From the Farm

My cousin Haidar owns a little farm here in Hofuf, and today he invited me and the boys to visit it. We spent a couple of hours there and it was a lot of fun. It really was a blast. Like most farms here, this one has its own swimming pool, so it was great having a chance to cool off in the water during the insane heat of noon. We also enjoyed climbing palm trees and eating delicious dates. My hometown is well-known for producing some of the world’s best dates and eating them fresh like that was awesome. Here is some pictures from the farm:

Hectic Times

Posting on this blog was light in the past few days because things were hectic around here. The Asian Cup, the wedding, and other stuff. I’m leaving later today to Riyadh, and should be back tomorrow to attend another wedding and a birthday party after that. Regular posting should continue shortly. Meanwhile, here is some pictures that I have taken in the past week. Enjoy.

Wedding Wishes

My cousin Ahmed al-Haddad is getting married tonight, and the whole family is excited about the wedding. Since he is just three years older than me, I have known him for almost my entire life. During that time, he wasn’t only my cousin, but also a good friend of mine and one of the role models that I look up to in the family. Words cannot describe what an intelligent, generous and warmhearted person that he is. Tonight, as Ahmed starts a new chapter in his life, I want to dedicate this post to him and wish him and his wife Ruqaia all the best on their wedding. Here’s to many, many years of happiness and memories.

UPDATE: here is the wedding photo. More photos from the wedding will be uploaded to my Ikbis account soon ishallah.

wedding_photo

Twenty-Three

I know, I know: I’m not supposed to get back now, but today is my birthday and I wanted to share it here with you. The picture below was taken by my friend Mahmood at the wedding of Haifaa al-Mansour in Dhahran last week. It was a great wedding party, btw, and I’d like to congratulate my friends Haifaa and Brad and wish them a lifetime of never-ending joy and happiness.

As for my birthday, there will be no party: Just me and my ~~beer~~ coke, working on some unfinished projects and getting ready for the tough finals. I won’t lie to you: I have actually written a few posts during the past two weeks, but they are pending and will be published later in June. Till then, have fun and wish me luck :-)

Saudi Jeans is 3 Years Old Today

Today marks the third anniversary of Saudi Jeans. Three years is probably not such a very long time of blogging. Dave Winer has been doing it for the past 10 years; Jason Kottke for 9. But for someone who has started blogging as a “fun experiment” I honestly did not expect myself to keep on doing that for this long. Surprisingly, I still enjoy writing on this blog and I truly believe this is the main reason why I keep on maintaining it. Of course, it is not always fun and games in Saudi blogland, and the blogosphere can be a tough, horrible place sometimes, but overall I can say that I’m somewhat satisfied with the experience so far.

Similar to last year, as my finals approach, I will be taking a break from the blog to focus more on my studies. I should be back in 3-4 weeks. I believe some more bloggers might also take similar breaks, though unannounced, so you can expect the local blogosphere to be queit for a while. Until then, you can dig in the archives at the end of this page to follow the evolution of Saudi Jeans over the years. I want to thank you all my dear readers, and I want also to thank anyone who helped me with my endeavors on the web.

On Zee TeeVee

If everything goes as planned, I should be on TV tonight sometime around 9:30 (6:30 PM GMT). Naif Abu-Saida has invited me to talk about blogging in the IT segment of the daily magazine show Min Al-Riyadh (From Riyadh) on Al-Yaum channel, a part of Orbit network. Since many people, myself included, don’t have a subscription to Orbit in their houses, it would be nice if someone (wink wink!) who has could recored the interview and upload it to YouTube.

I’m definitely not the first blogger to appear on the show: Herbaz and Milyani have done it before, and Naif himself is a fellow blogger, though his blog is strictly poetic. I’m nervous about this, but I guess it is understandable that live TV can be intimidating. Wish me luck.

UPDATE: Just left Orbit studios. I don’t know about the interview, I think I have had a hard time trying to put my ideas in sequence, but hey, it’s my first time. If you have watched it, please let me know what you think.

Announcement

This post was supposed to appear almost two weeks ago before some changes take place here, but somehow I totally forgot about it, and for that I apologize. The thing is: although I have owned the domain saudijeans.org for some time now, my blog has been hosted on Google’s blogspot.com domain. The blog is still hosted by Google, but I decided to use the new feature from Blogger to offer the blog under my own domain. You can still access/link to the blog using both domains: saudijeans.blogspot.com and http://www.saudijeans.org, but I prefer that you would use the latter one. The old feeds are still working, but you are advised to use the new ones. Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience.