Vintage Cans

While I was going through my daily internet ritual, which usually involves scrolling through lots of websites (mainly Liverpool FC related), I came across this photo of old cans. I mean when was the last time any of us saw one of those? One of them actually brought back childhood memories, could you guess which one (people from the gulf question)? Well it’s the one next to the tomato juice can!! It used to be a fruit cocktail which always seemed to be popular at weddings and engagement parties of the 80s and early 90s.

Football match or bullfight???

I sat down on a typical world cup day expecting to watch a mesmerizing football match between two of the best teams, Holland and Portugal. Instead, it turned out to be a bullfight where the referee is the "matador". I have never seen a match as outrageous as this nor have I seen a referee that looked seriously "mentally distrubed" afterwards. With a record breaking 16 yellow cards and 4 red cards, I don't expect to see this record broken, well atleast in my lifetime.

The only thing that was missing in this painful drama was the referee red carding himself !

Sad Day

My sincere condolences to my best friend; Mohammed Ashoor Alkoohaji; on the passing of his grandmother earlier this morning. My heart and thoughts are with you and your family Hamood.

Is BIC F1's permanent opening fixture?

From a camel farm to the most advanced racing circuit in the world, the Bahrain International Circuit has transformed a piece of barren desert into one of the most sought after investment zones within the country and the region. Since its inception, the BIC has achieved numerous accolades namely the best organized race in 2004. Numerous critics argued that it’ll be a one hit-run, but yet again, the BIC has silenced them with record profits for the second year in the running. Furthermore, having hosted the first race of the season, the TV ratings were far greater than those of Melbourne, which is the traditional F1 season starting race. Keeping this in mind, why wouldn’t F1 make this the permanent starting fixture? With Melbourne on the brink of signing a new contract that stipulates that they continue to host the opening race, is F1 on the winning or losing side? From a racing point of view, that’s up to your personal judgement, but financially speaking, the answer is simply no!!!

Google Office ?

You all might have heard of Google’s acquisition of the online word processor “Writely”, everybody who is anybody have heard of writely if not than well, you have been living in a cave or something !! Writley possesses many dinky features which can rival Microsoft’s mighty Word processor. In my opinion the main advantage of using the program is the ability to save your work online in a password protected account (2 Gigs) which means that you can access (ALL) your documents anywhere in the world without the need of using flashsticks, floppies or cds.
And as if this wasn’t enough Google announced this month, the launch of Google Spreadsheets its latest member of what will be called “Google’s Office”. So who are Google’s office members (so far):

Word Processor:
http://www.writely.com/

Spreadsheets:
http://www.google.com/googlespreadsheets/tour1.html

Database:
http://base.google.com/

Photo manager:
http://picasa.google.com/

Mail:
http://www.gmail.com/

Calendar and organizer:
http://www.google.com/calendar/

Cad:
http://sketchup.google.com/

So will this be the beginning of the end of MS dominance of the productivity suites market ? Time will only tell !!

Working with UNESCO

It had been I long time since my last post, I have been very busy with work, lately I was a part of team working with the UNISCO on producing engineering learning materials for both, the vocational and technical education systems here in Bahrain. Although it had been tedious work I am glad to say that it was a very enriching experience. With all of the packages out of the way and my summer holiday approaching, I guess I’ll have nothing better to do with my time but to go back to recording my daily drivel on my beloved blog.

Munther

Cousin RANT !!

This rant is dedicated to my cousin and friend Khalid. So why would I have such a rant ? Well as you can all see from the title of this blog, this should be a two person typea thing !! hence the " drivel of 2 Bahrainis" and I SAY 2 !! You see my cousin claims that he is very busy with his Msc course which I am sure he is, but the problem with my beloved cousin is that he likes to moan and exaggerate !! Let me give you an example lets say that Khalid and I went to a restaurant and ordered the same dish which turned out to be awful !!

Munther : Whoa ! man, this is disgusting!

Khalid: Yours is disgusting? MINE is even worst, infact after having one mouth full of this I have contracted every disease known to man!!

Munther: but man we have ordered the same dish. Yours can’t be worst

Khalid: No man !! trust me, mine is so horrible even flies wouldn’t touch this !!

So do you understand where I’m coming from ? Everytime I ask him to do a post, you know, just to spare me 5 minutes (which I am sure he can afford) he moans about how busy he is and how hard his course is !! Funnily enough, he seems to have enough time for liaising in Latino clubs !! SO K !! could you please pull your fingers out and start helping me here ? Its getting lonely and I am running out of drivel !!

And just to prove what I am on about, K is the guy in the middle, enjoying night life, BUSY MY beep !!

The World Cup is here !!

So finally the first ball of the world cup have been kicked off !! As a football mad person, this is one of the most important occasions which I look forward for every four years. It's a shame that our national team didn't make it to the finals, although we almost did but were denied by Trinidad & Tobago. Leaving the footballing aspect of the competition aside, people should view this as an occasion to spread world peace and eliminate all sorts of discrimination regardless to one’s race, religion or color. And also people should support Argentina (Wow, How erratic was that !!) :-P Anyway hope you all enjoy the world cup no matter what team you support !!

Waiting in Vain

Bored outta my head and raring to go to work!! WOW, never thought that I would ever hear myself say this! Does this mean that I have FINALLY matured? I mean who in the right state of mind would not want to stay at home, watch TV and sleep? Well obviously this is not my case anymore!! oh well I guess this was inevitable anyway, just like my father and his father before him, I am starting to have my own routine and GOD help those around me if it changed !! lol Anyway gotta end this mornings drivel and get ready for work.

Munther

Yet Another Batelco Rant !!!

This Friday, I am going to have yet another rant about our beloved sole internet provider!! So what provoked me to do this? Well because I am currently writing this post offline!! Yes, the broadband service here is starting to get on my nerves. How did we get to this condition of catastrophic chaos (I like to exaggerate) ?
Was the decision taken by the company’s board to change its rates and introduce bandwidth limits, this was faced by much protest by the customers (including me) but after listening to what the company had to say and its reasons for the change (which turned out to be a solution to stamp illegal networks) I started to understand that the approach taken by the company is correct be it a bit unfair for the normal legitimate user. So do I support Batelco ? HELL NOOOO!! Why? Because with them deciding that changes needs to be done, the broadband service started to lose its reliability, hence me doing all this offline.

Munther