It's J... & I. H. A. D.

Save the Date

2010-07-24T07:20:00.001+02:00

Though this nice uber creative Save-the-date is never to be used, i will keep it.

On the science of happiness...

2010-07-04T03:24:00.002+02:00

An excerpt from "Delivering Happiness", by Zappos.com co-founder and financier Tony Hsieh, Chapter 3, p. 78:

Streams of giant green laser beams were shooting throughout the entire warehouse, which was the size of ten football fields. Fog machines helped create a sense of dreamlike surrealism as everyone faced the DJ and moved in unison to the beat of the music. Cars of Red Bull were strewn everywhere, and ultraviolet black lights caused the fluorescent decorations on the walls and ceilings to glow as if they were alien plants transported from another universe.

But it wasn't just about the decorations, or the massiveness of the warehouse. Something else about the scene and moment elicited an emotional response from my entire being that was completely unexpected, and I couldn't really place my finger on exactly what it was or why I felt that way.

I tried to analyze what was different about this scene compared with the nightclub scene that I was more accustomed to. Yes, the decorations and lasers were pretty cool, and yes, this was the largest single room full of people dancing that I had ever seen. But neither of those things explained the feeling of awe that I was experiencing that was leaving me speechless. As someone who is usually known as being the most logical and rational persona in a group, I was surprised to feel myself swept away with an overwhelming sense of spirituality--not in the religious sense, but a sense of deep connection with everyone who was there as well as the rest of universe.

There was a feeling of no judgment, and as I glanced around the warehouse, I saw each person as an individual to be appreciated for just being himself or herself, dancing to the music.

As I tried to analyze what was going on in more detail, I realized that the dancing here was different from the dancing I usually witnessed in nightclubs. Here, there was no sense of self-consciousnesses or feeling that anyone was dancing to be seen dancing, whereas in nightclubs, there was usually the feeling of being on display somehow. In nightclubs, people usually dance with other. Here, it seems that almost everyone was facing the same direction. Everyone was facing the DJ, who was elevated up on a stage, as if he was channeling his energy to the crowd. It almost felt like everyone was worshiping the DJ.

The entire room felt as if one massive, united tribe of thousands of people, and the DJ was the tribal leader of the group. People weren't dancing to the music so much as the music seemed like it was simply moving through everyone. The steady wordless electronic beats were the unifying heartbeats that synchronized the crowd. It was as if the existence of individual consciousness had disappeared and been replaced by a single unifying group consciousness, the same way a flock of birds might seem like a single entity instead of a collection of individual birds. Everyone in the warehouse had a shared purpose. We were all contributors to the collective rave experience.

I didn't know it at the time, but ten years later I would learn that research from the field of the science of happiness would confirm that the combination of physical synchrony with other humans and being part of something bigger than oneself (and thus losing momentarily a sense of self) leads to a greater sense of happiness, and that the rave scene was simply the modern-day version of similar experiences that humans have been having for tens of thousands of years.

In the moment though, I felt a sense of experiential epiphany. It swept through my entire being. I n that instant, I suddenly understood the appeal of the techno music. I couldn't simply listen to it the way I listened to music on the radio. I had to let if flow through me in the context of a mind-set that I hadn't really experienced until just now. It was like someone had bestowed on me the Rosetta Stone of techno music, and no amount of verbal explanation would have helped me understand it. I had to experience it for myself.

And in that one instant, I did. I had awakened. I had been transformed. Finally, after all these year, I understood what the music was all about.

Just a theory

2010-02-05T02:51:00.004+01:00

I have a theory. Here it is.

A fallacy is a false, deceptive and deceitful statement or argument. It is the opposite of evidence or fact. My theory is that people believe a theory not because of its intrinsic legitimacy or the amount of truth is carries. Their belief is highly correlated with the person who states the notion or argument, and the number of people believing that statement at the moment of theory evaluation.

If the above holds, then my theory's corollary is that people do not believe in evidence or truths. They believe in propaganda. They borrow rationality from an outside source, mainly status and headcount, in order to believe in, and hence reinforce a statement or notion. As the process grows in a viral fashion and turns into a vicious circle, it feeds into the notion like fire and gives it more power, clout and credibility.

This is why media is a dangerous and powerful voice. And that's the voice of truth is unheard.

That's why artists who can't adhere to their legend fail, and those who live up to the image they are projecting succeed.

That's why writers who can relate the unshakable human emotions make it, and those who write to please their editors fail.

My theory is simple, and since I don't have status, it will take a heck of a lot of people to believe it. Then it will become truth. Just like the theory predicted.

So what comes first - truth or belief? If you understand my theory, the answer is yours.

Autobituary of a dying man [Part 2 - Take 1]

2009-02-15T20:57:00.009+01:00

During the summer of 2009, he refused to intern because none of the remaining opportunities he was able to find were worth spending his time on. Jack felt that was the perfect time for him to take a sabbatical summer and do something he really likes for a change. That’s when he remembered earlier events in his life: his novel at age 14, his play at age 19, his unique name that had a lot of bearing on his social life, his unique nickname that only refers to him wherever one can find it online, and his knack for inventing and torturing fictitious characters before making them heroes.

He also remembered his mentors; random wise and very particular people life put on his way to benefit from. Hung at the tip of their words and stories, he learnt that listening would be the strongest tool he could ever acquire. Listening to such incredible people helped him leapfrog his age group and become a premature prisoner of his old mind in a decaying forever-young wannabe society. That only allowed him to approach women older than him with a stunningly daring mind and unbelievable ease, but also prevented him from being able to completely connect with young women of his age due to their relative younger mental age.

All the weird and unusual events of his life served as fodder for his ideas, and his fertile mind served as the brewery for the story to come up with gems of plots. And that’s how he soon embarked on a journey to write his second—and last book. He wanted it to be his master opus. So he worked on it mostly by night. As a young teenager of 12, he used to let everybody go to sleep, sneak out to the dining room with a candle, and in the dark, he used to sit in a cold and quiet room where he was alone with ink, paper and a plethora of imaginary worlds, characters and stories.

He wanted to reproduce this same old combination of space, time and emotions. That’s why he partially had changed his hairstyle to what it was 16 years earlier. At times, the feeling of being unlawful and betraying the young dreamer he had left behind as he grew up gave him the creeps. Not disappointing the boy inside the man was an obsession he grew up with, fearful of bad surprises and sad endings.

In 2010, he graduates with a lot of useful tools, a ton of ideas, a great global network of peers and an overall very fun experience. He decides to go back to his birthplace set on building businesses that could only have positive impact on society. He wasn't the avid capitalist he thought he'd become anymore. All he was interested in was how he could create businesses that can earn reasonable profits while creating real added value in his community; and, mostly, how he could significantly impact his small nation and improve lives.

--

For many years, he went around the emerging region in the Middle East, North Africa and East Europe, taking care of some businesses he ventured with or created himself with different partners he met along the way. He was obsessed with efficiency and optimization, something he carried along from his engineering background. But also, he taught businesses to focus on their audiences, and taught them that profits are a reflection of satisfaction, loyalty and returning customers. What he wanted to proliferate was not a model, but rather, a philosophy of doing responsible business and driving positive impact in communities served by his businesses.

Ten years later, tired of helping businesses do responsible business, he realized that vile human nature was rooted deep in our behavioral patterns. The temptation to render businesses down to a pure revenue-and-cost exercise prevented many of his partners from seeing the big picture he was striving to help them see. He called it quits, sold all shares of his businesses and gave up on the modern capitalism altogether. He sold his penthouse in downtown Beirut and decided to move to a place where minds where still fertile and where a hope for a brighter future remained.

Autobituary of a dying man [Part 1 - Take 1]

2009-02-15T11:26:00.006+01:00

Jack King, aged a few decades and some years, dies tomorrow of no reason at all. A prominent figure of the unknown world and a hall-of-famer beyond the history books, tomorrow we shall be missing a man whose work has reached so many but was known to very few.

In 1982, Jack was born in the other city known as Paris in a middle class Christian family to Zwei King, a professor of German language and Sam Bouf who was still studying for her business degree by the time she gave birth to him.

Early on, Jack was the victim of the January effect. He was sent to school in September 1984, aged 2 years and 7 months. At the Catholic school of Sagesse, he was a slave to the stimuli of his parents and teachers, dedicating his entire asocial existence to satisfying older people’s desires and requests. To externalize his childish energies, his parents let him join a scouting association where he excelled as an active member and shone to leadership from the beginning.

At age 11, he decided that he didn't want to part his hair on the right anymore. His parents were receptive after a period of resistance. They allowed him to comb his hair backwards hoping this new "western" hairstyle would not affect his grades. As expected, it did not. At age 14, he had already published his first short novel.

Having finished school obsessed with success and drunk with competition, he had little orientation and so much potential that he ended up following the herd of bright top-of-their-class students and went to a top engineering school to learn how to build things for a wage. He also decided that he was never going to be a professional violinist; so he gave up his lessons after 11 years of courses and decided to learn to sing opera.

Six years in engineering school to obtain a five year degree taught him to deal with failures and humiliation. It also taught him that things should be done in a way that satisfies the end result and not for the theoretical utopian raison-d’être they teach you about. While he was in school, he also became a man and learnt everything there is to know about unfaithfulness and what it means to the significant other.

His career promptly took off as a software engineer, working for a couple of start-ups for short periods of time. His failure to abide to a hierarchy he did not believe in made him a bad fit for mushy cultures. He spent some time off trying to become a quick millionaire selling magic products to a dupable crowd. Then he tried to start a software company, with no avail. At that stage, he learnt that things are not as easy as they may seem to the hopeful ambitious. Jack also learned that shortcuts are a thing of the software engineering world, but less so of the real one.

He left the Paris of the East and settled in the Paris of the West after that. Over there, he pretended to work. As a tech consultant, he was paid good money but knew that he was just a passenger at a station waiting for the next train. While he waited in this marvelous city of light and darkness, he learned to charm, lie, cheat, betray, love, be betrayed and overcome hatred. He also learned how to defend himself in court, while enjoying Europe by car, train or plane.

In 2008, he joined a top business school in the US, and decided to part his hair on the left side like it was when he was 11. Behind him, he left a time of false hopes and scattered dreams and a place of beautiful memories and dear images. As he started his MBA, he had high expectations stemming from the culture he was exposed to at one of the finest programs in the galaxy. But as soon as the world economy fell down on its knees due to uncontrolled greed by amoral bankers, his opportunity frontier started to shrink at breakneck speeds. And as summer of 2009 closed in, he started realizing that he was heading down a dark tunnel. Being a fan of surprises, this kind of masochistic uncertainty entertained his overly agitated mind.

Dubai: Bubble or Boom -- The 1st Chicago Booth Dubai Trek

2009-01-08T20:27:00.002+01:00

In they flew from far and, well, farther away: Chicago, D.C., Beirut, Islamabad, Delhi, and Paris. Twelve people from eight different nationalities descended on the small city-state in the night of the 13th of December with the intent of going where no Boothie or Boother had ever gone before (excluding deans Kole and Morton of course). For the first ever Chicago Booth Dubai Trek, some came with passports that needed no visas, while others had nothing but the hopes of making it happen at the gates. Luckily, everybody made it through, and the race, up and down the Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai’s magnificent mile, started the second day without further delay.

Of the fifty odd local and international firms we reached out to, half were prompt to answer back and we scheduled meetings with sixteen of them. Another couple of consultancies asked for a closed list of participants. And of the 100 odd Private Equity firms that mushroomed in the region at breakneck speed, we were able to talk to four of them. Also, financial institutions from the retail to corporate to investment banks were all lined up for us to meet with. With no less than 30 in the UAE alone, Booth alumni in most institutions we visited heartily facilitated the setup, jubilated at our encounter and were thrilled to take our questions and their passport-holder souvenirs—all warm and friendly Chicago-style. And on a balmy December night, the alumni finally met the D-Trekkers at the trendy Calabar, situated just at a gold nugget’s throw from the tallest man-made structure in the world, the Chicago-Trump-Tower-looking “Burj Dubai” standing at shy under 2,600 ft—and boy does Dubai abound with superlative structures…

In the meetings, consultants flexed their muscles at how independent they are from the state of the economy—quite expectedly. They excitedly spoke of the work-life balance in Dubai, generous pay packages, expensive rents and crazy traffic, hot summers and warm winters, growth potential of the region and how all that translated in their work being much more exciting than what their peers are doing in mature markets. The six global consultancies we met had no different a speech than the usual: in good times, riding high, consulting clients mostly on growth strategies, while hiring like crazy to keep up with demand; in bad times, still proud to assist ailing companies to cut costs and restructure to survive, and, allegedly, proceeding with their hiring policy to stay ready for the next upturn. The life of a consultant is constantly awesome it seems. So optimism clearly set the consultants apart from the bankers in that place where nobody ever believed it could ever get cloudy a couple of months back.

And against the odds, we met more financial institutions than consulting firms or industry groups. Looking closely though, one can see why this isn’t surprising. Dubai, like most of the Arab world, has some characteristics that make it hard for outsiders to jump on the bandwagon without a significant presence in town; a history of trust, an established reputation, cut-throat honor codes and close-knit social networks make it hard for suitcase bankers to fly from London and hit the ground running, hoping to get a significant share of the delicious pie. That’s why most global investment firms had been keen on establishing themselves in Dubai as a hub to serve the region. And just like consulting firms, most banks did not fail to point out that the bulk of their work comes from the real gold mine of the region: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Dubai is above all a base camp for the hub-and-spoke business models. On their appetite for recruiting, the bankers were all poker-faced at best and despite their similar unclear point of views, blurry analyses and discounted-of-Q4 numbers (in brief: doom for now, boom for another day), most of them failed to hide their fear about the uncertainty looming ahead of Dubai and the region. And even more so when it came to setting time lines and time framing economic cycles. Surprisingly however, all this didn’t prevent one global investment firm whose bankers looked gloomier than others from calling one of ours for an interview after our meeting. And the outcome was that they want him for another interview. The trick was that our friend, during our meeting, made sure to use a keyword dear to the ears of bankers in the Gulf: Saudi Arabia. And to look even sexier, our friend threw in another magical term in the region: Islamic Banking.

On their prospects about the future, bankers were much more reflective of the state of the financial markets and the economy in general however. They were all skeptical but had somewhat differing outlooks about the future. Yet, all agreed that the real estate boom is now going to come to rational proportions, as the market gets purified from both speculators and free-riders. The real estate dementia would grind to a halt. But albeit this healthy return to scale, most agreed that pride-laden landmarks, especially those funded directly by the Maktoum ruling family, are more than likely to be completed despite the fact that the credit crunch has caught up with the region. That said, nobody was really worried about Dubai’s economy, and most expected Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich big-sister state, still awash with cash, to come in for the rescue at any moment as soon as Dubai decides to slim down its less-than-rational list of development. So the World islands and other lalaland-ish projects will not be completed—at least not during this downturn…

And last but not least, this piece on the miracle-city of the Gulf would not be complete if we don’t dedicate a word or two to the infamous Dubai traffic. The only means of intra-city transportation offered to the public in the UAE is taxi cabs—in two versions of course: the Toyota for the average expats, and the Lexus to insure that those who cab it out of the DIFC (Dubai International Financial Center) during rush hours get ripped-off. Soon however, the Sheikh Zayed metro line—yet another reasonable project?—will be up and running. Then, they’ll probably have a shadow of a solution to the jam-packed Sheikh Zayed Road by having a hopefully little congested elevated train that barely covers the main vein of Dubai, a la Chicago Loop, and that little to no people would use in a place where everybody owns a car.

It is hard to say whether Dubai is a boom or a bubble. Even the bankers and consultants over there tried to dodge that question. It is obvious though that everybody is still there, still betting on the future and expecting this fresh and very young experiential economy to take its time and correct itself. In a place where it is a shame to fail, it is hard to even envision the doom and gloom scenario. As long as there is pride and a lot of ego involved—backed with black gold and megalomaniac ambitions—as it usually is in that part of the world, odds are things will be fine in a near future. As for the D-Trekkers, overwhelmed by the presentations they attended from dusk till dawn, they did not fail to investigate the truth about the work-life balance of Dubai. So every night was an occasion to go out… and, yes: some long lasting friendships kicked it off and some really close ties, indeed, did get created...

GSB goes Booth! What’s in a name - just a sketchy change?

2008-11-07T19:46:00.009+01:00

Remember, remember, that time in November! That time when the wind of change did more than just blow over a mild Windy City – a time when change sent us a blow on the head as we sipped warm champagne and munched on cold hors-d’oeuvres in the crowded Rothman Winter Garden. As if November starting off warmer than October wasn’t eyebrow-raising enough, we would soon witness two very significant changes that would top all the craziness that had surrounded us till then in 2008: from our admission to the best graduate business school in the universe and those ridiculously awesome random walks, all the way to Turbo Micro midterms and the crash of the financial markets.

A couple of days after the United States elected the first African American president in an unprecedented sweeping victory—Barack Hussein Obama, Kumbaya!—, setting the bar high in terms of democracy, freedom and opportunity for the rest of the world, the Wind of Change strikes again. Just when we thought that was enough change for our slow-paced laid-back Midwest, we witnessed another twist of events that felt like a slap-on-the-face this time, for more than just sentimental reasons. Just as we thought we had seen it all and that we had stepped into a new era, we received a rather unusual email from Dean Ted Snyder. At 4 PM on that unforgettable Thursday, Ted Snyder emails the entire GSB family saying he wants to “share a historical moment with us” in the Winter Garden. The Chicago, then, GSB heard the “what-the-heck-was-that-about” question resonate across its named halls and rooms. Personally, that sent bad vibes down my spine. Curious to know what the Dean wanted to share with us, we gathered around “free” food and drinks (hoping it was not cut out of our own tuition fees, right?) in the Rothman Winter Garden, leaving the Kolver Café, the Peter M. May Student Lounge, the Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse and Eugene Fama classrooms, as well as the Ida Noyes hall all empty as a booth-town (‘booth’ meaning ‘ghost’ in Hindi).

******************

6:00 PM beeped on some geeky Casio watches. The Harper Center soon became the center of attention of the universe, attention rose and silence fell upon the crowd, as we held tight to our champagne flutes while a sharp-looking Dean Snyder splashed the news right to our faces from his tribune, stopping the breath in our throats. David Booth, a prominent investor and MBA alumnus who had carved his hedge fund business around Chicago GSB concepts and theories pioneered by Eugene Fama and other finance geniuses of our time, had just donated $300M. Not all cash, but he broke a lot of records by far. A great victory for higher education in this country and a greater one for the prestigious University of Chicago. But what did our glorious and top-tier B-school get for that? It got the B-name: Booth.

Chicago Booth. Kind of like the Chicago Bulls. But not as bullish. Kind of like Wharton, but not as outstanding. Kind of like Kellogg, but not as amusing. Not like Stanford anymore. Because, we have a name now. Damn the miseries of our weak endowment! Just when we started to become more known internationally and as we started to work on expanding our treks and getting our (ex-) name out there, somebody thought the timing was right to confuse people getting used to our brand, on those rankings, media channels and business cards. When somebody plunks down an insane amount of money to get the naming rights to a school, what are they really paying for? I'm in B-school now, so I'm allowed to say the B-word: Brand?! But in this instance, it was all about the endowment and not the brand. Although David Booth put up the right kind of money to crank up our endowment, I don’t think the brand got the same push our funds witnessed. This, I am afraid to say, was not an association with (more likely usurping of) what was really the work and achievements of generations of faculty and scholars who have come before. Isn’t it somewhat unrighteous for a single person to be able to lay claim to that just by opening his (fat) wallet? Can you imagine - Prof. Eugene Fama winning the Nobel Prize next year and they introduce him as the Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business?

I am curious to know what the alumni feel about this? Is it not up to that living organism of 33,000 strong businesspeople populating the globe from Wall Street to London, Hong Kong and Rio to make that decision? Doesn’t it feel like our identity has just been stolen and that an entire community's brand has just been sold to the highest bidder? Is this the only way to double our humble endowment? Is this the best solution the top business school in the universe can come up with? You may say my arguments don’t hold. Just imagine some Sheikhs from the Middle East throw some billions and save the US economy (cf. Sovereign funds). Would they want to call it the United States of Arabistan? If you said “yes” to that, we have a lineup of great courses for brand management in our Marketing Department: 37101, 37102 and 37203 (since we are so obsessed with numbering everything in this place). Alas none of those courses, I am afraid, teaches us "how to raise $300M of funds in one word".

I guess I am being too harsh; I should be a sport, get on the free market wave we are so keen about at our innovative school and enjoy the game. Oh - and I just loved some of my friends’ suggestions at the BSB, “Dude, you should become a billionaire and then change the school’s name again – Jihad Khalil School of Business!”– how’d y’all like that for a brand?

Essay: Tell us why we should pick you to join the cook-off between Chicago GSB and Kellogg?

2008-10-12T09:03:00.001+02:00

I used to live in France and am addicted to cooking with demi-sel butter. Actually, I am the one who is going to bring the (real home-made) Hummus to the next Epicurean dinner, since I am originally from Lebanon and we are known for colorful, delicious and multi-table stretching mezzes. I have been known to skew kebabs in my spare time, and I woo woman with my sensational Soupe à la fraise Savoyarde dessert. When financial markets are down, I spend my time grinding grilled eggplant to make mouthwaterting Baba-ghannouj. My pancake flipping style is legendary.

On Sunday nights, watching Entourage on HBO-E, I find myself dipping my famous home made Guacamole with my 5-minute-made tortillas -- which I cook in 2 and a half minutes. Sometimes, guests at my place are taken aback as I take out massive amounts of sirloins from my fridge and start to sauté them in sizzling salty butter and shallots, only to season them with anything I can get my hands on - and they actually end up tasting good to my by-then-drunk-on-cheap-red

-wine buddies... Little kids in my building love me for my unmatchable crispy chocolate chip cookies. And on rainy afternoons, the women of my block gather around my smoking baked potatoes soaking in butter. On hot summer days, I have been seen loudly grilling vegetables and sizzling pieces of fresh meat holding a cold bottle of beer on the decks of high rises. Chefs around the globe call me for tips. One time in the South of France, I won a Michelin star and lost it in a Casino betting on Martha Stewart becoming the next Yan Can Cook.. I also can actually cook - and do it for fun and for the love of the game.

Hope we'll be able to crunch out the cereal-loving competition!

Call me,
J.K.

Been there, herd that.

2008-10-12T08:36:00.002+02:00

So you know how it feels when you're somewhere just because somebody felt like going, and you ended up tagging along because you have nothing better -- or nothing period -- to do?

Well, I think I've been doing that quite often lately. And frankly, it hasn't been working out all so well for me. I am always feeling like I am only physically there, and my mind is elsewhere. Event tonight, while the crowd was good-looking and the joint was groovy, I felt out of place, and a couple of people asked me why I was so off or why I seemed like I am looking for something.
"I don't know.. looking for something?? well when I find it, I will let you know."

This thing has been working out all that well for me. I feel like I am losing money .. like last night's poker game. I was so not in the mood of being there. I was not in the game, and I had no game. I end up losing 50 bucks. For nothing. So I should probably stop following the herd and start doing things my way.

Like tonight. I was standing there barely pretending I was happy. Then at some point, I just walked towards the door. Focused to leave.. kept walking, got out of the joint and walked back home in 20 minutes. The best case of determination to do whatever I feel like doing myself in a while.

I am tired. Again. I need to find a way to stay on top of my duties, have fun and not be tired. I am not optimal, and I waste a lot of time...
On the other hand, I love this city. Chicago is a wonderful and lively place. Not too crowded for my taste and pretty vibrant to give you a big-city-life feeling altogether. I like its balance. Not so thrilled that I only got time to shop online... would have loved having a grocery store next door, but hey, you can't have it all.

Most of all, I am loving my school and my class is not that bad. I had worse in my previous school. Strangely enough though, I always have to deal with a different tar every time I move to a new place.. school.. or whatever. I don't know why. But I have to deal with it and I usually am.

Life goes on ever so normally. I have to work harder and more efficiently if I want to keep advancing towards my career goal.

* balance and focus *

Anatomy of a Random Walk

2008-09-20T18:03:00.002+02:00

- by Andrew Clark and Andres Naranjo,
MBA Class of 2010, University of Chicago GSB

Let me just say up front that Random Walks are absolutely worth it. Totally underrated. The biggest case of underpromising and overdelivering that I have seen so far. In the interest of documenting some whacky stories, we have decided to let you know how our random walk went down.

By accident or design, we had chosen the only homegrown random adventure as our destination: Alaska. Some of us loved guns, some of us were running from the border police, some of us thought bears were cute- we all had our reasons to stay in the US. Our first day started flying to Anchorage. All would have been well if the leathery flight attendant hadn’t been hitting on our new buddy JK. The conversation went: “Chicken or Fish? I turn 40 today and my husband is going to be a long way away in Seattle”. Lifejackets on, people! We eventually had to beat her with a stick to let our man rest in peace.

Upon our arrival to Anchorage we did the first thing that apparently any MBA student does, hit a pub – even though it was 12:00 midnight. On a Sunday. One drink later, we went to the most (in)famous restaurant in Anchorage - Leroy’s, where there was a dish called “12 dollars” that you could purchase for $5.95. A couple of able GSBers all went and ordered this in hopes of making a killing on the arbitrage…. But “12 dollars” turned out to be a turkey sandwich in glazed sugar French toast - bad luck boys, no one would swap it for a share in Lehman Brothers.

We spent our first night in a lovely B&B, where, for breakfast, the resident owner cooked black bear meatballs and caribou sausage with fresh pancakes, all while her husband told us about the dangers of becoming a tent burrito while going hunting. You are a tent burrito if a bear grabs you in your tent while hunting for deer. This guy had more stories than the bible and we could have listened for hours.

Our first drive to the Glaciers in Whittier was heightened after we noticed that our driver, Leal, a lovely American-Israeli second year, has her brain motor functions attached to her arms motor functions, thereby causing us to veer off the road when she looked at any scenery. Scenery: nice, driving: scary… and our buddy Will probably has bruises on his arms of how many times Andres held on to him for his life. The glaciers were lovely and sipping “hot otters” while watching the glaciers was memorable. “Hot otters”, by the way, are not heated, liquidized versions of the similarly named animal, but a lovely cocktail containing hot chocolate and “whatever alcohol they could get their hands on”.

On our second day driving north to Talkeetna, our other trip leader Ricky took us all fishing… that’s Ricky you know? The kinda guy that takes you fishing, gives you beer, and talks about the rims on his car. We love this guy! All was good until bam! Fish on hook! Amateur firsherman! Since nobody knew what to do with the big fellow, Will-The-Whacker grabbed a huge rock, jumped as high as he could, and at the highest moment, threw the rock down for it to gain maximum gravitational pull. He missed! Then he tried again and guppy was out cold. Eventually Andres-The-Cleaner stepped up to chop the head off and gut it, all while Andrew turned the color of an unbaked scone. Will honored the fish by glazing it with his signature Korean dressing in a BBQ a couple of days later. That same BBQ, in the Alaskan midnight twilight, saw the creation of a new signature dish for these parts – the Drewes Dog, affectionately known as a “Double D”. It was a special Leal concoction: take a loaf of bread and fold in half. Now smother in Thousand Island Dressing (TID). Now fill that bad boy up with canned corn. Now… slice a turkey sausage in the weirdest way you can imagine, make slivers as uneven as possible. Put those in there. Roll up and enjoy. Note that Drewes Dogs are enjoyed most if you have to take a long drive to purchase the dressing in a remote Alaskan town. Challenge Everything? Challenge the culinary arts, for sure.

It’s worth mentioning that the man who rented us all our fishing gear was named David Fish… how often does this happen? And we also kept David Fish’s business card because being the Alaskan Confucius he was, he was filled with fishing metaphors such as “Sometimes you just gotta swim upstream” and “Life is a fish, and then you marry one”. There was something kind of weird about this whole situation and I can’t help feeling that Ashton Kutcher was about to pop out of the van with glazed windows around the corner, informing us that we had been “punk’d”.

Next day, we hit Denali National Park. This was our test: nothing had been pre-organised and we had to get into the park, complete a hike, and get back. It started badly, when no-one knew where the park actually was, despite it being the size of Belgium. As we pulled in, there was dawning realization that you can’t explore it in a couple of hours in the afternoon, and we really should have been up earlier. It is that big that even to get half way in, the national park buses take 3 hours each way! After a considerable amount of administration, we managed to get in a bus – driven by Lois Berry, otherwise known as the People’s Grandmother. We saw wildlife aplenty, and ticked off nearly all of the ‘Big Five’ animals – indeed, by the end of the day, we had become insulated to the sight of a bear from miles away, and of a Dall Sheep (which appear to be “just big white sheep”). The hike was interesting, as there were no trails, and no obvious destination. So we just climbed, through 3-6ft tall bushes, to the top of the first summit we could find. At one point, we found a river, just slightly too wide to cross; for most of us, there was no choice – shoes off, feet wet, cross river. Not for JK. He’s an expert long-jumper don’t you know? And sure enough, he took a huge run and made the most spectacular jump you had ever seen! Spectacular because it didn’t go very far, and he ended up with the wettest feet of all.

On our fourth day we went rafting in Healy on the Nenana River – which got its name after two drunk guys argued over its name. The first one thinks it should be called Sourdough Bear River, and the other one says “na na na, I don’t think so…” and so Nenana came from the negating reply. The highlight was “Peaches”, our rafting guide. “Peaches” is the original California dude, gone pro-kayaker and now “doing summers in Alaska”. Peaches would simply blurt out rafting lingo like we understood him, something like this “Dude... so we ran this sweet little creamy terminal hydraulic which is supposed to be a grade VI, but its actually a V+ commercial, and we got totally stuck in the whirlpool and just had to go ragdoll for 30 not to max out our energy”. We’ve decided that any day now we are going to go ragdoll in class to save up our energy so we can just ride it out.

The trip was nearly over, but we still had time for more outdoor adventures! We managed to get up in a small plane to see the glacier network in central Alaska from above. It was truly amazing and a sight many of us will never forget. After a little bit of bargaining on the price, we got the opportunity to land on the glacier. Snow fight! The final full day, we then took a river cruise to some “grade VI rapids”… you could imagine the horror of Peaches, who had told us the previous day that you had to travel to Africa to find real grade VI. It was all very serene until right at the end – the boat had been specially designed to go on pretty much any rapid, anywhere. And so we did! For as much as it looked like a conservatory-on-river, that boat could actually do some pretty mean turns.

That night, we hit the town pub to support local hero “Heather” who had just signed up for the 2009 Iditarod race. After getting bidding numbers, downing a few beers and eating yet more caribou burgers, we got right into the bidding action. We bagged amazing items such as a loaf of bread for $25 (a gift to Will who was turning 29), special edition t-shirts with Fast Eddie, Heather’s favourite dog, on them for $ 25, and Andrew bought a state-of-the-art Artic Cat Snowmobile Backpack. Nothing topped Andrew taking the microphone and asking the auctioneer in his flawless English manner “So I can attach this to my snowmobile?”, and all the Alaskans nodding “oh yeahhh”. It’s all about machinery in Alaska.

We headed back to Anchorage, stopping at one last pub, and then safely flying back on the red-eye. Thanks to every one of our crew who provided amazing memories, and the leaders for making it happen. This is one trip where we certainly lived up to the name ‘random’.

13

2008-07-31T15:19:00.005+02:00

I was born on the 13h day of the month of Janus.

January is the 1st month of the year. And it is the 13th month of any previous year.

At age 13 I grew by 13 centimeters and I remember it was my best year at school probably, acing all my courses and topping all 6 sections of the 9th grade. It’s also the year I lost all the excess weight I accumulated on my lazy body between ages 8 and 11.

I wrote my first novel at age 13, and finished at age 14 when it had 103 pages.

I wore the number 13 on my basket ball team in high school.

I took my driving license on the 13 of January 2000 – just as I turned 18.

My passport number starts with the number 13.. RL01317XX...

I once fell in love with a girl that was born on a January 13. It was the highlight of my life. Yet, it ended pretty shamefully and did not last as long as I thought it would. It lasted as long as it could though, and that was enough.

And the day I got my French driving license… exchanging it for my Lebanese license to be exchanged by this one. The date is the 13th of February.

I only noticed that… as I sat in the Turkish embassy while I was getting my visa to go to Istambul, when I realized my number in the line.. was 13. That was so funny.

When I came back to take my Turkish Visa 15 days later, I also took a number. 13.

Then I stepped back and started seeing this number more frequently.
13...

Youngest a minor can watch a PG-13 rated movie by the MPAA without the recommendation of parental guidance or parental consent.

Jesus and his apostoles. 13. The number of participants in the Last Supper.

On the periodic table of elements, aluminum has an atomic number of 13.
Al (13, 27).

In 1782, Congress appointed a design artist, William Barton , to bring a proposal for the US national seal. For the reverse, Barton suggested a 13 layered pyramid underneath the Eye of Providence. The motto which Barton chose to accompany the design was, Deo Favente Perennis, "Enduring by the Favor of God". It is a 13 letter latin expression. It was later changed to Annuit cœptis.

Today, the Great Seal of the United States has an eagle with 13 arrows representing the unity of the original 13 colonies. E pluribus unum is the motto found on the seal, along with Annuit cœptis and Novus ordo seclorum, and adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782. E pluribus unum -- Out of many one. 13 letters.

13. It is the smallest integer with eight letters in its spelled out name in English. It is also the age at which children become teenagers.

13 is also the second happy prime, following 7, and the rethorical 1.

There are 13 Archimedean solids.

In Judaism, 13 signifies the age at which a boy matures and becomes a Bar Mitzvah.

The number of principles of Jewish faith according to Maimonides. 13.

According to the Torah, God has 13 Attributes of Mercy.

In Mesoamerican Divination, 13 is the number of important cycles of fortune/misfortune.

It gets more interesting...

13 goes into 999,999 exactly 76,923 times, so vulgar fractions with 13 in the denominator have six digit repeating sequences in their decimal expansions. It is thus the smallest half period prime.

13 is the largest number whose factorial is less than 10¹⁰. This means 13 is often the largest factorial a pocket calculator can represent without scientific notation.

13 is the only positive integer that is the fourth root of the sum of the squares of two successive positive integers (119 and 120).

The number of circles, or "nodes", that make up Metatron's Cube: 13.

The 13th root is the most famous integer root calculation record, because it is the first prime number over 10 such that the last digit of a 13th integer power is the same as the last digit of its 13th root!

In base 10, the smallest prime with a composite sum of digits is 13.

13 is a repdigit in base 3 (111).

There exists an aperiodic set of 13 Wang tiles.

Fear of the number 13 is termed triskaidekaphobia. The 13th of a month is likewise ominous, particularly when it falls on a Friday in some English-speaking cultures, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Belgium and Germany (see Friday the 13th) or a Tuesday in the Greek and Spanish-speaking world.

13 was once associated with the Epiphany by Christians, as it is said the child Jesus received Melchior, Balthazar and Gaspar, the three Magi on the 13th day of his life.

When a group of 13 objects or people is divided into two, three, four or six equal groups, there is always one leftover, or "unlucky", object or person.

According to another interpretation, the number 13 is unlucky because it is the number of full moons in a contemporary year, but two full moons in a single calendar month (mistakenly referred to as a blue moon in a magazine article of the 1940s) only happens about every 5 years.

Inside of a Lufthansa plane, row numbers go straight from 12 to 14. Where is the 13th?

The day that the Knights Templar were slaughtered in a collaboration between King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V finishing with the burning at the stake of Grand Master, the prince Jacques De Molay: Friday the 13th.

The legion with which Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon was the Legio XIII Gemina -- the 13th legion.

The Apollo 13 spacecraft malfunctioned after being launched on April 11th at 13:13 CST, forcing it to return to Earth without a landing on the moon and imperiling its crew.

After 13 years of being the richest man in the world, Microsoft Corporation chairman Bill Gates lost this title, according to Forbes magazine's 2008 list of the world's billionaires--to a Mexican of Lebanese origin: Carlos Slim Helu.

According to the ancient Mayan culture, it is foretold that when these 13 crystal skulls are reunited, they have the power to save humanity from a horrible catastrophe. All 13 skulls must be reunited by December 21, 2012, which is the marked as Doomsday--the last day recorded on the Mayan calendar. There are supposedly 4 of the 13 ancient quartz skulls found thus far.

If you play too much with the number 13, some odd things could fall into your hands...

Things Could Get Kruel.

Lady Diana died when her car hit the 13th pillar of a tunnel in Paris, on August 31, 1997.

August 31, 2008:
Exactly 11 years later, it happens to be my last day on this job in Paris.

Tomorrow, I will be on a new adventure.
Oh.. and my full name has 11 letters -- when written in Latin letters.
This post has 43 facts. A prime number. My address in Paris was 43 Avenue de Versailles.

∴

Brainscapes

2008-07-25T01:56:00.011+02:00

There is a lot of progress and daring innovations waiting to happen..

1- iTV : on the regression of television and its use, with respect to the advancements made in the mobile and computer industries.

2- iWeb : the web is becoming crowded. I think the whole approach of web browsing is become quite blurry. There needs to be a new protocole to help people "navigate" the web. More free and less biased (by commercial search engines)
* Google are heading in that direction: www.panoramio.com is just the dawn of that era.
They understand there is something unreal .. elusive about the internet. The web needs to look like our world.. just like programming took a turn towards the Object Oriented..

3- Green Energy: oil producing countries should take on the next generation of green energey. As the oil reserves dry out, the OPEC countries will be dethroned from their global role as energy providers to the world. In less than 25 years, the countries that take on the green challenge and find an efficient and sustainable way to replace oil with a cleaner substitute will be the next OGEEC (.Green Energy..)...
Syriana (2005)

---

Of lost personal marks and shaken comfort zones

2008-07-01T20:05:00.017+02:00

In 1987, my dad looked at me and said.. "there she goes, and my heart goes with her"... I looked at his sad almost teary eyes, standing with him in the empty parking space that used to be occupied for years by the same car. Then I looked at his old white shaky Renault 12, '79 model, being driven away by some buyer who had taken it, I remember very well, for 600 USD--for whatever that was worth then. I felt really sad for my old man.

I couldn't explain it. I was only 5. Real cars were not my favorite toys then.
Back then I thought, "why is dad so sad? I thought he was happy to know that since the old clunky Renault 12 is gone, he can now go and pick up his new swanky red Renault 18! I don't get it..."

The year is 2008. I am in Paris where, amongst other things, almost anything can be shipped--except your mother, as the Shanghighlanders would have had it.

In the process of selling out my belongings here in Paris to move across the Atlantic, I put up for sale my dear 32" LCD TV. Ten days later, sitting in the Business Center of the New Barrière Golf Hotel on a warm June Saturday night on the hills of Deauville, I clicked on "Accept Purchase" on PriceMinister.com. My TV was officially sold and.. well .. not mine anymore. That was a tiny moment of triumph.

Monday morning, I started packing my TV to take it to the post and send it. It was not a heavy piece of hi-tech: just 13.5 Kgs, mentionned its original cardbox which I had kept all along. Tuesday night, the TV was all nicely wrapped in its 10 x 40 x 60 inch orignal box, original wrapping et al. I was there looking at it almost not believing I was giving it away. For a moment before carrying it down my building, I looked at the empty desk where it used to stand.. the empty white spot it is going to leave behind it.. I stared at this place that a friend was subletting me for some months now. My place was calm and it felt cold in there.

What was wrong with me? I was going to sell my TV for a bit more than half of its original price. I had to do it because I lived in a country where I didn't own a square inch to store a nail. I shut down my emotional senses and focused on the job at hand. I had gotten early from work, around 6:30 PM - but the post office was only going to be open for another 30 minutes, and not a second more.

I carried the box and was down a minute later. 15 floors in a new highrise wind down like 4 floors in my old 30's building elevator. I was out and my Velib bike was there waiting for me. I had the idea of rolling the large rectangular crate on the bike instead of carrying it on my back over to the La Poste office which was some 4 blocks down from where I lived. The time is 6:45. I should be able to make it on time, I thought.

I untied the Velib from the post. Lifted the TV swiftly and placed it on the seat from one side and the steering rod from another. It looked steady. I smiled at my ingenious idea. And rolling I started. A few feet.. I stopped. The leather bike seat was slippery and the TV was not going to stay there for long unless I did something. Then I noticed the steering rod is metal slippery as well ! I was just realizing that what sounded like a perfectly logical plan in my mind, was much harder to accomplish in real life. Damn it!

I cooled down, because it was so hot and I was in my suit, minus the jacket of course. I felt my face turn tomato red.. and I froze there for some seconds. Looked at my watch again. 6:49. OK. Calm down. Concentrate, analyze, move slowly, correct, move again, stay slow and don't rush it. The office is close but I can't roll as fast I think I can. And so I started my slow march, leaning the bike slowly against me and with my shoulder and head, giving the big thin box a couple of support points against me, while with one shaky hand, I was holding the crate's lower corner and the seat together, and the other corner and the steering rod at the same time. I went slowly not thinking about my speed nor the time. I had to focus on this new movement I was barely mastering. Balance, steadiness, pace, breathing, load balancing and just keep pushing slowly.

I felt like a 5 year old. In my mind, I could only envision that it should have been such an easy process,.. and in reality I was realizing how much it could turn out into a failed mission. But I shut the horns of doubt and kept going.. half way through I realized I was also watching out from people, bikers and cars around me.. I was after all on the street. I looked at my watch.. it was 6:53. I felt I was going a bit faster. My hands were more shaky and my nerves were on guard to keep the whole trapezian balance. I kept going, feeling I was just a hair faster every minute. I was starting to actually master this movement, and without intentionally wanting to go faster, I actually was.

I crossed three lights and turned left down rue Linois off Rue Robert de Flers, and the post was there. Another 100 meters. I was walking faster now, reminding me of the last meters of Mikhail Baryshnikov in White Nights before he crossed the frontiers and was freed! It was those last meters that were shaky and that I amazingly feared most actually.

So there I was, from a simple practical plan in my mind to transport the "light" TV crate on a bike, to finding myself faced with an exercise my body was totally uncomfortable with, to a corrective technique of mind alertness and body adaptation, to sufficient mastering of what I was doing.. to.. most dangerously, an irresoponsible, yet unvoluntary out-of-control precipitation that could have plunged me in my own demise. And then, I slowed down again. It seemed to me like the materialisation of the way I did things in life.. I start off lento and grasp the whole thing, and then, sadly, I get anxious to finish a now-mastered action and start burning the stages and rushing to the finishline remarkably bored. So I slowed even more, knowing that I wanted to avoid looking at my watch and feeling the meters wind down as I approached the office's main entrance.

A few minutes later, I touched base. The door was open, a clerc was free and another busy; I look at the watch on the wall, standing there all sweaty and just as physically and mentally exhausted from the 12 minute concentration exercise, TV leaning on my shoulder, head and hands while lying on the bike. It was 6:59. I rolled with the bike inside the office slowly, and the clerc smiled and shouted a welcome that seemed half french humour, half french obtuseness: "Les vélos sont interdits ici monsieur!" (Bikes aren't allowed here sir). I smiled and kept walking towards his desk, making sure he understands that I prefered he help me instead of throwing sermons. Near his desk I leaned the big box to the other side and pushed the TV slowly onto the desk.

- C'est lourd monsieur? (is it heavy sir?)
- Non.. 13 kilo et demie (no, 13 and a half kilos)
He lifts the box with pain and goes to the back. He comes back.
- 19 kilos monsieur. (19 KG sir)
- Quoi? vraiment.. 19! (what? really.. 19)

That was a good thing though. My mind thought it was moving a 13 kilogram box on a bycicle. My body was actually doing that with practically twice the weight. How amusing the treachery of the mind.. How pitiful the submissiveness of the body.

I am going to miss that thing. My view of the internet and the way I interacted with it daily will surely never be same again. And without all the colors and motion it used to fill my small flat with, it is sad to say it is really lonely without that thing. Typical material human nature. Typical attachment to places, people and marks that bring new satisfactory equilibriums to our existence. I think that forced change is good. It helps us stay new, and prevents us from sinking into the dullness of habit and comfort.

On I move.

Traveling light -– with just one burden on my passport

2008-06-26T01:15:00.004+02:00

Flying back home to Paris from Stockholm with KLM, I was reading the FT’s Sporting Life column by Simon Kuper, a journalist born in Uganda, and who lived in Holland, Germany, England and the US. I had intentionally left my laptop back home in Paris; a cure for my web-addicted eyes. On my way to Stockholm Saturday morning, I had happily snatched, as usual, a copy of the Financial Times Weekend Edition—eye candy for any news-hooked mind on holiday.

A few months earlier, I had been admitted for an MBA at the University of Chicago Graduate School Business. In my opinion, that was my most self-gratifying achievement to date. Yet, the cherry on top was served to me a couple of months after my admission, when I received a certain email from Rosemarie Martinelli, the Director of Admissions at the GSB. She was writing to tell me I was one of four applicants she had selected out of the MBA admits this year, to write a bunch of articles to the Financial Times over the next two years. She was wondering whether I was interested by that opportunity.

Did I say yes?... I jubilated. I, an Arabic native speaker—although “hexalingual”—born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, was being offered a fragment of the limelight in the international journalism scene. I, the product of a child who only dreamed once of writing novels and sharing ideas with the world, was being offered the chance to do just that—yet, on a golden tribune. Did I say yes? Actually, I remember very well I did not sleep before 4 in the morning the night I got Ms. Martinelli’s proposal. That’s how much I was excited. Ms. Martinelli got my email reply the same night of course, with ample thanks and swanky words of appreciation and excitement. Now it was all going to come down to one decision from FT’s Business Education Editor, Della Bradshaw. She was supposed to contact all four of us from the GSB for a screening to choose one name to be printed under an article in FT’s MBA Diaries. And as I write this on a plane, I know that this is far from being true—yet.

Actually, twenty two days on from Ms Martinelli’s email, I am still waiting for Ms Bradshaw to call or contact me. However, as each day passes, and although I try not to think about it too much, I constantly fail in my denial. In those thoughts marinating in the background of my mind, “waiting for that phone call” has been lurking dead in the center. And day by day, I feel the chances of being contacted winding down from slim to none; but just today, an old fear resurfaced and started haunting my mind again.

Is it because of where I come from? Or is it just because of my name? Is it because of that same “stain” haunting my life again? The same one that makes me get random-checked almost every time at US airports? The same one that makes people in the West turn in their seats whenever they read or hear it? Is that it again? Is it?

I can’t frankly say, and although I try to follow most advice given to me by well educated people on how to deal with it—i.e. be cool and smile—well, it rarely works. Talk is easy but, to be honest, the burden is a heavy one to carry around the world today.

The name is “Jihad”. Born in a catholic family in war-torn Beirut, my grand father, a self-proclaimed savant, decided it would be wiser to give me a “neutral” first name (i.e. a name that was neither Christian nor Muslim). He believed it would protect me from what was know as “execution on identification”—a barbaric technique of vengeance used by most sides of the conflict during the Lebanese civil war. It consisted of detaining people at random checkpoints, asking for their religion (that used to show also on the old Lebanese ID) and kidnap them to be executed shortly after if they turned out not to have the same religion as the militiaman in charge. Consequently, “Jihad”, a fundamentally Arabic word meaning “internal struggle”, and a neutral first name in multi-confessional Lebanon, had also become a very common given name among the newborns of Christians in Beirut of the 70’s and 80’s.

That was all good until the “mudjahideens”—fanatic volunteer-warriors who have adopted the “Islamic Jihad” to defend the “Nation of Islam” around the world had sprung to the foreground of the world’s attention. And ever since, and as the “loyal” brothers keep aggressively “defending” their cause against the “demonic” West, I have been paying the price in the naturally non-Arabic speaking Western parts of the world, where there is little understanding of the Levant’s co-existing and confusingly mixed cultures.

So now, while others get stopped and searched for having a 200 ml tube in their carry-on, or for triggering the alarms of metal detectors, I get stopped and searched for weapons and “strange” material just for having… the wrong name on my passport. And while scores of other applicants worry about their GMAT, resumes, essays or even their TOEFL score, I have to pray as hard as I can—with my little religious and Cartesian heart—that my application material don’t fall in the hands of an evaluator with more subjectivity than professionally advised, and less sympathy towards Arabs-with-an-eye-browsing-first-name than the bare usual.

I wonder if it would please the world if I do like I did in Paris, where, for 2 years as a web technology consultant, I went by the name of “Julian” to make sure I don’t bump into a poorly thought question by a little educated person. It was an amusing two year experience lived “undercover” à la James Bond.

Another nationality with another brand new “common” first name could fix all that, I know. And what a relief it would be to me from this tiring meaningless and almost daily predicament. But knowing myself, I think I have become that which I was named for: a “struggler” for all righteous causes. So I think I’ll end up sticking to the non-conventional and harder path to get the message through: instead of changing my identity to hide who I am and what I represent, I choose to enlighten and evangelize people, rather than keeping them in their dark comfort zone.

*This article was sent to Ms Bradshaw, only to learn a day later through Ms Martinelli that somebody else was chosen to be the Chicago correspondant to the FT. I wasn't contacted by Ms. Bradshaw until a couple of week after that... with nothing but a short regret letter...

To hell with it -- I'll just become CEO of the Economist...

stumbling to bed

2008-06-23T20:19:00.002+02:00

I am beyond exhausted.
I can feel every part of me ache. Each in its own neural flavor.
If every neuron was a light, my body would have now looked like a glittering Christmas tree... and how I miss those. Distant fragments of a past life.

Days are long in the summers of Paris. But my aching body just can't wait for the night to throw its dark veil on the city of lights.

My feet are worn out of eurotrotting. Soon all this will pass.. and my vagabond shoes will find their new playground on a new continent.

Off to sleep in broad daylight.

Bonne nuit.

~

in limbo

2008-06-17T09:16:00.011+02:00

And when I want to write, my hands are not there ..

When I can write, my mind is gone.. and my attention blown to smithereens.

[Play]

I took a walk with another dear friend of mine,

Down from the Sâcré Coeur de Montmartre,

To the Gare du Nord where he had a train to catch..

From a majestic site above, down to a cradle of poverty and filth.

I walked with him to his train..

Then I was back on my way home..

I felt weird. I was hungry. I was empty.

I walked slow. My eyes were kind of blurry.

Soundwaves came vaguely and made no sense.

I was invisible. And the world alien through my lens.

Hmmm.. this was meant to be prose.

And obviously _ verses _

Is all my mind can now propose…

Sometimes, you stroll above the ground not feeling your lazy feet

Fail to dodge an army of cold eyeballs – wondering who they were

Walk on down streets of uncertainty – searching for yourself

In a city where you live – she doesn’t know who you are

Look at those people around you – faceless strangers

Feel the tickling smells of filth – foiling your breath

Your reflection in a mirror – but see another one

Think of a fading family – a nostalgic burden

Where are you going? Where are you going?

Where are you… ?

Are you going?

Are you?

Who?

When my fingers are ready to listen… my mind is gone.

When my ideas turf in, I am no longer present; I am alone.

The sounds of the world flush through my mind.

But my memory is asleep and my eyes are blind.

I talk like a zombie - I lie, I act, I pretend.

I am not here. Not here. I deceive, I blend.

These white eyeballs are tired pink.

Ivory teeth soaked in coffee black.

Rotating chairs and driving seats,

Have stabbed daggers down my back.

Keep looking for you in every hopeful look

In every flowery scene, in every romantic book

Time is running out, but my heart is dead stuck

Searching for an other you before it turns to rock.

I set my sails just after you – the eye of my perfect desires,

I keep creating, you, every time a new face, with all new fires.

And everything I do, everytime I wake up, every hurdle I jump,

Is my way of composing the unique inevitable path - that will show you up.

I may never find you, meet you, smell you, know you.

But I’ll teach myself, I promise, to keep my heart alert,

And determined to find you – and possess - and free - and adorn you.

~

Anew

2008-05-23T01:21:00.004+02:00

New beginnings require new places.
New beginnings are new stories, with brand new faces.
New stories require new ink, new quills, and new sheets.
New smells. New lights. Foot loose and no laces.

That inner Voice is keeping me awake.
Time to pay it more attention and lend it a quill.
That quill that cannot any longer hold still,
Will break down closing walls for tomorrow's sake.

That urge is going to drive me ill.
I better dust off and get busy until
I do whatever I must do to fulfil
This dream I have. My destiny. My will.