Charitable activities update

Gosh, I haven't updated this blog for a long time. Well, have been on holiday, no? :)

1. IT4CH trustee meeting

Had an interesting time when I chaired the trustee meeting. Met with a volunteer who is offering to call up IT companies in London to get hold of their old kit and perhaps give donations. I find it humbling to see and meet with these volunteers. They, for no other reason, but to help out others who are more unfortunate than others, spend their own money and time. Wonderful, and this is what I love about humans, despite their propensity to hack off other’s heads and do mayhem, they also love to help others. Attaboy! I am also going to start writing one photo essay on each volunteer or donation per month, hope to get more content generated for the website. Have you visited it yet? More photos coming up soon. Also attended and spoke at some banking and IT dinners. The good part of this is that they pay the charity a honorarium when I do this. Killing two birds with one stone, eh?

2. Swansea teaching

Will be making my annual pilgrimage to Swansea to talk to the young ones about how to succeed (lol), how to manage their money, and what kind of financial management should they learn. Also about career choices and stuff. Will let you know more when that happens, its sometime in October.

3. SIFE Annual launch

Had a nice time with the business advisory group meeting with the SIFE UK launch, met with several students who were all passionate about helping others with doing business projects. One young lady from Durham wanted more help, so might pop up there one day to see what I can help with. My own group relating to LSE here is spinning up, they are hiring more people at the freshers fair for the LSE SIFE group. Will be meeting them next week. So I am quite happy and looking forward to doing much with this project.

4. MBS mentoring

Have signed up to do mentoring with my old alma mater in Manchester. So have submitted few selections for the students. Found it curious that many students were selecting every bloody industry for career choices under the sun. That’s not good, one has to be focussed. You cant say that you want to be in banking and in pharmaceuticals. It shows signs of a confused mind.

5. For some reason, the 100books initiative has gone a bit cold which is a bit of a shame. I was really looking forward to working with that one. Oh! well, no worries, next time :)

I am also inundated with requests to fund people’s bike rides, climbs, marathons, and and and. While I do try to help, its not fun to turn down many. Keeping my powder dry and money for the ones which I am looking at..Another reason why I didnt give any money to

Anyway, more later :)

In an alternative universe in Egypt

I got this translation in my in-box. This was very sarcastic and just brilliant. But for religious meatheads, the sarcasm and brilliance will just pass over their heads. Its my firm belief that these muttheads are nuts and the fact that everybody and his dog is now getting on the in-your-face religiousity is really sad. But check it out.

The diary of Mister Abd Rabbo (slave to his god), the Muslim in Coptic Egypt
Try to imagine if these things would happen to you as a Muslim one day, how would you feel?

If you got woken up at dawn by the sounds of a very loud microphone that tears your sleep away and fills your ears with a program from CTV broadcast a mass service from church and national TV would be broadcasting it too, and you find a hoarse voice yelling "glory to god, glory to god, come to church to pray to your lord"
of course after that you would fail in sleeping again and would remain awake until you have to get up to go to work.
you wave to a cab and the driver is a Copt who has a tape playing at the loudest possible volume. The tape is a sermon by a fanatic priest saying those who believe in the Prophet Muhammad are infidels, they need to be killed, so you get scared and ask the driver to drop you off and you decide to take the underground
you find a place and sit down in the underground carriage and your are flanked from both sides by pious Copts reading from  their bibles loudly all the way till you get a headache
you are in the minority, almost everyone around you is a Copt so you cannot say anything because if you do the answer you get will be: are you objecting to God's words? and this will lead to a discussion, which will end up with a problem that will require the police, but then you know that most of the police force are Copts, which is another bigger problem, so you just shut up and keep quiet to avoid problems and get to work
So you reach your place of employment and by now you are very tense and nervous because you did not sleep enough, were awoken rudely and got aggravated by the taxi-driver and have a headache from the underground, so you are not feeling happy and still you wish your co-workers a good morning and peace, and they reply back to you, the Lord's morning and Jesus' peace, so you just shut up and get to your desk
you start to work and in a little while you find your colleagues telling you that they will go pray to the Lord and they gather in the corridor and pray together to secure more rewards and after prayer they take out their little booklets with "dua" (that's kind of personal prayers specially formulated using words from the holy book). You feel like using the restroom and you cannot because the corridor is blocked and you cannot interrupt their prayers, so you try very hard to keep it in till they finish
after that you resume your work and your colleague Girgis (George) comes and asks you why don't you convert to the true religion, it is the majority religion, so it is the right one, instead of remaining a heretic and ending up in hell. You are a good person, and we like you, so we want you to be with us on the right path. Because you want to avoid problems you will have to reply to him diplomatically and politely and say, I like my own religion and even if it is the wrong one, I would rather be in it but thank you for your concern about my wellbeing in the afterlife, so he will get very upset with you and a fight will start
so you appreciate that the working day is over and you can go home, so you remember the cab driver and the neighbours in the underground and you decide that your day has already had enough problems so you walk home.
After all that walking you reach home at sunset and that is the timing of the next prayer and you find your small street blocked by those praying. Even the small grocery store has been converted to a small church and you squeeze between the wall and those praying so you can reach your house and you cant help but hear the sermon given by the priest that true religion is Christianity, that the Copts will prevail, that all others are non-believers and need to be killed or repent and adopt the true religion and that those who believe in Muhammad the false prophet are doomed. SO you swallow your words and go home only to find your wife in a state
she tells you that she was walking in the street and your neighbour's son was telling her that the way she is dressed is all wrong because she is creating temptation and she will burn in hell for it and that she is doomed
so you bite your tongue because you do not want any problems because if you complained the Copts would come and torch your house or torch the Muslim shops in the street and the small old mosque, the only one in the neighbourhood, and the police will come and arrest you for inciting disobedience and you might get slapped with a court case for insulting the true religion and then you will go to jail, and if you keep silent your wife will no longer respect you for being a coward and a weakling so you just tell her, malesh, all will be good eventually and they are just misguided, Allah will help them see the light some day, and you hug your wife and you try to sleep only to find the microphones staring again ....

A brave couple

This was an amazing photo essay. How a couple, both disabled, make a wonderful life together.

Reminds me of this old Hindi song.

I used to sing this song when I was on crutches for 18 months. Its not fun, i tell you.