And then, a couple of months ago, while browsing through audiobooks to borrow through the CloudLibrary app, that the Oakville Public Library provides, I came across ‘Circe‘ by Madeline Miller, which I had heard quite a bit about, but wasn’t sure what to expect given the topic.
Anyway, I thought I’d give it a try, and see what all the fuss was about.

As soon as I started listening to it, I was fully blown away!
The writing style was amazing! I was immediately sucked into the story, the characters, the places, the events; I just wanted to keep going, getting deeper, following the thread of the story as it unfolded.

The narration of the audiobook, by Perdita Weeks, was great and very engaging too, and brought the book to life.

It follows the story of Circe, one of the daughters of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans. She’s born a strange child, lacking any powers like her fathers, and without the allure of her mother.
She turns to the world of mortals, discovers that the power she has, is that of witchcraft, which sets her, and us with her, on an incredible journey from being banished, to crossing paths with other Gods and mythological figures, to many other adventures.

I couldn’t stop listening to the audiobook, and thoroughly enjoyed every detail of it. It’s easily one of my most favourite books I’ve read in the last couple of years. So good I’ll be buying a copy of the book for our home library, to read and enjoy again.

Having enjoyed the book that much, I started looking to see if Madeline Miller had any other published books, and found that indeed she had a previous book called ‘The Song Of Achilles‘, which won the 2012 Orange Prize for fiction.

I borrowed the audiobook, narrated by Frazer Douglas, and there I was again, transported into ancient Greece, witnessing events that played out before and during the famous Trojan war.

The story centred around Patroclus, an awkward young prince, who was exiled to the court of King Peleus, where he befriended his perfect son Achilles.

It follows their path together, their growth, and the evolution and strengthening of their bond to a much deeper relationship, and how that influences their story as the events of the Trojan war unfold.

It’s another very well told and engaging story, that was very enjoyable to read.

Between the two books, I’ll have to admit I enjoyed Circe more, but they’re both great books, that I would highly recommend everyone add to their reading list.

On my end, I can’t wait for another Madeline Miller book to come out, to take us on another magical ride. In the meantime, I will be grabbing her short story ‘Galatea’ to read next.

I’ll have to say that I’ve become a big fan of her writing style, and her ability to weave these amazing narratives around a set of great characters, and hope to read many more of her works in the future.

I never got into posting or consuming much content on there, even though it seems many now find it to be a great place to share content and interact with the people they’re connected to.

Interestingly enough though, every time I go to LinkedIn, and think of checking out some of the content people are sharing, I’ll come across some version of the following idea being posted by someone, with a ton of comments on it.

If a candidate doesn’t take the time to send a thank you note to the interviewer after a job interview, they won’t hire them and will dismiss their candidacy!

It always surprises me how many people hold the above opinion, and how many people agree with them.
What surprises me even more is that people apply this very generally to all kinds of positions and scenarios.

I never took the time to respond to any of these posts on LinkedIn, but it’s always been something that nagged at me and annoyed me, as I couldn’t disagree more with this generic rule.

Before I go any further into why I completely disagree with it, I’d like to start by mentioning cases where I think this rule can actually apply to some extent.
If someone is applying for a sales, business development or marketing type job, or a position where a big part of their role and success at it, hinges on their ability to follow up on an opportunity, continue to push a certain message, and help seal a deal, then by all means, the kinds of actions they do after the interview, can be used to evaluate how good they’ll be at doing that job.

However for anyone else, for any other type of job, I believe it’s absolutely unnecessary!

At a job interview there are two main parties involved, the interviewer and the interviewee; both of them are equally dedicating a chunk of their precious time, before and during the interview, to go through the process.

Both of them need each other; the interviewer is looking for a great candidate to fill a position that will make their life easier; and the interviewee is considering an opportunity, to see if it’ll be a good choice for their next career step.

That’s what the whole process needs to be focused on: if both sides are a good fit for each other, so the required work can get done to a satisfactory degree or better, and for progress and growth to be made on both fronts.

In most cases, the candidate has gone through a number of options and selected that company to apply to, and on the other hand, the hiring manager has gone through a number of candidates to choose whom to talk to.

They should both be equally thankful to the other for the time they’re putting into it and for choosing them over other options.
That definitely should be expressed during the interview, and at the end of it, as it’s being wrapped up; and that is more than enough.

The idea that the interviewee owes the interviewer an extra thank you after that, for some weird reason, is just absurd and unreasonable.
It implies that the interviewer somehow holds some extra importance or dominance over the interviewee, which is quite an old-fashioned view and an imbalanced equation, that doesn’t reflect the reality of how these interactions and relationships should be structured.

As a hiring manager myself, who has had to hire for different roles on engineering or product teams over the years, I’ve never expected a thank you note from anyone after an interview.
As soon as I meet them, I start by thanking them for their interest in the position and for taking the time to meet with me, and then as we get to the end of the interview, I thank them again for their time. They do the same on their end, and that is more than enough.
In fact, the few times I’ve gotten follow up thank you notes, I found it a bit weird, and didn’t find it to add any real value to the interaction, nor give me any more information than I had already gotten.

On the other side of things, in cases where I was a candidate for an opportunity, I’ve also never seen the point in sending thank you notes after interviews. I make sure to express my interest in the role, and thank everyone who takes the time to meet with me during the interview, and at the end of it, and feel that’s enough to show my appreciation and respect.
If someone feels like they need that thank you note from me after the interview, or else they won’t even consider hiring me, regardless of my skills, experience or what I bring to the table, then I most probably wouldn’t want to work with them in the first place!

Now, there are certain cases where someone might’ve forgotten to mention something they feel is important or relevant to the conversation, or where they might’ve remembered a point or example they feel would better demonstrate their fit for the role; those are of course cases where a follow up email could be worthwhile and helpful.

This also doesn’t include cases where someone is just following up on the status of their application to know where they stand, as they might be evaluating other options in parallel.

But sending a message just to say thank you one more time, is a step above and beyond what is necessary, and an extra display of politeness. That someone would feel entitled to that, and be willing to dismiss someone’s candidacy for a job, regardless of how perfect a fit they might be, in the case they don’t get it, is just mind-boggling to me and utterly ridiculous.

Hire the best person for the job, value their time as much as yours, evaluate their experience and skills, not their ability to go through a set of motions that are forced and void of any real substance.

This has also extended over time to me taking a step back from many social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram; and not being as active as I once used to be.

I’m not quite sure why this has happened. I’d probably blame it on life, the changes and whirlwind of events it puts us through; work, with its busyness and different ups and downs; or maybe time, or lack thereof, amidst the competing priorities of family, work, life, …etc.

But that wouldn’t necessarily be fully true.

Part of it is that I just didn’t feel like writing, and maybe more importantly didn’t feel like I had anything worth sharing or writing about.

My wife always jokes that I have this uncanny ability to make certain everyday things sound trivial. I wonder if, in some weird way, that’s something I ended doing to my own writing ideas too, just swatting them away as negligible or unworthy of putting out there in the world.

But I miss writing, especially on this blog. For years, it was a great outlet for me, a place where I could share my thoughts and ramblings about the world, comment on news or events happening around me, talk about some of the personal things going on in my life, or just dump whatever I found interesting around the internet.

So, I’m going go try to slowly get back into it, and step by step make it back to writing more, and just sharing whatever the voices inside my head keep telling me.

I don’t know if it’ll work or not, what frequency I might be able to post at, or if anyone will give a rat’s ass and read any of it, but I know that I want to give it a solid try, because I think I personally need to, and well, because I think that with all the craziness going around in the world, there should be no shortage of topics for me to comment on.

So here goes nothing!

Anyway, this past Friday, we watched ‘A Hologram for the King‘, starring Tom Hanks. It was movie of the week on iTunes, rentable for just $0.99, the trailer looked interesting, and I had heard some good things about it, so we went for it.

The movie is about a washed-up corporate salesman, who looks to change his luck by traveling to Saudi Arabia to try and sell his company’s holographic teleconferencing product to the King.

It was a light, nice comedic movie. Not Hanks’ best by far, but was still fun to watch, and gave us some good laughs here and there.

Most of all, I was really impressed by the co-star of the movie, American actor Alexander Black, who plays the role of Yousef, a Saudi chauffeur who befriends and drives Tom’s character around in the movie. He was really funny and truly nailed the Arabic language dialogue parts; even doing the Saudi dialect better than some of the non-Saudi native Arabic speakers in the movie.

Usually, all Arabic dialogue in movies and TV shows is very bad and extremely cringe-worthy, sometimes even when they have native speakers in them, where they just butcher the language and the dialects they’re trying to use, so this was definitely a pleasant surprise. Lots of respect to Alexander Black!

There was a romance portrayed between Alan (Hanks’ character) and Zahra, his saudi doctor (played by Sarita Choudhury), and even though I get the idea of introducing an element like this in the movie, it just felt a bit rushed, and wasn’t developed enough, considering the characters and the context.
Given the story unfolds in Saudi Arabia, it would have been a lot more complicated for Alan to meet Zahra the first time, let alone keep easily meeting her on several other occasions, and starting a relationship with her.

The movie was based off a Dave Eggers novel, so I just might throw that onto my to-read list, to check out soon, and see how the events play out in the book, hopefully in a bit more detail.

It was also good seeing Tunisian actor Dhaffer L’Abidine make an appearance in this movie, even if for a small and secondary role.

Overall, I’d say it was a good movie, and worth watching if you’re looking for something light and fun.

The main idea being to limit the possibility of the employee accessing any more information or any future plans and strategies that they might then go ahead and share with their new competing employer.

While the main premise of this may be valid in some cases, it should be very far from being the default automatic rule.

Not all companies deal with information or plans that are sensitive to such a high degree, not all employees have access to top secret data, and some employees already know all there is to know about the space they operated in. Long story short, there isn’t always something to hide or protect.

In the end of the day, every case is unique, and although the context of the company and the sensitivity of the information it deals with are big factors to consider, the biggest and most important factor in all this is the employee in question.

Are they trustworthy or not? Do they have strong work ethics or not?

Telling an employee that, just because you’ve told us you’re going to a competitor, you need to go right now, simply amounts to telling that person that you don’t trust them.

Regardless of how much time they’ve worked at the company, what kind of effort they’ve devoted to doing their job, the level of loyalty and trustworthiness they’ve displayed during their tenure at the company, and ignoring the fact that they were willingly transparent and honest regarding their next employer, you’re just dismissing it all, and saying that you don’t trust them, that you don’t believe they’ve got the integrity, ethics or morals to do what’s right and what’s professional!

That is a huge blow!

Putting myself in such a person’s shoes, I would find that insinuation highly offensive. I’d most definitely prefer to be fired for a valid reason or laid off, than for someone to shed any shadow of doubt on my trustworthiness, integrity or ethics, which are all values I live by and pride myself on.

If you have reason to believe that the person is untrustworthy and would leak company information, then they probably already have, and you probably should have done something about it sooner.

Otherwise, depending on how well you know the person, your level of trust in them, how loyal they’ve shown they are, how much they already know, and how involved they’ve been with decision-making or strategy-building, you can draw a line that defines how involved you want them to be during their last days at the company, and what you need their focus to be on; even if all that amounts to is knowledge transfer and tying up a few loose ends.

Trust your good people, and show them that you do, and they’ll live up to your expectations and very rarely, if ever, let you down. Don’t offend and alienate them, running the risk of losing their trust, and pushing them towards the scenario you’re trying to avoid.

Trust and respect are key in all our human relationships; and as hectic as things get at work, as much as we get carried away with the nitty-gritty details of it all, and as important as we think all those big projects and associated strategies and deadlines are; we need to always remember, that at the end of the day, we work with other human beings, that we build and foster human relationships with them, and that we need to do that with trust and respect.

“Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.”

– Stephen Covey

Couple of days ago, I got home to find that my awesome wife had gone on and bought me Walk Off The Earth’s new album R.E.V.O, which was just released this week.

For those of you who don’t know Walk Off The Earth, they’re a very talented Canadian band that formed in 2006 in Burlington, Ontario, and has gained success around the world by making low-budget music videos of covers and originals. Their 5-people-playing-one-guitar interpretation of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” exploded on Youtube garnering well over 35 million views in under 2 weeks.

I’ve been hooked on the videos they’ve been posting on their YouTube channel for quite a while, and listening to some of their songs on Grooveshark; and both their original songs as well as their covers are just great music. I actually like their covers more than the versions by their original performers in most cases (e.g. Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble“).

The album has a combination of songs that Walk Off The Earth have recorded over the past while, some of which would be familiar to fans who follow their YouTube channel, and ones that are new tracks. It also includes their acoustic, 5-people-playing-one-guitar, cover of “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye.

I’ve been listening to the album the past couple of days, and I totally recommend checking them and the album out. Some of my favorite tracks off the album are: Red Hands, Gang of Rhythm, Speeches, Summer Vibe, and No Ulterior Motives.

They’re another great example of an indie music band or artist that used YouTube to get their music out there, build a huge following, and then through that get a record deal to be able to further their dream of making more music at a more professional level.

It used to be gigs at clubs and auditions and such that would get the word out about new bands and artists, and even though that still happens obviously, there’s more and more reliance on the internet and specifically sites like YouTube and SoundCloud for the build-up phase.

And I think that’s the going to become the norm for all new music acts, where record labels only sign up bands and artists who have garnered enough attention and interest from people to take it to the next level.
It also gives some power to the bands and artists, where they have a bit more choice as to whether they want to go with a record label or not, and puts them in a stronger position during deal negotiations as they already have a fanbase and exposure to build upon.
Yet another way in which the music industry is being changed because of the internet.

Anyway, long story short, make sure you check out Walk Off The Earth and their music; and let me know what you think.

As someone who lived, studied, worked and got married in Jordan; there’s always a little place in my heart for the country, and I tend to try and catch up on what’s going on there every now and then.

I only got to read the full feature, which is pretty long, yesterday; and whoa, was that something!
The full feature can be found here “The Modern King in the Arab Spring”, and for some quick highlights, you can check out the New York Times’ article.

The article basically lays out what the king thinks of the internal players in Jordanian politics, the tribal leaders (whom he calls Dinosaurs), the General Intelligence Department (GID), the royal family, regional leaders, the Muslim brotherhood and more, painting them all mostly in a negative light.
Now all of these things aren’t that shocking in the sense that the king or anyone else thinks that way, heck I agree with most of the opinions in the article; what’s more shocking is that they’re released and made public this way, bypassing any of the usual PR or diplomacy filters we’ve gotten so used to from political leaders and their offices.

After the article was published, the Royal Hashemite Court responded saying that the article included “many fallacies and took matters out of their correct context.” Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote the piece, confirmed on Twitter that both he and the royal court have recordings of the interviews, and that they’re well in context.

All that in mind, I’m going to lean more towards thinking that the Royal Hashemite Court is just scrambling to contain and get rid of this internal nightmare situation, while the article remains mostly accurate.

Many people think that maybe the king’s comments were made off the record, and they do really seem like things that would be said off the record, rather than on the record; but I don’t think that’s the case, I actually think the king intended these comments to come out exactly the way they did.
Why he’d do that? What exactly the reasoning and objective behind it is, isn’t that clear; but what’s for sure is it’s quite a gamble.

A western reader or an outsider with little to no knowledge of Jordan’s background, history and news would walk away with a pretty positive view of the king from this article, with an idea that this is a king who has been striving to reform the country and hand over power to the people, but who has found himself somewhat helpless in front of strong internal opposition to his plans, and that his only concern of moving forward quickly with reform is around power ending up in the wrong hands, more specifically the Muslim brotherhood.
That image sets him well apart from the other leaders in the region who are facing internal tensions and the ripples of the Arab spring revolutions within their countries; it portrays him as a reasonable forward-thinking leader who shares the same ideals as the West, has very good relationships with Israel, and who would be a good partner for the West to keep supporting, someone they can’t afford to lose.

I think that’s the main purpose of the article. The problem though is that I doubt it will help at all inside Jordan; it’s not going to help with the royal family’s decreasing popularity, and it’ll probably make life harder for him moving forward; the tribal leaders, GID and Islamists are facts within the Jordanian society and political scene, and he’s not going to get any closer to accomplishing anything by getting on their bad side.

There might be some hope that Jordanians of Palestinian origin, who make up over 50% of the population, might appreciate some of what’s in the article, like how he wanted to allow for a greater presence for them in parliament, but then again they’re not outsiders, and they’ve witnessed the king’s different choices and decisions over the years, and know he was never as helpless as he tries to make it seem.

I think the king knows all that, and just decided to take the risk and see how it all plays out in the end. He’s played his hand, and there’s no takesies backsies at this point, there’ll definitely be change over the coming period, maybe initially it’ll be behind the scenes, but it’ll start bubbling up to the public eye soon enough. Only time will tell whether the king’s gamble was a stroke of genius or the worst decision he’s ever made.

Finally, I have to recommend reading this blog post by my friend Naseem Tarawnah of The Black Iris for a Jordanian perspective on the article.

It’s been just over two years since the Tunisian revolution that overthrew Ben Ali took place, almost a year and a half since the election of the constituent assembly, and the country just got its fourth temporary government.

The economy, security, and the whole country in general aren’t in good shape at all, to say the least. And there’s nothing so far that suggests things are going to get any better anytime soon. To be fair, this can’t all be blamed solely on the governments the country has had over the past period, but on the other hand, those governments only seem to make things worse somehow.

The constituent assembly is behind schedule in getting the new constitution ready, and the elections have been pushed back too. The latest announcements mention the end of April as the target date to get the draft of the new constitution ready, and the end of June or early July as the date it could get adopted on the first reading; If that happens, legislative and presidential elections could maybe happen end of October.
However if the constitution only gets adopted through a second reading or a referendum, that would push back the date for the elections even further.

From all the bickering that’s been going on within the constituent assembly, I think it might be safe to assume that it’s pretty improbable the constitution will sail through easily and get adopted on the first reading. If we’re optimistic, it might go through on the second reading, assuming the constituent assembly want to save face and not further demonstrate how utterly useless they’ve been, and if not then referendum it is.
I won’t go into the possible scenario where the constitution gets shot down by the people through the referendum, so I don’t sound too pessimistic.

Anyway, election-wise, we could be looking at December or January of next year for the elections to happen; People will be asked to go out and vote for who they want to run the country, who they want to see in parliament and who they’d like as president.
And that’s where a big problem arises, do the Tunisian people really trust anyone for those responsibilities at this point?

Over the past couple of years, if anything can be stated for sure, it’s that Tunisia’s current political parties have all performed miserably, and have all lost a big deal of good faith and confidence from the Tunisian people. Some parties have driven themselves to complete irrelevance; others have shot themselves in the foot, and face for that matter, rendering themselves un-electable; and in the best cases have not lived up to people’s expectations and lost respect and confidence because of it.

It doesn’t help move the country any further towards a stable and lasting democracy when the people look around at the different options they have and feel they’re surrounded by two-faced dishonest opportunists, familiar faces from the old regime wearing different hats and colours, or others who seem disconnected from the country’s reality.
Now of course not everyone falls into one of those buckets, and there surely are some very honest people who really want to make a difference, but how will they stand out from the crowd? How will people know who they are? And that they’re not just putting up a mask like others before them, who changed their tone and directives once they got elected?

The way the next election seems set to play out is mainly as a face-off between Ennahdha and Nidaa Tounes; the other parties will probably fall to the sidelines playing a secondary role, leaning to one side or the other based on what benefits them more.

Ennahdha, the “moderate” Islamic party as they like to portray themselves, even though for some reason they’ve been lenient with extremist violence over the period they’ve been in power, seem to be very organized on the ground, which helped them win the most votes in the last election; and even though the government they formed was pretty much a failed one, they still should be able to pull a good percentage of votes their way in the next election.

Nidaa Tounes is a secular party headed by Beji Caid El Sebsi, who headed the second temporary government after the revolution, a period which wasn’t particularly bright or anything for Tunisia, but still looks relatively better in comparison to how things went under the following government Ennahdha put together.
One of the things that some try to point at against the party is that it has a bunch of ex-RCD members among its ranks, but it still seems to be the main contender in front of Ennahdha.

The problem is, for an average Tunisian, who has been watching things as they develop over the past couple of years, what do they do? Who do they vote for? Especially if they don’t believe either of those two parties, nor the others, really have Tunisia’s best interest in mind? or are able to bring real and lasting change?
Do they choose to vote for the lesser of two evils, whatever that might be for them, and convince themselves that they’re voting “strategically” against a party rather than for one?
Or do they abstain from voting altogether, and convince themselves it’s a form of protest?

I ask the question, because it’s one that has been swirling around in my head unanswered, and I’m sure many others are in the same ship as I am; a question that will become a more and more pressing one as the next elections loom closer, and the future of the country depends even more on the outcome.

Of all the animated series I watched as a kid back in the 80′s, ThunderCats was probably the one I enjoyed the most, and that popped up first in my mind whenever I took a little trip down memory lane throughout the years.

I’m not sure what it was exactly that fascinated me about it all and what got me so hooked on it and attached to the different characters and storyline; but it’s safe to say that it stuck to me, and still is to this day in some way; in fact, one of my favorite t-shirts that I wear whenever I can is a ThunderCats shirt I bought a few years back from an HMV store.

Enough about the past though, let’s return to the present; the ThunderCats are back!
Yes, Warner Bros. Animation have rebooted the series with animation provided by the Japanese Studio 4°C, and it’s currently airing on the Cartoon Network every Friday night.

I realized this after the series had already started, and only got to catch up with all the 7 episodes that have been aired so far this past weekend. And it was really fun watching it; the little boy in me just loved it!

Initially I was afraid they’d mess it all up and ruin it for me and other fans, but I have to say they’ve done quite a good job with it. The only thing that irked me a bit is the new look the different characters got, I like their looks from the original series much better; in this version they all have this Japanese anime elf-like look, which is annoying and doesn’t fit some of the characters at all (especially Lion-O and Cheetara).

Other than that though, it’s really good and fun; they took the story back and gave the characters more history and personality, developing the story slightly differently than the original, but still in an interesting way, where instead of the Cats being stranded on a new planet as in the original, they actually rule Third Earth and are seen by some as the powerful oppressors, who are attacked and their city of Thundera targeted and destroyed.

The story at this point follows Lion-O as he takes on the role of King after the passing of his father, and as he goes on a quest to find the Book of Omens.

Another great thing about this new 2011 series is that I got to introduce my 5 year old son Adam to it, and he just loved it too. In fact, as I was writing this he saw the image I included above and started asking if we could watch some other episodes of ThunderCats today.

At the end of this post, all I can say is that I really enjoyed watching the new series and will be making sure to watch the new episodes every week.

As for you dear reader, if you were a fan of ThunderCats in the 80′s, then you should definitely check this out; if you weren’t, well this is your chance to redeem yourself and discover a great series.

…If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don’t stay.