Apology for Not Updating

I apologize people for not being able to update my blog, but I'm spending most of my time finalizing a whitepaper I'm writhing as a prerequisite for being a speaker for the upcoming Storage World 2006 that will be held in Dubai from the 15th to 16th of May 2006.

I'll be discussing Data Management/Storage Consolidation and how it can benefit organizations. Once I finish my white paper I'll post it here and also on my recently created blog ( Enterprise Storage & Disaster Recovery Solutions) Thanks to Ahmed of Saudi Jeans for giving me the idea after he stating that the Saudi Blogosphere needed more specialized blogs.

I'll try to make my white paper as simplistic as possible so that everybody will get what I'm saying.

Wish me Luck My deadline for submitting this paper is the 14th of April.

Living in Riyadh

(Talal's Perspective)

I'm writing this post based on a request from jorgee; who's interested in learning more about life in Saudi (Riyadh in particular). I would like to stress that my life in no way depicts the general life in Riyadh, this just how I live mine.

One thing to keep in mind is that the workweek begins from Saturday until Wednesday; the weekend is Thursday & Friday.

During weekdays I usually conduct a set of routine activities that begin with me and my wife going to work at 8pm. Both of us return back home at 6pm after which we have a "late lunch / early dinner" (yawn I know). At around 7:30 pm I usually conduct one of 3 activities.

1- Stay at home watching TV, sometimes taking a nap, just hanging around.
2- Sometimes I go out with friends and to a gahwa (a place that serves mu3asil (sheesha) and hajar (jurak)) this is a Saudi pastime that people are going crazy over. What you do is you have a bong like device (picture below) and you put this kind of tobacco with dried fruits and you smoke it. Anyway even though I never tried it and hopefully I never will all my friends are addicted to smoking it and thus 90% of our time we meet up in a gahwa.




3- Visit my parents' house and chat up with my Mom, Dad and Baby sister and sometimes my Brother would be back from University (KFUPM in Dhahran) and other times my second sister (who is also younger then me but older then my brother, if you weren't able to follow that we are 4 siblings me being the eldest followed by a sister, a brother and finally my baby sister) would be their with her husband and son.

It should be mentioned that I always conduct 3 activities in parallel to any of the activities above:

1- Chat with my amazingly gorgeous wife
2- Check up on my favorite blogs for any updates and check if I received any replies to comments I posted
3- Download TV shows off of the internet.


Now weekends are a different thing.
Thursday is what I like to call the global sleeping day; I usually sleep up until 4pm or 6pm. After I wake up I have lunch then usually do one of 3 things:

1- Go out with my lovely wife
2- Go out with my friends to yet again gahwa
3- Have a get together with my friends from college

Friday is family day, after the jum3a prayer (around 1pm) my wife and I usually go to either my parents' house or her parents' house and we have lunch and we spend a little time with them around until 4pm. After which we either go back home or go out for dinner or something, it differs from week to week.

Now this is only a basic overview of what I usually do, what should be noted is that my wife and I try to keep things interesting by traveling every once in a while either to Bahrain, Dubai or other places for our annual vacations, living in a routine regardless of where you are is bad no matter how you look at it. The thing is in Riyadh it is very hard to break your routine because there isn't anything else to do especially with your family besides going to restaurants.

VOTE for TALAL
Campaign

As I have mentioned in my previous post I'm a nominee in the 2006 Rimyoleta & Dotsson Awards ( also know as the rim-dots) . The categories I've been nominated in are "Best New Male Blogger" & "King of the Blogosphere". Vote Here.

Being the competitive person that I am, I thought I would start a full fledged campaign and try to gain supports so that I might win. To effectively campaign I need to Advertise. I will be updating this post every once in a while with my campaign slogans and media spots.

Update #1:
Campaign Slogan: "If you want the best, you have to vote for the best, vote for Talal"

Update #2:
Campaign Song "Lene Nystrom - It's Your Duty (Shake Your Booty)"

Update #3:
Campaign Radio Spot#1 for "VOTE for TALAL #1"

Riyadh Bloggers Get Together
Part Deux

I have recently been corresponding with Mr. Ahmed of SaudiJean and he suggested that we conduct a new Riyadh Bloggers meeting, which I think is a great idea (especially since the last one had only 2 attendees). So if your a blogger in Riyadh or just passing thought we would love it if you could join us.

Date: Thursday March 2, 2006
Time: 20:00 and onwards
Venue: Dr. Cafe, King Abdullah Rd.

Rayyan hope you at least come over and say hi this time ;)

PS. As you probably have noticed I have an ad on my page stating that I am a nominee in two categories in the 2006 Saudi Blogging Awards, Best New Male Blogger & King of the Blogosphere, please please please Vote for me.

PPS. if Dotsson and Rima inform me that they will keep the voting up for a little while longer, I will unleash my "VOTE for TALAL" campaign, so keep your fingers crossed people

From there to here to infinity & beyond

I was browsing the web the other day and I came across an article that mentioned the medieval author Nostradamus, this was not the first time I heard of him nor his astronomical prophecies but I thought I would google him and find out more. Luckily I was directed to wikipedia (great site with a great concept) and found everything I was looking for.

What interested me while reading about his upbringing and the events of his life that lead him to author his famous "The Prophecies", was the fact that his life was a web of interact experiences that built up to a point where writing his book would gain wide acceptance.

Reading Nostradamus' history got me wondering about the legacy I would be leaving behind if at all I would leave one. What are the various situations that I have encountered and the ones I will face that will either write my accomplishments in history or let them fade with the wind.

Parents believe that their legacies are maintained by their children and lineage, but looking at my family tree I see the names of my ancestors and I know nothing of them all they left was their names and nothing else. Were they brave warriors that fought opposing tyrants, or were they blood hungry tyrants that stole and pillaged the weak?

Is it superficial to want to go down in history or is it a human instinct? If I get offered a job and I take it or reject it will it set in motion events that would eventually lead to my rise to greatness or my demise and downfall? It kinda puts in perspective how the little things you go though in life can have the biggest most profound effect on your future, maybe even the future of the whole of humanity.

I've always liked the sensitive dependence in chaos theory being described by the butterfly effect; in short the effect states; "a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan could cause a tornado in California." This theory states that actions no matter how trivial can some how have the most unexpected, unimaginable results. Kind of gives you a lot to think about? doesn't it?

Why are you a Muslim?

I know people will try to associate what I want to talk about in this post with things that are happening with Denmark, but this is not the case. I've wanted to discuss this issue for quiet a while, mainly because I need to add more interesting subject matter to my blog and because this is an issue that I think people have neglected.

What I want to ask and this is not only a question to Muslims but to people of all faiths relative to their respective religions, "Why are you a Muslim?"

Are you a Muslim because you were born a Muslim or are you one because you truly believe in Islam and its teachings? Now this question might not be as clear to some people as you might think, the actuality is people in their nature try to follow the crowd they were brought up in; you will rarely see a stray sheep. What I see today are zombies that follow those they were led to believe are better then them. People have stopped thinking or claiming responsibly for their actions and opted to go with sayings like "khali bainak we bain jahanam mutawa" (keep a cleric between you and hell) a way of saying as long as a cleric says it's okay then do it because he is the one who will get punished if he is wrong come judgment day. This saying like so many similar to it indicates people don't want to acknowledge any responsibility or accountability for their actions.

People thinking in this manner raises a lot of questions:

1. Have they ever wondered if they are on the right path or not
2. HAVE they ever question if maybe just maybe they were not practicing God's true religion?

What I want to make clear here is I'm not asking anybody to change their faith or anything all I am asking people to do is what our forefathers the Sahaba the followers of Mohammed (PBUH) did when they were first introduced to Islam, they questioned their original beliefs they asked themselves why am I here what is my purpose in life is Islam my true salvation or is it something else? Is being a Sunni or Shi'i or even a Sofi the right thing? All I ask is for people to ask the question they need to ask to truly believe, instead of just blindly following what they were raised on.

Imagine being born into another religion, what would your actions be? Would you be stubborn and not acknowledge you were on the wrong path? Because to find the right path you have to question what you believe is true; to find what is positively true.

I was once scared and terrified I couldn't sleep and I would always ask myself "am I on the true path of salvation?" If I'm wrong then my after life will be in eternal damnation? What if there is another path that I have neglected?

Asking these questions led me on a journey to discover myself and affirmed my beliefs in Islam but more importantly it opened up my eyes to how it should be practiced; in the end no one will carry your sins but yourself it is on your shoulders to find the path, if you fail it is your failure and yours alone.

Hide & Seek



If you've been hearing the rumor then I will put your mind at ease, yes what you heard is true and I'm not proud of it but what can I do when in the game of hide and seek it is an eventuality just as true as death (I've been hanging around catch for too long). Anyway seriously I had this really interesting post that I wanted to write about but I guess I will delay it a bit (so as to give this post a little breathing room).

Now where was I ? Oh yeah before I continue just wanted to say that the gathering we had last Wednesday in Riyadh was a blast not only due to my gracious presence, but also because KMB graced the gathering , as for Rayan I still have my doubts that he wasn't there.

Now on to the main event:
I have been tagged by Rimyoleta & Ahmed

The rules of the game are:
1. The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different points for their perfect lover.
2. Need to mention the sex of the target.
3. Tag 8 victims to join this game & leave a comment on their comments saying they've been tagged.
4. If tagged the 2nd time, there's no need to post again.

Sex Target :Female

1- She has to be smart (I don't wanna have discussions with myself)

2- She has to have a strong personality (people don't push her around)

3- She has to be open minded (I think this speaks for itself)

4- She has to love kids (In the words of goldmember I wanna be a "Farzer")

5- She has to love to travel (I don't wanna travel alone)

6- She has to be understanding (I wont go as far as saying I'm weird but have my quirks)

7- She has to be patient (I aint the easiest person to live with)

8- She has to be able to take my breath away (not just because she's beautiful, but more important because she keeps me captivated by how amazing she is)