Mahmood's Den

Over the last few years of active blogging, and BBSing and other forms of electronic communication since 1986, I have decided to stop active blogging and would like to thank everyone for their friendship, support, suggestions and comments.

It’s been fun, but it’s time to move on.

Thanks very much and best of luck to everyone. It’s been a pleasure.

Sirmione Castle, originally uploaded by malyousif.

Have a wonderful Eid

enjoyed among your loved ones and thinking of those less fortunate

snail, originally uploaded by malyousif.

Guys, I’ll be taking a break from blogging for a while.

I don’t know for how long that while is.

Thanks all for your support.

Have a wonderful Friday and weekend.

It's been blissfully busy at work over the last few weeks, and it doesn't seem like it's going to ebb any time soon. Me very happy!

To put you in the picture, I have 8 productions all happening at the same time; one must be finished before the 20th of this month, another before the 27th and then two more in October, one in November with another in December an the pipeline is not finished! I’ve got more in the stream and I am sure that we will have to slot a few more productions before the year is out.

I loved this theme, I even called it Athari, but I reconise now that maybe the 'regular' way of displaying posts on a blog is what most people want. Enjoy Athari2!

That is, if the other bits in between allows me to with at least 2 shoot and a final edit scheduled for this week.

Enough of the boring whining. I just hope you understand as I am sure you will.

But as a parting present to all of those who complained about the theme and wanted the regular chronological full article display on the home page, well, I had a couple of hours in the weekend to tinker with the theme a bit and here it is…. I hope you like it.

Love ya!

They’re certainly not the first supermarket in Bahrain to try to get rid of plastic bags and wrappings and I hope it won’t be the last either, but my friend Muneera – who is no stranger to health and healthy lifestyle herself – informed me that yesterday Al-Osra started their environmental experiment in earnest by replacing the packing plastic bags with paper ones. She thought – as I do – that this is a good thing to explore, so off I went with my trusty Flip video camera (thanks again go to my brother Jamal for allowing me to steal it!) and investigated.

You could view the results yourself of course, but what I came out with in the end is that much more than these “anti plastic bags” campaign, educational campaigns about environmental responsibility and education are very much needed for both adults and children in this country.

You know that you are a Gulf Arab (or a long term resident) if a story like this doesn’t even make you stop and contemplate life for a while:

This form of transport happens in every single country in the Gulf, seen as pretty normal.

Baby camel still missing after crash

MYSTERY surrounds the whereabouts of a baby camel, which fled after being involved in a road accident in which two people were injured.

The accident happened near the Al Jazira Supermarket, Budaiya, when the camel reportedly fell off a pick-up truck, into the path of an oncoming car, on Saturday.

It is understood the camel shattered the car windscreen, slightly injuring its Indian driver and a passenger.

The camel was last seen running into bushes near Bushehri Gardens, but there has been no trace of it since.

Traffic police called an ambulance and the injured car occupants were treated on the spot, but not taken to hospital.

“We made sure the two men were treated but we are not aware of what happened to the camel,” said a traffic official.

A witness, who was at a nearby cold store, said the camel fell off a pick-up but the vehicle did not stop.

“Seconds later, the animal was hit by a car,” he said.
GDN – 8 Sept 08

Picture credit: The Telegraph

Frangipani flower, originally uploaded by malyousif.

This is definitely one of my favourite plants. The scent especially in the early evening is stunning.

Have a wonderful and peaceful weekend my friends.

The shiny new Nokia E71 I bought yesterday has prompted me to try it’s capabilities, image wise that is, so what better way to do that other than to take you on a garden tour while using it to record the experience?

Will this be the return to regular M.Reports? I sure hope so, I missed doing them!

Have a wonderful Friday my friends.

I’ve not really been an advocate of the iPhone at all, happily concentrating on the negatives rather than recognising the positives. Well no more. I decided that as I have started to hate the newly bought Sony Ericsson C902, it’s time to just accept the call of lust and go for the iPhone 3G and give that a go.

Fortunately, a reader of this blog had become adept at securing reasonably priced units – don’t ask how, that would be the secrets of the trade – but as it comes with a bona fide box, albeit bashed and battered and copiously taped with Aramex 2-inch special, it does contain all the bits and pieces as His Royal Majesty Steve Jobs required.

That; though, was not the end of the story. To get it to work in these here climes, the gentlemen came with a tailor-sized pair of scissors and an old-school shaving blade! It doesn’t stop there either, yes there’s more!

Out comes the magic adapter, a tray and my massacred and ‘reshaped’ SIM card gets cajoled into being sandwiched between the adapter and the tray all of which get judiciously inserted into the slot. A restart and it comes alive and connected to the Zain network.

I – am – in!

It was jailbroken unit too, but as I want to experience the “pure” 3G experience first, and as I am always a sucker for the latest releases, I came home and immediately plugged it in at which time iTunes came up with a resolute objection: “You have no right to use this phone!”

The SIM, it declared, was not on the authorised list, one which was blessed especially by His Royal Majesty, and a state of semi-panic sets in. If this is the start and if I can accept the currently installed version, how am I going to sync my contacts and get my email and ical appointments – which is one of the major reasons why I bought it in the first place?

A call to the intrepid suppliers and after a brief panic-filled moment, they duly informed me to eject the magic tray and connect it. Sure enough, that is exactly what I did and iTunes – now assured that I shall not have the temerity of using it on a network not fleeced by the King, acquiesced to my request and started downloading the latest software release in order for the iPhone to be restored to a factory default virginal 2.0.2 release. That – iTunes tells me – will take about 3 hours to download (at 2Mbits and about 250MB of data). So, I shall leave it as it is for now, and shall continue to look forward to explore and play in the morning.

Thank God for weekends!

Update 080904: That was a short lived experience. I opted to return it to the seller who accepted it and offered a full refund. Time to get another phone, so your suggestions are most welcome!

What better way to wish you all a very happy and peaceful Ramadhan, my friends, other than to share with you the Anti-hate campaign‘s winning logo which was announced last night at the event organised by Al-Waqt newspaper and attended by government, political and electronic publishing personalities and in which more than 23 websites, fora and blogs penned their names and affirmed their participation of this national enterprise?

I sincerely with to thank all of my friends who participated in this very worthy cause, even if their involvement was just offering moral support. Without you, this would not have seen the light of day.

I wish you all a very happy, fulfilling and peaceful Ramadhan.

Bird Fight!, originally uploaded by malyousif.

In the garden earlier today – I love the shot!

Have a lovely weekend my friends.

With only two days remaining to the big day, August 31st, on which we will be opening the book to receive signatures and pledges not to engage in hate speech in our websites and encourage others not to do so as well, we have received the full support of all the political societies, MPs and the government for the Code, all of whom promised to lend us the support in order to ensure that this effort becomes successful, for a better Bahrain.

The launch will take place at the Gulf Hotel’s Conference Centre from 7.30pm to 11pm on August 31st. Please come and lend your support.

We will also be announcing the winning Code logo design and present the winner with the top prize and everyone who participated in this competition with an appreciation certificate. The designs submitted were top class and I will proudly show it on my websites.

Here is a snippet of some leaders in the society offering their unstinting support for the Code.

High Costs Aid benefiting 98,000 Bahrainis press announcement

In a country that is awash with multi-billion dollar projects and where these kinds of projects are announced almost on a daily basis, we get a front page snippet advising us that 98,000 individuals in Bahrain – most of them probably representing a family each – will be receiving a monthly stipend of BD50 (US$132) from the government as an aid to allay the effects of sky-rocketing prices of basic goods and services in this country.

Can you believe this? What is this country coming to? Isn’t the government responsible to every one of its citizens to provide them with adequate housing and jobs as is enshrined in the constitution? What does it mean when we are faced with pictures such as this in the national papers?

Bahraini woman looking through the trash in the mid-day heat

Is this picture not a resounding notice of the abject failure of the government in its various duties? And are these alms they are giving fully one fifth of our Bahraini population – most of them indigenous I should think – enough to raise their standard of living and allow them to surmount the poverty line they have been living under?

Things like this and the various “makramahs” or Royal Gifts, although very welcome I am sure, should never be the modus operandi of a government. It surely should enshrine and inculcate basic rights to its citizens and be prepared to be held responsible for failures such as this. Giving out a stipend such as this should not absolve it of its basic responsibilities.

Pink Floyd Animals album cover

To me, one thing that is very special about their music which makes it very personal to me is that I even associated smells to their various songs! I don’t know if certain music or songs engender the same response in you too, but I can tell you with many of their songs I get transported back to the college dorm and to my room in my dad’s house through a visual and an olfactory journey too!

The famous Pink Floyd balloon pig

I must also confess that when I get the house to myself – which is very very rare – I blast out Money or Comfortably Numb or especially Shine on Your Crazy Diamond through the stereo or the computer, recline, close my eyes, and get transported back to distant memories, locales and odours.

Do you have the same experiences? Or am I the only weird one in these here parts?

I am about this close to ditching the crap they call Zain – which I have now only started calling Shain – and throwing my lot with the devil.

What the bloody hell is happening with this company? Since they changed their “brand identity” they’ve gone almost completely down the toilet, at least as far as their wireless Internet service is concerned. It keeps dropping out and has become really unreliable. Their support is no great shakes either, there is no one on support after 10pm and before 8am, the speed crawls rather than walks and the whole of yesterday and this morning I couldn’t get connected at home.

It is almost daily that I call their tech support and tell them to reset my equipment from their end because they just go belly up and I could not get connected. This is stupid, absolutely diabolical and the service is a hell of a lot worse than I anticipated.

Because of the constant frustration with their service, it is really not worth staying with them.

If they think that “rebranding” just means changing their logo and colours and ignoring quality of service, then they might as well call themselves “Shain”, in this case, it is actually much more appropriate.

“shain” is Arabic for bad – against “zain” which means good.