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Weather today has been much nicer - more sun and less wind. We ended up taking a boat, حرية السويس, and visited a couple of dive sites. I did three dives during the boat trip. The first two dives were "drift drives", where I was learning to glide with current while enjoying the marine life. Both of these dives were with my instructor Haitham.

I then did a third dive, this time with Captain Abdelhameed, and that was a buoyancy dive, where I did drills to help control my altitude under water and to be neutrally buoyant.

Finally, I did a fourth dive with Haitham, Tarek, and Juan. This time, though, it was a night dive. I've been craving doing a night dive for a long time, and it certainly was worthwhile. I'd almost compare to going to outer space - the blackness of the sea vs the blackness of space and the buoyancy in the water vs the free gravity in space.

Anyways, we wrapped up today with a great seafood dinner at Fares. I am exhausted now. Time to head to be to catch another boat for a couple of diving trips in the early AM. Tomorrow will be the last day on this diving trip, and I then will be heading to Dahab to work out of there for a bit.

Today was a bit of a rough start to our diving trip. The weather was cloudy, dusty, and very windy. One of the boats that went out in the morning came back shortly after because of the weather conditions.

We plowed through it tough and decided to dive directly from the beach without a boat. Haitham, my instructor, guided us in two dives in Shark's Bay. The first was a refresher, as it had four years since I last dived.

The second one was supposed to be a navigation dive, but it was cut short because Haitham's dry suit was leaking.

The original plan was to do a night dive this evening and then take a boat at dawn tomorrow to Thistlegorm, the British shipwreck from WWII. That unfortunately won't happen tomorrow also because of weather conditions. Hopefully the day after (?)

It's getting late here in Sharm El-Sheikh. I just checked into the hotel a few minutes ago with my friends Abu ElHaz and Tarek. Over the next three days I'll be taking the Advanced Open Water Diver PADI course. Plenty of diving to come!

بدأت السنة الجديدة بزيارة لشارع المعز لدين الله الفاطمي مع معتز و أحمد عليوة. أنا محرج و أنا أقول إن هذه هي زيارتي الأولى لهذا المكان. من مفهومي أنه تم ترميم الشارع و آثاره من فترة بسيطة. ولا أنكر أن  زيارتي غيّرت انطباعي عن القاهرة بشكل عام (إلى الأفضل). رونق هذا الشارع فريد من نوعه بالرغم من أنه يزال ينقصه الكثير.

استغليت زيارتي لشارع المعز و اشتريت أباجورة لأمي بمناسبة عيد ميلادها. الأباجورة شغل يدوي و رحت على كهربائي في باب الشعرية عشان يركّب الكهرباء. طلّع دين أهلي بس شكلها طلع مش وحش في الآخر. منقوش عليها "قل أعوذ برب الفلق":

It's been a few days already, but I can finally report that Project Small Fish is officially complete! The final deliverable is in the video below:

Here's a recap of the goals I originally set for myself:

1. Be in a better mental state
   • In earlier posts I mentioned how I felt that I was mentally weak, and that I needed to improve my mental stamina and clarity.
2. Be in a better physical state
   • I haven’t really took my physical fitness seriously for a long time, and there can’t be a better time to do this than now.

Here's how I've evolved on both of the above fronts:

1. Be in a better mental state

To contrast my current mental state with how it was prior to Small Fish, here's a snippet from an earlier post I wrote back in September:

When I left my job almost three months ago I wanted to spend more time focusing on my physical fitness, as it’s something I haven’t been putting as much attention to as I’d like. Here’s how things evolved:

• I came up with a plan that I wanted to train for Half Iron Man and be ready by next Summer.
• I ended up procrastinating and didn’t do much training, but a big hindrance for me was that a big pool was inaccessible. Traveling to Lebanon and not sticking around one location long enough makes it more difficult for me as well to commit to a gym for pool access.
• I changed my plan to do something very simple but over an extended period of time. I decided every morning that I’d spend a couple of minutes doing ab workouts, following the guidelines of the book Convict Conditioning.
  • That plan lasted (with many misses) for 40 days, but relocating several times and the sheer ease of the workout didn’t make me feel like I was actually working out, so I subconsciously made the decision to stop.
• The whole workout plan fell apart.

As the above points out, I was in a state of mental weakness, and even simple ab workouts I haven't been able to do consistently.

In contrast, I started Small Fish while I was in Dusseldorf in Germany, and then I moved to Paris, Bonn, Lisbon, El-Gouna, Giza, and Cairo. In all of these cities I managed to find what it takes for me to finish my workouts. Whether that's a calisthenics park in the city center, a tree, a fence, or a shitty pull up bar from التوحيد و النور. I stuck to the program in all these scenarios despite the very different environments.

I feel like I'm in a much better mental state and in a more positive mood.

2. Be in a better physical state

A number of friends and family members have been commenting that my physique has improved lately, and I certainly feel that as well.

• I can now easily do 10 pull-ups, and have done 40 chin-ups across four sets on some days. I couldn't do any of that before.
• For the first time since my shoulder injury, I can comfortably and easily do a wall handstand.
• I can now last a lot longer doing a frogstand, and my stance is a lot more stable.
• There were two skills I haven't been able to do yet: the elbow lever and the clap pull-up. I'll incorporate these in the coming fitness project.

This project was the first one that I structured in this formal and written way, and given how well it has worked out it certainly won't be the last.

اليوم كان أكثر الأيام توازنا منذ أسابيع:

It's a late night here in Cairo. Aside from posts related to Project Small Fish, I haven't really posted much in a while.

December has been a month where I lost my balance. I was so deeply focused working on one particular project, and I got so consumed by it to the point where I have been falling short on other priorities. Examples:

• Not spending quality time with my parents even though I'm living with them. I'm also not being a good uncle to my nephews. I haven't been doing fun activities with them at all.
• Barely seeing my friends.
• Very slow in responding and getting back to people's messages. Similarly, I didn't follow up much with people whom I met at Riseup Summit earlier this month.
• Not doing fun activities or adventures to add that extra spice to life.
• Not keeping in touch with people who are important to me or greeting them on special occasions.
• Not taking advantage of my time in Egypt (examples: taking oud lessons, calligraphy classes, etc.)
• Not documenting what's been going on in my life.

I'll have follow-up posts to address how I want to tackle each of the above. I started tonight by freeing myself up for the evening and spending more play time with my nephews.

I played with Mido and he was teaching me how to build Titanic out of legos:

And I played dominoes with the little man:

 

I left Europe last night after a whopping 56-day trip. I could not have anticipated that I'll spend this much time there, especially when I traditionally had little interest in going to Europe. The MIT reunion was really the only major reason that drew me there in the first place.

I arrived to El Gouna in Egypt this morning. I wanted to take this time to reflect on my experience in Europe. Here's how my itinerary in Europe panned out:

1. Madrid, Spain
2. Cordoba, Spain
3. Seville, Spain
4. Granada, Spain
5. Tarifa, Spain
6. Stockholm, Sweden
7. Brussels, Belgium
8. Dusseldorf, Germany
9. Paris, France
10. Bonn, Germany
11. Lisbon, Portugal

On average, I relocated every 5 days, often using long bus rides or flights. Moving around was certainly a huge burden and barrier from me actually doing "work". Not to mention that, in most of these places, I was staying at hostels, which are not necessarily the most productive of environments.

I am not going to lie, it was hard. Reflecting back, here are some moments that come to mind:

• Reconnecting with my MIT comrades in Spain
• Feeling the most lost I've ever been after the MIT reunion, and that was especially hard in Cordoba and Seville.
• Applying to YC with Carlos and having some healthy brainstorming sessions.
• Connecting with old friends like Lise-Lotte, Linnea, Rafa, and Amelie.
• Making great friends like Marie and Alina.
• Getting to know the EdgeRyders crew and experiencing a different model of thinking when it comes to communal living.
• Visiting the Catacombs in Paris with Bilal, Josephine, et al. - an incredible experience!
• Attending WebSummit in Lisbon and connected with great people there.
• Taking some great kite-surfing classes in Tarifa.
• Visiting INSEAD in France and learning more about their MBA program.

Gains from my trip to Europe:

• I started becoming more project-based and I think I found an approach that helps me stick with a project and commit to it. The first, and so far successful, example of that is Project Small Fish which involves calisthenics training, and I've been sticking to it religiously for weeks now.
• I experienced the state of total loss, where I had no idea what I was doing with my life - no job, no career, no friends, and no home. I like to think that I've become accustomed to that, and I am no longer afraid. I feel a lot stronger and more emotionally resilient thanks to the training I've been doing.
• I've identified two projects that have occupied a great deal of my time as I was traveling. It's still unclear where they'll go, but at least I have been spending my time doing work that is challenging me intellectually as well as growing my skill set over time.
• Having the freedom to connect with old friends is a huge luxury that I have, and practicing that luxury while I was in Europe was highly rewarding for me. I would love to visit and connect with more of my friends who live abroad.
• I learned that I am not asking for help as much as I should be. I should reached out to more friends about questions I wonder about and directly ask for help. I am a bit too independent for my liking.
• I identified some key questions that I need to answer for myself to help guide what I should be doing moving forward. Two key questions that I am contemplating on are 1) whether I should do more product as opposed to more engineering, and 2) whether I should remain attached to my Arab heritage as I currently am. I'll be reflecting on both of these questions in more depth in the future.
• I learned that joining a business school isn't really what I need right now. After going to that session at INSEAD, I felt very out of place and the crowd that I met there didn't appeal to me as a crowd I'd like to spend a year with.
• I should be spending more. I've been mostly cost-cutting while I was in Europe, and I think it's more appropriate from me to invest in myself through courses, experiences, and whatever means necessary. Time should be what I'm optimizing for as opposed to finances in the meantime.

These are just my initial reflections, and having written those down it doesn't seem like Europe was a time ill-spent. I'll be digging deeper into some of the points I mentioned above in the near future.

Today I went to the OpenVillage Festival that's organized by the EdgeRyders community. I got referred to this community last week through Bilal, and through online exchanges the people seemed interesting/crazy enough that I knew I had to come to Brussels to chat with them.

I admit, I am still not too clear what EdgeRyders exactly is about. The people that are part of it are clearly ambitious, knowledgeable, and interested in making a positive difference. From what I gather, the way they are aiming to achieve this is by outlining what are the different needs that humans need to be happy, and exploring how these needs can be met through collaboration as well as co-living.

The people I met today were certainly a diverse crew of talented people, and often have ways of thinking that I haven't been used to, at least for someone coming from Silicon Valley. A reasonable portion of the people I interacted with are anti-capitalist, anti-corporation, and believe that everything should be open-sourced.

While I appreciate open-source, I am also a huge believer in the power of business. Also, while capitalism is far from perfect, I have yet to see a better model by which a society should operate. I'll be keeping an open mind these days though - would love to observe a better (and more environmentally friendly) alternative.

We did an urgan game today where we split into teams and explored the city. Somehow, I ended up wearing an eagle mask. Here's a picture with me and Bilal pimping it out in Brussels!