The "D" way...

A huge cake, very tasty, covered with Marzipan, my favorite, and lots of happy people. Today we celebrated a launch of a product that was not delivered, or in regular people's words - just did not happen. I bet someone said:" damn, we cannot deliver the product on time, so what shall we do? What shall we do?

"Eureka!! We can still deliver the cake!"

Happy people in the kingdom of D.

(I wonder whether we will celebrate a new cake once the product will be really, but really, launched.)

Just less than a month ago, a different product was launched successfully 'on time, on budget', and there was NO cake. The D management decision was that the project was launched successfully since the people worked on it, were doing the job they were requested to, so why the hell would anyone bring them a cake?! No one is volunteering to work here.. Hello?! They all get paid.

But hey, if you don't do your job, a product doesn't launch, the system doesn't work, the organization collapses and all are stressed, then what would be better than a cake to lift the sad faces and low morale up? Correct, A cake!

That my dear friends, is the D way!

Now let's say that your project is in a critical phase and it is not performing, what would you do if you were to use the D way?

1. Focus on the problematic area and act fast.

2. Find the weak link within the problematic area and look into out of the box solutions.
3. Be efficient, be creative.

or

1. Immediately say, "There are no resources".

2. Start playing with the organizational chart - after 3 weeks of play, come with the conclusion that:

    a. "There are no resources".

    b.  4 more managers are needed immediately.

    c. You need to delegate this task to someone else because of: #3.

3. Communicate that you feel stressed, and you don't know when you will feel better.

4. Communicate your vacation plans that, what a bad luck, falls exactly on the planned launch date of the project you are leading.

and... the winning answer, is?!  Come on, do you really think I am going to tell you?  Think! Think!

So, now we have a new project manager replacing the stressed project manager, without much of knowledge transfer, but who cares after all the conclusion was that the project needs to be staffed with 4 new managers filling the organization chart vertically and horizontally (literal translation from arabic saying: Bil tool ew Bil 3ard), layer in front and layer in back. The more inefficient you are, the more successful you are, the more money burnt on managers the bigger  your project is, the more cakes you get!

If all this doesn't work and the project didn't launch on time (no way it is going to launch on budget, you already know that - right?), then just bring another cake, continue complaining about the size and the scope of the project and how huge it is, while you have more managers than developers and/or testers, but still, add few more managers since you are so busy changing the organizational chart again, preparing a new presentation to describe it to managers again, and joining additional 10 more status meetings a week. Ohh, how could I forget the status reports and the Minutes of Meetings that you need to write.

So now you invested 4.75 hours in writing detailed report and then another 4-5 days preparing a presentation for the executive managers (Decision makers), so they can see the real status of the project, the progress, the open issues, the risks and of course the new updated budget!

You send it for your direct manager, a part of the executive managers board, for his review, and then it comes back to you looking all "red" (track changes, track changes) like after the Great Northern War between Denmark & Sweden in 1700-1721.

Some numbers should be changed, others should just disappear, move left to right, right to left, change some colors, remove few sentences, add few others, make it look "realistic", and yuppy hurray, we are done!

It is ready for presentation! Serious decisions need to be made, the presentation should be as accurate as possible for best decisions. Executive managers, look at the presentation, the numbers look right ("Not more than X millions, Great, not need for board approval"), ask few questions to show interest and here we go, Go/NoGo?

Go, NoGo, Go, NoGo, Go Go Go!! and let the Boss enjoy the Cha Cha Cha (Cover His Ass) dance!

A comment to a comment to "أسطورة التزايد السكاني وأبعاده البيئية"

An answer to a comment on Nisreen's post that, became a post of my own ;-)

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Hi Nisreen,

I fully agree with you with regards to nature’s control. Nature has always been the conscious of humanity; it always finds ways to remind us “who’s the boss”. It always helps us to find ways to re-harmonize with it.

I see the point you were trying to convey and I would fully agree with you if we were speaking about a sterilized world that is not infected by “modernism", or lets be more specified and say “The culture of stuff” – stuff that costs money, and we need to continuously replace and get more of it.

I don’t think that the woman working in the field and nursing her children is poor if she lives in a similar culture that does not worship consumption or washing machines. In order to define “poor”, “rich” and other similar definitions and categories, we must relate it to other dimensions like time and place.

The woman in china, working in the field and that never seen a washing machine or a LCD TV or internet, is not poor. If she can survive and raise her children to be as healthy as possible within her time and place limits, then I do not perceive her as poor, regardless how different her life could be compared to mine.

The same woman, if in Egypt living in the grave yard nursing her children while begging for money so she can buy them food because the restaurant threw all the leftovers to the dogs and cats (in best case) instead of giving it to her, then she is poor. If she has no water to drink, because no water pipes reach the grave yard or she cannot afford buying (paying by money or equal to money, or even paying with her body) a place that has water, or she cannot drink from the polluted Nile , then she is poor. If because of her poverty she cannot run away from her “home” when her husband, relative and/or her neighbor abuses and rapes her, and when she gets pregnant unwillingly and cannot do anything about it, then she is poor. If she is struggling for her life, for her survival, then most probably she will not be able to read and write – it doesn’t mean that she cannot - she has more urgent needs.

Although I believe, like you, that there is enough food for everyone in the world, we both know that there are people starving as well and they are...poor. We both know that we eat and consume more than many others in the world. Not everyone is getting his/her share from the nature’s resources. Some get more, some get less.

Everyone that survives has a chance to a decent life (what is decent? Compared to what?), but let’s count how many made it out of the slums and grave yards and such. Once you are born with less, it is very hard to get more. The “environment” saves the world, exactly like with the animals, the strong survives.

The equation has changed, and this uncontrollable population in "modernized cultures" that is built nowadays on consumption, cannot bring any good to ecology and it needs to be controlled else we are creating a monster, a disaster. Therefore population in consumers’ countries must be controlled.

As for nature, I trust that it will always find ways to balance itself, even if on the expense of humans. It could be a natural disaster and it could be a war. The irony is that the rich mess with the environment, and the environment punishes the “poor”.

Culture doesn’t have to be written to pass it from one to another, we can pass it by songs, by behavior and tradition that is remembered and practiced. Other than that during the centuries only the privileged ones could learn to read and write and those wrote books and papers and made sure that the knowledge is preserved. At those times, women were not even allowed to learn how to read and write, not even the rich ones, and there were always rich and poor people before the invention of capitalism, before the invention of money the way we know it. So it is not black and white. There is so much grey, but some grey is darker and some is lighter.

So many topics related to each other. The chain of life. The cycle of chain of life.

A video from the Copenhagen Climate Change Demonstration In December COP15.

Everything & nothing - noncoherent thoughts

I feel in Arabic.
I think  in Arabic and Hebrew.
I write in Arabic, Hebrew and English.
My current world, is Danish.
No wonder I have an identity crisis.

Palestine/Israel is so small for me, I need the big world. But where is the big world? What is the big world? What do I want to do when I grow up? Why do I ask these questions after 33.5 years? Isn’t it too late for that? Or is it my awakening moment?

Wake up wake up...I always found it hard to wake up in the mornings...I always wake up late. But once I wake up I am full of energy and ready to eat the world, to grab it with my both hands and chew it, until nothing is left.

Who  am I? What am I? Am I happy? Am I sad? Where am I going? What do I feel?

I feel that I lost partial control, which makes me no one and nowhere. Either I gain full control back, or I want to loosen everything, and lose it all. To start from the beginning. Look, watch, see and flow with whatever life brings to me. Enjoy the moment of being alive, our time is final here, and who knows what will happen tomorrow. Sad. Lately I feel sad too many times, and I cannot figure out why. Sometimes I worry too much for other people's problems and feelings. I take responsibility on other people's lives while I ignore mine or neglect it. I feel I should stop doing that. Sometimes I want to run away, sometimes I want to sleep, sometimes I want to be invisible, and most of the times I want to feel warm arms around me, live laugh and experience.

A memory:

When I was in the 2nd grade, we had a football match with the other 2nd grade, I also played with the boys (let's face it, I was better than most of them). We lost. And after the match a classmate came to me, and told me a sentence I never forget...”I admire you so much" she said, "all the boys' heads are in the floor with despair, only yours is looking up", how a girl in the 2nd grade could have such an observation and tell me this sentence that I remember until today, about 27 years later. Amazing. Today, I feel I’ve lost, not much to be proud of or to admire, I walk in the streets and I seldom feel my head looking on the ground, instead of to the skies. Once I notice this, I always remember this sentence and try to raise my head and look ahead of me, look forward.

If they ever ask me about a person that had a great influence on my life, I will definitely include this girl in the list. Maryam, her name was. Unfortunately I do not remember her last name.

Beers and an Old Chair

Today I had a different Shopping experience. It was sunny, 5 degrees, wow :)

On the way to "Baresso" for the saturday morning cappuccino, I passed by an antique shop. I always pass by this shop. I always look at one chair that I love, and would like to buy. The shop is always closed when I pass by. Seems that the shop opens only twice a week for couple of hours only. Today, it was my lucky day, the shop is open and my chair was waiting there for me.

All it needed is a short bargaining about the price, and it became mine. I can say that today, I lost in the bargaining game that I love so much. I badly wanted the chair, and I was afraid to lose it. So I lost., but I feel like a winner. I love antique furniture. No, I don't understand in antique furniture, but there are few things and pieces that I would love to purchase and have in my apartment, house, home, or under whatever ceiling I would ever have.

So, here is my new "old" chair, it is simple, but it managed to charm me. The guy at the antique shop said it is from 19th century, I don't know whether to believe him or not, but don't care.

Speaking of shops that are always closed, there is another shop, a Beer shop, that I have never seen open. Today, as I mentioned, it was my lucky day, it was open. So we went into the shop, and it has a huge variety of Beers from all over the world, you can spend there so many hours just looking at the different bottles and shapes and designs. We didn't have much time, we spent just 10 minutes, and what we got, other than tasting a special Easter Beer made by my neighborhood brewery "Amager Brewery", is Three bottles of beer. Two are german, the one (in green) is a Wheat beer and the other (in red) is dark smoked beer. While the third bottle of beer is a Belgium beer based on Blueberries. 

The truth is that I didn't taste them yet, so I cannot tell how good they are, but i am definitely looking forward to check.

Work work & a single man

It's been a long time since I wrote anything in my blog. I blame work. I am working a lot lately and when I arrive home I am exhausted and have no strength to do anything but lay down, eat something, do nothing and go to bed. It is not OK. I like it when I write. I even think of many topics that I want to share in my blog, but then I just do not do anything about it. Now, I am forcing myself to write something, anything,  just to return to the path of writing. It is almost mid of March and this will be my first blog of the month...

I just came back from a movie, "A single man". I've seen its promo trailer few times in the previous 2-3 weeks, and it seemed as one of those movies that it is worth watching. The promo, did not tell anything about the story itself about the nature of the story. Nada. It was obvious though that it is a life story, a sad story, but nothing more. That made me curious and tonight I went to find out.

A SINGLE MAN is a romantic tale of love interrupted...It is the struggle of a man to find meaning of his life, after the death of another man, his long term partner and lover. It is about grief. It is about awakening. It is about destiny.

I did not read about the movie before i went to watch it, and I was surprised to find out about the gay story in it - something that made me wonder how come the promo, poster, etc. didn't indicate anything about that and whether there were some hidden reasons? That was strange..

I enjoyed the movie a lot. The camera work, the music and ofcourse Colin Firth that was amazing. His acting was so good, I was fascinated. He made me feel with him, live with him and grab his thoughts with all my senses. Although sometimes the pace of the movie seemed to be way too slow, the music kept me alert and waiting for the next move. The sense of humor in some sence was a must and a great refreshment for the heaviness of the movie, it made it lighter and eased on digesting the grief.