Gone fishing...

That's is , I will be in Tunis on Saturday inchallah. I miss Tunisia, the people, the mood, the family.
In the program, fishing, swimming , diving and long nights spent with the family. Be back in a month.

Will be in

Take care everybody :-)

ONU: "Ce machin", il sert a quoi?

Le général De Gaulle qualifiait l'ONU de "ce machin", il n'avait pas tort.
Au fait ce post est inspiré d'une discussion que j'ai eu avec mon fils ainé (15 ans),qui au passage m'a fait beucaoup plaisir.
Mon fils est né a Paris mais il est venu aux US a l'age de 4 ans et donc son education est principalement americaine. Le reste de la famille étant parti a Tunis a la fin du mois de Juin, j'ai pu passer avec lui pas mal de temps ces derniéres semaines. Comme tout les ados de son age il passe la plupart du temps sur le net et ces derniers jours il commence a s'interesser au conflit du moyen orient, surtout qu'il a une copine dont les parents sont des palesteniens refugiés aux US.

Il a googlé tout les mots clés pertinents et sa conclusion est que l'ONU est une organisation bidon qui est un instrument aux mains de 5 pays non représentatifs du monde et qu'elle n'obéit meme pas a sa propre charte qui est la suivante:

WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
To save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

To establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,



AND FOR THESE ENDS
To practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and

To unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and

to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest, and

To employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples,


HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS

Bon tout ca c'est joli,mais comme mon fils le dit tres bien "ils devaient fumer de la mauvaise herbe a l'epoque". Une remarque qui m'a fait peur au debut, mais comme je le connais tres bien, je me suis convaincu que ce n'est qu'une remarque innocente tres utilisée parmi ces copains ;-)
Beh non, ils ne fumaient meme pas, c'est tout juste des politiciens donc c'est des nuls hypocrites adepte de la formule "deux poids, deux mesures". et puis que qqun m'explique pourquoi le conseil de securite est composé 5 pays permanents qui ont le droit de veto et de dix autres non permanents qui ne l'ont pas? Et puis pourqoui meme le peu de résolutions qui ont passé le veto contre Israel ne sont jamais appliqués et totalement ignorés,n'est ce pas illegal ca?

Bref, L'ONU n'est pas le conseil de sécurite seulement, il ya plein d'autres structures et organisations mais elles ont tous un role consultatif ou benevole. La seule structure qui peut emettre des resoultions et les appliquer est le conseil de sécurite.

C'est pour cette raison qu'on trouve a l'ONU d'autres institutions qui voient les choses differement comme UNHCR (commission des refugies), qui s'occupe de nettoyer les ravages de la guerre que l'ONU est supposé prévenir. l'UNICEF qui s'occupe des enfants et l'application des conventions des droits de l'enfant, ou UNHRC (commission des droits de l'homme) basé sur la convention universelle des droits de l'homme.

Ces organisations en generale plus objectives que le conseil de sécurite, car simplement on n'y trouve pas de politiciens! D'ailleurs que ce soit l'unicef,unhcr ou le unhrc tous ont condamné et ont documenté les atrocites,tortures, assasinats commises par Israel. Mais bon, les medias, ils ne vont pas nous casser la tete avec de tel details, et donc ils passent inapercus par le grand public. Je vous invite a lire qq unes malgre que qq unes montrent franchement la propagande israelienne en action. J'ai lu les trois premiers de la liste et elles sont objectives quoi que!

Documents

Et récement je quote Louise Arbour, commissaire ONU de HRC dans un communiqué reuters: "United Nations human rights chief Louise Arbour said the scale and predictability of the killing in Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories could involve war crimes.
Indiscriminate shelling of cities and the bombing of sites where civilians would inevitably suffer were unacceptable, and those in command could bear criminal responsibility, Arbour said without pointing a specific finger of blame.
Many villagers in southern Lebanon said food, water and medical supplies were
dwindling after roads and bridges were cut in the south, restricting movement of
aid. "

Donc moi je suis d'accord avec mon fiston, l'ONU c'est bidon!!! Et la subjectivité des politiciens, on la paie avec la vie de pauvres innocents, enfants ou adultes qui n'ont pas choisi d'etre palestinien, libanais ou autres mais qui paient de leur vie a cause de cela.

PS:Une conf de presse interéssane de De Gaulle en 1967 (tout juste apres la guerre des 6 jours), qui montre qu'a l'epoque les pays de l'ouest osaient dire des choses qu'ils n'osent plus aujourd'hui. Mais bon a l'epoque la machine de propagande israelienne n'etait pas encore aussi sophistiquée que maintenant.

Voila, je vais faire mes valises, car dans moins de 48h je serais on my way to Tunis inchallah.

Children caught in war!

I can't stop thinking about children caught in these wars. Kids don't choose their country or parents but they assume that choice and sometimes they pay the price in blood, trauma or even their life. Can you imagine what a kid goes thru when he wakes up at night on sound of detonations? instinctively, he'll run to his parents who are always there to protect him and comfort him but for the first time he will see that they are scared to death, terrorized, unable to explain to him what is happening and why is it happening. Such scene will haunt these kids forever, and then they start discovering about war, death, wounds. They will see destruction that they thought happen only in cartoons. And unfortunately some of them will die, some will get wounded, and all will stay traumatized for life.

Check these sad facts:

In the decade from 1986 to 1996, armed conflicts

Killed over 2 million children
Seriously injured or permanently disabled over 6 million
Orphaned over 1million
Psychologically traumatized and scarred over 10 million
Countless numbers of children, especially girls, have been raped or subjected to other forms of sexual violence as a deliberate instrument of war
Currently, over 20 million children are displaced from their homes by wars; about 300,000 are exploited as child soldiers; and an estimated 800 are killed or maimed by landmines every month.

I am a parent for 3 kids, and parents like me know how precious a kid is for us. Do you know how much love a kid need, how much emotion, joy and pride he brings to us, how much memories from his conception, to his first cry, to his first step, to his first word. We live for them and by them, and then some megalomanics come and take them form us, erase our reason for life, brake our will. I don't care if they're right or wrong, their actions kill kids. Aren't kids protected under some UN resoultions, Don't they have the right to live, to be educated, not to be exploited..etc. Why can't we enforce these laws??

I know, I am not being realistic, but when it comes to children who is? How can we justify the suffering of these small cute things, the joy of our lives? Poor cowards, we are!




One of the "war child international network" campaign messages is: "You can take child out of war, but how do you take the war out of a child?"

Beirut airport targeted by Israel

The two main runaways of Rafik Hariri International airport were damaged this morning by Israeli airforce. The airport is indefinitely closed and 22 civilians killed in other raids.
This is a sad day. Let's see how the governments that stood beside lebanon in other similar terrorist attacks on its land would react this time. How can they be so hypocrite.
Anyway can you imagine France dropping bombs on Madrid airport because the basques kidnapped a french soldier? The lebanese people struggled rebuilding their country and now this. How can this be fair? How can democraties allow this ? Why Is Zidane "Yo mamma" insult gets more coverage than human being getting killed and the future of a country getting in jeopardy.

How cruel this word became!

My thoughts are with you, opperessed people of this unfair world.

The Israeli apartheid

I always find that when discussing the isareli-palestinan conflict with americans, that they make me feel biased and I can see it from the raised eye brows I get or the look they give me, generally I give up gently because I dont want to get into loosing battles waiting for the right moment to say "told you so!".

I alway get the break and come back with opinions, statements or articles coming from westerners so I can "tire mon epingle du jeu" and stay neutral enough. Today I found such a break as I always do and I want to share it with you.This is my first "coup de gueule". It does not come for me, but from an very well established and old israeli newspaper the "Haaretz" (hebrew for 'The land'), It is a leftist newspaper founded in 1919.I invite you to read this article and the various comments of the readers, it is very helpful to understand this tragedy.

At this time where we're on the beach, looking forward to the next night party, this post is not attractive to some of our youth and I am sure that just the tilte make people think that this yet another crazy hatered post. This because it has always been associated with extremism, fundamentalism, terrorism and so on so forth, but let's forget all these stereotypes and think about the human side.

Just imagine what these people are going thru and this is from israeli reporters, not eljazeera or some fundamentalis web site.Please do read it and invite anyone you know to do so (specially westerners) and I will be delighted if I can have your comments on my blog.

Palestinians are fellow human beings and as that we owe them. Being an immigrant myeslf, knowing that I can't visit my motherland will be devastating and I know that all of you will feel the same.


Israel bars Palestinian Americans for first time since 1967

The comments posted online on their site are so representative of this drama.

10 days on the blogosphere. State of the Union.

It’s been 10 days since I started this blog and also began regularily spending time reading and commenting on some of the Tunisian blogs. To tell you the truth, I like it a lot. Here are my feelings/thoughts about this new experience.
The quality of the majority of posts on tn-blogs is good to excellent and so are the majority of the comments. What is amazing me, is that people take the time to read, understand and comment smartly sometimes on very personal and difficult subjects and you can see from their comments that they know what you’re feeling or thinking. Isn’t that amazing or what? Imagine this happening in real, not in virtual. You go to a café or any public place, and you start making a speech about how hopeless you feel about your girlfriend who does not want to commit despite all the love you have for her and then people start advising you what to do or tell you their own story!!!

I also found that there is something new I am feeling that I can’t explain. I wake up in the morning impatient to go and see if there are any new comments, any new posts on the blogs I am following. And believe me this is a big change for me because, all what I care about when I power on my laptop is my work. I consider this change as a positive one.


I also find myself associating pseudo of my favorites bloggers to specific face I imagined for him/her. I think that’s my realistic down to earth side.

I noticed also, that some of the bloggers have the same style whether writing their posts or commenting. Some are very different. I find this interesting, because I think when they are writing, they are doing it on their own blog and don’t feel have any constraints, but while commenting on other blogs they are guests and they just stating their opinion on the host subject. Of course this is not always true and I found some posts where the commenter invaded the host blog. Perhaps it is just our cultural background that is reflected here and this is not pejorative.

A trend, I could not understand is that some of the bloggers are anonymous like me and generally they write very personal and sometimes intimate posts and others post under their real identity and those in majority don’t post very personal stuff but talk about society or human issues. This is normal right? What’s not is that these two kind interact together and know each other and even organize meet-ups. I cannot myself do that because if I were not anonymous, I would never talk about personal feelings to a community who I may know some of them or even interact with them in the future. Some situations would be even very embarrassing. If someone is expressing some doubts on someone he loves or describe mixed feelings he has for some subject, it would not matter when he is anonymous, but it could turn against him if he is not and you would never know how people will use this info because after all there is no notion of trust since you really don’t know who hides under a given pseudo. Of course this just my humble opinion. It is ironic isn’t it? I can be intimate with someone I don’t know but not with someone I know :;). Perhaps getting to know one blogger on a personal basis thru email, phone and then perhaps in person is something I can understand, but meetup with a group is pushing it too far.


The last thing I noticed also is that we carry our personalities with us into the virtual world. I hate stereotyping people or behave with them differently based on their race,country,region,gender or religion (it is even illegal in the US), but unfortunately I noticed that in Tunisian blogs there is some of this, specially when dealing with Tunisian society problems, the discussion always deviates to regionalism, machism, Tunisian living abroad vs. local ones…and non constructive critics that sometimes degenerate. Fortunately, I saw this only in few posts, so it’s no big deal. That reminds me of a slogan I saw once carried at the gay parade in San Francisco “Open your mind and shut your mouth”.

In summary, I am very happy with my experience and I will keep blogging, at least for the next tow weeks before I fly To Tunis.

PS: I wanted to share with you one sentence I heard from a French barman in a Paris’s bar I used to go with my wife. “Les gens qui croient tout savoir, ne posent jamais les bonnes questions”. This helped me a lot professionally and personally.

On a complete different note, and to finsish on a smile,I wanted to share with you this 2 African proverb (for adults only NR/NO).

" Si tu te lève un matin avec deux paires de couilles, te prend pas pour un surhomme, mais t'es sûrement en train de te faire enculer "

" Si tu te couches avec le cul qui gratte, tu te lèveras avec les doigts qui puent "

More from : http://kolwezikat.free.fr/proverbes.htm

Trends: Tunisia vs India. a story of words!

This post came by accident, it was not planned.


I know that from the title you would think that this is about a serious article comparing consumer or product trends between these two countries. It is not.

Actually, I was doing some research using google trends trying to make a top 10 list of countries that it would make sense to focus on for our product launch. Usually this is the sales team job, since they know the revenue by country for all our products. But I was curious to get raw data and to see if I can recoup it with sales data. So I started by getting the trend by city for people who searched for the word "J2EE" and "Java" and Here is the result:


Top cities for word "J2EE"



Top cities for word "Java"



At this point of time, this validates what I was thinking of, that the real market where we can grow is the emerging countries and that's where the people who are looking for solutions even though they can't afford them for the time being. So it is up to the product managment to come up with the right solution at the right price for these countries and it could be our growth vector for the next couple of years.

Then, and because my tunisian pride is always hidden deep inside me, I got jealous and I wanted to find what words would bring Tunis in the google trends. I started by technology like software, c++, web service, soa, sca, gsm, telephone portable (Algiers showed up for this one), telecom...etc. Next I tried sports like football, coupe du monde, handball,.. nothing. Of course I omited tunisian terms or names, just to be fair. Then I don't know why I started looking for general words or themes. After two trials I got Tunis to show up for the word "Amour": (Love)




Wow, I did not know the tunisians are so romantic, so in order to double check that this is not about "faire l'amour" as opposed to "aimer" (to love), I cross referenced with the word "aimer". Casablance showed up for "aimer" but not Tunis.Mmmh, so we are not that romantic after all. So Only one thing is left to verify that what I was thinking is true. I did search for "relation sexuelle" and here is Tunis again :;)




I dont know if I should be proud or sad or just laugh about it.
So I'll leave it to you to make your own mind, and I hope you can get Tunis to show up for a more serious word so that I can get my pride back, unless all these searches were only for educational purposes :;)

The stuff that keeps us going!

Lately, I found myself wondering, what keeps us going?. I mean doing what we do, our work, day after day, month after month, year after year? Personally I can’t explain where do I get the energy for waking up every morning as if it was my first day of work, besides the fact that I love my job and I have always this pressure to do the best I can and to learn more so I can be better.
Normally for software companies here in Silicon Valley, the R&D campus is always open 24 hours, so engineers can work anytime they want. Usually I am in my office before 7:30 AM and when people ask me why I am in so early? I answer “ I want to beat the traffic, you know how the traffic became in the valley”. I don’t know why I feel embarrassed by the question, because for me there is no room for it. I came early because I am so excited to check if the solution I thought about before going to sleep yesterday will work or not. Isn’t that obvious? After spending two or 3 hours working in peace, the phone starts to ring and Outlook mail notification starts bugging me. Ok let’s deal with the bureaucracy.
“Hello, Sam speaking”
“Hey Sam, how are you? This is xxx from prod marketing, we wanted you in this meeting where we’re defining the different segments of users and …..bla bla “
“You know xxx, why don’t you send me the meeting minutes and any questions you may have by mail and I’ll give you my input. I am kinda busy today”

“Hello Sam speaking”
“Hey Sam, this is yyy from Human resources, the meeting started”
“What meeting?”
“Uhh, the meeting for discussing the next employee survey”
“Oh that one, I briefed zzz and he will be sitting for me”
“Yeah, I know but this is very important and we have this external consultant to help us understand our employees…..bla bla…”
“zzz, I have an open communication channel with my team and I did not lose any engineer in the last 24 months!!!”“Oh ok, as you like then”

Of course sometimes, the meetings are important and I have to leave the piece of code I am debugging the same way a lion will leave a deer he was hunting for hours. And generally, people will know better after while to invite me only when it makes sense. For Emails, the technique is a little bit different. Normally, middle managers in US companies thrive for visibility and that’s how they build their careers. It is known in the US that if you don’t make it as a manager before 30, you will never make it far in the hierarchy. That’s why some people focus on their visibility to their bosses and bosses’ boss and that mean a lot of email and meetings and taking credit of any good result their team may achieve. So my technique is to forward as much politic mail as I can to my peers who I know like politics and deal only with the mails that are related to our core work which is getting the product out of the doors in time.

And then I go back to my piece of code I left suspended in the debugger with a large smile like the kid who found his favorite candy.

Then comes lunch time and sometimes I am really embarrassed because, this guy stops by and invite you to lunch to introduce himself and chat and I really don’t want to spend an hour away from my computer, so I try all the tricks girls use to get rid of an insisting admirer without being rude. Then I run to the cafeteria; get my usual turkey sandwich to go and run back to the office.

Why do I do that? I should be stopping writing code myself, nobody in my position even think about doing it. They just enjoy their management position. Why don’t I take a break? In fact, I never tried or even thought about stopping because that’s who I am and that’s what I am good at. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy managing my small teams of young engineers and I take care of them, but I work with them, doing the same things they do and I learn from them as much as they learn from me, but I can’t give it a break.

It is now 6:00PM and that’s the best time for doing some real work, because it is quiet and only R&D engineers are in the building, the brain soldiers, the real deal, the people who make it happen, the magicians, the artists and I like being with them and they like being with this old odd guy who is still jamming his keyboard between java and C++. I say old because in this line of work you are old by 35. I like being around them, we understand each other, we tell the same nerd jokes and we are the only ones who can laugh while reading a buggy line of code but not at the last top 10 of Letterman.

One of my colleagues who is leaving stops by:
-Sam you’re still here, didn’t you come early?
-Oh yeah, I am just waiting for the traffic to clear, you know how the traffic is nowadays in the valley

It is 8:00 PM now and the traffic cleared, so I head back home to spend some time with the kids before they go to sleep. And then finally I can sit with my other half who I never understood what keeps her going either! Because she is the one who has the toughest job of keeping this family going taking care of the zillions things at home, so I can get to play with my toys all day long.

PS: You should be wondering where I got the time to write this. It is easy, it is the 4th of July today (US Independence Day) and we’re having a pool party in the backyard for the kids. After 2 hours of fun, I decided to spend some time coding. After starting up, the computer, I started checking the different blogs I find interesting, while waiting for tools to initialize, and somehow I felt guilty, so I decided to write about it. This helped me and I hope you will ask yourself the same question. What keeps us going?