MI: Hi Hussein, no, actually, salam. :) Thank you for agreeing to answer my stupid questions. :)
HB: Hola, Map. No, they are not stupid.

MI: Let's call then "uninformed"... First, about your work. What technologies do you use?
HB: Basically, I feed on Java.
I use Java EE stack, from EJB to servlets/JSP passing through JMS and Java security, and a little of Ajax voodoo.

MI: How many programmers work with you?
HB: Five. Is it a lucky number of some civilizations?
MI: As far as I know, seven is a lucky number. As for five, we need to ask a Chinese person -- they assign meaning to every number...

MI: What is an average age?
HB: 26, but I'm the youngest. :cool:

MI: Any female programmers? ;)
HB: Yes, two. Actually, I work with two girls in developing but the number of girls working is huge.

MI: Another question: do they wear hijabs? If not, what clothes do they wear?
HB: Some girls do, some don't but basically, Jeans clothes are dominants. And don't forget Syria is called "The Cradle Of Christianity", so Christians have their existence in Syria.

MI: Wait, isn't Islam supposed to oppress women?
HB: Yes sure, Islam oppress women. We eat dynamite instead of hot dogs and nitroglycerin instead of mustard. We ride camels for a much more greener globe (not because we can't drive cars)
We hate America.
Yet better we learned to make bombs at ten.
Ah, we are violent and we kill people to go to heaven.
Are you still reading? please do...
None of above is true.
Western countries have a corrupted, ill, misinformed image of middle east countries (and Islam particularly, thanks to Hollywood stereotype and Bin Laden for his great nonprofit organization.
If you asked me to justify this sick image (and you don't), I have to two reasons:

· Middle East countries aren't trying enough to clean their repetition around the world.
· Western people believe in every thing their media feed them.

This is were I'm greatly missing the political threads of JavaRanch MD forum, this forum was my gate to communicate/argue with people around the world, in JavaRanch MD forum, I'm talking with highly educated people. How can we learn about each other if we can't talk?

MI: How does a typical hiring process in your country look like? Do you write resumes, go to interviews? (I am asking because in Russia we didn't have no resumes, neither interviews. It was all a question of knowing somebody in an organization, who could recommend you. The whole process was very informal.)
HB: Well, for a very large degree, yes.
I work for a major telecommunication company here, the process was identical to the one in western companies.
My hiring process went through three stages:

· The developing team supervisor.
· The applications manager.
· HR (better than catbert)

Not that different, right?
And sure recommendation plays a great role too.

MI: What are your working hours?
HB: My working hours per week are: 50 hours (approximately).

MI: Do you have to work overtime?
HB: Yes, but I didn't work over time yet.

MI: What benefits do you have: medical insurance, pensions, paid vacations...?
HB: Yes, all of these.

MI: Our President believes that Syria belong to the Axes of Evil, and one naturally expects an evil country to be radically different from um... non-evil country. So, what is evil about your country?
HB: How much time do you have ? :D
Let me see.
My inability to get an iPhone (all iPhones in Syria are cracked) -Yes, I'm a Mac die hard-
My inability to get to order books from Amazon.
My inability to get JavaRanch merchandises.
The jammed streets.
The unhealthy air to breath (due the large number of cars).
The expensive living.
Did I say corruption?

MI: Your working environment: do you work in cubicles, or in one big room? What about posters on the walls -- what's on them?
HB: I work in the MIS department (Management Information Systems), which is one large hall. Posters on walls are about Ericsson hardware mainly, and posters about self-motivation and working.

MI: Does Islam affect your work in any way? I know that Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day, so do you pray during working hours?
HB: No it doesn't affect me.
I don't pray during the working hours, my religion is for myself and working hours are for the company. Please note that the company don't prohibit praying during working hours and many of employees pray.

MI: What about books -- can you get books published in the US? If they are available, are they in English or translated into Arabic?
HB: I'm not sure if I can get US published books, I never tried but AFAIK Amazon.com don't ship to Syria (also due American sanctions). Not sure if the same is applicable to FedEx and DHL (DHL has offices in Syria). Some books are translated but I don't buy them for two reasons: I like to read software books in English. I'm Manning and Pragmatic Programmer publishers fan and their books don't get translated.

MI: Your English is quite good if you are able to read books in original. Where did you learn it, college?
HB: I started to learn English when I was 6 or 7 when I was in the school. Well, I admit my English is not brilliant.

MI: Is it typical for Syrian programmers to read books in English, or only elite programmer can?
HB: Some prefer to do and others don't.

To be continued...

From Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind,

For instance, about 48 percent of GE's software is developed in India. The company employs a whopping twenty thousand people there (and has even posted signs in its Indian offices reading, "Trespassers will be recruited").

It is apparently a tradition, to make an altar in Filipino homes. Our apartment now has one too, although for some unknown reason it is placed near bathroom. Perhaps, altars are supposwed to be placed where the biggest traffic is? :)

A couple weeks ago we all visited the Fisherman Wharf. There was a store that sold traditional Russian tsatskes: matreshkass, Palech boxes etc. There I found a couple of beautiful thingies: an icon and a skladen. I am not religious, but I liked their colors: bright red and gold. So I bought them and placed on our altar.

Now, Filipinos are Catholics, Russians belong to the Orthodox Church. As far as I know, the Russian Orthodox Church isn't particularly eager to participate in the ecumenical movement, for it believes its mission is to carry into the world the light of one true religion, which is the Orthodox Christianity, of course. I thought that adding the Orthodox attributes to the Catholic altar would make a nice postmodernist gesture. Take this, the Orthodox Church. ;)

From the interview with Oliver Sacks about his last book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain in Saloon:

Hume wondered whether one can imagine a color that one has never encountered. One day in 1964, I constructed a sort of pharmacological mountain, and at its peak, I said, "I want to see indigo, now!" As if thrown by a paintbrush, a huge, trembling drop of purest indigo appeared on the wall — the color of heavens. For months after that, I kept looking for that color. It was like the lost chord.

This reminded me. I lived in Russia back then. I had a dream, and in this dream I saw an aquarelle with some building painted in a shade of yellow, a bit dirty yellow. The color was really important, full of meaning. There are lots of building painted in this kind of color in my city, and for long time I too was looking at them trying to find precisely the shade I saw in my dream. Of course, I never found it, and then it left my memory. For me, it wasn't like the lost chord, it was like a shade of a mood, a bit sad and nostalgic and homely.

He would leave symbols
To be proud, busy with their causes.
He wanted to draw the
Name form the very thing by looking

Previous parts: part 1     part 2     part 3     part 4     part 5     part 6

The WeatherPixie is a little graphic that shows a representation of the weather using data reported (mostly) by airports and aerodromes around the world.

As the weather in a particular location changes, the characters clothes will reflect the weather and the graphic will show rain, snow, airborne particles and changes in cloud cover. Daylight, sunset and current moon phase are also displayed.
http://weatherpixie.com/

Here is mine ->

There is a trend now -- to start a new series in every post. Yesterday I started "Microtrends", today I came up with "Identity engineering". In this new series I am going to blog about things I have, or plan to have, that will construct or repair my damaged identity. Today it's about watches.

During my Second Coming to Russia about five years ago, I bought Philip Persio's double time zone watch. I set one dial to PST, another to EET and proudly wore them ever since. The watch treated me well, which, unfortunately, cannot be said of me. One day I forgot them in my pants's pocket and washed them in a washer.

I still don't have a nerve to throw away the corpse.

I searched the Internet to try to find the same model as a replacement. Apparently Philip Persio doesn't make them any more, and I had to settle on this watch, even though I don't really like them.

Yesterday Marc started a "My rationale for not wearing a watch thread, in which Peter van de Riet posted a picture of his 24-hour watch. I liked them and checked the site that was shown on the picture. That's how I found what will be my next favorite watch. Normally, I don't buy watches that cost more than $20, and these are sold for a modest price of $329.00, but they are just too cute, and watches are the only piece of jewelry that I ever wear, so I am very particular about them.

Now I need to start saving money...