Blue Chi’s

I just finished reading “The World With Us” and it suddenly hit me that I have recently watched and read a group of things that somehow all revolved around death in one way or another, but yet in totally completely different ways.

I recently finished watching Caprica, the failed prequel series to the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. After watching the only season made of this canceled show, I am really bummed about it being not having any more of it. I don’t think that Caprica is better or even as good as Battlestar Galactica, but I still really enjoyed it and loved the way it explored the future of gaming, simulated reality and the religious and political aspects of the show and was totally blown away by the season’s finale. What connected Caprica for me with The Fountain and The World With Us is that a big part of Caprica seems to be about an attempt of some characters in the show in enabling the human mind to transcend death because of how these characters could not accept the death of a loved one, so they did everything they could to overcome death, and succeeded.

Aronofsky’s “The Fountain” on the hand is the total opposite, it tells the story of how a man who could not accept the death of his wife goes through this journey that teaches him how death should not be fought and should not be feared, but should be looked at as a fundamental part of the cycle of life that we need to acknowledge, accept and be in peace with in order for the cycle of life to continue. I thought that The Fountain was breathtaking and magical in the way that the story was told and how the whole thing came at the end to a closure.

Finally The World With Us  is a non-fiction book that explores how nature could take over the planet Earth  from an environmental scientific point of view and how in essence the easiest way for this planet to survive would be for humans to just die off.

I thought it was a cool coincidence how all these things I’ve been watching and reading somehow connected to each other through the theme of death in a non-morbid or dark way at all.

“Highly Inappropriate Tales For Young People” is the latest book written by my all time favorite author Douglas Coupland. This book is a collection of short stories written in the format of colorfully illustrated children tales, but all of which are extremely inappropriate in a dark and hilariously evil way that is totally unpredictable. The book has seven extremely short tales and can be read in one single go. I really enjoyed this book and  I cannot seem to get enough of the way Douglas captures the essence of contemporary pop culture. Highly recommended for ADULTS looking for a humorous read.

I finished reading the graphic novel “Habibi” by Craig Thompson today. I picked this book because I was intrigued by the artwork on the cover and how potentially blasphemous it seemed. The book turned out to be a heavy 650+ graphic novel that told the story of two Arab slaves in a current imaginary modern world where there are still villages in the Arab world where slaves are publicly traded and a Sultan rules over the country from his ancient palace with harem full of women. To my surprise the book wasn’t blasphemous at all, instead it seemed to explore Islam through a fantastical lens that focuses on the charm of the stories mentioned in the Quran, all done through breathtaking illustrations and Arabic calligraphy. The story wasn’t exactly epic, but it was amazing how it wasn’t only told through actual words, but also through the delicate transformations of the characters of the Arabic script. The attention to detail in this book is unreal with amazing artwork and background references to Quranic phrases and Arabic poetry written both in Arabic and English. It made me feel special for being able to understand such a beautiful script that is so full of mystique.

I just finished reading “Love is a Mix Tape” by Rob Sheffield – it’s a book telling his personal journey of finding love and losing it. The experiences he has gone through are somehow reflected in a collection of mix tapes he made with his wife throughout the years. The book is a combination of a love tragedy and an exploration of the evolution of rock and roll through the last quarter of the last decade. It explores how music plays a big role in the psyche of some people that somehow it transcends being just a form of pop entertainment.

I could not relate to the book much because I am not a fan of rock and roll and I did not recognize the majority of artists and songs the author was talking about, yet I still managed to connect with the concept of how an old song can somehow transport you into an old experience or a feeling that you used to have while listening to that same song before.

I remember buying Alicia Keys album “As I Am” at the airport before traveling to Egypt and how I listened to it during the three days I spent in Cairo. I hated Cairo, it’s people, and everything about, but somehow I have this amazing memory of walking by the Nile at sunset alone and listening to the song “Tell You Something” and how beautiful the place seemed amidst all the chaos of Cairo. I still have that seem tingly feeling whenever I listen to this song and I can almost smell the polluted air of Cairo while looking at this canvas of orange and purple sky,

I also remember listening to Mya’s cover of “After The Rain” in Cardiff while walking under actual rain and how the background sound of rain drops in the song mixed with the real sound of rain drops, how cold and dark it was, and yet really felt good.

Another one that really gets to me is OneRepublic’s “Say (All I Need)” which I used to listen to all the time when I was in Southampton on the 20 minutes bus ride from the university campus to downtown Southampton, passing by the dorms, the university campus, and the parks, before getting off at the town hall bus stop. I remember how Ryan Tedder’s voice sounded haunting and add to the song have this dream-like quality, it was amazing.

I don’t think really cared much for Love is a Mix Tape as a novel with a storyline, but I guess I’m happy I read it because it made me go back to listen to my own old music and got  transported into all these experiences I’ve been before.

I just got back from the Arab Bloggers Meeting in Tunis a couple of days ago which was a quite unique experience. Around 100 bloggers attended it mostly from Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Jordan, and other Arab and non-Arab countries. I was the only Omani blogger at the event, a couple of Bahraini and Saudi bloggers were also at the meeting.

The major focus on the event was obviously the role blogging has played in the recent Arab uprising, but various sessions in the meeting covered a variety of other topics in addition to that such as web security, web activism, content development, culture hacking, and information communication – just to mention a few. The fist day of the meeting was your average conference, but the other three days of the event were conducted in bootcamp format where the attendees decided the schedule and contributed in conducting the actual sessions. It was very informative, diverse, dynamic, and a lot of fun. I can’t deny that I was a little bit out of my comfort zone as the majority of the participants were actual political activists while I was the only person who is actually happily working for his government and is in support of the current system.

For someone coming from a quiet place like Oman, it was very surreal to me to hear that a few of the participants of the previous blogger meetings couldn’t make it to this one because they have been in prison for several months and haven’t been released yet. I think some of the participants survived imprisonment and made it to this one, too. Many of the other participants also had their own stories to tell and it was interesting to meet and get to know them, especially the bloggers from Global Voices - as I used to write quite a bit on that website and never really met or had a proper conversation with any of its staff before.

I found the security sessions were extremely beneficial (probably cuz it just coincided with the fact that I believe that my usage online is being monitored), but seriously I feel that I came back with a much better understanding of the situation and more techniques on how to protect myself online. It also got me more irritated by the fact that privacy here is not considered as an actual right at all.

One of the most fascinating sessions at the event was the presentation made by the new CEO of the Tunisian Internet Authority and how he seemed to be strongly determined to transform the way the internet has been regulated in Tunisia so that it is regulated in an open and transparent way that promotes freedom of expression and privacy. The presentation went into a lot of details on how censorship has not been in the interest of Tunisia, how massive amounts of money were spent on it even though the technology wasn’t really working and how developers of this technology use Tunisia as a testing ground. It will be really interesting to see how internet regulation progresses in Tunisia and it would be really great if other Arab Internet regulation authorities looked at how Tunisia is trying to figure out new solutions.

On a personal level, I thought that it was amusing how the country name “Oman” invoked this dreamy feeling to the very few people who have been to it before long time ago and then asked “How is it in Oman now?” in a away that almost wondered if that quiet faraway country still exists. It was not offensive, but was just weird, and I think it shows how Oman still doesn’t really seem to be on people’s radar at all, but there was this other person who seemed to think that I was some sort of “novelty” in my own right by just coming from this country and was genuinely intrigued by Oman and its people.

The Arab Bloggers Meeting was a really great experience and I feel very fortunate to be able to experience it.

I have been having problems with using Facebook for a while now and las week I decided to connect to it using SSL (https://www.facebook.com/) and to my surprise I got the message you see above (The site’s security certificate is not trusted). I tried all the browsers on my machine and all the other computers I have access to in my apartment and they all get the same error. When I tether my computer to my phone to use my mobile data plan as the source of connection the error disappears so it is clearly a problem with my broadband connection. This problem only appears on a few websites that use SSL such as Facebook, gmail (not mail.google.com), and Hotmail.

I also got a message from Facebook today that someone has tried to reset my password, I am not sure if it is a connected incident or not.

I am starting to get paranoid, I am sure if this is the ISS  that is trying to monitor my usage, or whether someone in our building is trying to scheme a crime. It is very hard to protect yourself in this country when VPN and other anonymity tools that protect your usage are blocked, and I have no idea how to verify what the source of this problem is. Urgh!!

(Photo by acaben)

I’ll be traveling in a couple of days to Tunis to attend the Arab Bloggers Meeting. I’m looking forward to it and hopefully it’ll be great fun to meet and share experiences with other bloggers from the region.

This is just a reminder for those who haven’t seen this on my Twitter, the TRA has extended the period for receiving responses to it’s public consultation paper of the regulation of VOIP, anybody upset about Skype being blocked here should write the TRA about this now! The new deadline is the 10th of October.

You can read the response I wrote to the TRA here.

First of all, a reminder to all of you that the deadline for submitting your response to the TRA’s public consultation paper on VoIP is the 10th of September. If you are one of these people who have been bitching about having Skype blocked in Oman for all these years then it is time you do something about it and write to the TRA why you think Skype should be unblocked.

I have written a draft response, which you can download from here, if you guys have any suggestions or points to add please let me know! Will try to send this in sometime next week.