professional attitude and delivers professional results. He is, to a certain degree, obsessed about maintaining the quality of work he’s known for, and thus spends an awful lot of time perfecting his job. His end-results are fabulous and quite often superior to his colleagues’.
2. Reehsab is a college graduate, experienced .NET developer who has worked with several companies on various .NET-based projects, including ERP and stock charting. He has a track record of successfully completed projects which he’s proud of and uses as his main selling point during interviews. However, he lacks dedication for creating quality results (in programming terms, for instance, that means the last thing he worries about are code comments and documentation). He is simply happy to get the task done and start a new one, because let’s face, he will not withstand working on the same task for far too long.

Any experienced hiring manager should be able to spot the clear sign of difference in perfectionism during the interview. But which one would he pick? Surely that depends on many other factors, including the manager’s past experiences with perfectionists.

But let’s say the manager’s given a third choice. All of the sudden, a third person named Reedeala pops in. The manager, still not decided who to go with, gives this guy a shot at an interview. After all, his CV looks quite interesting.

Reedeala’s work speaks for itself. His 4 year experience working for 2 high-profile companies and helping them deliver .NET-based solutions to the market is impressive. He considers himself “a go-getter with attention to details”. His work is often praised for promptness and completeness. His previous managers speak well of his professional attitutde towards business.

As you can see, Reedeala carries the best qualities of Niddeala and Reehsab (hence his weird name).

So what am I getting at?

Perfectionist + Achiever = Every employer’s fantasy dream

No, not that kind of dream.

It just means: Reedeala’ is getting the job.

The reason is quite obvious, and it’s really the point I’d like to make in this post:

The world is now looking for the best people who can accomplish their jobs and still manage to deliver quality results. Those people are capable of spending just the right amount of time and energy on every task at hand in order to produce their best possible work in the shortest amount of time, or for meeting deadlines.

The world isn’t looking for perfectionists who abuse the time they’re given for each task trying to satisfy their desire for attention by worrying about smallest of irrelevant details and things that are just nice to have.

And just as much, the world isn’t looking for uninspired, unmotivated people who just want to get by.

The world is looking for.. accomplished perfectionists!

In the next post, we will dig deep to find out exactly what makes an accomplished perfectionist, which is the term I’m using to describe the person who gets the job done with a higher than ordinary level of perfectionism.

Conclusion

Back when I was in school, we were taught this little ditty: Good, better, best, never let it rest, ’till your good is better, and your better is best.

But my experiences so far have forced me to pose this question: is “the best” always better than “good” and “better”?

In other words, there’s a line that we always have to draw somewhere between excelling at our jobs and going over the line to becoming neurotic perfectionists.

See you next time!

Related posts:

1. How to be an Accomplished Perfectionist
2. Going through the motions: is productivity the key to accomplishment?
3. Summon your creative moments!

I will elaborate on that so it makes little more sense to you:

There’s a common phrase I use quite often (especially at work) to describe the thing where you pretend to do something by acting as if you were really doing it, but never actually getting it done. It’s called going through the motions.

It amazes me how often we find ourselves inadvertently going through the motions of achieving things, doing everything we know we’re supposed or told to do, but eventually not reaching the finish line, or reaching it a bit too late.

I wasn’t aware of how guilty I am of this until I started my current job a couple of years ago and started to learn about the environment and work culture. Two years down the road, I’ve realized that what we actually do here at the company is far from trying to get projects done. We obsess very little about end results and a lot more about methodologies, frameworks, work policies, clearing our responsibilities and basically just getting the ball on to the other side.

Make no mistake, we do like to feel accomplished, and we’re actually getting paid to do so. But we’re lousy at that, and you know why? Because we think that by going through the motions of working on various projects, clearing many seemingly important tasks, being all productive and punctual, we’re bound to drive projects to the finish line. The only problem is, we usually don’t. Our projects carry on for years (I’m not exaggerating!). So what is it we’re doing wrong? Or to put it in a more general way:

How does going through the motions of accomplishing things not help us accomplish them?

Speaking for myself, I have always thought that by being productive, for instance, I should see flow of results and accomplishments. After all, I have just the right system, with just the right calendar technology, and to-do notebook, and task management philosophy. I can just turn the system on and watch it churn out what needs to be done.

What I didn’t realize though is that productivity is overrated. It’s not the goal but the means to an end. And so are all the other things that we do that don’t bring us that much closer to seeing our projects through.

It takes a really critical eye to spot those things, and it takes guts and bravery to decide that we’re no longer doing them, but instead focusing on more important things or tasks that are sure to drive our projects home.

What kind of things are considered as “going through the motions”?

I’ll give you few examples to make my point a little more concrete. I’ll draw from my own experiences at work or in my personal life, and I welcome you to share your own in the comments.

1. Productivity always leads to more accomplishment. “If you are productive without harboring this intense desire for completion, you will end up just being busy. We all know the feeling. You work all day off of your to-do list. Everything is organized. Everything is scheduled. Yet, still, months pass with no important projects getting accomplished.”
2. More time spent equals more accomplishment. I will never understand why so many companies go to great lengths to emphasize importance of being punctual and sticking with the shift schedule, most of the time at the expense of employees’ productivity.
   In my opinion, one of the most important decisions any company must make is whether being punctual is more or less important than being productive. It’s unfair to expect employees to be strictly punctual and highly productive, especially if you’re making them work long hours.
3. Work policies. All those work policies that a company may (or may not) have in place to control its internal business operations do nothing but hinder employees performance most of the time. I’m talking about things like complex and intertwined organization hierarchy that forces employees to go through complex channels to achieve the simplest of tasks like making a purchase request, all in the name of “consolidating internal communication”.
   The trick is to be constantly re-evaluating the company’s internal policies, paying close attention to feedback from actual employees and their supervisors, and making appropriate changes as fast as possible to help employees stay focused on accomplishing their jobs.

But despite what’s mentioned above, the road to really being accomplished starts with you knowing what makes an accomplished person or company.

Accomplished people are different “species”!

To quote the author of the article that inspired this post:

From my experience, the most common trait you will consistently observe in accomplished people is an obsession with completion. Once a project falls into their horizon, they crave, almost compulsively, to finish it. If they’re organized, this might happen in scheduled chunks. If they’re not — like many — this might happen in all-nighters. But they get it done. Fast and consistently.

It’s this constant stream of finishing that begins, over time, to unlock more and more interesting opportunities and eventually leads to their big scores.

I took liberty of highlighting certain keywords in the quote that, when put together, gives you the traits of this species:

• obsession
• completion
• crave
• compulsive
• finish
• organized
• fast
• consistent
• big scores

What connects all of the above traits, which is also the point I’d like to make in this post, is the following observation:

To be an accomplished person, you have to see each and every task you do for a project in light of the expected project outcome. If it should contribute significantly to what you’re trying to accomplish, then go for it. Otherwise, skip it altogether or replace it with something more likely to get you there faster. Never go through the motions of accomplishing your project by performing needless or marginally significant tasks. Always crave to reach the finish line, or at least before that turtle does :)

A framework for being an accomplished person

In that inspirational post titled: The Art of the Finish: How to Go From Busy to Accomplished, guest writer Cal explains an overly simple framework for cultivating a passion and dedication for accomplishment.

I’ll be personally giving this framework a shot over the coming months. However, I may have a preference towards keeping the list described in the framework in a digital format using my PDA rather than plain paper, because I’m a fan of carrying less things around and making the most use of what I already have.

Conclusion

The truth is that being accomplished is hard work. It’s not pretty. If you really want join the elite group of accomplished people, then you have to be willing to put in whatever effort necessary to see the light at the end of the tunnel, whilst avoiding unnecessary diversions.

OK, enough serious talk. Time for some words fun.

I’ve told you how we use the phrase “going through the motions” a lot at work to vent off our frustration with the system. Well, we also came up with a whole list of abbreviations and derivative words for that: (dictionaries aside please)

1. Motion is a reference for the longer phrase (going through the motions).
2. Motionable refers to a task that (potentially) involves needless activities.
3. Motionization is how a whole bunch of needless activities fill the void left by removing the actually useful ones. Quite a mouthful, I know :)
4. Motionlessness is sort of a utopia where every task contributes directly to the accomplishment of our projects, and all those other pesky little insignificant tasks that suck up our energy are left in the dark for the rats to feed on (metaphorically).

Related posts:

1. Perfectionism
2. How to be an Accomplished Perfectionist
3. Summon your creative moments!

It’s been almost a week since I took the old site down and started working on it. Since this is a major redesign of the old version, taking it down was necessary to maintain consistency between my local and remote version, so I apologize for any inconvenience this might have caused.

This is a snapshot of the old version, which suffered from many problems:

I’ve worked hard on designing this new new version. I spent a couple of days picking out a nice-looking theme from the hundreds of available WordPress themes out there. Then I spent about a week tweaking the theme’s guts until I got something out of it that lives up to my standards and everything I’ve learned about blogging, SEO and web usability so far.

In short, I’ve focused on few key points when tweaking this theme:

1. Clear, simple and contextual navigation.
2. Separation of different topics since my blog is quite diverse in nature.
3. Bringing the content forth and make it easy to read and scan.
4. Increase the stickiness of the blog (see point 1) and make it easy to subscribe.
5. Increase the loading speed of the pages.

It’s really been a wonderful (although a bit tiring) experience to unleash the developer in me and let him work out some PHP, XHTML, and CSS magic. Of course, let’s not forget WordPress, the greatest open-source blogging platform ever made.

Having said that, I’m dying now to find out what you guys have to say about my new (vs. old) blog design. Don’t hesitate to be constructively critical, I’ve been known to be one so I naturally expect it from other people. It may also help to know this is still a work in progress so I’m not really emotionally attached to it (OK, maybe just a little bit).

Looking forward to your comments and feedback.

Related posts:

1. Alaeddin’s Blog gets a facelift
2. New blog features at Alaeddin’s Blog
3. Major relaunch planned for Alaeddin’s Blog

I waited till today to write about it because it took a little while to sink in. I mean, it’s over! The ambitious plan that started early this year with my attempt to get into the field of usability and gain some credentials has now been realized.

For new readers of this blog, Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) is a certification offered by the world-renowned usability consulting company called Human Factors International as an entry-level certification for usability professionals. It’s the perfect kick-start for people who are passionate about this field of science like me.

My plan to achieve this certification involved traveling all the way to India for a 10-days training course in July. That went pretty well. I came back and had about 2 months to study for and prepare for the certification exam. I wasted no effort reviewing all the course materials and reading lots of online and offline literature on this subject. Finally, I devised a strategy for taking the exam that involved creating a reference sheet (PDF) to lookup any piece of information I may need during the exam (it’s an open-book one). The latter proved very useful during the 2.5 hours, 100 questions exam.

With this certification under my belt, I’m now ready to delve into the world of usability and human-computer interaction. As a matter of fact, I already have a blueprint for a usability career plan. The steps of this plan go something like this:

1. Establish professional credibility by way of certification and actual practice.
2. Work towards bringing usability knowledge and practices into my workplace.
3. Start a dedicated blog and write regularly about different topics in usability such as user-centered design.
4. When I feel confident with enough usability work to back me up, I will start giving public speeches and training sessions.

What I’m really hoping to achieve is something bigger which is to bring the science of usability into this part of the world and make people (especially those involved in IT) aware of it’s critical importance. I honestly hope to look back on this post one day and say with confidence that I’m at least one step closer to achieving this grand plan of mine. It’s not completely selfless, as I’ll hopefully become famous for this effort. But in doing so, I’ll also make the lives of many, many people easier since the institutionalization of usability means we will start making (and using) many products that are usable, useful and effective. Everybody’s life will be easier. It’s what computers were always meant to do, and it’s up to us to make them do just that.

Related posts:

1. Beginning countdown for my CUA exam on Thursday 13 Sept
2. Passed + Passed + Passed = MCAD!
3. Leaving on a jet plane to India

I’ve already been through the courses’ material twice. I read countless articles and white papers, and I’ve been through couple of fantastic books about the subject. It only seems fair to believe that I’m well-prepared for taking on and passing the exam.

However, no matter what I do I can’t seem to shake off the feeling of anxiety and anticipation. It seems that no matter what you do, exams usually have their dreadful sensation which you can’t get rid of. For me, this is mainly caused by the fear of failing. Although I do have the option of retaking the exam after 3 days in case of failure, failing this exam does a couple of things to me:

1. It shakes my confidence in the career path I’ve decided upon and chose to begin with this certification.
2. It sends a bad message to my friends and coworkers, possibly lowering the credibility I’m trying to establish in the field of usability.

Not to sound pessimistic, I do however believe in my knowledge and ability to pass the exam with flying colors. I’m just skeptic, that’s all. A healthy dose of skepticism is important to ground our egos in reality and level-off our expectations, don’t you think?

Related posts:

1. I passed the CUA exam!
2. Leaving on a jet plane to India
3. Back from India: Mission debrief

While I’ve been busy lately preparing for my Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) exam on September 13, I’ve been quietly studying this blog’s performance, vision and roadmap.

I’ll admit that in the blogsphere there’s not much room for a personal blog to thrive, but my idea is that if this is the case, then I might as well build and maintain the best possible personal blog out there that provides kick-ass content and value to my friends and readers.

To that end, there are many things that need fixing (both technical and otherwise), that have piled over the last few months. For example:

• Optimize load time - Last time I checked, this blog’s load time stands at a whopping 25 seconds!
• Easier navigation — While current one isn’t all bad, I’m not fond of the menu labeling. I have ideas for improving navigation, mostly inspired by Steve Krug’s awesome book, Don’t Make Me Think.
• Browser compatibility — This problems continues to exist in minor forms, despite changing theme last May.
• Clear purpose - I want to further focus this blog and I want new readers to get at a glance what this blog’s about and where to find valuable content (again, navigation).

So in my spare time, I’ve been planning out steps I will take to meet those goals:

• I will start by switching to a more browser-friendly, fast-loading and awesome-looking theme. I already got a theme picked out.
• I will make sure everything that’s wrong with the current theme is permanently fixed in the new one upon launching.
• To celebrate the new launch, I will start writing a massive post series that’s going to be really valuable for virtually anybody who uses a computer. Stay tuned.
• To go along the post series, I will embark on a massive ad and marketing campaign to bring in fresh and interesting new readers to spice up the community around this blog.

It’s all about you!

Yes, without you, the lovely readers of this little blog, I wouldn’t have the motivation to plan and do all of this.

Recently, I’ve done something I’m really proud of: I’ve reached out to a fresh new reader of this blog and thanked him for having the interest to follow my blog. Then I asked him of what he thought of the blog, what he liked best and least. I was really amazed that he took the time and effort to reply, thoroughly describing his experience with the blog so far. He suggested some very good points that kind of reaffirmed my existing suspicions.

So now I want to generalize this concept:

In the comments, write at least one thing you like about this blog and (more importantly), one thing you’d like to see changed. Be brutal, I can take that (as long as it’s constructive).

Your comments and suggestions will feed into my lists above and the relaunch of this blog will see most of the things you like reinforced and the things you disliked hopefully patched up.

Related posts:

1. It’s done: the blog is (re)launched!
2. Alaeddin’s Blog gets a facelift
3. New blog features at Alaeddin’s Blog

I’ve been on a 2-week trip to India attending a 10-day course series offered by the renowned usability consulting firm called Human Factors International (HFI) (read more in my original post).

So I’m now in Dubai airport with 8 hours of waiting time till my connecting flight back home. That’s plenty of time to reflect on the whole trip and that’s what I’m going to try and do here.

Overall, I’m really glad to say that objective of the trip was achieved in excess of what I’ve expected. I got out of the courses with such solid foundation of the material that it feels like money well spent. But what’s more important is that it reaffirmed my passion for this field since it was my first official exposure to the principles and methodologies followed in the world of usability and human-computer interaction design. I can safely say now that I’ve truly found my career passion!

For the rest of this post, I’m going to make a quick run through some of my observations and experiences during the trip in general. The outline will be as follows:

• Training courses
• First impressions
• Hotel
• Food
• City (Bangalore)
• People
• Funniest moments

Training courses

It’s really been a while since I was thoroughly impressed by the quality of an onsite training. For the past year and half, I was plagued with a streak of really bad training sessions that were in consistently horrible quality, both in terms of content and presentation.

This might be part of the reason HFI’s training seemed so impressive to me. But that’s not to deny they were actually well thought-out and presented. We had 3 instructors for the 4 courses, and they were all experienced working usability engineers with impressive academic background.

Honestly, my biggest fear going to India was finding it difficult or impossible to understand their unique English accent. However, none of that was ever an issue. All of the instructors were really easy to understand and their vocabulary was really good they could deliver complex concepts like a breeze.

My only complaint about the training is HFI’s decision to hand us the material (slides and supplements) in paper. By the end of the course, we had a huge pile of training material, so huge I had to pay for a 10 KG excess luggage weight that costed me a hefty amount at the Bangalore airport. I was really pissed off!

First impressions

It’s funny: my biggest mistake going to India was going through Dubai! It was a huge downgrade leaving Dubai airport and being greeted in Bangalore airport. The difference is impossible to describe in simple words, but Bangalore’s airport can be described in a simple analogy: a glorified mall, with planes instead of shopping carts!

For example:

• It is too small travelers actually stumble upon each other trying to move around the place. Also, some of check-in lines extended beyond the doors to outside the airport!
• It is so dirty in and out it made me question whether the department of sanitation was on a strike.
• It had all these complex procedures and pointless forms you have to fill when you’re coming in or out. Really aggravating when no other airport you’ve been through made you go through them.

Hotel

HFI recommended that I stay at this hotel which is a walking distance away from the training center. It’s supposed to be the best business hotel in Bangalore, and it’s really not that far from it. Although it’s a little bit on the expensive side, my experience staying in it for two weeks was generally positive. The best part is availability of broadband wireless internet in the rooms which really helped me stay in touch with family and friends.

Food

The hotel had a complementary breakfast, which wasn’t too bad. However, the training center served the same exact 5 meals for lunch for 2 weeks. All were traditional Indian meals. Speaking of which, next time somebody asks you to describe Indian food, go ahead and use the following pointers:

• Tell them it’s spicy. No actually too spicy. You know what, just tell them it’s spicy enough to build a nuclear bomb, provided sufficient Uranium.
• Tell them it’s too oily. If you have a minor form of cholesterol like I do, Indian food would be your best option to step up the game!
• Tell them it’s too sweet. Their dessert menu will almost always have that 1 item that makes you think you’re digesting loads of sugar.

I thought I was going to starve there the first couple of days. Then I realized the hotel had it’s own restaurant which served some humanly meals like good-old burgers and noodles. What a life saver!

City

Bangalore is an industrial city. It’s heart of India’s IT industry. Many big corporations have offices there and Microsoft is even building its very own university. When I read all that on the Web I thought I was going to a very hi-tech city, or at least something in that category.

With all the development that’s going in, you’d think the government would pay attention to to the outlook of the city, or at least provide it with uninterrupted stream of power supply. I guess that was too much to ask, because power interruption was very normal for them, but very frustrating for me.

I used to walk back and forth from the training center everyday. I’ll admit that I’ve never seen the larger portion of Bangalore, but from what I’ve seen, the city is extremely poorly-maintained. Streets look like they were last paved in celebration of India’s independence. The largest crack I could spot in one of the streets was enough to replicate a mini swimming pool in your backyard. It didn’t look far from that especially when it rained. I was tempted!

Pollution is another thing you can’t help but painfully notice walking down the street. There are apparently no rules imposing regular maintenance of automobiles and those 3-wheeler things.

Traffic is more of a fun movie to watch than an absolute disaster. At a big intersection that I used to pass, there used to be these traffic contentions, involving the following:

• Cars
• Bikes
• Bicycles
• 3-wheelers (whatever they’re called)
• People crossing
• Cows (also crossing)
• Dogs (just screwing around)

One of those days I just stood watching how the traffic contention would clear out. I’m telling you it was the most fun I had while being there. I’m pretty sure I was there for several minutes while dogs were dancing to the rhythm of the horns. The cows got their way in the end. Fair enough.

People

The most interaction I had was with the people who were taking the courses with me. The general impression I got is that Indian people are very social and welcoming. In these kind of courses, I usually stay away from emotional attachment due to the short time we have together. But some of our class mates insisted we go out for bowling. On another day, he suggested we stay after the course for some open heart-to-heart discussions, which was really fun. On the last day, he even arranged for a McDonald’s meal which was a breath of fresh air for me, albeit a spicy one.

Funniest moment

The funniest moment I can remember was that night when I was watching TV in my room. Here is what I saw:

I was flipping through the channels; lots of boring stuff. Then I stopped on a channel where an Indian version of American Idol was on. I curiously watched it for few minutes as some aspiring Indian singer was giving a performance. One of the judges seemed to be a popular Indian singer and he was really into that guy’s singing. He really loved the song that he felt the need to go out on stage in the middle and start dancing with the guy who’s singing. So he started making all these trademarked Indian dancy moves, until he did that move that just cracked me up. Here is what he did:

He pulled a scarf the singing guy was wearing. He pulled it from his neck and literally cleaned his balls with it! I’m not kidding. He held it from end to end and rubbed it again his balls in a dancy move. Right after that he returned the scarf to the guy and put it around his neck again. That’s it. He did all that and everybody in the audience chanted and clapped for that “cool move”. Man, am I missing something here?!

Conclusion

The short version of all of this is:

• Training was awesome.
• Country wasn’t even close.

I realize now that Middle Eastern culture is far different than Indian’s culture. We’re so different in many ways. Sure, we share some family values but as far as everything else is concerned, we have more in common with the Western culture than the Indian counterpart. This isn’t meant to offend anybody, it’s just my observation and it’s just the way it is.

Below is the photo album for my entire trip. Enjoy!

Trip to India

Related posts:

1. Leaving on a jet plane to India
2. Beginning countdown for my CUA exam on Thursday 13 Sept
3. I passed the CUA exam!

As a result of this upgrade, I’ve trimmed down on some options in the previous version that are now pretty much unnecessary. So this new version (1.1) is much more simpler to setup and use.

Features

New features in this version are:

• Widget support.
• Welcome-back message for returning visitors.
• Ability to add a visitor’s name anywhere in the message.
• Ability to add a visitor’s MyBlogLog avatar anywhere in the message.
• Display Dashboard/Logout links for logged-in users.

Since this version is a major rewrite of the old one, many of the old features are not removed, including:

• Title for the welcome message.
• Message status (Published, Title only, Content only, Private)
• HTML Style (div or unordered list)
• Display options (on home page only, to registered users, use of content filtering)
• Hiding message after specifable number of visits

Download

Download: Welcome Visitor! Reloaded v1.1.1

Installation/Upgrade

• If you’re upgrading from old version, make sure to save your old welcome message somewhere safe before you continue.
• Unzip the downloaded folder and upload it to your wp-content/plugins folder in your WordPress installation. You should have this folder structure at the end (wp-content/plugins/welcome-visitor-reloaded/).
• Go to the plugins administration page and activate the plugin.
• Set your custom welcome messages under Options > Welcome Visitor! Reloaded
• To display your welcome message, do one of the following:
  • If you use Widgets, go to the widget panel and add the Welcome Visitor! Reloaded module
  • Call the following function in the theme template where you’d like it displayed:
    <?php echo welcome_visitor_reloaded(); ?>

As always, I’m more than happy to help you with any questions or comments you may have.

Related posts:

1. It’s done: the blog is (re)launched!
2. New blog features at Alaeddin’s Blog
3. Alaeddin’s Blog gets a facelift

I know what you’re probably thinking: my first time experience proved scary so I chickened out this time. Nice try, but not me. You guys know I love public speaking and I even gave out my first ever public speech recently.

So why did I quit?

Well, simply put, there’s a major flaw in toastmasters clubs. A one I came to find out about in the first hour of my first visit to the local toastmasters club. Maybe it was amplified in the club I tried, but I believe many more clubs suffer from the same flaw because it’s in the very nature of a toastmasters clubs’ educational process.

So what’s the flaw?

Well,

You can’t teach something if you’re incompetent!

Check this out:

Two weeks ago in my first visit to the club, along with a close friend of mine, we were first introduced to the club’s president and the vice president. They were both very nice people. In fact, most of the members seemed to be very welcoming and we were very optimistic and eager to join the club.

So the meeting started with their usual weird-at-first-time rituals. Then came the prepared speeches part in which it was president’s turn that week to give out a prepared speech. The subject had something to do with internet protocols. However, that’s all I could gather from his speech. It was all downhill from there!

I literally couldn’t believe the way he was giving the speech. It was like he read up on everything wrong you can do when giving a speech, and decided to do them all, with no exception!

For example:

• His back faced us instead of his face most of the time.
• And that’s because he was reading computer-jargon-filled bullet points one by one off his slides.
• Speaking of slides, do we still call them slides when they’re more like crammed textbook pages?

Those are just few of the unbelievable things the “president” did in order to not convey any meaningful piece of information from his speech.

Round of applause everyone, for the club president!

You’ll have to forgive my sarcastic tone in this post, but if the president was this “good”, I thought: “I’m bound to learn something every other week watching him and just doing the opposite!”.

The fact of the matter is, it wasn’t only the president. As the meeting progressed, I discovered that practically everybody in the club was a beginner. There’s nothing wrong with that. Well, that’s until beginners try to teach each other something, then we kind of run into a deadlock situation where there’s very little (if any) progress made.

Furthermore, any possible progress is further hampered by the fact that we have to be “supportive” to fellow toastmasters. The idea of being supportive, in my opinion, was misunderstood. Yes, we are not supposed to laugh in your face when you mistakenly pronounce “peanuts” something else, but we also should be very critical of everything else wrong you do in your speech, and spit that out (nicely) when doing the evaluation. That wasn’t the case with this local club.

Conclusion

A Toastmasters club is a “learn-by-doing” workshop. Nothing is wrong with that. But don’t you think this model is really flawed when you have nobody from within the club to learn from or even imitate?

That’s why I quit my local toastmasters club. It was just not worth waking up every weekend Friday 8 AM and paying those once and bi-weekly fees and putting down the preparation effort. The progress I’m going to make is sure going to be very minimal. It’s just not worth it.

Maybe a different club is the solution. But for now, so long toastmasters!

Related posts:

1. Major relaunch planned for Alaeddin’s Blog
2. My first ever public speech!
3. Why would someone love public speaking?

The courses will take place in Bangalore, India and will span 10 days from July 16–26. Taking these courses will prepare me for my ultimate objective which is to obtain their highly regarded Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) certification, which I figured is a great kick-start for me in this path. The certification exam will be done online on September 13 this year, so I’ll have plenty of time to prepare and read more resources.

I had the option of doing this training in Washington, DC but the total cost of travel and training was more than double what I’m paying now, so I chose to go with Bangalore. Besides, it’s the same certificate from the same institute here and there.

Truth be told, the hardest part about this endeavor is having to explain to people and friends what software usability is and why it’s a relevant skill to have and an awesome field of science. Without formal training though, it’s really hard form me to concisely present a case-in-point for of how sofware usability is very important consideration for software vendors. However, if I had to quote a line that best says it all, it would be this:

Software usability today is what hardware was for the 80s and software was for the 90s.

There is a lot more to be said here but this is not the subject of this post. The bottom line is that I’m very excited and looking forward to attending this training series. The arrangements for the travel are almost final and I even ordered a relevant book to read on the plane.

Wish me luck :)

Related posts:

1. Back from India: Mission debrief
2. I passed the CUA exam!
3. Beginning countdown for my CUA exam on Thursday 13 Sept

This post is simply dedicated to thanking every one of you who’ve visited my blog and left a comment or sent me a thank-you e-mail, especially during the week where I solely featured the works of fabulous Canadian musicians. Man, that was a fun week, wasn’t? :)

Here are some of the great e-mails I received from some “satisfied customers”:

Hi Alaeddin,

Happened to stumble upon your site while searching for music stuff. I like your site very much, its got a nice clean layout, good contents and fabulous music recommendations. Keep up the good work, pal! Hope to see more great stuff here.

Regards.

Melvin (from My idea index for anything and whatever)

Hello friend,

Thank you so much for visiting my blog and leaving a comment. I appreciate it. No wonder you have a wonderful knowledge about music around the world. That is evident in your blog. I am a great music lover too and love to listen music in different languages. Keep visiting my blog and let me know your ideas on how to improve it. Have a great week ahead!

Take care,

Kate Rogers (from I Love You Ecards)

I also want to give back some link love to all people who took the time to comment or respond to any of my posts:

• desipenguin
• Julie Tuggle
• nV (from a band called Ryma Path)
• Catita
• Phil Gerbyshak
• Calvin Chin
• Steve S
• gia combs-ramirez
• Matthew Cornell
• Karin H.
• Sue Olson
• communicatrix
• Darrell
• KWiz
• bara2
• timethief
• Martin Plante
• Jag Senghera
• RamyB
• Darren
• Jason Sadler
• Tisha
• David Airey
• Daniel
• Qabbani
• Daniel
• Mark Shead
• msham70
• Greg Scowen
• Kahea
• Christopher vanDyck
• 7usam
• Kelly Cat
• Mother
• jf.sellsius
• Florian
• tomawesome
• Lord Matt
• Jane
• Keith L. Dick

Related posts:

1. The hidden reasons of why I blog
2. New blog features at Alaeddin’s Blog
3. It’s done: the blog is (re)launched!

1. Fabulous Songs is a new page with a complete list of all songs I’ve posted, and then some. It’s useful if you want to get a quick overview of all of them, plus you can download or listen to any song just by clicking on it.
   (Kudos to the Box.net team for providing such useful widget)

2. Shared Listening is a new page that is similar to Shared Reading (which lists my latest read blog posts and favorite blogs) except that it includes up-to-minute listing of my recently played songs as well as my weekly and overall top tracks and artists that I’ve listened to.
   (Kudos to the Last.fm team for providing those useful set of widgets)

Go ahead and check those pages out and let me know what you think in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Alaeddin’s Blog gets a facelift
2. The hidden reasons of why I blog
3. It’s done: the blog is (re)launched!

I realize that maybe one of the main reasons people subscribe to my blog is because they’d like to discover new inspiring music and artists. Since there are a lot of noise out there, it would help if someone pointed out notable songs and artists for you and preferably provided you the opportunity to download and listen to them.

This is exactly what I’m trying to do. I have a lot of passion for music and an appetite for discovering new wonderful tunes. Plus I have a tempting desire to share my discoveries with as many people as I can.

This is where this blog kicks in.

To this end, my aim from this post is take a quick poll:

How many of you think that we should focus exclusively on music-related stuff in this blog?

If you’re in a feed reader, click through to cast a vote in this poll

Related posts:

1. New blog features at Alaeddin’s Blog
2. The hidden reasons of why I blog
3. It’s done: the blog is (re)launched!

• Looks horrible on IE 6
• Bandwidth whore
• No support for widgets
• Being a 1-column, it makes you miss out on potential subscribers. Had it been two column, the arrangement could be made so that subscription options are more visible and easier to spot.

So I knew someday I had to give it up one day and, well, today is the day!

Introducing a new theme based on the popular WordPress K2, and a custom style to the latter called Jolie. I must have browsed about a a hundred theme before adopting and customizing this one. What I liked about it is its simplicity yet level of sophistication (read, Ajax) that it delivers. Also, the two column layout is handy when you want to organize your stuff for better visibility.

Some of the customization I’ve done on this theme were:

• Header image (yes that is me).
• Subscription options at the top.
• Blog statistics sidebar on the homepage with a link to the full page.
• Search engine optimization in the HTML header tags used throughout the theme.
• Miscellaneous style changes (my favorite is the alternating color on the sidebar which makes the items more readable)

Overall, so far I’m really satisifed on the performance and usability of this theme. But what matters is what YOU think. I’m sure many of my readers use different browsers on different platforms. So what’s your experience so far?

Finally, to celebrate the new look, in the next post I’ll bring you an awesome new song by a really really popular rock band from an album that will be released soon. This one will blow you away. So stay tuned!

Related posts:

1. New blog features at Alaeddin’s Blog
2. It’s done: the blog is (re)launched!
3. Major relaunch planned for Alaeddin’s Blog

Take me back to that place
where you only have one face
you and your mistakes

I got to thinking: Is there really a place “where you only have one face, you and your mistakes?”, so to speak.

In other words: 

Aren’t we all double-faced, whether we admit it or not?

The reasoning is simple: we’re all humans. Therefore we all make mistakes that we are not necessarily proud of sharing. Now what makes us double-faced, in this regard, is when we attempt to hide the fact that we’re guilty of such mistakes, and acting as if we’ve never done them.

I’m sure we can all think of such mistakes. They’re not the easy ones we can get away with. They’re the big ones that we’d get blamed or labeled if we reveal them. So instead, we opt to hide them, hiding behind the second mask that pretty much says, “hey don’t look at me, I don’t know anything about that”!.

But wait, that’s a good thing!

Yes. It’s good to be double-faced. In fact, you can be x-faced and still be doing us all a favor.

To explain why, let’s a recall an episode of That 70’s Show when Kitty is shocked when she learns that Fez, who she considers a son, is dating an elder woman, who happens to be a (despised) friend of hers. When she tries to break them off, he revolts back in her face, telling her: “you’re not my mother”.

Towards the end of the episode, Fez comes to apologize to Kitty telling her that he doesn’t know what to do because he wants her approval, but he also wants to do things to women that would shock her. Kitty understands, and tells him that he needs to do what any good son would do: lie to her! It took him a while to get the concept, but when he did, he stood up and told her that he is not going to go have sex with Marcia on her washing machine. Kitty tells him to have fun at the movies!

So you’re saying that lying is good?

Yes.

I would argue that as long as it’s done to spare the feelings of your loved ones, lying to hide the mistakes that you’re ashamed of is a good thing, as long as you don’t make it a habit and lie your life through.

Essentially, this means hiding yourself behind that second mask that conceals your darker inner side that you don’t want the other people to see. You want to live up to the image they have in mind for you and you don’t want to disappoint them or, worse yet, send them to complete state of depression about being lied to.

Conclusion

With all this talk about how bad it is to be double-faced, when you do it for the purpose of not letting the people who love you down, it’s really not that bad!

So now tell me what you think:

Is anybody ever in a place where they only have one face, them and their mistakes?

* Image by Esther_G
 

Related posts:

1. How I learned to lower my expectations
2. The major flaw in Toastmasters clubs
3. Perfectionism

Four months in the making, the curtains are finally drawn on my first ever public speech which was, by all measures, a big success!

Of course, when we’re talking success here, we’re talking relative one taking in consideration this being kind of my first public one and the fact that it’s the first time I’m presenting this widely popular phenomenon, known as Web 2.0.

That being said, the speech wasn’t without fair share of flaws. I received some valuable feedback from the audience and the organizers. However, the general feedback was that this presentation was so awesome it’s a shame many people couldn’t make it. Well my friend, that is a good enough testament, for me, for now!

Let’s take a look at the good, the bad and the ratings.

The Good

• My passion for the subject was apparent and people appreciated that.
• I kept the audience attentive due to:
• • Proper use of visual aids
  • Constant change of voice pitch
  • Body movement
  • Some jokes here and there :)
• I got the message home and I was able to explain some very complex ideas of Web 2.0 to people who never heard the name before!

The Bad (learned lessons)

• I stumbled quite a bit in the beginning and said some nonsense stuff before I picked up pace and went into the flow.
• I think I was talking too fast even though my main goal with this one was to practice slower speech and more pauses. This may be understandable given the fact that the topic is quite big and complex and it had to be delivered in less than two hours.
• I also failed to achieve my second goal which is good straight-up posture.
• I’ve been told that I overdressed. A simple casual style would have done better job because I wasn’t in the position to talk to investors or pitch a product. I was merely volunteering to explain something to (mostly) university students.
• When most people put in the “umm”, mine was the “ok?” which followed pretty much every statement and was a bit irritating and noticeable in the footage taken.
• In an attempt to create a connection with the audience, I inadvertently blurted out couple of words which I later discovered were unnecessary way of describing certain popular e-mail service that I’m not too fond of ;)

Ratings

The following graphs are for 4 key indicators as rated by the audience:

Conclusion

The whole experience was amazing!

It was the first one of a kind for me. For the first time, I got to present something I’m really passionate about. At the same time, all that reading I’ve been doing in presentation skills (kinda) paid off and I did something the audience have probably never seen before.

Would I do it again? Absolutely! I’m already getting invitations to do the same thing in some other universities and places. Also, since I got the general overview out of the way, now I’d like to dig deep into real-world applications of Web 2.0, probably starting with incorporating Web 2.0 services and technologies in the education system.

Thanks for all my friends who supported me in this one. I really appreciate your efforts. Also, big thanks for my blog readers who provided some much needed moral support. I owe it to you guys.

Related posts:

1. My first ever public speech!
2. Why would someone love public speaking?
3. The major flaw in Toastmasters clubs

However, unlike other bloggers, I realize that there are reasons why one blogs and there are the other hidden reasons. By “hidden” I mean those reasons which we are not aware of at a conscious level but they are still a driving force that keeps us going. A good example of what I’m talking about is ego-boosting. In my post about why would someone love public speaking, a reader suggested that on some level a blog is something similar to that. However, there is no reason to be ashamed of that. “The ego needs validation and there’s nothing like an audience to give that rush”, says another reader.

So without further ado, here are all my reasons for blogging.

Psychology Exercise

Here’s a fun thing to think about:

Which one of the “advertised” reasons feed into the “hidden” reasons?

I made few connections myself but I’m curious which ones you think are related!

Related posts:

1. New blog features at Alaeddin’s Blog
2. Future direction of this blog
3. Major relaunch planned for Alaeddin’s Blog

As a recap, last time we came out with a conclusion that it’s neither practical nor possible to be a “jack of all trades”. We talked about the “T” model and then I showed you my version of that model where the skills are divided into 4 broad categories in order to better reflect the required depth of knowledge you need to have in each category of skills. Here’s that diagram again for reference:

Now let’s see how we can use this as a point of reference to brainstorm our relevant skills and put them all in perspective. As a bonus, I’ll be doing this exercise on myself and everybody will get to know, for the first time on this blog, what is my true passion!

Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

I wrote before that I always knew I wanted to do something in computer science. I did get my undergraduate degree in CS but then I kept wondering: now what? To answer this question, I eventually decided to get into the real-world, get a job, and see where it goes. It’s been 3 years ever since, and my interest has fluctuated in different areas of CS including web development, software engineering and software architecture (I’ve even considered IT management for a bit!). However, about two months ago, I’ve begun to develop a profound interest in assessing usability of human computer interfaces. After a while, it hit me: isn’t this what I should be doing! The more I read about it, the more I became certain that HCI is where my heart really is.

There’s so much more to say about why I’ve chosen HCI, but that’s the subject of an upcoming post. For now, let’s see how I plan to take on my newfound passion by first assessing the required skills I’m supposed to pick up until I reach my dream of becoming a recognizable usability engineer and actually contributing something to help make a difference in people’s lives.

I want you to understand though that this isn’t entirely about me. I’m just taking myself as an example to show you how you can make a similar analysis tailored to your dream.

1) We all need soft skills, don’t we?

Coming up with the skills in the first category was a no-brainer. I picked up some from a list of popular soft skills, and added some of my own. However, I made sure they are all relevant to my case. I can’t stress enough the importance of skill relevancy to this exercise. If you’re ever unsure of how relevant a skills is to you, consult an authoritative resource on your field of expertise or simply google it, appending the word “skill” or “qualification” to it.

In no particular order, here they are:

• Time management
• Leadership
• Team participation
• Communication (writing, presentation)
• Sociability
• Responsibility

Note: we won’t get into a discussion of why a particular skill matters. This will be lengthy subject that is better addressed alone (hopefully in future posts).

2) Getting wet and dirty: the skills specific to my industry

Next up is the what I like to call the industry-specific business skills. Essentially those are the skills that are both important to your job and within the boundary of your job’s industry. For example, as a fellow reader pointed out, a writer these days must possess basic web publishing skills in order to carry on successful online publishing endeavor.

As for me, I dug a little deep and gathered a list of the skills most usability engineers seem to have a background in these days. I also consulted job ads and found out what employers (notably Google) are looking for. I came up with the following list;

• Software engineering
• Project management
• Programming background (Web Services, .NET)
• Web technologies (HTML/XHTML/DHTML, CSS, JavaScript)
• Desktop technologies (Windows, UNIX/Linux)
• Database technologies (SQL Server)
• Prototyping tools (Photoshop, Visio, Director)

Sounds a lot right? Not really! Well maybe sort of. Remember though the trick is to know that you’re not supposed to be a master of each and every single one of those in order to realize your true passion. You have to pick and choose what you really need out of them and if you’ve missed something, you just fill in what you need to know. This largely depends on external factors such as your employer’s expectations, your peers and the country you’re working in.

I’m in luck though, because I already carry a strong background in most of these given my CS background. So I guess my quest just got a little bit easier.

3) Not so easy tiger, here are the skills to support your specialty

My luck just ran out when I found out that HCI is such a diverse interdisciplinary subject, relating computer science with many other fields of study and research. It’s mind-boggling! Look at the following list of disciplines involved:

• Aesthetics
• Anthropology
• Artificial intelligence
• Cognitive science
• Computer vision
• Design
• Ergonomics
• Information security
• Library and information science
• Philosophy
• Phenomenology
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Sociology
• Speech-language pathology
• Behavioral statistics

You know: I just might end up like Leonardo Da Vinci afterall :)

Again, the rule is simple I’m not expected to be a full-blown psychologist, for instance, to achieve a respectable degree in HCI. Those are the disciplines involved, and I’ll get to know a little bit of each, some probably more than the other, but you get the idea.

So that wraps up the preliminary skills needed to succeed and now there’s nothing left to me but to focus on my…

4) Specialty: an HCI Usability Engineer

What this means is that once you reach a stage where you’ve pretty much acquired most of the preliminary skills, you’ll then have to pour your energy in getting involved into this as much as possible. This means you will likely:

• Further your specialization by tackling some very specific problems and trying to come up with innovative solutions to them.
• Keep your reading up-to-date on the latest developments.
• Participate in conferences, workshops and so on. Preferably host or get to speak in one of them. I myself would ultimately like to do that!
• Become a member of one or more related organizations.
• Publish articles, books or even start a blog in order to share your knowledge and help promote public appreciation.

Conclusion

This is just the start. A guiding light, if you will, to help you plan a direct route to living your passion and loving what you do. In the end, I want to state two points that are of uttermost importance:

1. Never expect this plan to remain valid for a long time. Times change, and so should you.
2. Never expect to reach the tip of your knowledge. It’s a never-ending endeavor.

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. Do you have to be the jack of all trades?
2. Leaving on a jet plane to India
3. I passed the CUA exam!

I guess that’s where the phrase “Jack of all trades, master of none” comes from. It describes a “person who is competent with many skills but is not very good with any one particular skill”. Sometimes known as a “polymath”, Leonardo Da Vinci (pictured on the left) is seen as the one of the greatest painters of all time, and the man with the most diversely prodigious talent ever to have lived. Hey, the man is a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, and writer. Wow! Talk about a jack of all trades!

Now, while we know that having that much knowledge will definitely get you laid at some point, can you really do what this man did, metaphorically? I mean, is it possible for an average human being to know so much about so many things and still maintain acceptable level of human sanity? (ok you caught me, any man who grows this much hair isn’t sane in my book, maybe it was a different time, but I stand corrected!)

This is a question of specialization vs generalization. In other words, how much should you learn about each skill or set of skills in your life including, but not limited to, your job skills? An interesting post by Scott Young addresses this trade off with a neat little visualization called the “T” model. The idea is originally suggested by Ben Casnocha. In a nutshell:

Through this model your aim is to have a moderate amount of skill in a broad range of areas (the top of the ‘T’) and to have a lot of skill in a select few fields (the column of the ‘T’)

The point to take home is that you should make the inevitable trade off: decide what is it that you’re extremely passionate about, and give it the best you got! I mean, by all means, come right at it with a full swing! However, meanwhile, don’t forget about the things that you’re expected to be knowledgeable in, such as soft skills or presentation skills. Most often than not, those kinds of skills will be a prerequisite for your success in pursuing your passion.

Rethinking this model, I’ve noticed that sometimes the depth of your skills is a little more complicated than the above model. More precisely, I believe that leading up to our “expert” skills, there are other ones that we’re supposed to have knowledge in varying amounts or degrees of depth.

I drew down a little diagram to help me get my point across. Notice how the shape of the T is changed into a kind of funnel. I also flipped it to go along the axes.

So does this make sense? And what do you think of the indefinite circled tip at the top of the diagram? Do you think anybody ever has reached that point where he/she just knows it all! I don’t know, but I seem to think that we as humans are never capable of reaching that point because the more we discover about things, the more it’s obvious to us how much more there is to it!

Related posts:

1. A master of my trades
2. Leaving on a jet plane to India
3. I passed the CUA exam!

I’m super excited to announce that I’ll be giving my first ever public presentation on a topic I’m super interested in!

I’ve done numerous presentations in the past, ranging from business-oriented to educational ones. But this one is different: it’s public! Meaning anybody can attend which brings a whole lot of different flavors to it. I’ve previously written on how much I love giving presentations, but I’m not interested in giving tired old boring presentation this time. You know, I’ve been studying for a while the art of giving winning presentations: reading relevant blogs, books, and even practicing some of that on the presentations I’ve been giving in-house. It’s really exciting to finally get to put those skills to a bigger test with bigger and more diverse audience.

Plus, how wonderful is it to get to talk about a phenomenon as huge and relevant to our lives as Web 2.0? For the past year or so, I’ve been knee-deep interested in this topic, reading and following the news surrounding it on a daily basis. Since then, I’ve grown so fond of the power and influence it will have on our lives. For this reason, I decided it’s time to share all the knowledge I’ve accumulated with other people in order to spread and raise awareness about it.

So, about 2 months ago, I’ve contacted a local non-profit organization called ITDigest and expressed my desire to give out a public presentation about this subject. Something that is very introductory designed to enhance people’s overall knowledge of the principles and technologies surrounding it. They were more than willing to arrange that for me and even suggested it would be done in a local university. Ever since, I’ve scattered the web doing comprehensive research, gathering and putting together my material in a format that can be understood by novice and expert users alike.

And now: it’s show time! March 7^th, at King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. For dear readers of this blog who won’t be able to attend, I’m going to have the whole presentation recorded and uploaded here soon after the presentation.

Anyways, wish me luck!

p.s., I’ve designed the picture above to be first in my presentation slides. Here is a bigger version of it, you’re free to use it with proper attribution.

Update 12/3/07: The presentation has been rescheduled to 15/4/07.

Related posts:

1. Why would someone love public speaking?
2. Speech was a big (relative) success!
3. The major flaw in Toastmasters clubs

Some Background

Turns out this phenomena we’re talking about, one’s creative flow, or simply the “flow”, is a long-known one studied and proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The Wikipedia’s entry on this subject states that the:

Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

So you’ll know you’re in the flow when..

• you’re resistant to anything that tries to interrupt you or put you out of it
• you lose all sense of time
• you forget about your basic needs like hunger or sleep
• you don’t feel like what you’re doing is work as much as trying to achieve that goal you set out to achieve

Rings any bells? I bet everyone of us has experienced all or some of these symptoms at some point in time. I know I did. At my previous job, I used to diss off people who’d interrupt me during peak working hours for trivial matters. I got a reputation for being cranky or having “the bad day”, but really what it was is just me trying to keep the pace of my flow going in order to fix that nasty bug or roll out that long overdue feature. But now I know better, because with these rules, I know exactly how to initiate and maintain a creative and productive working session. So let’s explore these rules in details, shall we?

Preparation: What needs to be done beforehand

Because maintaining a steady flow of creative ideas requires complete focus on your goal and ultimate objective, you will need to take care of the following 3 things first:

1. Set up your own conductive environment. It depends on your preference whether you want to work within stimulating and active environment or prefer secluded and quite environments (like me). Also you might want to play some music along, you know the kind that gets you going.
2. Master the tools of your trade. In my opinion, nothing kills creative flow of ideas like getting stuck on some technical issue related to the tool(s) you’re using during your creative session. A basic competency of these tools is a must to minimize disrupting your flow.
3. Allocate enough time that you think will take you to finish the task at hand

Define your scope

Some people have a habit of drifting out of their real goal when they follow their natural progression of ideas. You know what I’m talking about: you’re trying to do something and it leads to something else seemingly related, and before you know it you’re tackling a whole different problem than the one you set out to do. While this is clearly a prospect for innovation, when your creative energy is shattered among several different problems, it quickly wears you out and you end up achieving none, or at least not the one you were meant to achieve. This is why you need to consider the following 3 points which will help you “tunnel” your creative ideas into something productive and worthwhile:

1. Define a clear purpose. You’re going to need a clear goal to focus on. Decide on what you want to create and by all means avoid vague goals. This is your ultimate objective and achieving it will likely trigger the end of your creative flow and make you feel good about yourself!
2. Identify a compelling motive. Why is your goal important to achieve? When you answer this question, you align this goal with your real-world objectives which will give you powerful driving force towards achieving it. You know, most short– or long-term goals, like our new year’s resolutions, fail to see the light not because they’re impossibly unattainable, but because we failed to associate them upstart with a compelling motive that keeps us going at times of weakness.
3. Architect a worthy challenge. There are tasks that are just too darn easy to need your full creative energy. And then again, there are those that are too damn difficult that makes you want to kill yourself. More so than often, we get to choose how challenging our tasks should be. If so, then you need to know that on a scale of of 1–10, where 1 is trivially easy and 10 is impossible, the optimal creative range is 5–9 with a 7–8 being ideal. A wise man once said:
   

   Achieving flow is a fine balance from feeling bored to feeling overwhelmed.

Ready? Go!

That’s it! If you have all those elements (preparation + scope) figured out and accounted for, then you’re ready to start. It will normally take you 15 minutes to begin to enter the flow state. Within 45–60 minutes, you’ll be riding the waves of your creativity! But then again, it all depends on you and the nature of your task. Save and use the following figure to help remind you of the stuff we talked about today. Wish you all the best!

Related posts:

1. Going through the motions: is productivity the key to accomplishment?
2. essere finito MCSD :)
3. How to be an Accomplished Perfectionist

I consider myself a rare breed in this sense. Not many people love to give out public speeches, and certainly a whole lot of them dread it. Seinfeld has a famous quote that goes like this:

According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.

While I could not find a particular study that proved this fact, I can understand why someone would have such fear of public speaking. There are many reasons to that, including:

• Audience disapproval or criticism of your ideas, speech or even looks.
• Connection to bad experience of giving public speech in the past.
• Being incompetent in the subject.

On the other hand, I believe there is only one reason why people, like me, would love to do public speeches. Are you ready? Here it is: egotistical recognition!

OK, I’ll admit that I have no basis for this theory at the moment, but the more I think of it, the more it makes sense to me. To start off, note that I’m not talking here about the ultimate reason of giving a public speech, presentation, key note, or even a training session. Each one of those activities has one or more practical objectives that the speaker would like to achieve by the end of his speech. But if we strip the speaker of those objectives, what reasons are left for him to actually want to do the purposeless presentation? Turns out, there are quite a few:

• Impress somebody or someone
• Showoff something or some quality in himself
• Prove someone’s right or wrong

All three of those reasons lead to increasing our own or people’s positive perception of us, which in turn feeds our demanding ego. Now, if I apply those in my case, I’ll get the answer I’m looking for. Here is my reasoning:

• I said that I’m a “shy, quite, almost introverted” type of person, right? Well, turns out that being such kind doesn’t do your ego any good. So what I need is a way (a social activity) that gets me the recognition, approval and admiration that I’m looking for without making me change my ways. Public speeches perfectly satisfy this need for me.
• “The more people attending, the more excited I get”, that’s what I said right? Well, let me restate this now:
  “The more people attending, the more people there are to give me the recognition, approval and admiration that I’m looking for”.

See, easy isn’t? Now, if we put back the speech objectives that we stripped the speaker from, we come out with a quite an obvious conclusion, which is my point in this post:

All public speeches inevitably deliver a form of ego-boost for the speaker, whether that’s the speaker’s intention or not.

Related posts:

1. My first ever public speech!
2. The hidden reasons of why I blog
3. The major flaw in Toastmasters clubs

While researching this subject, I wanted to find out exactly whether there’s a hardwiring in human genetics that makes them appreciate blissful things less as time goes by. Dr. David Brandt, author of Is That All There Is?: Balancing Expectation and Disappointment in Your Life, concisely explains this phenomenon:

Human beings have a curious capacity to take things for granted. The most exquisite diamond loses its luster with familiarity. The most compatible intimate becomes boring. Miracles like the daily sunrise fail to astonish because they’re commonplace! Repetition and time dull our sense of wonder.

We endow novelty with powers and attributes that it does not really possess. When a thing becomes familiar to us, the mystery we have projected onto it is lost. We see it without the overlay of our imaginings.

The irony in this idiosyncrasy of human character is that we are disappointed by the very things that used to excite us. The once new job or leisure activity is now tedious. We feel let down rather than uplifted. Disappointment is a consequence of our expectation that an object or event will continue to provide us with stimulation regardless of how constant our contact. Unless we adjust our expectations accordingly, we will continue to feel deflated.

I think what we all should agree on is the fact that this is a natural “idiosyncrasy of human character”, a one we’re all born with. The basic fact remains that we all love things when they’re new, shiny and exciting and gradually begin to lose interest as we get increasingly familiar with their effect in our lives.

The differentiating factor then becomes: to what extent do we take these things for granted, and whether or not we get the chance to realize that (and hopefully do something about it) before it’s too late?

And just to be clear, “things” here may refer to anything of materialistic, inspirational or spiritual value in our lives, even things that are out of our control like the sun we enjoy everyday and the sound of ocean waves that we love so much.

Speaking for myself, I believe that my defensive lifestyle, the one that prompts me to have low expectations of others, helps me to appreciate the good things that do come my way, and the good things that are already there. I always wonder how my life would be if I didn’t have such wonderful parents who are always around, some amazing friends who are just in it for “me”, and a God-given healthy body that gets sick too few times around the year. I don’t see these and other things as ones I’m born with or destined to have, I see them as things that other people may not have and I’m such a lucky person if I do have them.

It’s certainly not easy to always keep reminding ourselves to look out for and appreciate the blessings we take for granted. But for starters, let’s look at things we do have that others are dying for. If you have got yourself a loving wife or husband that have shown you nothing but love and care over the years you’ve been married to them, think about other people (you may or may not know) who are still struggling with dysfunctional and failed marriages and relationships. Think about how lucky you are you found the person who, for once, loves you for what you are and who you want to be. Now tell me, how often do people get to experience this wonderful feeling of intimacy to another human being. I can you tell from my own short-lived experiences, very few, if any. So tell me now, is it fair to assume that what you have is something we’re all supposed to have, or are you really that lucky to have it.

Just coming to this last realization, we start to question ourselves: well if I’m really that lucky, how can I hold on to it? What things can I do to show my gratitude and appreciation for having this blessing in my life?

Well congratulations my friend! If you really do care to ask yourself this question, then you’re on the right track. By just spotting those things that need your attention and appreciation, you can start to develop plans that aim to regularly find ways to cater for their presence in your life.

So why wait any longer? Let’s get up, look around us, and let every single good thing we’re blessed with know how much we care!

Related posts:

1. How I learned to lower my expectations
2. A Judgment Made Too Quickly!
3. Do you have to be the jack of all trades?

Well today marks my 24th birthday. Unlike last year, turning 24 hasn’t come in much of a surprise to me. That’s because beginning 2006, I had set out bunch of some specific goals I wanted to do by the time I’m 24. I was very aware of the time that has passed. I can’t claim to have achieved all my goals, but overall I can say I was lot more productive than any time in the past. This was definitely one of the best years of my life!

For this year’s blog, I’m going to start something new. I’m going to highlight the major events of the year. I’m also going to list things in various categories that have I’ve favored or discovered throughout the year. Finally, I’m going to nominate one song to be the Song of the Year!

So starting with the highlights, here they are in chronological order:

• I’ve started the year (Feb 18) by ditching my stupid old company that I worked for since 2004 and switching to a much bigger one. This was difinitely a wise choice and a move I won’t regret.
• Passed the TOEFL exam (March). Important step in preparation for my Masters degree.
• Having a renewed energy and desire to prove myself, I proceeded to obtain the Microsoft Certified Application Developer and Microsoft Certified Solution Developer certifications in a 2 months period!
• To show my gratitude to God for helping me achieve the above certifications, I promised myself that I would never neglect or miss a prayer time again. Usually promises are broken, but I can’t believe how I made myself stick to this one and, you know what, I have, and will, never miss one again. It became a habit. Thanks God!
• Finished my car payments. I now fully own my own, self-financed car!
• Finished my university paper work. (Thanks MoE!)
• Opened my own bank account here. This was so much of a relief as I’ve started doing my banking and bill payment online and on the phone.
• For the first time in my life, I’ve managed to stay on top of all my income and expenses and I’ve tracked all that down to the smallest details using a lovely software package called AceMoney.
• Maintained a healthy relationship with my family and friends. I don’t recall any major problems all throughout the year. This is by itself an achievement for me. I have grown to be more tolerant and friendly.
  ..well to some extent.. don’t you dare sticking a pointy piece of paper in my ear I’ll smack you down! :)

Now, I’m not perfect. There are still some things I wish I would have achieved. Of course, those are going to be my objectives or resolutions for the new year:

• Get used to waking up for Fajr prayer on time.
• Pay monthly charity.
• Read Qur’an on a regular basis.
• Stick to a gym plan.
• Start my Masters study.

(Tip: I found this great online goal tracker, called Joe’s Goals, which I’m going to use to track down my progress in achieving the above objectives)

Alright, now to the part where I tell you whole bunch of different things that I’ve favored throughout the year (and things that I disliked as well):

Category: Friends

The stars of this year are my colleagues at my new company, namely: Ahmed, Saleh, Ubaadah, and let’s not forget Hamdein (aka degre’ mama). Together, we have turned the dull atmosphere of this workplace into an energetic and fun one. Those guys are the kings of jokes and sarcasm. Sometimes, we laugh so hard we have to run to the meeting room to blow off all the laughs. I believe we are all going to end up kicked out of this place someday, and I’ll be the first to go. Hey, I like setting examples!

Category: Music
Till recently, I have heard about a type of music called Ambient Music but wasn’t too interested in exploring this field of music. That was till I recently wanted something so relaxing I could put on and still continue to focus on what I’m doing or relax to. I went ahead and downloaded an ambient mix CD called The Chill Surrounding the Promise of Snow and, needless to say, I was fascinated by the level of sophistication yet simplicity this genre of music has got to offer. I became an instant fan and ended up downloading all the CDs at ambient-nights.org.

Also, I thought’s it’s also important to honor Fadl Shaker’s new album (Allah A3lam) which instantly became an all-time favorite with it’s lovely tunes and emotional content.

Category: Food
Nothing major here. I’m into food for enjoyment as much as for survival :p But if I had to a pick a favorite restaurant for this year, I would say it’s gotta be the italian Paninos restaurant. Lately, I’ve been having my breakfast there every day. They rock!

Category: Places
Since all the buzz was out about how StarBucks is all for supporting the Jewish army and stuff, I was determined not to go there ever again. Thanks to my friends, I found this great little new coffee shop called Oasis. It has the most comfortable couches ever (much better than StarBucks) and I just love its relatively quite atmosphere.

Category: Tech Gadgets
Well, I guess we have a clear winner in this category: my new lovely NEC VT767 multimedia projector.

This medium-sized wonderful projector has been a blessing for me and the whole family. I can now read my favorite e-books in a much easier way and watch my favorite sitcoms in a theater-like experience (coupled with my new Creative Inspire 5.1 5200 speaker system)

Category: Internet
This year, the boom of the Web 2.0 era took us all by surprise. It became one of my major interests on the web. Everyday, there is a new startup that promises to offer a new service or an improvement to an existing online service.
But the best Web 2.0 website (service) that has made a difference in my life in this year has got to be Google Reader. Keeping up with the latest news and stuff will never be hard again thanks to this wonderful app that lets me very easily check out the latest headlines (through RSS) in all interesting websites so that I don’t have to visit them one by one. Thanks to Google for making such a wonderful time-saving app. Google to continues to make a difference in the world!

So there you have it folks, a year in review: 24. To end this year, and this blog, I set out to pick one song that represents the past year and the future to come. My pick was on an all-time favorite song by The Goo Goo Dolls called: Better Days (download)

Here goes the lyrics. Have a good listen everybody :) See you next year!

And you ask me what I want this year
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just the chance that maybe we�ll find better days

Cuz I don�t need boxes wrapped in strings
And designer love and empty things
Just the chance that maybe we�ll find better days

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight�s the night the world begins again

I need someplace simple where we could live
And something only you can give
And that�s faith and trust and peace while we�re alive

And the one poor child who saved this world
And there�s ten million more who probably could
If we all just stopped and said a prayer for them
So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight�s the night the world begins again

I wish everyone was loved tonight
And somehow stop this endless fight
Just the chance that maybe we�ll find better days

So take these words
And sing out loud
Cuz everyone is forgiven now
Cuz tonight�s the night the world begins again
Cuz tonight�s the night the world begins again

p.s., much thanks to my cousin Afnan for her wonderful birthday postcard she sent me on my birthday. She is truly the star of this one!

Related posts:

1. 25: a year in review
2. The One With All The Resolutions (2005)
3. A Judgment Made Too Quickly!

Overall, it was a pretty easy trip. Aside from flying out really early in the morning (thanks for the ride Basheer!) and landing really late at night (thanks for the ride taxi man), the rest of the trip went pretty smoothly and we achieved our objectives.

The major highlights of the trip include seeing my aunt family in Amman. It was really refreshing to get to see them all once again. We had so much fun. I don’t know what has changed since my last visit, but we all seemed to click and have fun and laugh ourselves out. It was really fun!

Another dear ones I got see were my best friends Reem and Yasmeen from back in university. As you could see in the photo album below, we too had some really good times. We went out first to a restaurant, UrbalGrill, which Reem claimed to serve the best hamburger in Amman, and it DID! To the point where I made special arrangements to take my aunt family on the last day again to it to try it out, and they too fell in love with it!

We were supposed to go see a movie but it was getting late so we just stopped by a crowded mall and had some dessert. It wasn’t the most pleasant setting you could find but the company of my friends were far more important. Overall, we had a really good time and a night to remember!

Jordan itself, on the other hand, was the least impressive thing in the whole trip. A LOT has not changed since my last trip and I seem to think the country is going from bad to worse in virtually every aspect. I care not to go into details with everything that’s wrong with the country, but I would say that if this place was to pick up pace with the rest of the world, it’s gonna need some serious makeover. For me, Jordan is a place I stop by to see my loved ones and then move on, nothing more, and nothing less!

Will I do it again if I had the chance to? Absolutely! Seeing everybody, well not everybody coz I sadly didn’t get the chance to see some other good friends of mine, is so much worth it. I do hope I get sent out on another trip sometime in the near future.

Jordan Trip 2006

Related posts:

1. Back from India: Mission debrief
2. A Judgment Made Too Quickly!
3. Beginning countdown for my CUA exam on Thursday 13 Sept

In other words, having expectations almost always results in disappointments for us. This may be the case for us at work, but I believe this idea is universally applicable, to certain extents.

So what kind of expectations am I talking about? You know, as a matter of fact, almost everyone one of us has some sort of expectations that he/she lives by. Without them, we’d be lost. Like the child expecting his mother to love him unconditionally. Is that too much to ask? I wouldn’t say so.

But it’s when we raise the bar a little more that we hit the hard ceiling of disappointment at many times. It occurs to me that lots of times we unintentionally raise our expectations for some reason. Say for example that there’s this bonus that most companies do give out at certain times in the year. After trying out several jobs at different companies which all of them do this, you come to expect that this should be the case for pretty much every company out there, right? Well who’s to say so? Unless it’s a law to do so, we can’t go on expecting every one of them to do the same. You see, in this scenario, you have just accidentally expected something from someone which you shouldn’t have in the first place. And now you got a bump in your head from hitting that ceiling.

So what I’m trying to say is:

If we wanted to live a less stressful life, we should learn to lower our expectations from other people as much as possible. Try not to expect them to do things unless they’re bound to in which case if they don’t they would go below humanly-acceptable levels.

See where I’m getting here? Whenever someone disappoints you somehow, ask yourself: Should I have expected him/her/them to do so in the first place? What if I just didn’t and the hell with them. If they do it, that’s fine. If they didn’t, da hell with them. I don’t need them.

One’s perception can predict his own disappointment. Period.

Related posts:

1. How do we not take things for granted?
2. How to be an Accomplished Perfectionist
3. Going through the motions: is productivity the key to accomplishment?

Yep .. finito.. over.. done .. finished .. call it what you want .. but i’m done with this. I’m officially recognized as a Micrsoft Certified Solution Developer for .NET Platform with focus on platform security. For none ITs out there, that’s some good stuff :)

If I did learn something out of it (i mean hell beside the actual material in it), it’s that with persistance and patience you can do just about anything you’ve ever wanted. Coz for me, this was something I wanted to achieve since my highschool was over. We’re talking 6 years here! Somehow I never got the energy or the right environment to pursue this certficiation. But after starting with this new job, I think I felt the need to make a standout from the talented people around me by achieving a certification which many of them didn’t have. And with the financial support from my company (yep .. I havn’t paid a penny for any of the 5 exams), it was the right time and the right place to do it.

It’s all so relieving to get something out of your way and be able to look out in the near horizon for something else exciting and new. I mean lets face it, always looking forward to something or anticipating what the future will bring along is what life’s all about. I would feel so dead if I don’t have anything to look forward to.

So what’s next in my agenda? Well, I know exactly whats it gonna be. Yep.. my Masters degree. I haven’t decided if i’m gonna do it online or the traditional way yet. But either way, I’m ready to qualify for admission. I just got my TOEFL score results back a week ago and they were pretty amazing.

Before that, though, I feel that I need to renew my religious vows, if you know what I mean. It’s like, in order to put everything wordly I achieve in perspective, there’s gotta a religious side, or intent, to it. I’m one of those who firmly believe that none of what we do in this life matters if we’re missing out on the purpose of our existence, and I think that’s the way to feel real happiness.

Related posts:

1. I passed the CUA exam!
2. Passed + Passed + Passed = MCAD!
3. The One With All The Resolutions (2005)

Yep .. thats me baby ! Just nailed the last of the three required exams today and now this pretty logo’s going right into my CV. There’ll also be a certificate (perfect for straight walls) and a pin (perfect for over-bragging) coming soon from Microsoft.

Anyway, it’s been a great journey. But it’s certainly not over yet. I’m just one exam away from the ultimate title for Microsoft software developers which is the MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solution Developer). I’ve scheduled this last exam a month from now so that should give a pretty good head start at studying. It’s gonna be hard (security-related exam) but I’m the man ;)

Related posts:

1. I passed the CUA exam!
2. essere finito MCSD :)
3. Leaving on a jet plane to India