Iced Espresso, Trip to Syria, Misc. April '08

So back again to coffee.. don't you think coffee is a bit overrated? ;) i am sure this can piss someone off.. I like coffee.. smell and i like taking photos with coffee in it. But it's overrated still. Shot by Hamed.. This is Janaka, the executive floor supervisor at Ramada Plaza Hotel in Doha, Qatar. He's holding my passport in this shot, probably this was the last time I used my passport.. keep reading to know why. Dubai Airport Marathon.. I shot this on the way back from Doha, it was around midnight.. I arrived home, slept for a couple of hours and then woke up and packed to go to the airport again. I was planning a two week vacation to go visit hometown in Syria during Spring, for the first time, but plans canceled when my company asked if I could cancel or delay my vacation for some project work. I changed my mind after I first said no, and agreed on cancelling my vacation but the problem was in that my passport ran out of visa pages and part of my vacation plan was to renew it back there as it only takes a couple of days to do so back in Syria, whereas our lovely Syrian Embassy requires 13 friggin days to do so in Dubai. heh.. So my company decided to send me for a couple of days to renew my passport and come back.. ASAP. Shortly after my arrival to Damascus airport. Doha, Dubai and Damascus in less than 24hours.. crazy day. It's roughly a 3.5 hour ride from Damascus to Safita.. a ride not too bad, but I wasn't expecting traffic.. had enough in Doha and Dubai. This truck is a piece of art. You see this artwork quite often in Syria, a crappy truck with some poetry on it.. and the back window says: "Leave Me Alone!" Now this looks more like our part of Syria.. entering Safita.. I arrived around noon time, I actually arrived one day before my dad's flight back to the UAE so I spent a day with him.. This is dad on the roof of our place we're building still.. a family house sort of. neighborhood.. This is Ali, my uncle.. Renad's father. Now this is a very very special shot.. the file name is IMG_9999.jpg, after this shot the camera reset the counter to IMG_0001.jpg, I shot over 10,000 photos in less than two years.. damn. That's Hassan, who picked me up from the airport, heading to airport to drop my dad off. I was in the car with Danny, heading to Tartous, to renew my passport. Had some hard time renewing the passport, expected.. and wouldn't have been made without some under the table dodgy work.. will this ever change?

And then to fix Danny's car.. I've never been to this place before, and I've never met this mechanic before, but I have one kickass dad who can't keep much, like it's pointless to tell him something and ask him to keep it for himself =D So Danny was like: Bob, do you know Shady? And once Bob figured out that he knows my father he was like: "Oh! you're the one so and so.. bla bla"!! that was pretty freaky, the guys knows a lot about me!!! Super cool dad that I got. Some shots capture by Danny.. Danny's collection of keys.. Shot from the hip, not too bad for keeping the horizon.. horizontal. I wanted to take this shot of the young kid sitting in there, but he didn't seem very friendly =) Since my trip was for a couple of days only, it was mission impossible to please all friends and relatives specially that some take it seriously if you happened not to have dinner, lunch or spend and afternoon in their place. Maan! I spent over an hour calling people (who definitely knew I was coming, THANKS TO DAD!) and explaining to them the situation, why did I come and when I am leaving.. hoping to see them in the summer feeling (or pretending to feel) sorry that I won't be able to spend sometime with this in this short trip.. Dad left me a peice of paper with list of phone numbers of my beloved relatives.. ;) This is purely and truly my favorite cousin, Renad. I caught her before bedtime, she's growing but still got the wonderful young spirit. This was the last shot before I fly the next day back home.. I had two empty seats next to me, perfect trip. And then the rest of the weekend to slack.. Hanged out with Sham, my sister, and mom one early evening when the weather outdoors was still not too bad. Now, it's very bad.. and will be much worse in the coming days, months. Sham working on some of her wicked designs for school. Now i have to make a move and pack as I have to catch my flight back to Riyadh for one or two more weeks. Back to Riyadh because I just back late Wednesday night, almost a weekend.. But I am enjoying my Cabana which is 3 seconds away from the pool in the hotel, makes me feel like I am on vacation.. business vacation.. in Saudi. How pathetic.

Moving to Blogger

My friend Hamed says that my JuxtBlog theme doesn't go well with my Juxtapoza site layout. I think this blogger black theme can do. Let's see if this change is worth the effort. I sort of believe in Google, so maybe it's about time to move to some ready-made content management/publishing system without applying custom changes.. I am putting my previous self-hosted WordPress based blog on hold until I figure out a way to import its content to Blogger or maybe to just leave it accessible as an ex-blog with no further updates.

Collective shots from the past.. months, year?


Shots from last March, mainly in Doha where I spent most of my time..

Weam and Suhail from our office in Bahrain happened to be in Doha during my stay there, I joined them for sheesha and tea one evening.. with my little baby Canon.

Showing Suhail how to shoot wide open.. this one came out nice.

Almost every Saturday for the past 5-6 months I used to spend time in Doha Airport before my flight back home.. Costa's cafe was the best place to hang out until departure time, and there was Liz who once asked me to take a photo of her..
And she liked the idea so she was like posing for like three Saturdays in a row.. she always was the one choosing the background, and the same pose.
I got fooled by the impression of quietness and emptiness of this terminal so many times, once I try to sleep I either get a bunch of teems yelling and playing around me, or some cleaners with their huge machines to clean the floor underneath my feet.. I chose deserted seats, and they are many like you can see.. but it never works.
Liz again!


Rafik and Mais..



Danny me friend came on vacation to the UAE for the first time last Feb. Not much of what I post here but photos are what matter the most! And some photos came out nice.. Made me feel like a tour guide and a personal photographer.. heh.

Didn't know there are such places in the UAE. On the way to Dibba Al Fujairah.
I find this shot funny.
Akram, Danny, Sham and Maya.. clockwise.
A pussycat, with the shadow if a tiger ;)

Fun with shadows.. I like shadows..

I think this building was Dubai Intercontinental, I was waiting for a friend at Dubai Festival City Waterfront and the almost perfect reflection was so tempting.. very cliche, still I like how this shot came out. Mr. Mandou, tmandou.. he works now for Microsoft and here he was trying to defend and convince that MS services can compete and be up to the level of Google's.. yeah right ;)
Hamed listening, not so convinced..
And even though we all studied together, and were in the same major.. I tend to find such talks boring sometimes. Playing around with my 28mm lens wide open at f/1.8 was more fun to me.Or creating some nice 'bokeh' out of Tarek behind this heavenly drink, until they get out of the topic.

The following were shot the day when I watched 'I Am Legend'.. what a movie. This is Khaled, the most talented guitarist I know in person, too bad his job in top-end security domains and watching too much southpark doesn't leave him time to compose more good music.
Playing around with focus, shuffling between Kahled and the blondie behind him.. she fired up her laptop and started chatting online..
This is how you know people are chatting or interacting with others online, funny facial expressions.. we all do it, you can't deny it. The 50mm would've been prefect for these shots.

I get nice upgrades in the hotels I stay at when traveling for work. I think I've stayed in this very same room like 5 times. Ramada Plaza Doha, Room 465. My managers shouldn't see these photos ;)
Andy.. my uber boss. In our office in Bahrain. He shouldn't be seeing this either.. but I have to take his permission, he's special!

Shot in December '07. We lived nearly 7 years in this building.. funny years, and it was interesting see how horrible some people painted their walls from the inside ;)




2D Front-end ;)