My 2010 Tops

Every year I typically seed and reap. On the whole, 2010 was all a seed-year except for one little reap of a (literally) passion-fruit; Malak my baby girl, although she soon became one of the most important seeds I will keep investing in for the rest of my life.

Here is a summary of the most important events I went through and things I encountered in 2010. This is just my personal list. For a global list check the Time’s Top 10 of Everything.

Top Event: Malak’s birth.

Top Book: Dear Undercover Economist – Tim Harford.
Although I spent the first half of the year with one book in hand: “What to Expect When You Are Expecting: The First Year”. But as things settled down back to normal with the newborn I could find some time to practice my normal life and read some books.

“Dear Under Cover Economist” is the collection of the best letters from the ‘Dear Economist’ column of the Financial Times by the brilliant best-seller author Tim Harford.  This book had the same dazzling effect on me as of a delicious molten cake. With 5 chapters (1. Love and Dating, 2. Work, School and Money, 3. Family, 4. Entertainment, 5. Miscellaneous), every answer (1 page for every question and answer) presents the rational (in terms of self-interest first), witty, and practical advice of an economist to some everyday concern. 

I am also currently reading two more (so far) engaging books: Mathematics and Politics (by Taylor and Pacelli) , and makers (a novel by Cory Doctorow). I may write some reviews for these two books once completed in 2011.

Top Movie: Agora.
Unsurprisingly, this year I was deprived of the joy of attending movies in the cinema. The only movie I got to watch was ‘Agora’. That was in Jan, only few days before my labor. My hormones were on the climax, playing a roller-coaster game with my nerves. I spent the last 40 minutes of the movie in heavy tears and I went out with a surge of emotions that were unleashed with a  poetry I wrote the next day before I could stabilize myself back again. 

Top TV Episodes: “تخت شرقي”
This Syrian TV show was on display in Ramadan. For many reasons (I may mention them later on) this show was an eyebrow-raiser to me. The nature and the context of the script were original and it (in someway) raised the standards of Syrian drama productions.

Top World Story: Soccer World Cup
Although there might be other more important political events (for example, the WikiLeaks which I personally think it is the strongest boom of information in the political world), but I am mentioning this particular one because during the weeks it lasted it was like a lively family festival..like a special edition of the days..like taking a break of the daily routines..and getting together, sharing yells, laughter, adrenaline raises, popcorn, and comments. I was not a supporter of any particular team (whatever team I liked its play, I’d support it in  the next game). 

Top Poetry: محمود درويش- خطب الديكتاتور الموزونة
I just read it recently and I shared it on my FB with a comment: محمود درويش: عبقرية القصيدة، قصيدة العبقرية. القصيدة التي تمنيت كتابتها.

Top Achievements: 
1. M.Sc. IT. My masters degree from the British University in Dubai. Although I haven’t graduated yet. But I am almost there. I shall write a special blog once I am done to share with you my experience and give a brief about my thesis.

2. MCTS - BI certificate. Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in Business Intelligence.
Besides some other minor achievements (one is some new cooking recipes certified by my husband!)

free2blossom’s 2010 special applaud award goes to: Mark Zuckerburg the father of Facebook (also the Time’s Person of the Year 2010). Thank you for turning our social life into a better connected one like never before!

In the hope of having so many other important achievements in the coming year, let me wish everyone a happy and fruitful year!

My Facebook Quotation

I have been looking for a quote for my FB profile to put in the “write something about yourself” area. I wanted one short sentence (5 or so words) that presents me to other people. For those who know me well, if this quote is mentioned they will with no doubt guess whom it represents, and for those who don’t it shall give a sufficient idea what kind of persons I am. i.e. it shall make me predictable (my actions, reactions, choices, values,..).

Yes, all [the accumulated sophistication gained through learning and exploring and stored in the 100 billions brain neurons  (or the ones remain intact) is to be summed up] in 4-6 words and a period (and the period is very important btw.). I left it blank for over a year until the moment of Eureka blinked up just yesterday and here is the One quote:

 “Maximizing gains, Minimizing waste/cost of scarce resources”

Sounds too materialistic? too dry? Seems to be taken out from some Economics textbook? or some  boss declaration for the new company’s strategy after the credit crunch? nop, nop, nop..you missed the point. So before you can mistakenly stereotype me, here is my justification.

Despite the different theories, philosophies, religious explanations, or gradient ages of light (darkness, illumination, renaissance), the two most important facts that everyone agrees upon on the face of this planet are:

a) we are mortal beings living in a world with scarce resources (our lifetime is the greatest scarce resource since it will come to an end, energy, food, job opportunities, etc) and,

b) how we can invest in these scarce resources in a way that maximizes our gains and minimizes our loss depends a great deal on the choices we make, and ,in turn, the results of our choices depend (in most cases) on the choices and actions taken by others!

(I know that many people fail to realize one or both of these facts, by either acting as if they have everlasting resources, or by assuming that they live alone on this planet and complaining about bad luck while missing the art of taking strategic choices by considering others’ actions)

Unsurprisingly, these two intuitive observations have been made long time before I write this blog and are now the basic pillars of a whole science called ‘Economics’ (I myself am one big fan of this science and am steering my academic research towards the field of computational economics).

The second point mentioned above (point b) is one big branch of Economics that is called ‘Game Theory’. In this context, a game is any setting in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others.

By this definition, we are all players in the game of life! We all take actions and receive payoffs from the game’s environment based on these joint actions. The role of the world (environment) around is to give payoffs (or incentives) to the players after they take decisions (actions). The ‘rational’ player, it has been said, is the one who succeeds in making the choices that maximize his payoffs (hope that now you can conclude something nice from my quote!). On the other hand, to be stable the environment has to care about its incentives

Laying down these definitions I further make the following points:

• I know my time is a scarce resource but my willpower (as well as patience) is a scarce resource too! (this is the formal justification I present to myself when I am in a party-time mood and I want to take a big, messy, crazy fun time: I just need to renew my energy for God sake!).
• While we cannot control or even sometimes predict the actions of others, thus the payoffs are sometimes not satisfactory, but in many cases we can choose our partners in the game, those players whom their actions affect our payoffs, or we can change the environment altogether if it is not giving satisfactory payoffs although we take the right actions. A nice quote in this regard is “If you are truly spinning your wheels with no growth in your abilities or in the world’s interst in (or sufficient appreciation to) your output, then it’s time to regroup ”.
• As an example of the previous point, many people choose to migrate from their own homeland and live in another country because it has better environment that can give back greater payoffs that matter the most to the individual (in terms of many things: health, security, education, work opportunities, money, insurances, living standards, freedom of expression, etc) and this payoff becomes greater than the cost (nostalgia for example). Some people run away from corruption for example (see the corruption index for countries 2010).

  And guess what? Corruption is the result of the joint actions of individuals based on the setting of the environment and it has the following formula as given by the economist Robert Klitgaard (oh ya I love formulas):

                     corruption = monopoly + discretion – accountability.

I’ll not go further in discussing this formula (this is out of scope and it needs a whole new blog), but to cut it short, what this formula indicates is that corruption increases when: a) the monopoly increases (well just remember the description of most of ‘our’ countries: “republic/democratic under an authoritarian military-dominated regime”!! As an illustrative example, just take the latest parliament election in … your country if you are from this region),  b) the discretion increases (the discretion of both the giver and the taker of the bribery for example), and c)the accountability decreases!

As a final note: I choose to live in an environment that nurtures accountability, minimizes monopoly, and penalizes damaging actions..an environment where I can maximize my payoffs and minimize the waste of my scarce resources  because I want to be a rational individual (this doesn’t contradicts with the fact that am crazy at times) who is free2blossom!