Blue Chi’s

Every other discussion I have these days seems to revolve somehow about Twitter, Facebook, blogging, or something of that sort. I am not always able to justify why I am on these things other than having them as a window for me to express myself and that I simply enjoy sharing the daily happenings of my life online. I know it doesn’t necessarily make sense, but I am having fun and a few people seem to like to follow the random updates I make around the clock. I feel connected and at many times liberated by saying out loud what I think. I am quite comfortable not being anonymous, but – believe it or not – it restricts what I can say online. Tweeting throughout the day became part of my lifestyle which I do not think about doing anymore.

Talking about other changes in my lifestyle, I am so happy I have been able to continue going to the gym while I’m in town. A serious issue with all the travels I’ve done in this year is that I cannot go the gym while I’m abroad, I’m still very intimidated by the gym and I like only going to the one I know. The result of this is that I only go to the gym when I’m in Muscat. I’ve been going to *my* gym regularly and recently I was fortunate to meet an old schoolmate in the gym who I get to train with (and for which I’m grateful!) , so I’m actually having fun at the gym these days and I feel like I’m progressing. I weight myself yesterday and it turns out I gained more than 2 Kgs since the last time I did my measurements! (I’m trying to gain weight! )

Other than that I still generally feel quite stressed with what I’m doing in my life, but it’s getting better because I started updating the OmaniCuisine and the Republic of Code once again. I am done with that crazy international environment law course that I had to do for work. It was good, but it just came at the wrong time. I do get stressed at times about my Muscat Daily column, I don’t really get any feedback and I’m not sure if I’m doing well,bad, or what. At times I really don’t have any idea what I should be writing about next, I used to keep a list of topic ideas, I don’t where that list went. I still think that I’m doing better than how I was doing a month ago. I hope I can get in top of it all by the end of the summer.

Ramadan should start in a month, I’m really not looking forward to it. I have a feeling it’s going to be crazy hot, and I’m afraid I’ll be thirsty all day long. I don’t how I’ll function when I’m low on sugar, and I have no idea what’ll happen with my gym schedule. I don’t know if I want to take time off to stay at my parents house for a bit or not. I’m just not looking forward to it.

I’ve been reading Shantaram for a while, it’s too long but I quite like the book. In page 136, the character Lin talks about how he was given the chance to reinvent himself, to follow the river within, and become the man he had always wanted to be. I found to be quite profound. I think we all can also have the chance to reinvent ourselves, to be someone different, someone better. It was just one line in the book, but it really got me thinking.

Best thing I like about places like DC is fact that you can just walk to practically anywhere. I love metros and the feeling of the thrill of the city. The weather has been bright, sunny, and awesome on most days. Yesterday was probably the best day I had so far, I visited a local market, went to a baseball game, visited a museum, got invited to someone’s house for dinner, and walked for a while under the sun.

The thing I envy Americans for is the courage they have to take risks in their lives to do whatever they want, I cannot just decide to quit my job one day to go and help children in Africa – we just can’t do that. These days I do not even have the courage to write whatever I want on my blog, I am not talking about legal restrictions and freedom of expression, but just about not wanting to upset people or not wanting to show my vulnerable self.

I love my blog and everything I do on the internet, this weekend a person I have known online for a while now came to see me, he took me around to meet his friends and made me feel really welcomed, it was amazing – at times I find it hard to believe that people genuinely this kind and hospitable stil exist on this planet.

I wish I was this kind to other people.

(Photo Credits: ukslim)

I’ll be attending a legislative fellowship program at the Congress for the whole of May. This program is sponsored by the US Department of State. I’ve never been to the states before so I’m really looking forward to it. I’m checking the forecast and it looks like it might still rain a bit even though it’s technically spring now! I’ll keep you guys updated on Twitter and here.

I’m a bit bummed cause I just started updating the Omani Cuisine again, and now I’ll be away for a whole other month. You guys will just have to wait for me to come back to get you the latest reviews on restaurants in town.

Oh and by the way, for those who didn’t figure it out, my previous post describing a day with my iPad was totally fictional, it was written before it actually came out. The funny thing is that I STILL haven’t got one yet, I will be buying one from the states while I’m there though.

I’m currently in New Delhi attending a training program on legislative drafting at the Indian parliament. The best advice I got was from SangitaSri who told me to make sure to keep my expectations low to be able to enjoy it, and boy I’m just amazed by everything I’m seeing. First of all my hotel is really nice, even though the place is under renovation, but the rooms are really fancy (IMO nicer than hotel rooms I recently stayed at in Abu Dhabi and Vienna) and there is even free wifi in the hotel. (I told you I’m keeping my expectations really low! ) But seriously, the hotel is super clean and that’s the most important thing!

The roads of the city are pretty dirt, there are beggars everywhere, and the driving is INSANE. The littler restaurants and places where they sell food on the road are also super dirty, but there are loads of nice places to go eat at. Yesterday my Indian friend took me a really nice restaurant at Khan Market, and today we went to Select Citywalk, which is like a massive proper shopping mall just like the stuff we have in the Gulf. I event went to check the Apple Store (yes they have one unlike Oman), but unluckily they did not have the Magic Mouse – which I’ve been trying to buy for a while.

I’m going to stay here for a whole month, so I’m hoping I’ll be seeing a lot more of India. We also have a trip within our program to go visit Taj Mahal – I can’t wait to go there!

I have been writing a bi-monthly column called Cyberia for Muscat Daily since the newspaper was launched in October last year. For some reason Muscat Daily still doesn’t have a website, so people could only read my column if they bought the physical copy of the paper. I decided to post all of my previous columns online as well on my blog from now after they get published on Muscat Daily. I have scheduled it so that a new post will appear each week on my myITLawyer, so posts might appear on this blog also. My latest columns will still come out every other Sunday in Muscat Daily.

Making a post on the last day of the decade! In the last ten years I finished highschool, started and finished university, and got my first job. I had the best days of life, I was blessed to meet a lot of amazing people, been to so many different places, and did all sorts of crazy things. Life was really good in these last ten years and looking back at it I think that I enjoyed almost every single bit of it. Thanks to all of you readers of my blog! I wish you the best of luck in this new decade!

I’ve only subscribed to a mobile data plan less than two months ago, but I already feel that the way I use the Internet on the go has changed forever, tharmt is of course also directly related as well to my iPhone as well, but many other smart phones like android devices. Could’ve done the same.

I spoke with several people about how the transition to a mobile data plan is similar to the transition to a mobile phone for the first time, to some people the mobility by itself does not justify the cost of the plan, but used to say why get a mobile phone when I can just go home and make a phone call, most people are not running vital businesses that require urgent instant feedback, but the same thing could be said about mobile Internet, imagine being able to do everything you do on your PC on your mobile phone, from YouTube and Facebook, to editing an excel sheet on Google Docs, and all of that in a big enough screen and running through a high speed connection. Of course the phone plays s big part of it, but it is the connectivity that makes all the difference. It is truely life changing.

So if you did get my opinion yet on whether or not you should get a data plan, even in Oman, the answer is yes of course – provided you have a good enough phone to make use of it. And just to prove my point, I made this blog post from my phone that is connected through a 3G network!

I started going to the gym last month for the first time ever in my life, I thought it would be the only way for me to gain weight. I’ve never been to the gym before so I thought I’ll read a book about it and use an iPhone application to make my gym experience more fun!

The book I read is the one you see above, it is Muscle – The World’s Most Complete Guide to Building your Body – by Ian King and Lou Schuler. The book is mainly written for those who want to get seriously into body building and weight lifting, unlike traditional workout books, Muscle takes a scientific approach by explaining how muscles work and goes into great detail into the function and nature of every single muscle you can think of. I thought that the book was helpful because it explains a lot of about how muscles grow, how to have a proper diet, and explains in a great detail many exercises for working the various muscles in the body. However, at many circumstances I thought that the book was an overkill for someone who merely wants to gain weight to look more normal than trying to be a big buff or a professional weight lifter (which the book seems to be directed at). The book also seems to focus on working with free weights more than using any machines (literally, I think only four machines were mentioned in the book).

However, in my regular trips to the gym I do not actually follow the workouts in the book, and instead I follow the routines specified in the iPhone application iFitness. This is an awesome iPhone application that has detailed routines for all training levels. In addition to the explanation on how to do the workouts and show you videos on how to do then, the application also enables you to log your training sessions for each exercise you do and lets you plot graphs to show your performance.

I really love iFitness probably because I am a sucker for statistics! Apparently I can also back up all my data online and send it by email as well. I haven’t tried these two features yet, but they should be interesting.

I’ve been going to the gym for a whole month now and I feel like I can have as a permanent item in my routine, but I’m away from Muscat for nine days for Eid and there isn’t a branch of my gym here in Sohar, I still got my shoes with me, so I might try going to any gym here. What’s even worse is that I’ll be traveling abroad for about two weeks after Eid, so again, I’m not sure what’s going to happen to my gym schedule.

So does anybody else go the gym around here? Have you read a helpful book on the topic or used a good iPhone application to help you with it?

Eid is tomorrow here in Oman, We got a nine day holiday this time and spending the whole break in Sohar at my parents house.

For everyone on Twitter please use the hash tag #omaneid when making any updates or uploading any eid pictures!

Eid Mubarak to all of you!

My previous post on my addiction to Twitter attracted a lot of replies, many were written by people who are not Twitter. I have reached this stage where quitting Twitter is NOT an option. I feel that I am part of a community of people I care about and whom I have no other direct regular method of communication with. I am, like the majority of people in my Twitter circle, having a lot of fun on Twitter, I’m meeting new people, learning about new things to do in town and discussing topics through methods that cannot be replicated on any other medium. I just CANNOT QUIT.

What I would like to do is be able to carry on with my life and still have fun on Twitter like everybody else. I have developed a simple strategy to be able to do this. First of all, I decided to CLOSE DOWN TweetDeck when I’m doing something else. It is really not rocket science, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to do anything else when there are 5 new tweet update notifications every 30 seconds. For example, this time I don’t have TweetDeck opened as I’m writing this blog post! See!!!

Second thing, I am going to have a Twitter break each 45 minutes or between switching tasks. This way I will have something to look forward to and will have a systematic method for checking Twitter. In order to time myself I’m using my good old Klok application which I’ve been using for a couple of years now. I cannot live without and I don’t know how I never used it since I got back in town earlier this month. I have Klok installed on my work machine and my computers at home.

I am also starting to get back into a systematic to do list workflow for everything. I have installed a number of iPhone apps and will see which one to go with. Will try using GTD, but not sure if it’ll work.

Finally, I’ve stuck up a new banner in my room to indicate my next goal! I want to receive a 1,000,000 page views a month at the Republic of Code. I’ve been stuck at around 500,000 pageviews a month for a year now and never exceeded. Some of you remember my old banner, which worked. All I need is to have a goal to work towards!

I have already implemented many of these methods today and I managed to respond to all new forum threads, read two chapters in a programming book, AND GO OUT OF THE HOUSE AND BUY A PAIR OF SHOES. I have also chatted with Twitter and had fun with the guys over there. So I think it should work out if I properly focus!