Terry Pratchett's Eric

A very quick update here.

Been gloomy for a couple of days but mood is getting better now. Went on a couple of outings, played bowling, lots of backgammon, not too bad.

Work looks like it'll be getting a lot worse (as in busier, and loads of overtime) in the upcoming few weeks but I'm trying not to worry too much as there's nothing for me to do about it.

So Nag finished her newly acquired novel by Terry Pratchett called Eric and lent it to me (Thanks Nag), it's been so long since I'd read anything non-technical so I was very excited about the prospect of reading literature again.

For the first 20 pages I had no idea what the guy was talking about, but then I got into high gear. I like it a lot, the guy is supposedly talking fiction but he's got a very cool way of reflecting upon the real world with the kind of British sarcasm that I'd always loved so much.

I'm now 55 pages into it, about one third of it so I'm expecting it finish it shortly, which is kind of refreshing after long periods of reading 1000 page books which seem to never end.

A few quotes that grabbed my attention:

• The gods of the disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won't do if they don't know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
• Hell needed horribly bright, self-centered people like Eric. They were much better at being nasty than demons could ever manage.
• You could fly in dreams. If he woke up, it was a long way to fall.
• I run, therefore I am; more correctly, I run, therefore with any luck I'll still be.
• It was true about time measurement as well. The Tezumen had realized long ago that everything was steadily getting worse and, having a terrible literal-mindedness, had developed a complex system to keep track of how much worse each succeeding day was.

See, that last quote perfectly portrays (imo) Terry's way of reflecting upon real world in a fictional manner with a twist of sarcasm that verges on being black comedy. It's intriguing.

I'll be back (soon, hopefully) with sort of part 2 for this much-debated-offline post

We all live under the same sun, but why don't we all see it

Well, the mood is gloomy today, have done almost nothing useful, and in no mood to do. Writing this entry could be the most useful thing I do today, could you imagine?

Enter Banana world as my friend the Wyvern calls it....

I happened to pass by some extremely poor neighborhoods a couple of days ago. Let me first declare that I'm in no way a rich person, not yet at least, as I haven't been born one. But I was blessed to be born to a well doing family. An average one at that, being average in a 3rd world country could be thought of as poor by someone in a 1st world country, it's all relative, but anyway you get the picture.

So, passing by these poor neighborhoods, I think about the vast differences between the standards of living between human beings. I'd seen and known rich people, and I'd seen and known poor ones, the difference between the lives each lead is amazingly vast. The rich have and take things for granted that the poor may not even know exist. I'd seen people who look at a 20 year old car with admiration, people who sometimes sleep with no dinner because they can't afford it. And people who change their cars every year and throw wedding parties costing upwards of quarter a million pounds.

Why the difference? I do believe in God, and by definition God should be fair. So where is the fairness in such a situation.
Why are some people that rich, while others are that poor.
Granted, the poor can work their way up sometimes
And I do believe one should reap the rewards of one's hard work.
But some of these poor people, or many if I dare say, work more than you and me. They do all they can to secure their next meal. And yet they may never go up the ladder.
So what have they done wrong...

I'm not a communist, and I don't believe all people should be equally rich and I know that can't happen. But I don't think that some people should be so poor that they starve to death... I don't think people should die of disease when they can't afford the cure. Couldn't it have just been rich, and non-rich-but-still-well-doing-enough people?

How could this be fair, is there a rationale behind this, or is it like this just because it is. Just because the rich get children so they're born rich and the poor get children and those are born poor?

Can you put such a situation in a way so that it "looks" fair? I tried and I still can't.

Toothache sux

Well, everytime I plan for a deep meaningful post next on my blog something prevents me from doing it. Today's "something" was by the far of them all.

It all started when I chewed on some bread on a bad tooth I knew I had yesterday... I thought it might hurt a little and was testing it (as my dentist told me I should), but it went crrrazy, I was about to faint from the pain and it only stopped after an hour and 2 analgesic tablets and 2 full glasses of whiskey.

So today I took a sick leave and went to the dentist, he had to use 3 analgesic shots in the process of opening it up because of the unbearable pain. The analgesic was so strong that my ear (yes my ear) went numb! He later told me I had pretty bad inflammation in the tooth's nerve and he removed it and placed temporary filling.

So theoretically a couple more appointments are all that I need to take care of the 3 bad teeth I currently have. The 3 already have their nerves removed and they should be ready for closing. I'm keeping my fingers crossed cuz I've been continually trying to fix my teeth for 2 years now....

A meaningful post to come next, I promise (insert_innocent_sympathy_seeking_face_here)

May you all never experience toothache.
Ciao Ciao

I love my car!!

Well, call me nuts, but I do!

First of all you should know that I'm obsessed with cars. Three months ago I got my first car ever, a brand new and shiny silver Opel Corsa 1.6 GLS sedan.

But, what triggered this emotional flow is that for the past few days she's been demonstrating an amazing ability and willingness to please, yesterday I was (kinda) drag racing with a friend's '97 Ford Mondeo 1.6, we did two zero to hero runs and she made me so proud when she annihilated the Mondeo both times.

And then today, I took my mum and a neighbour family to Carrefour. She carried us in chilling air conditioned comfort while the temperature was 30c outside. 2 hours later We came out with two-families'-one-month-each worth of groceries, noone believed the boot could possibly accomodate it all, and they began packing bags with them in the rear seats. But I just knew that she'll make me proud again. I packed the stuff (with ease too) and everything fitted neatly in there with even some room for extra!! My neighbour now wants one!

So she's sexy, fast (190Kmh on the highway once), practical, comfortable, and an amazing value! How can I not just love her?

Now seriously, if you're looking for a new car in the 80K range in Egypt, you should definitely check her out. I'm pretty sure she'd win your heart over.

Later

P.S.
Yes, I do call my car her, not it!

An average day

So, one more average day passes here. I've been feeling bored for quite a while now and seems it's getting worse.

But anyway, instead of forcing myself to try and write a good interesting entry (which I seem to be unable to do so far even when in a good mood), or ranting and boring the hell out of the readers (all 3 of them) I'm gonna post some of the more interesting stuff I've encountered today on the world wide web.

A cool and very funny project done by some MIT students.
One of the funniest job opportunities I'd seen in a while.
And a cute (and rather amazing) news story here.

Later ppl.

Who I am

Well, I guess this will have to be the part where I introduce myself. Of course right now all those reading probably know even more than what I'm about to say, but then again, it's silly to assume noone will lose their way in the cyber space and stumble upon this blog of mine. Putting your life on the Internet has got to have some consequences right?

So, my name is Christian. I'm Egyptian and I live in Cairo. I work as a software engineer at a company called ITWorx (a cool place that will definitely get its own post sometime). I graduated in July 2002 (much better than saying 2.5 years ago imo cuz this way the information will still be valid anytime in the future ;) ) and been at ITWorx ever since.

I'll be relocating to seattle in a few months though, as I recently passed my MS interviews and accepted an offer for an SDET position in the SQL Server Engine team (the interviewing process will also get its own post soon).

I love cars, computers, science, technology, interesting conversations, chocolate, and ice cream in no particular order. I'm single, and I listen to all types of music (almost).

hmmm I don't think I have more interesting stuff to say about myself at the moment (that would imply that the stuff I already said was interesting :p)

And now is when I go to bed to get up early for work. Later.

Bloggers Here I Come!

Well, I've registered this blog spot a few months ago, but I could never really get myself to post anything. I knew I wanted to, and I knew I'd get rolling after a few posts, and maybe become one of the world famous bloggers ;), but I could never justify some time to get myself to write anything useful even though at times I had lots of ideas for posts. Well that changed today when my friend Nag showed me her blog. Seeing we already had a lot in common I was encouraged to begin writing myself.

Speaking of that incident, when I asked Nag if she's blogging and she said yes, I decided to try "googling" for her blog instead of having her send me the link. It's not the first time I try googling for someone-I-know's name. Strangely enough, google came up with nothing. But I'd read some articles recently saying that google are getting notorious for their crawler being slow updating and that yahoo maybe doing a better job at that. So as a real world test I searched for the same words on yahoo. Bingo! She came up as the first entry. Don't know what could be wrong with google, maybe they're slacking off a little bit these days with all the post-IPO fame? Only time will tell.

Well I intended the first post to be an introduction to who I am, but I think that's already long enough. I think blogiquette (I just made that one up) requires me to stop now and save the rest for later. So there goes, my first blog entry ever. I'm even thinking I could be one of the first few hundreds of thousand of bloggers around the world. Not bad for a world with 6 billion people eh? ;)