Mascom Picnic

Sometimes whatever arrangement you make for a family, friends or college picnic but still there will be something which will kill the pleasure of this or that picnic like bad weather, minor or major accident (God forbid), or boring companions who are by the way the worst among all these reasons for spoiling the picnic's spirit.
None of these existed in the MAHE Manipal/ Department of Media & Communications picnic, the picnic was that close to be the perfect picnic ever despite the face that there was nothing so special about the place; LoLo Island / Abu Dhabi, but some magical touch we all felt it was there, only one thing happened we have to mention it here is that one of the senior had injured in the last 1 or 2 hours of the picnic, but even that wasn’t really annoying to the injured person or to the rest as well.
Peaceful, is best to describe the whole environment of the LoLo Island, or the picnic itself, it was a space for all the students and faculties to interact among each other students – students, and students – faculties, Shubha Maam, Mr. Joseph, and Mr. Sabir were the faculty members in this picnic distributed in the 3 buses.
Watching the sunset in Abu Dhabi is really amazing moments you will remember ever, because the sea in Abu Dhabi is different from those of Dubai or Sharjah or Ajman, it has this fine purity and clarity of blue color, it gives you precious moments of thinking and flying without wings inside yourself and dream, nothing but dream.
I know my words seem a little lyrical but this exactly what I and Mascom people felt, as if it was a nice good bye for the 3rd year people.

Photo World & Symbolism

The Photo World/ Dubai 2008 was a good experience for the students of Mascom who are interested in Photography or TV and Video production field, for me had the feeling of : what am I doing here? It was pointless for me to go to such an exhibition, but yes in the last hour when I was really hopeless and disparate to find any good story to cover about this exhibition, suddenly I found something concerns areas of interest of mine.
I realized when looking at the photographs done by professionals and by beginners as well that they all shared something in common; all are showing the huge reform and Renaissances of all the GCC countries especially in Dubai accompanied with showing cultural symbols like the falcon, the classical form of ships, the Masjids, and so on and as shown in the photos.
Such connecting between the developments in different sectors and the inheritance of the Gulf countries lead us to feel that these photographs or the photographers want to show us the insisting of the GCC to relate between the past and the present or to be more accurate between the present and the past; in other words they want to say that yes we are an opened window to the west and to other cultures and to the whole world in it's technical developments, globalization, and modernization but still we hold our inheritance to shape our developments according to it and under the it's influence, and this is what we call the right way of dealing with the globalization and ideas like the world become a small village as McLuhan said.
I don’t want and don’t have enough space to discuss the symbolism academically, but this is only a whisper in intelligent people to notice such form of symbolism in the art movement in the Gulf region to be able to read more efficiently the developments in this particular region.

The Eye...a movie review

Jessica Alba’s new movie The Eye is based on another Chinese or specifically Hong Kong movie carry the same name.
This movie’s poster show you the movie as a horror movie but after half an hour from the beginning of The Eye you will surprised to find that the story and the idea behind the movie are much deeper than what has the poster shown us.
Jessica Alba plays Sydney Wells, a blind violinist who will discover the world after ages of darkness with new eyes which she had got by undergoing an operation to restore the eyesight, when she first starts looking at things around her she found it normal to see abnormal things as well for the reason that she and her doctors thought that she still discovering the world and might see undefined things according to her situation.
Later, she was certain from one thing: that she is seeing frightening creatures leading people around her to their death, normally she had told everybody of the strange things happening with her and more normally nobody had believed her for the first few times until one of these people was willing to sacrifice his life and career for her and not because he believed her but because he fell in love with her!!!
The director of the movie did an ok job but the problem lies on the writer who made a lousy connection among events in the movie, for instance, Sydney Wells was so upset that nobody is believing her disturbing visions so that she decided to leave her job and not even inform any of her colleagues or boss that she want some rest for some time until she feels better then join again, so she let the job go to hell and sat at home with damaging all the light sources in the flat, closing and covering all the windows with blankets, staying in this state for 2-3 days with only phone calls from her sister who was leaving the town, but the strange thing is that nobody had thought of visiting her flat to see what did happened to her, this is no. one.
No. two, her doctor Paul Faulkner was not believing her at the beginning and may be he was more than anyone else refusing the idea that she is seeing abnormal visions but that she was refusing the fact that she has to face the new world and that why she started to see strange things, and suddenly he put everything in risk for her and went with her to Mexico to meet the donor’s family who she suspected that this might be pointing a light on her situation.
The movie is definitely not horror, and definitely not adding to Jessica Alba’s filmography a masterpiece, but let’s says it is a normal movie that you can watch on TV and not in theaters.

Amr Khalid...The New Hope 1

Anthyony Quinn as Omar Al- Mukhtar in "The Lion Of the Desert" movie in 1981 was the real inspiration of Amr Khalid to believe again in Arabs role in the world and to believe in the possibility of renaissance of the Arab Nation again and again, this belief led Amr Khalid an Egyptain accountant to start his making his dream come true by hard work and strong will and belief.

He dedicated his all life to work for this goal the renaissance of the Arab Nation and not under any of the titles were inroduced during the 2nd half of the 20th century like Communism or Socialism of Nathionalism but under the concept of (Faith based Development).

He started with his closest friend and it worked, so he start thinking why im happy with only one person??? I should go for more people introducing my idea and lets see what will happen...

He then began his chitchats with his classmates, then his friends from the most famous social club in Cairo(The Hunting Club) which is only for the high class people and Amr Khalid is one of them, but by this time Amr couldnt stop what he had started, people began to come in huge numbers to listen to him in the club audiotorium which was not enough, then people started to sit in the garden with outdoor amplifires.

Thousands and thousnads of people were coming to listen to him until he got the chance to appear on TV in one of the most famous and popular Arabic TV shows, which made millions of people follow Amr in his idea and beagn to work for for the same goal.

In 2007, Amr came in the Time Magazine's 100 people who shaped our world under the category of Heros & Pioneers.

Finally, Amr began a campaign which has not ended yet, a 5 weeks campaign in cooperation with Dubai Police & The UN to make 5000 addicted person to ask for help and they prepared eveything from the phisical treatement till the after treatement period.

Finally, Now we are in the 4th week with unexpected results, more than 4500 people asked for help and have taken directly to the specialized centers, unlimited number of volunteers for helping in this campaign, the Egyptain PM announced last week his Government support to the campaign.

This is Amr Khalid, one person made a little difference in our life, what about the others? The world needs more of this kind of people, not only talking but DOING.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/time100/article/0,28804,1595326_1615754_1616173,00.html

to be continued..