Do you want to destroy a country? Destroy its human capital

Do you want to destroy a country? Destroy its human capital
This is what is happening currently in Lebanon, by reducing growth perspective, encouraging corruption, and destroying the pubic education system. This reading may offend some people, but it’s the truth.

The largest threat to most countries is not rich countries, but intellectually fruitful ones. Lebanon has a high concentration of intelligent people with potential, who can change the world if the world let them. The majority of these Lebanese left the country and developed their ideas abroad, due to the lack of funds, support and fairness in Lebanon. This is continuing with the support of foreign rich countries to corrupted politicians, as they turn Lebanon into a hole of poverty and extremism.

Lebanon is not as big as Israel, it does not have many riches, it is not as advanced in sciences and technologies, nor does it have an army as large and powerful. The only threat that Lebanon represents is in its people and their capabilities.

This is why politicians are supported in their attack on our pollution, since more pollution = more diseases = more sick people = less people capable of creating. They are also supported in their attack on the public education system, since poor people will have to rely on public education, so they made public schools extremely weak, and they are attacking the Lebanese university due to the success of many departments in it, to the extend of one minister demanding to close the only public university in Lebanon.

This is why also corruption is extremely welcomed and supported by the USA, Israel, GCC and other countries: putting an unqualified person in a position of power destroys the whole system. Just like before, kings were chosen stupid and reckless so their counselors were the real rulers, this is what is happening today, as we allow the corrupted politicians to be put in charge, when actually, they are mere puppets to other political forces.
If you think water is the blue gold for us, Israel has created already a desalination system that is low cost already and that will become more affordable with time.If you think it’s gas and oil, the era for oil is coming to an end and we will be producing a product that is no longer as desired as before in maximum two decades. Therefore it will cost more to extract it and its price will be low, and the extraction will cause multiple imbalances in the crust of the earth, so we will witness most probably more earthquakes with a higher severity, not to mention the increased risk of water pollution and loss of the few remaining fish populations.

If you think it’s Lebanon’s location, Israel has the same one, with more borders, and better preparations for import/export and general transportation.

The only weapon we have left is people, and we are losing our human capital by supporting unworthy politicians, who would sell our blood for 1 penny if it suits them. The next time anyone shouts “with our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you”, remember that politicians who cause wars remain in history’s memory, but the thousands and millions of soldiers who were on the battlefield and died for false pretenses, no one remembers them. You’re nothing to a politician but a dot they use in their campaigns to count the “heads” that will vote for them during elections. When you die, you will just be a lost voter.

Support the Lebanese university in its fight, support the Lebanese labor forces in their demands, support the Lebanese students in their demands. It may not be convenient for you now, but you will one day realize how selfishness caused you to be so near-sighted that you missed seeing how they will affect your future.

What if your first step fails?

I am working on a new start-up and I decided to introduce it through an event to also raise money to fund it. It’s been almost a month, I have 17 days to go, yet zero tickets were sold. I am in a circle where I am not sure if I will succeed in making it work, or I will fail in my first event.

Despite reading that small events like mine sell tickets within the last 10 days, this feeling of anxiousness is too overwhelming. It is not the fear of failing in one event that worries me, but rather knowing that I was not able to pull off a small step, so what about bigger steps? Will I be able to pull of managing a start-up and make it successful? Will I be able to reach clients and sell them my services, or will I fail and go back to being an ordinary employee? Am I capable of pulling it alone? What will happen if I start and cannot make it?

I believe these thoughts come across any self-employed and entrepreneur’s mind. Yet so many doubt themselves, that they fail to accommodate, make changes, or take daring steps. I have been told that the scarier I am, the better. It is not because feeling scared is good, but because it means I am truly invested in my project, that even a small failure is not an option for me. This is a sign of faithfulness to my values and ideas.

It has not been easy for me so far, especially that I lack financial funds and the right network. But in case I fail, it would help me get rid of all the “what if”s that would have traveled my mind if I didn’t dare to take a step. I would have the pride to say “At least I tried, and it was a beautiful adventure”.

Have you been in the same situation? Do you have any advice?

Top 5 BEST Places To See The Northern Lights

I have always dreamt of seeing the Northern Lights. The day I do, I will definitely see them from one of these 5 locations!

Travology Host Agency

It’s time to check another item off your bucket list. You’ve narrowed it down to an amazing, once in a lifetime experience that you’ve been dreaming of seeing since you were a child – the Northern Lights. Everything you’ve read says that photographs don’t do this beautiful celestial display justice. It’s time to settle beneath the aurora of ever-changing lights and watch as they dance across the sky in hues ranging from red to blue, an utterly stunning display everyone should experience.

With aurora season kicking off in early fall, and with several sites to choose from, now is a great time to start planning a trip. Take an organized tour to ensure you have good odds of seeing the display, or blaze your own trail somewhere along the “aurora zone” for a more personalized experience. Either way, you need to know where to go. We’ve put together a list…

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Cool Hacks For Your Home

This blog post gathers very interesting and easy to do tricks, a really interesting read if I may say so!

kelleysdiy

If you been following my diy site, you know how much I love hacks! Hacks for anything and everything holds my interest. Last year I wrote this post and well it was so well liked that I thought I would share with you once more.

1. You can make inexpensive vodka taste like the expensive ones by doing one trick. Take your Britta, or any other water filter pitcher,  and pour your cheap vodka into it…it will filter out all the crud that makes the difference in cheap and expensive.You won’t tell the difference
2. If you need to take a break from painting…wrap tray, roller, brush in a plastic bag and put in fridge
3. Pitching Machine for home use: Practice hitting wiffle balls with this pitching machine. Take your leaf blower ..Place a T Joint on to the leaf blower.Secure with duct tape.  Then take a 2′ pipe and stick it into the…

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Engage your employees!

A common problem for almost all workplaces is the lack of employees’ engagement. We may blame it on the employee, but when the majority of employees suffer from it, workplaces know they are also part of the problem, or perhaps their management techniques.

However, employees are not hard to satisfy, and they can be happy in a workplace even if they are not paid very large sums. In fact, in a study, 90% of employees said that a more fun work environment increases their engagement and 72% of the engaged employees confirmed that their opinion was taken into consideration by their company. One may consider stress as a normal factor in work, but constant stress is bad. And although a manager has more experience that the employees he manages, but it does not mean employees do not have great ideas.

So treat your employees like you would treat your date to make them happy: talk to them about their interests, care for their opinion and point of view, and offer them activities that interest them, not just activities that interest your company. Their engagement will return with plenty of benefits to the company!

This content was originally posted on https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6538329110396174336

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#business #employees #HR #engagement #work #life #Lebanon #tips #tricks #date #interest #opinion #management #MENA

Feeling down sucks!

I know that feeling down sucks. I am an anxious person, prone to depression. I hate feeling down, I tried to keep it low, I tried to ignore it, and yet, it did not go away. Eventually, it was either stop myself from living, or stop my darkness before it takes over my life. You can guess what I chose. I know many suffer like me, many suffer much worse than me. I am not a psychiatrist nor a medical expert, I am merely an emotionally recovering person. So I wrote about what I am doing to get better, I hope it helps you.

The first step is not blaming yourself for it. You shouldn’t force yourself to “feel better” just because people around you do not feel comfortable seeing you like that. You are allowed to feel sad, down, tired, and fed up. You are allowed to be angry, if you don’t feel anger and sadness, you are not being honest to yourself.

Keeping your feelings down, bubbling them up, it will lead to an explosion and a larger damage. But don’t ruminate your dark thought, you are hurting yourself, and hurting those who love you truly. Returning to the same old dark idea is similar to you running with a bungee rope: no matter how far you get, it will pull you back to zero. Cut this cord and keep it as lesson, not as If you can’t do it alone, don’t feel ashamed, seek the help of trusted people or of professionals. You are not a desperate case, you are not crazy, you are not weak, you just need an external party to see things clearer than you.

Allow yourself to give every event its worth, be sad until you feel better. But always give yourself a healing time. If you lost a loved one, grief them, but don’t grief them until you stop living, grief them and understand that it’s ok to move on. You are not cheating on them, you are not being unfaithful because they died and you are still alive. You feel anger? Use the rule of 5: will it matter in 5 minutes? 5 hours? 5 days? 5 months? 5 years? For each yes you give, allow yourself a 30 seconds of anger. If it does not matter even for the next 5 minutes, I will not say don’t be angry, but let it go after 20 seconds. Allow yourself to empty your feelings, but don’t abuse it.

If someone or something keeps upsetting you, fix it or throw it away. You are not someone to push around and abuse, and a job or item should not make you feel bad. Is social media making you feel bad about yourself? Disconnect yourself. Is your friend always negative and making you feel awful? Talk it out. If they won’t stop it, then they don’t care about you, they just want to throw their emotional baggage on you to feel better, and you’re better off without them. Is your phone always breaking and stressing you out? You either repair it or stop using it, but don’t let a pack of inert material make your life miserable.

Get rid of your negative feelings by expressing them and dealing with the source of these feelings, not by repressing them. You may take a hobby, you may curse, you may cry, you may scream, you may shop, you may break a plate. It’s OK, do it. But keep 3 rules: do not hurt others, do not hurt yourself, and put a limit on the time and the resources you consecrate.

11 ways life is just like driving

Driving is one of the most dangerous things to do in life, especially in Lebanon (we know our reputation). I have spent long, and I do mean LOOOOONG hours on the roads to know that. Yet it’s a necessity. Just like life, we can’t keep on avoiding it. If we look at it, it really makes sense.

1. You need to get to point A to point B, but you never really know when you will make it, because no matter how well you plan, you will probably be a little earlier or a little later, that is if you make it at all. This applies to every plan we make in life. Lucky are those who stick to the plan and can make it just in time, but for the majority of us, that’s not how it’s gonna happen. Plus, the trip is never as we plan it, there is always the element of surprise hiding somewhere.

2. Along the way, you will find all sorts of obstacles:
– People driving too slow but blocking your way, the equivalent of the people who cannot comprehend progress and change, and don’t let others try it.
– Potholes that you either drive over, avoid, or fall in. They exist and you cannot really avoid them unless you change your road.
– People cutting you off, trespassing your lane, just being assholes overall. No need to ask you how many people you wish you never came across, yet you can’t really avoid them, unless you stay home.
– Road cuts, forcing you to change roads, or change destinations. You also
– Your own anger and rage. I have road rage most of the time, I haven’t experienced a long drive in the middle of the day during traffic without cursing someone in a long long time. And it does make the drive harder, just like our negative feelings make it harder for us to get through life. This is perhaps the toughest part.

3. Just by being on the road, you are already facing dangers and risks, just like being alive means you cannot be safe from danger. But would you rather live and take some risks? Or stay at home and miss the whole trip?

4. Sometimes, we need to make on the spot decisions, which affect the speed at which we reach our final destination and how we do it. But life is never about comfort, it’s about the excitement and difficulties we get over.

5. The road you choose affects your speed, and your presence on this road affects others’ trip. You can use the highway, you can use the old side roads or just make a whole new road, it’s up to you. But remember, the easy roads are the most traveled and the ones that get flooded the fastest. Sometimes, the good old roads are longer, but you may get faster to your destination. And if neither works, you can always create your own road and be a pioneer. Of course, there’s the cheaters, who can use pull strings, close the fastest roads, and get there while eliminating others unfairly. We hate cheaters.

6. You can drive yourself, you can trust others to drive you, you can choose a destination that is really close and walk the road, and you can stay at home. You either work hard on yourself, choose a road set to you by others or that goes through others, choose a road that is easy for you and doesn’t require much work, or you can live just because you didn’t die yet. If you choose a new road, it may not be guaranteed that you will reach the planned destination, but I guarantee you that you will enjoy the ride and learn more.

7. You can also drive alone or have company, and in both cases there’s a risk. The ones who drive alone may end up stranded and needing help, and those who choose the wrong company can end up in an accident or hurt others because they’ve been following bad advice.

8. The way you drive will impact the road others use after you. Your badly maintained car, your “tiny” gas or oil leak, and the bad tires you use can put others in danger. If you drive recklessly, you are a danger to yourself and to others. Always think of each action you take: is it worth the risk? If I do this step, will I create a benefit or will I be destroying others? If I do this change, am I making it better or worse? Reckless drivers always say: I am fast but I am careful, it will not happen to me, yet there are always casualties.

9. You can follow the rules or break them, and there’s a chance you will get away with it for a few times. But one day, you will be caught, and you will have to take responsibility of your actions. Think of it as karma in life, you think that you will do great no matter what, but it’s gonna come back to you somehow.

10. If you invest some time in maintaining the road, your trip and others’ is better. If you see a rock on the road an remove it, you benefit from it yourself and you let others benefit from it. You may see a pothole and ask for it to be repaired, or you may open a tire shop 50 feet away and make use of it, it’s all up to you. But don’t get upset if someone fixed the pothole, they’re not against you, and it’s their right to advance and choose a solution.

11. Sometimes, you decide to bypass a car but when the opportunity comes, you feel incapable of it, yet you block the road on others EVERY TIME they have the opportunity to bypass you and that car, instead of letting them pass. And sometimes you are that first car, and you drive while making sure no one can pass you by, even through you’re slowing everyone else. Selfish drivers consider themselves the priority just because they were there first, yet they only cause a delay for everyone else, and a long traffic road.
In the first case, you are not using the open opportunity correctly and you don’t let others use it. In the second case, you are making yourself an obstacle just to forbid others from going places, but you gain nothing. Which many of us do in life. We grab all opportunities and yet we don’t use them correctly, or we stop others from getting their share of opportunities for a fake sense of being the best. But the truth is, we are not the best, we are just breaking everyone else’s wings so we can be the only ones flying. We know that we are not good enough, and we don’t want to work on getting better, because breaking others is easier than working on ourselves.

Life is not about the destination, but about the journey. I hope your journey gets filled with great experiences and amazing people.

Change your online behavior to save the Earth! (2)

It seems strange that being online is causing pollution. We are using a computer, reducing the need for paper, not travelling distances to communicate, and we are using mostly energy efficient machines that have a low average electricity consumption. So why does being online cause pollution? And what can we do to reduce it?
In the previous part, we gave you tips on how to reduce your personal carbon footprint impact. In this part, we are giving you tips on how your company can act greener and reduce its Internet pollution impact!

Internet Pollution

Are you familiar with the term Internet pollution? It is a term that refers to the pollution caused by the data processing servers and data centers, since they consume a lot of energy. In fact, a data center on average consumes the same amount of energy as 30’000 European inhabitants DAILY! Energy is used to power and cool down servers, and ensures that they operate c continuously in case there’s a failure. Since the world still relies heavily on dirty energy, this energy is causing an additional release of CO2!

The Internet pollution, also known as Digital Pollution, originates mainly from activities that require a lot of resources, such as streaming videos, mining for bitcoins, and sending/storing emails.

What your company can do

Companies can adopt greener online behavior as well, and their contribution can reduce immensely their online activities’ carbon footprint by using really simple tips:

– Use the FAQ section to answer your customers’ most common questions on your website. Be clear and straight to the point. Customers will need less time to research and read, you’ll receive less clarification requests through emails and phone calls and you’ll gain a reputation for being a transparent and honest business.
– Optimize your intranet: reduce unnecessary files create and a systematic filing system. Prefer putting your news on the intranet instead of sending emails if you can.
– Encourage live communication, or even phone calls within the company instead of sending tons of emails. Make the emails a un-urgent issue so employees can work uninterrupted, without keeping their eye the whole time on the inbox.
– Use white boards within a department (with nontoxic whiteboard pens of course) for small news, it’ll do the same job as a forward to all email.
– Encourage employees to remove useless emails from their inboxes and to only keep what’s essential. Your company’s party invitation from 5 years ago is a nice memory, but it’s not necessary to keep it in the inbox.

– Remind your employees to send clear emails and include any necessary details to avoid follow-up emails.
– Prefer simple pages and designs to using extremely heavy online content on your website. Most companies do not need to load their websites, it will slow down the website launching and use up too much internet. I have tried to use the same tips on my startup’s website, and it did not affect the traffic nor the amount of information I wanted to share.

Companies, when working together, can achieve goals much faster than individuals. Consider these tips as a head start in your green behavior, they will not cost you money, but they will definitely save a lot for planet Earth

Change your online behavior to save the Earth! (1)

It seems strange that being online is causing pollution. We are using a computer, reducing the need for paper, not travelling distances to communicate, and we are using mostly energy efficient machines that have a low average electricity consumption. So why does being online cause pollution? And what can we do to reduce it?
In this part, we will be giving you tips on how to reduce your personal carbon footprint impact. In part 2, we will give you tips on how your company can act greener and reduce its Internet pollution impact!
I gathered the best advice from various sources, I hope you will enjoy the content!

Internet Pollution

Are you familiar with the term Internet pollution? It is a term that refers to the pollution caused by the data processing servers and data centers, since they consume a lot of energy. In fact, a data center on average consumes the same amount of energy as 30’000 European inhabitants DAILY! Energy is used to power and cool down servers, and ensures that they operate c continuously in case there’s a failure. Since the world still relies heavily on dirty energy, this energy is causing an additional release of CO2!

Retrieved from CCCB Lab, Source: Jon Koomey.

The Internet pollution, also known as Digital Pollution, originates mainly from activities that require a lot of resources, such as streaming videos, mining for bitcoins, and sending/storing emails.

How can I help?

You may think that as a user, you may not make a difference. It is true that the upgrade of data centers and servers is up to the companies. But you can reduce your own activities’ carbon footprint and energy requirements with a few steps:

Take care of your email

Clean your inbox regularly, and get rid of those thousands of emails that you stored a long time ago to read later on, but never did. If you are a nostalgic person and you saved every email your friends and family sent you, just save these letters on your computer and remove them from your inbox, you’ll be doing the Earth a favor.

Unsubscribe from the useless newsletters that you do not read, it will reduce the distraction created by recurrent incoming mail, reduce the number of emails uselessly stored, and help you find the important emails faster.

Send short, clear, and easy to read emails, with optimized attachements. It will require less energy to send and receive the content, and your recipient(s) will need less time to read the email, and understand your goals better. If the email is unclear, you will receive back another email demanding clarifications, which will cause an unnecessary amount of energy to be spent for additional emails.

Use compressed and light format files in your email attachements and when uploading files to an online drive. If you are sharing a photo with family, prefer JPEG format to Bitmap to reduce the size, and you can always resize it. Although a 10 megapixels photo is cool, unless you need professional work done on the photo, you can have a great photo quality for 5 megapixels as well. You can easily resize the photo using Paint or online tools.

Don’t check your email all the time. To avoid missing out on important emails, we advise you to have a personal email for all the personal emails, and a professional email for all education and work emails.
You can stop all the incoming email notifications during work hours from your personal email, and you can disconnect from work by turning off the notifications of your professional emails during your off-work time. Not only will you reduce the carbon footprint, you will also be able to work with much less interruptions and have a better performance during work hours, and be able to disconnect better from work and its stress in your off-duty hours.

Unless you REALLY NEED to, don’t use the “reply to all” option when sending back an email. Send the follow-up message only to the concerned people.

Make use of the subject line in emails to inform your recipient about the content, so they know whether it is urgent/important enough to read on the spot, or whether they can read it later.

Act more responsibly online

This part is really important. You need to reduce any unnecessary carbon emissions that your online presence may cause.

Choose a greener online cloud service, use lighter file formats, and reduce the unnecessary use of online space. We know it’s awesome to have a free cloud storage and put all our treasured memories, but it is also consuming too much energy, when you can keep an offline copy on an external storage and/or your computer. Make sure to back-up regularly your files and remove that 4 year old university project that you saved online when you feared you might lose it.

Reduce the number of photos you share on social media by removing unnecessary photos. These photos take a large space off servers, and with the increasing number of users, companies keep on adding data servers to cover the need. Your school photos are really cute, but do you really need an album of 100 photos to confirm it?

Delete your old accounts if you no longer use them, and don’t create unnecessary email addresses just for fun. Although it’s cool to have 1 extra free month from Netflix when using a new account, it’s doing a lot of harm when you consider the number of users doing it.

Bookmark the websites you always visit, instead of researching them every time you want to use them. It will save a whole lot of energy.

Reduce the time you spend online. Since pages usually keep on loading, if you have a long read, you can download the web page as offline copy, or simply disconnect yourself from the internet until you need to use it again.

Optimize your research by using specific keywords and favorite your frequent searches. Remember that each search is using more energy. Prefer using green search engines like Ecosia, as they use way less energy, and prefer clean energy to dirty one. In addition, many of them use the revenue to support an environmental cause!

Research the companies whose services you’re using. You will discover which ones are working towards greener services and which ones do not care about it at all. A good reference is RE100, a reference for companies that pledged to use 100% renewable energy. RE100 is a global corporate leadership initiative bringing together influential businesses committed to 100% renewable electricity. You can also check Clickclean, an initiative by Greenpeace. They do annual reports on the green performance of large corporations, and they do campaigns to influence companies to turn green through petitions.

The next time you think that you can be more eco-friendly when using online services, think twice! Sometimes, their environmental impact is worse than doing things the traditional way. If you can communicate it live, prefer it to sending emails or instant messages. If you feel safe to store a file on local drives, prefer it to cloud systems.

One person may have a small impact, but when a group of people do it, they can make a difference and inspire others to do so as well. So make sure to inform others on how to reduce their online carbon footprint as well!

FabricAid: reusing clothes for an amazing cause

We do not realize how lucky we are, to have the ability to enter a shop, check items, and buy the item, without overthinking of the cost. So many people have to choose between a loaf of bread and a shirt to put on their back. Although you may think that making free donations can help them, they easily hurt these people’s dignity and may not even be useful for them at all, since many NGOs cannot tailor clothes per group and end up sending the same package to all the people it’s taking care of.

Luckily, a team of Lebanese students in 2016 decided to change things. They created FabricAid, an initiative that gives second hand clothes a new life, and allows underprivileged individuals to enjoy a shopping experience without worrying about the costs.

Omar Itani, a founder at FabricAid and the man behind the idea

The team created a network of donation bins, and made a collaboration with businesses and NGOs to collect clothes. They check the items, select what’s in good condition to be reused, clean it up, iron it, tag it, and put it in their shops. They have pop-up markets called Souk El Khlanj and several permanent markets. Souk el Khlanj means the shop of like-new items.
The shops are located in areas where there is a high level of poverty, they are just like any other shop, with well organized merchandise and fitting rooms. The prices range between 0.3$ and 2$, so that people who have low income can shop and pay without having to worry about the bill being out of their purchasing power.

One of Home of Hope Lebanon NGO’s children choosing clothes at a shop that was set up by FabricAid as a collaboration

The items that are not fit for resale are sold in bulk to existing second-hand stores for much lower prices, or they can be used to create new items for RemAid, FabricAid’s own upcycled fashion brand. In 2018, a partnership between RemAid and ESMOD (one of the best fashion design school in Lebanon) was made, and 100 items were created by students and sold in a special event, where prices of unique clothing items made from the used fabric were between 50$ and 150$. The event was made to support FabricAid’s cause. The items were redesigned by ESMOD fashion students and sewed by Sawa for Development and Aid’s women refugee tailors.

2018’s event to exhibit the clothes made by ESMOD’s students for RemAid

This team has also been able to win multiple competitions, and is one of the few to reach over 200 000$ in funds through competitions. Their work has contributed to alleviating two major problems: clothes waste and poverty aid.

Through their amazing initiative, so far, FabricAid has been profitable, created jobs, and made great numbers:
– 55,000 Kgs of clothes collected
– 37 markets set up
– 7,000 beneficiaries
– 17 staff members
– 32,685 items sold
– 19 clothing collection bins distributed

One of the collection bins

The clothes donors are also benefiting, as every once in a while, a new partnership between FabricAid and businesses that support the cause is seeing the light. For example, Jaleesa, a babysitting business, offers discounts to its clients. All these collaborations can be found on their Facebook page, and they’re updated every once in a while.

If you are interested by their initiative, wish to make a contribution, get in contact with the team, or just wish to learn more, you can always check their website and their Facebook account. If you don’t live in Lebanon, make sure to search for similar initiatives or maybe to share the news about FabricAid to encourage others to make similar initiatives in their own communities!

Also, please don’t forget to follow my startup news on Facebook, Instagram and the Website.