The outcome

Dont do it, Dont do it, Dont do it, Dont do it, Dont do it, thats all that has been on my mind today!

What I do not want to do is something that if done it would move me from being a positive influence for some one i care about to being a pest.

See the debate that has been raging in my mind... and around various living rooms, smokey stairwells and the mobile phone airwaves... has been whether to reveal my feelings to some one i have grown to really care about over the past few months.

Now, as you can already decipher, I have been twisted over a person i honestly thought could be the one.

My only problem is that i cannot get myself to admit it or confront that person with my emotions.

After many debates and conversations i grew the courage and resilience!

I found that releasing these feelings out in to the open actually feel a lot better than just bottling them. A weight was lifted off my shoulders and the fear that I had was unfounded!

The response though... it was another thing all together ;)

It was the response I have been longing for =D

but hold on a second.... lets track back for a minute.... and come back to the real world!

I did muster up the courage and I had the best line ever to do it, or so I thought.

Now this person i have been rambling on about is someone that i like for who she is including all the faults and quirks. The beauty of that person with in shines outwards so brightly that its hard to avoid.

The strength of character and detirmination are so admirable that it is comparable to figures in history that were adored and followed by many of our ancestors and predecessors.

But today all this changed when I was brushed aside by the realities of life, I have had so many chances to be honest and clear from the beginning but now i think it's too late.

I might be slightly dramatizing the situation but knowing my impatient self this is how i really feel.

The dismissal was with out even letting me reveal the truth of how i felt, or even a hint of it. My hesitation was the noose I hung my self with.

From past experience, any attempts to salvage are useless. Strike while the Iron is hot! thats the new rule I will go by.

Over the past few weeks, i will have to admit, I have fallen in love and have fallen hard. All that stuff about love at first sight bla bla bla.... BELIEVE IT !

its true and its out there.

Those who can DO and those who cant TEACH so my lesson to you all is to live and learn.

Live and learn just like i did because if you overcome your own personal insecurities and do all the right steps, like a chess grandmaster, there are unforeseen things that can fudge up your track.

i will now hesitantly post this blog and just move on and try to pick up my shattered self.

The only thing that is going to stay in my mind is: What if i held on and waited some more before I gave up?

But bleh - like one of my oldest friends told me last weekend - just live your life like she never existed and toss her in to the darkest corner of your brain.

clarity

Resolutions resolutions to the ever damning problems!

Since my last post I have come to so many resolutions to untangle myself and return on the path crime busting-ness :p.

Of all the answers I came to this one.

This crap happens to every one! live life, move on and what will happen will happen.

Do not hold on to strings and stop chasing windmills.

I came to the realization that the majority of humanities problems comes from the simple power we have of boundless imagination.

When one sees something one starts to add assumptions and tie unrelated facts to it leading to the person not being able to differentiate between what is real and what is not and finally the person's life skews out of control in to a path that is hard to retract from.

Therefore - if a person goes through the emotional 'roller coaster' and then clears ones mind things can look a lot clearer.

Now go away and listen to Jonny Nash's I can see cleary now to get what i feel like :p

Peace

Twisted

Hey ppl! it has been over a year since I last posted any thing on my blog, its partly due to my new job at The National newspaper. Since we last met i have started on a new chapter which has went exceptionally well for the past 17 months.

However the reason that brings me back to share with you my thoughts has nothing to do with my career or work but with a more personal thing that many of you have already experienced or will surely experience in your lifetime.

Its the twisted feeling that sends butterflies, or more like bats, scurrying around in your stomach.

That feeling that makes you wake up early every morning to be somewhere, you should not be but you go there still.

That feeling which makes you want to give up your sight in just for one more glimpse of that - lets call it subject - :p

Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have grown now to understand what these silly romantic flicks were all about. What the hell Shakespear was blabbering about when i was reading him in eighth grade. What our parents talked to us about when we were kids about their relationships.

I would love to explain it to my self in a rational manner but i can not. I even tried to seek answers from many people but none of which were satisfying.

This twisted feeling has haunted my since the last week of December and only grew stronger and harsher with every day passing.

Of late i have become a very short tempered and moody individual - even moodier than i usually am! My chest tightens with every buzz of my fone, i get excited with every blip of my messenger.

Since December my activities have drastically changed - I started reading a lot more than i did before, I became an early bird and turned in to a movie buff!

I have always been these things before but of late I have become intensely engrossed in them.

Knowing my self I can say that I have been through this roller coaster before but it has never been this intense. Its like a roller coaster that has its own mind. A roller coaster that is so unpredictable you would be holding on with the skin of your teeth for bare survival.

I know some of you have looked at your lives like a five chapter book, like i did - Chapter one school, chapter two college, chapter three career, chapter four marriage and chapter five what the accumulation of all these things lead to.

For me this book was ripped in to shreds and turned in to confetti since the last week of December.

For the first time in my life I am now placed in a position where i feel suffocated by my own emotions and held back by fear and indecisiveness.

The me of pre December would have seen it, scooped it, hit it and moved on. The me of today cannot even plan his next day before he checks if there was any possibility of a glimpse.

Its sad, really really sad. I hope for all of you out there not to go through this because its unfair and inhumane.

The sad inevitable end is surely disappointing. I know that because when ever i took a leap of faith in to the unknown it more often than not ended disappointingly.

Nevertheless I will still push onwards and - like a fool - hope for the best :[

60 days later

Hiya doin People!

I know i have not kept my word, ok i am a lazy b@stard i agree. i have not written a single word since may 6 on the blog but i have to say i was working hard on finding a job!

its exactly 2 months later and i am very close to signing a contract, most of you already know where so i just wont say it :)

well what has been going on in the past 60 days? for once i have had two stories, back to back published on the front page of the national, u can check em dated 23rd and 24th of june.

Since then i had a few failed projects, eh eh eh trying to set up a comedy show amongst other things.

But today i am writing to yall from the beautiful south east asian country of Malaysia!
i have been here ten days now and will stay here for some time until my work papers are finalised.

My time in malaysia has been amazing due to the help of my good friend Sanjay Sathyan's brother Praadhip.

i arrived in Kuala Lumpur on the 25th of june, the eve of my birthday and it has been a roller coaster ride since. Partying like rock stars and doing the do!

Malaysia is a really interesting country and specially Kuala Lumpur or KL as the locals call it.
Its a country of a unique ethnic mix, the Malays, Chinese and Indians are the three blocks of the ethnic pot here.

The Malays represent the Muslim ideals of the country while the chinese represent the street market and production power and the indians represent the capitalistic power of this country.

sitting here writing at the Starbucks in Petaling Jaya i can see around me on every table Malay chinese and indians sitting together and laughing or chatting about every thing from the current riots in china to the iranian election results. We say Dubai is a melting pot but honestly, thats bull crap!

Bieng black my self i usually face discrimination in one way or another in different countries around the world, here i have not encountered it once. people are chilled, non expectant and laid back.

only down side to the country is...... ...... ......... still trying to find onme for now!

Honestly i would advice people in Dubai to consider KL as a great quick 4 day holiday destination.

You can come and stay at a six star hotel for only 500 dhs a night! i am staying at a governemtn owned hotel which is really nice and has big rooms with great service for only 112dhs a night, tell me where can you get a price like that any where in the gulf!

The nighlife here is amazing, stuff is so cheap u can spend 300 dhs and be the king of the bongo in KL, and thats going royal.

check out the flight offers in the malaysia arlines website and im sure you can find bargains.

In any case, will post some thing soon, but dont hold your breath!

Freedom of the press....what press?

Hiya doin boys and girls.

this is the life after career death now. well i have to be honest, last night i recived a great peice of advice from a friend that i intend to fullfill.

i was told that in order to succeed i have to set a personal discipline which i should follow religiously, so much that it turns into a habbit. knowing my self i need that sort of discipline. what makes this important is the fact that one should not be the sort of person who waits to be ordered around, one should know what to do and just do it.

that makes you your own boss, and at this time i intend to be my own boss, :)

the personal disicipline i intend to follow is going to be writing.

i vow to you that to my best efforts i will try to write you guys a story every day from my personal experiences. at times they will be short and at other times they will be full fleged features. but at least 100 words every day.

this will be my first one, well here goes!

JOURNALISM FREEDOMS IN THE UAE, WHERE REALLY IS THE PROBLEM?

A few days ago an interestin in focus article was published at gulfnews about journalism freedom. A side bar written by Abbas Al Lawati was focusing on the fact that more emiratis are needed in the business and they are the ones holding the real power behind pushing for more freedoms.

i agee in full with Abbas's conclusions but i would also like to highlight that the problem does not only last there. in uae journalism there is a plague of ethno centric styles bieng imposed upon publications.

in any local news paper today the reporting team in the trenches are either young residents who have been in the country for years before starting, educated here or even born here or they would be highly qualified individuals from abroad who have no concpet of the cultural fabric that is the UAE.

the editorial team usually would be either from major papers in south asia or east asia and at times europe or the US.

the editors are usually either locals or europeans.

now what is the problem with such a mix?

in my opinion to have unbiast, truthful reporting that would make sense to all the readers you do not need to look at market reports or who our readers are. first and foremost you should know where u live and all the back doors like the back of your hand.

i belive from editor to janitor, you have to have been raised in the UAE. its true there are not enough emiratis out there but there are more than enough people born here, in my book if you have not spent at least 15 years in the country you dont qualify.

let me give you an example, bringing a copy editor fromt he times of india who has been here for six years working. that editor will always implement what he knows best, indian journalism. in the uae the ceo or the tourist do not want to read about indian issues, or what shah rukh khan ate for breakfast, honestly, even if there 30 billion indians in the country. people want to read something in a unified language that makes sense to u and me. for such ethnocentric stroies there are 1000's of publications in thier home countries which ar available here.

for example, i would rather read about the over population of Hor al Anz district in Dubaiand unhygenic living conditions there than the philipino choir which one an award at a kareoke show!

getting back on the subject this is the UAE's press freedom limitation in my opinion. i will site an example, last summer when the whole beach sex incident hit all the papers, gulf news had the story, they ran it as a small side bar to a bigger beach decency story. in my paper a colleague alerted me to the story and i went forward to the indian news editor and requested for it to be run the next day. he looked at it and dismissed it, for two reasons, it was not significant enough for him and it was not an enterprise story.

i sat back and told him that he may have just missed on the biggest story of the summer. and he did.

this was not the first incident, many more followed, such as kerry winter's case, and the dubai fraud inquisition. the guy is definately not the sharpest tool in the shed when it coems to his news sense.

such shortcomings with in our journalists in dubai are consistent. we have to create a grass roots movement and recruit people who breathe the same air as our public and not concentrate on expertise that most ceirtainly lack it.

Arab Political Rap Made in Dubai

Published: April 02, 2009, 08:59
Thought provokers: Reality rap By
Awad Mustafa, Staff Reporter

They call themselves thought-provokers, even activists, but with no political affiliations.

Meet a new breed of rappers, for whom freedom of expression knows no bounds here in Dubai. Part of an underground hip-hop scene, they go about airing views that might not be welcomed in their home countries.

Raising awareness

Fouad Abdul Hadi is raising awareness on the plight of war victims in Palestine, where he grew up. Witness to the atrocities of the Jenin massacre in 2002, Hadi, 14 then, began to write about the mayhem that surrounded him.

“I thought the only conflict in the Arab world was in Palestine but when I came to Dubai, I learnt about the humanitarian crises in Darfur and Somalia,” said Hadi.
“After seeing that people don’t care any more about what happens in Palestine, I decided to remind people of this and other forgotten regions.”

Hadi’s producer, Jabbar or Hani Khateeb, is also a Palestinian but he has never been to Palestine. “I first learnt about my Palestinian identity from my grandfather,” he said, adding that he has lived in many parts of the world, including Jordan, Egypt, Qatar, Indonesia, Chicago and now Dubai.

The 25-year-old producer and rapper was arrested in Chicago when, as a student at the University of Illinois, he spoke at an anti-Bush rally.

"

I was in a country where freedom of speech was obliged by law but I still had to go through what I did

,” he said.

Their teammate, Lucky Swerte, is a 25-year-old Swiss producer and rapper who was born in Indonesia. “The economic collapse of Indonesia in 1997-98 provoked me to write music that captures how I feel about corruption in my country.”

The music that these artistes have been producing is available on tapes and CDs and can be downloaded from www.myspace.com/therecipedxb
Check out the video excerpts of the interview

Kerry's Killer

Kerry's alleged killer under the spot light
Published: April 09, 2009, 15:08

Arnold charged with murder in Winter case
By Awad Mustafa, Staff Reporter

A British expatriate charged with killing his South African ex-girlfriend pleaded not guilty after prosecution formally indicted him in a Dubai court on Thursday.

Mark Arnold, who faces charges of premeditated murder for killing Kerry-Carol Winter on August 20 last year said “no” after the charges were read out to him by a court translator Thursday morning.

Her body is yet to be found.

Arnold, 42 a former operations director at Hill International, is charged with beating Winter with a baseball bat at her house in Al Barsha in Dubai, killing her, wrapping her body in a blanket and putting her in a bag with weights before dumping in the sea.

The prosecution presented testimony of 10 witnesses, including a friend of Arnold who testified that he was asked by the defendant to buy a GPS tracking device, a waterproof bag and burlap sacks from Carrefour.

Another key witness was Arnold’s Pakistani driver who testified that he was told to collect Winter’s mobile from his house and to forward any message from it to Arnold while he was in the UK. The driver also testified that he drove Arnold around when the defendant was tracking Winter.

Arnold’s ex-wife Dianne Joy Arnold told prosecutors that she was approached by Arnold on the eve of August 25 after he drove Winter’s car to Dianne’s house. She saw Arnold was washing the car at her house and was asked by him to keep Winter’s mobile but she refused to do so.

A Russian witness who was the last person in contact with Winter before her disappearance testified that she received a call from Winter at 7 pm August 20 saying that she was being assaulted by Arnold. Later, she received an SMS from Winter claiming that she had left the country for a long weekend. The prosecution claimed that this SMS was sent by Arnold who had Winter’s mobile.

The prosecution told the court that Arnold’s fingerprints were found on Winter’s car. Also, Winter’s blood traces were found in the car, the prosecution told the court.
The case has been adjourned till April 24.

Arnold, who is defended by criminal lawyer Ahmed Al Hammadi also faces a civil suit from Winter’s family which is being handled by another criminal lawyer Hussain Al Jaziri.