The forgotten tag

Tala & Kinzi tagged me ages ago with the pre-18 tag, Although i think life starts after 18 and whatever you do before really doesn't matter all that much (hmm yeah that includes the crappy tawjihi or whatever else there is in you life as a rights of passage)
so here it goes ...

to list 6 things one should do before becoming 18 years old.

so am just going to say the highlights of pre-18.

1. Ignore the popularity contest that is school, you are who you are make that bloom: so much damage and false expectations in life stem from the fact that life in school mimics real life. If you don't develop the skill to connect with people beyond whats hot right now forget about ever being anything. Accept your differences, start thinking about who you are as a person, that is you, not which religion, family, country, color, and class. take a peak at the raw you.

2. if possible, sleep through it: oh sleeping in school is a must and i enjoyed that part thoroughly, if you feel you are not getting the education that you need from school that is the best protest you can do, while on the other hand you should not lax off and you should carry the burden of your education.

3. Go to a test without even opening a book: There are many types of intelligence in the world, don't make them brainwash you into thinking that you are irrelevant if you suck in any class. try to exercise your own system. by going to a test without studying you are measuring your recollection ability, your independent thought, your retention abilities if you paid attention in class, and you are also testing your stress tolerance and handling. screw a couple of grades points if you manage to get a positive experience in those areas which are far more important later on. you will never always have the whole answers in real life so might as well start now.

4. you are grade what ? i don't care: If you think that you shouldn't know something because its for a higher grade then i suggest that you lock yourself up for life and forfeit the dream of ever becoming more than what you are. You are only limited by the system, so screw the system. If you find that you have interest in something that goes beyond what is offered by the system then go after it, even if its at the peril of other courses that you yourself hold no interest in. Even

5. WHY ? just keep on asking others that: it bears repeating, KEEP ON ASKING WHY. If the answer is "heik" or "its just the way it is", its worth asking "why" again. While getting an answer and learning from others is great, what is even more beneficial is discerning half-truths and uninformed answers from the rest. You will face a lot of bias when you ask for an answer about anything, anywhere. so the sooner you learn to distinguish which ones to keep and hold on and which ones to fight and decimate the better. Always do that with the knowledge that you might be wrong and you aren't always right. Also a warning for the wise, limit the parental "Why" to 5 a day otherwise you might be experiencing some financial hardships.

6. you know money ? You know the thing that you get for just breathing, eating and by now you should know how that sentence finishes: Learn the value of money, money is what makes life easier but its never gives meaning to it. Learn what its worth to not have, and if you can learn how people that have a lot of it act, and how people change which the fluctuation of the amount of money in their pockets. learn what it means to save, learn what it means to over spend. just mess with money, earn money, try to do everything that you can possibly can with money before you hit 18. For it is the only 18 years of your life that your financial mistakes won't come back to haunt you later on.

oh and btw, life starts after 18 so if you want to mess it up try to do it by then ... and like one really annoying presenter from my school days used to say "age is just a number it doesn't matter how old you are, what matters is how much you know in this life"

ENJOY

I am still speechless and flabbergasted !

When I was reading 7aki's post I couldn't help but be reminded of a little incident which I still can't fully comprehend till this day.

A blink of an eye away. When I was a bit younger , think right around five years old, my parents enrolled me in the bus for my first grade. So like the good responsible first grader kiddo that I was I was expected to ride on the bus and go home and have lunch after school and maybe go out and play with the "other" kids... ok thats what i was supposed to do.

Honestly I was never much of a good sport and playing with other kids in the 7arah was a total bore, and one day I broke the rest of the stereotype in one of my rare instances of impulsiveness. I came home from school and I was anxious to see my mom for some reason, which slips my mind at this age. So as usual I come through our garden to knock on my door, expecting my mom to open up the door. Instead its my eldest sister who was visiting from uni back then. So we say Hi to each other and i drop my bag next to the door. Since I scoured the house to find my mater but to no avail I came back to the only other person in the house that I didn't have to use my sri linkan skills to converse with, my sister...

"Sis, fein mama, leish heyeh mish bil beit ? " I asked her. After looking up from the magazine she was busy reading with a look of how do I dare to disturb her meditative reading with my childish question (ok, ok, she's no ice queen. she's a very warm person but when i still can't overcome the age difference to this day. Back then anything she spoke to me sounded a bit authoritative) . She simply told me that mom went away to clean my grandma's house because she is coming in a few days.

Interesting i thought to my self, why would she not tell me ... weather is nice, check. do we know our destination, check. is there anyone worth informing at home on what am going to embark on, nope. Door open, door closed and on to the open roads. my grandmas house is about a 30 minute walk from my home. So I go on to walk which i thoroughly enjoyed. The first experience of total detachment from those "adults". For some reason all the way up on that hill that leads from gardens street to Rabieh people were looking at me weirdly as I recall, didn't make too much sense to me. For I was going to see my mom and there was nothing that would come between me that goal.

phew, so after walking down the hill, the gardens street, up the hill, then down the hill and up the yet another hill I manage to make it to grandma's house. Hey sis was telling the truth ! there's mom's car outside. So up the elevator we go...
openning the door to the elevator, super excited and accomplished in my euphoria ... "shoo bitsawe 7oon, keef jeit ? keef okhtak khalatak titla3 !" I was thinking to myself ,huh ?! why is mom at the elevator door screeming at me ? . "wala shee, 2irji3et min 2il madraseh 2o sa2lt reem 3anek 2alatli 2inek bi beit teta fa jeet hon".
Lets just say that there very few instances in my life were I've seen my mom that scared and angry with me. My mom was just getting done with the clean up and heading home to make it before I came back from school. So I guess if only the timing was a bit off I don't know how different that would have turned out.
Its a given that I was screamed at all the way back home, only to be welcomed by my frantic sister who was worried sick about me and over reacting. only for her to be blamed for her negligence for not paying attention while I sneaked out on my quest.
With all those emotions flying around there were two things on my mind back then. What the hell is so dramatic about me going to tetas house, dad always said that he used to walk 15 kilometers when he was a kid and he was proud of it.
The other thing being, what was it exactly that i wanted to see mom for ??

So moral of the story moms, provide them kids with cellphones so that they won't have to go walk to get in touch with you since we demand you to be in the expected places at all times. we are ritualistic beings and we require prior knowledge of changes in the routine. In case of emergency you need to be reachable on your cellphones.

On a more recent blunder that left me totally flabbergasted, someone told me that I am actually taking different identities and blogging under them. namely chikapappi and moments of clarity. No offense to those blog owners but my reaction was
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! NEVER !"

ENJOY!

Opening windows

Earlier on, Kinzi in a comment dropped a certain term... Johari window. At the time i never heard of the term and as usual it was on the list of things to read about (its an obscure list in my mind of random curious lil tid bit for instance the etymological root of arctic is arktos, the greek word for bear. back to the subject matter)

Now according to wiki;

A Johari window is a psychological tool created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham in 1955 in the United States, used to help people better understand their interpersonal communication and relationships. It is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise.
When performing the exercise, the subject is given a list of 55 adjectives and picks five or six that they feel describe their own personality. Peers of the subject are then given the same list, and each pick five or six adjectives that describe the subject. These adjectives are then mapped onto a grid.

The grid is based on four quadrants based on who knows what, so you have stuff that others know about you and you don't know about your self (blindspot), others that you know about your self and others don't (facade). At first I thought it would be an interesting tool especially in teams to establish a common ground of familiarity between the team members and help then connect on a personal level which, in my opinion, helps a team operate more efficiently when you consider the other team memebers more than a 2-dimensional paper cut outs. Turns out that it also helps identify problem elements in an easy going exercise which sounds interesting.

OK so thats not exactly what I want to talk, but it served as the inspiration. Now if you notice there is a quadrant for secrets (things that you know but others don't) but what spun around in my head is that a secret is not problematic until a person you don't want to share your secret with knows about it.

After thinking about a bit more I tried to figure how would such a situation come about; First thing that came to mind is intuition and stumbling on them. For me its a big part since I do trust my intuition about things and it serves as an insight about the person am dealing with that won't be readily available otherwise. when it comes to its accuracy its relative but it always serves as an impetus for what follows.
Second thing that occurred to me, well the six degree of separation in Amman has been cut down in half. It is not that hard to learn about the life history of a person and his family in Amman, all you have to do is ask anyone. whats funny about that is usually you will be looking to gain as much information without raising any alarms.

The Third and last thing that occurred to me is to ask the person about what you are thinking about, the gutsy option. Usually i would say this is the most honest and better option out of all, since you don't have to beat around the bush.
The problem and the reactions that occur from it is what is problematic, people tend to not mind sharing their public information but as soon as you step on a private only topic a red flag will be raised. Since it will raise the question of how did you find out about it, rarely does intuition and stumbling upon them fly as a plausible answer since the person would have invested a great amount of energy in safe keeping that part. That usually starts to fester issues of mistrust.
Then the second logical path would be "why are you so interested in knowing that ? you want to black mail me or something?" which, I'd like to think, is rarely if ever the case. Non of us are really that important to be worth blackmailing.

So since the reaction will be mostly negative if you do go about the direct path the best way is to take the indirect one and drop hints about it candidly. Till the trust level reaches a certain point that he/she is willing to confide in you.
Though honestly if that level is never reached it really doesn't mean that you are not trust worthy, it might simply mean that somethings are better left off from the conversation.

I kind of lost my point along the way, the thing is that brought all this up is just how small Amman is and people by nature are curious. those two options combine for a lethal combination is that if you ever confide to anyone the news will travel like fire in august.
So happy secret safe keeping and enjoy life.

ps. nope don't think about that you know who you are :P muwahaha

Childhood theories and musings

When I was a kid trying to make heads and tails of the world I always came up with amusing and pretty wild theories for why things are the way they are. Somewhere along the line of knowing more about the world it managed to unhinge the imagination and tuck away in the back of my mind.
I am not really sure what made recall those weird theories today, but am sure as hell proud of every single one of them.

The theories:

• We had a really bitter French teacher (if anyone went to the bishop school then i think her name was Fatikha) for some odd reason she had one of those hair pins and it always looked like a femur bone to me. so the deduction that i came to is that i shouldn't be annoyed because she is a total bitch and very mean after all she has lost a child and thats the source of that peculiar hair pin.

• There is a vast difference in behavior between girls and boys, and I also couldn't help but notice a considerable difference in behavior between Christian and Muslims. since I figured out that girls don't have dinosaurs in their pants I went to look for how Christians were different since i associated behavior differences to physiological origins. I found one main feature difference, Christians got a couple of more visible veins that are green in color in their foreheads while Muslims don't so thats how i used to identify Muslims and Christians as a kid

• I used to love dinosaurs as a kid, and was always fascinated by the fact that they went extinct. I even had my own theory of how they went extinct and every time I was in the bathroom I was reminded with my theory, here it goes.
  It is as follow, a certain body part of mine really resembled a Triceratops' head. So that means dinosaurs didn't go extinct they got so friendly with humans to the extent that they became part of their body and thats how we don't have any dinosaurs around. thats One reason I took good care of my Triceratops :P

• There was a deep innate belief/wish in me that I was adopted, or if that wasn't the case then am atleast an alien spawn that was transplanted into this family (hmm actually that still sometime cross my mind till now). So I was always was anticipating the moment when my parents are going to break that news to me, and how I would be devastated and live the homeless tough life and triumph over all the hardships (\earn me a dancing dog and clamping monkey friends along the way) and dramatize that whole thing in my head. I attribute those symptoms as an emotional reaction for the sheer amount of depressive ass shows that i was made to watch as a kid ! Think Remi, lady lady, sally, Bell & Sebastian , Adnan wa lina, Sandi bell and a few more that were all orphans living the tough life .... good what were the dubbers thinking when they picked them.

• There is a way to gain super powers, all you need is pain tolerance and perseverance. Here is how it goes, you have to gradually expose your body to higher and higher heat levels for longer and longer periods of time. Eventually over time you will be able to teach your cells how to generate heat by themselves and you can be a flaming man just like the human torch. I think that lasted about 6 months then my heat source was taken away; read it was winter and my bed was smack stuck to the radiator.
  

In conclusion I was damn kick ass kid, no wonder that my parents just left me to watch TV rather than me asking them question. Also If you didn't know TMNT when I was in first grade you deserved to spontaneously combust in my eyes!
ENJOY !

thf fjrst rfbljzbtjpn cbmf bs b shpck bt brpvnd thf bgf pf twflvf
hint: a twist on the crypto

Addiction

There is no way I could know what you experienced, right ? I couldn't possibly feel that need... Like a 1000 hiding voices whispering "this is who you are!" and you fight the pressure the growing need rising like a wave.
prickling and teasing and prodding to be fed but the whispering gets louder till its screaming "NOW!" and its the only voice u hear. the only the voice you want to hear, and you belong to it.
to this shadow self...
to this dark passenger.
Yes, The dark passenger.
~Lila

I am in love with that passage lately, to the extent that I wish I was able to write something on that caliber.
anyways, the other thing that was playing in my head lately is that I came across an article a while back regarding changing habits that i totally loved and wanted to have my go at but given how efficient i am it took a few weeks to get to it and now I can't find that article to atleast give credit to it since it was the inspiration.

So sometimes you come to a point when there are certain habits that you picked up along the way, that regardless of how you view them, you feel that you might be better off dropping them or may just want to adopt new admirable habits that you think you will be happier having.

1. Ask your self why you do it ? Unless you know why it has became such an internalized need for you to do those thing(s) you will not be able to summon that extra will power at the instances when you are the weakest. It does take some introspection to find those reasons, its not such a bad idea to monitor yourself for a period of time, or recalling how you happened to pick up that habit at first and why you like it right now.
For me that would a time filler, a relaxant, a medium for focusing and clearing my thoughts, and
a nostalgia for lost things.

2. Decide Why you are going to be dropping the habit: first thing along the way, there is really no need to venture too far for reason. If those reason are not innate atleast reason with yourself to make them so, if you are not convinced that this is the right thing to do for yourself there is no way you will be able to persevere.
For me its slightly brutish and silly but the reason for me to do what am doing is that i hate to have a shred of a doubt of me not being able to do it. Call it jakara bi 7alee, but usually thats the biggest motivator for me. Some others might find health reason, some others might have the benefit it instills into others around them... to each his own but all must internalize those reasons.

3. Fill the void: Its not called a habit for nothing, this is something that has been pretty much part of who you are for years. Don't be naive to think that you can just forget about it, YOU CAN'T.
So best way to do that is to try to fill the void that will be left, try to replace it with something else. Think cough drops if you smoke, you bite your pencil buy a whole bunch of pretzel sticks or twirlers. I know its not the same and am still trying to work on better solutions.
Try to find replacements that would be able to satisfy most of the needs you have identified.

4. Remove the temptation: what's out of sight is out of mind, if its not going to be in front of you, you will reduce the amount of time that it will be calling for. you have to also minimize the exposure to things that are associated with your habit (e.g. ashtrays, "people")

5. Don't be discouraged: what you have been doing for the past 12 or so years you won't be able to over come in a week, month or even a year. you are certain to have some setbacks but there is no reason to be discouraged not even if you lose control and binge a bit. Hey after all you don't really hate it, actually you like it a lot so its understandable (<-- my dark passenger speaking there)

6. Set milestones: check progress on the firs week, month, 3 months and year. see how much you manage to achieve at each point and when you break it down it gives you a foreseeable point that you can look forward to. (please no obscure 12 step crappy milestone styles those sux)
It's like being on the tread mill for 30 minutes and your losing your breath and about to collapse on minute 28, because u know you have it in you to wait the extra 2 minutes it helps to tough it up and finish them. although on the other hand if you didn't know you had 2 minutes to go you are more prone to just drop it. same thing could happen if you start obsessing about how much time passed it will just remind you more about what you are doing and will be a counter productive process.
the best method for me so far is just to forget about how long its been, and only when am feeling a bit discouraged to check how much time is left for me to reach on of those milestone and take solace in that

7. "My favorite" Reward yourself: what a better motivator than that :) and if you normally reward yourself regardlessly its an excellent excuse to pamper yourself even more. (a new hard disk, me wacom, and a trip, it's gonna be lovely !)

8. ask for accountability: tell a few people what you are trying to do, ask them to ask how you are doing every once in a while. They have to be people that you are honest with atleast, so that when asked you will no avoid the missteps you had and face them. Thats one thing the AAA got right having somebody that you are forced to be honest with not because you want to but because they know better. Get yourself and accountabuddy! ask him to not go easy on you even if you ask for it.

9. are there others like you ? the sense of competition in us is so great that if u can find somebody else going through the same thing you are it will give you a major boost to not fall behind that person in progress. It doesn't matter if you know him or not, you can find somebody on the internet and keep track with them, and that will be a good time to get to know someone new.

10. If you have a loved one do it for them: this might be a bit of a twist, but if your loved ones would be happy with you quitting your habit then even if it doesn't make much sense for you to quit it then do it for them.
For if you are the type of person that takes a great deal of pleasure out of seeing your loved ones happy then there would be no better reward than that.
and if you don't have a loved "one" might be a good time to preoccupy yourself with getting one :P

yeah it sucks that am writing an advice column sounding post .... but it seems writing about it will atleast help me keep tabs and serve as a reminder.

ps. I beg you, please oh please no encouragement. I already told you that am jiker (is that gile ?) so it might be counter productive but thanks in advance if thats what u had to say :P
pps. Quit the pep talk already, so out of character
ppps. Tougher luck ! I love to use those ps's even tho some grammar police bloggers might digress & object about that one too
pppps. $hit, i can't think of a puzzle ... that sucks .... oh wait might already did the puzzles something looks amiss with all those ps's
p...s. Never use this one again, by the way japanese people read differently from us traditionally
p...s. Got to say this thanks to the people who actually had me on their mind for the blogger thingy, i think u know who i like to read and i try to make my presence there even if there are still some of u that confuse bambam with a female for some odd rzn, and turns out that am funny, weird ...
p...s. Bitter quitters who were proud of their will power to quit a habit have manage to eradicate a part of them and that made them what they are today. thats what i think happened for them to be so self rightous and think they are better than the rest because, pitty them, they managed to quit and become over zealous bitter people who turn off any others from quitting for the fear of becoming like them

Hello! my name is BamBam and I am an introvert

What is an introvert ?
in·tro·vert (ĭn'trə-vûrt', ĭn'trə-vûrt')
A term coined by Carl Jung to describe people who reflect inwards and are drained by being in a social activity and need time alone to recharge. Simply they get pleasure out of solitary activities, given a choice they prefer to sit down and think rather than chit-chat the day away.

Is there someone who just sits down and eats his meal silently without participating in the conversation, that every so often has a smirk on his face that creates an air of arrogance around him ? do you know someone who, to your bewilderment, can be tucked away in his own corner and still come out as the happiest person on this planet without any social interaction for days on end ? then chances are that person in an introvert, and he is most likely not arrogant he just can't help being amused by the utter nonsense that comes out of some people's mouths when it is detached to their brains (muahaha yeah i countered my point i know :P)

It is highly draining to sit down for hours and hours talking about absolutely nothing, that makes me cringe to no end. yes evidently I do hate family gatherings cause you always end up being asked the same bloody question with the same "I care" attitude from people who really are just trying to be nice for the sake of it. Then to be tormented by the same topics over and over for the rest of your life. Now socially that comes off as shy, anti-social, some even go to the extent of labeling introverts as being agoraphobic(fear of public spaces) or some other colorful assortment of disorders, in actuality introverts are not necessarily any of that, they just value silence in the absence of something worth saying, hence when an introvert speak it is better to shut up and listen.

All my gripes aside (and being an INTP I can be really anal & taciturn "sometimes"), the reason I had to sit down and have this talk with one's self is the series of activities that I was involved in the last couple of weeks which shed light on some sides of me that I was in denial about. The reason for those according to my deduction is that currently I created my world to minimize annoyance to the extent that now am vulnerable to annoyances to the extent that it polarizes the way I should act with the way I act, that in a way is the reason that I feel that am faking and acting out my social interactions rather than living them.

With the amount of choice we have nowadays no longer can we live in the same world as other, we think the world is getting smaller but in fact we fragmented the world to even smaller pieces were our perceptions are irreconcilable. Then we profess bafflement and bewilderment and how can others react the way they do towards things.

Slightly loosing you there in the previous 2 paragraphs ? let me bring you up to pace with an example. Being in school you might have been the only one with the interests that you have, for the sake of the example lets say you had an infatuation with fury cuddly teddy bears. So in the past you were forced to interact with others because you had no other option. So you were exposed enough to annoyance that you became immune to it to a certain extent, people then were watching the same shows and hearing the same news. Agreeing or disagreeing based on a single reality. When you wanted to reach out to other fury cuddly teddy bear lovers, you had to expend the effort, and most likely it would be vis-a-vis. Which made the joy of finding them that more real and enjoyable. You had to be more accepting and tolerant of your environment and taking people as is, with all their flows and imperfections.

Contrast that with the reality now, you are no longer the only fury cuddly teddy bear lover.
blast up your computer and you can reach out to plenty, who are exposed to media that is dedicated to fury cuddly teddy bear lovers which shapes their perception of the world based on that perspective. They naturally presume others to atleast have the basic understanding of the culture hence when communicating to outsiders they truncate years of integration which results into them having starkly different views about things. Also for convenience the majority of their communication with other cudbears (thats what fury cuddly teddy bear lovers call themselves) is based on text which detracts from the life of the conversation and aids misunderstanding (boy how sarcasm on paper is hard to achieve!) . So as a result they end up interacting with less people than they would have in the past. Because "they just don't understand".

So how does that tie in with being an introvert (an INTP one non the less) ? well a lot really, mainly the realization that I need to raise the level of noise in my life. I am not going to be "friendlier" or be a chatter box that never stops talking about thy self, and am probably not going to join into a small talk anytime soon.
What I will do is just get exposed, no longer shying away from places I consider to be "not my type", no longer shy away from groups where there might be some people I loathe. Just be around different people.

RAISE MY LEVEL OF TOLERANCE TO THE ANNOYING THINGS IN LIFE & BREAK THE BUBBLE

ENJOY!

ps. fury cuddly teddy bear lovers has some context and it is not purely random
pps. chats and IM's still rule and I love them for stripping the human out of the conversation, but will refrain when given the choice now *psyche*
ppps. I am not an emo.