Beyond Samarkand

I can't help but feel a bit of trepidation. After three years in Saudi Arabia, and months of anticipation,  I am finally about to be laid-off. The official company meeting is in two hours. Tomorrow, those who will stay with the new company need to meet with them. I'll likely go to that meeting, more out of curiosity than any thing else. I have final details to arrange quickly, shipping the motorcycle, making sure Shisha' papers are absolutely in order. Of course, now that the transition is drawing near, I feel a little fear. Big changes. A new chance to reorganize my life and live closer to my ideals. And end to the familiar and new adventures. I'm glad for it, but still reluctant. The familiar is, well, familiar.

As my courses are wrapping up I finally have time to turn to other matters. Or at least, I have no excuse for not turning my attention to other matters. I could have gone back and edited one of my projects, but I'm just not fired up enough to do it. Instead I exercised, light weights and some rowing, and spent an hour working on Arabic. Chotu is awaiting departure from Jeddah to Porto. "Bokhara, insh'Allah." The delay is blamed on Saudia. I'm concerned about his routing, but I suppose once he is on a plane more than one hand off will have to happen. There is not much I can do but wait another day. The vet blames it on Saudia for not getting back with confirmation. Waiting seems to be what I do here. I'm still waiting for news of my actual lay-off. It has taken so long that I have started making other plans. At this point, I expect to have to resign before they get their act together. Really, really annoying. Especially after spending four months of expecting i...

My portfolio was approved, so that's one thing out of the way. I have submitted the last major project for my "creative designs" course. That is the "This is Islam" video drafted before. The final version is this: Chotu is now scheduled to fly out on the 2nd of May. Insh'Allah there will be no incident. I'll keep Shisha here in Saudi until I have a final date for leaving. Hopefully final word on that soon. I have a draft paper to submit tonight, and a final version due at the end of the week. Once that is submitted, the only thing left is "clean up" work on the two courses. It looks like a B in one and A in the other. Frustrated about the B, but not enough to go back and resubmit the projects and such. It was too much the first time around. But, once this paper is done, maybe there will be some space to at least resubmit one. I just want to be done at this point. Did not hear back from InfoPrints (IBM). I'm not surprised, I had a requiremen...

The final months, weeks, days in a country all become a rush. I've put out a departure date from Saudi of June 7th. I don't know if that is it, but sometime in June, maybe the first week of July, I expect to leave. My current teaching semester ends June 6th. I'm trying to get everything in order by then as well. In the next week I turn in the third major project for my Creative Designs course. Final paper for the research project the week after that. The draft of "This is Islam" can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU0tIocwF2Y The cats are getting sorted. The first one ships out to Portugal next week. I'm waiting to getting a better idea about the possible job in Colorado before I ship the other. The interview is tonight. I suppose I'll have some idea after that, but if it goes well I would expect there to be more steps before they know if they want to hire me or not. We'll see. I'm taking the week off from work to relax a little as I f...

For one of my current classes I have to make presentations. These presentations are supposed to be learning objects - they help the viewer learn something. For my last project I've decided to do something on Islam. The theme is "This is Islam". The intended audience would be high school or freshman college students. The people using the presentation would be teachers who present it to help drive discussion. The audio track for the presentation will be Adhan followed by Al Fatiha. The video portion needs to be slides and text. Using images of Muslims and quotes from the Koran and Hadith I want to make a presentation that would enable Western audiences with little exposure to Islam, or negative exposure from Western press, see Islam in a new light. This is where I need help - I'm hitting the Koran and Hadith for appropriate quotes. Still, my knowledge is weak in this area. I'm open and grateful to suggestions or pointers. Images - if you have images you are willing ...

I was able to find people at University of Coimbra today using facebook. From one of the people I wrote there, I know have the e-mail for a professor in the EdPsy program at UC. Now I need to write the letter! I've been distracted today by the topic of my graduation portfolio. I have just enough time to put something together, having waited too long to start assembling the pieces. A past instructor, Dave Young, was able to find some work that I had done but had lost my copies during the too numerous computer migrations I had in '08 and '09. Thank you Dave! One more day until the weekend here, and then I hope to get bulk of the work on the portfolio done. Mostly it involves looking at what I've done and assigning it to categories. Of course, there is no news on the impending lay-off with Raytheon. Inshallah there will be something definitive soon. Two months now and it just wears on the back of my mind. A level of weariness to everything I do. On a side note - I talked, ...

I've been combing the web to find stuff on University of Coimbra in English. There isn't a lot out there. I'm going to start gathering stuff here. Notes Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Coimbra (Portugal) The Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences is integrated in the University of Coimbra, one of the oldest Universities in the world. The Faculty offer graduate and pos-graduate courses in Educational Sciences, Work Service and Psychology. Same of the pos-graduate courses in Educational Sciences and Psychology have as main purpose to prepare teachers and other professionals to research and to lead with social and pedagogic problematic, like violence in society, and more specifically in schools, families and other places. Web site: http://www.fpce.uc.pt / Source: http://www.cybertraining-project.org/page.php?lang=En&page=2 University of Coimbra main web page http://www.uc.pt/en Web page that gives brief on EdPsy p...