The degree of correctness of the image built for someone in our mind usually varies according to the time of building that image since knowing them.

1^st phase, prejudgment:

It is the idea formed in mind even before meeting a person due to previous gained knowledge through experience in dealing with people. It can be like the probability of the presence of a certain characteristic in them. This is obviously wrong as it is only predicting according to the previous knowledge of others which might not always be true.  What can make it worse, when being subjected to a prominent event that highly affects one’s judgments towards a certain criteria. Like for example, someone who was treated badly by a single person in a country so he thinks all the people of that country are rude.

If this experience was gained, not due to person prejudgment but even from others the effect will be multiplied. You can notice that the prejudger uses plural even when talking about a single person.

Prejudgment or prejudice could also be called generalizing which it may lead to racial discrimination.

2^nd phase, first look impact:

After meeting a person or could be even the very first period of knowing them. At this period, the judger starts mixing his prejudgment image with the first image he encountered when dealing with this person.

The first impact is very strong, especially if there was not prejudgment the first impact takes control of the judger and can disable the mind as one’s mind is already satisfied with the idea which was formed during the first impact with that person.

It’s obvious that this time of judgment is mostly wrong as it forms an image of a person by appearance or by a onetime situation. Usually people discover that, but sometimes it is too late; like for instance trusting someone you shouldn’t and getting conned by or something like love at first sight.

3^rd phase, getting to know:

This can be a considered, somehow a safer time to say you can know a person after getting to know them more through further interactions between each other and spending more time together.

4^th phase, knowing their lives:

I was not quite sure about that forth phase except recently when discovering people more who I thought I know pretty well for a relatively long time.

One of the best ways to know a person is to travel with. It may be thought that it is more likely to say “stay with” which is a good way to know someone indeed, but in traveling you discover much more about the inside of the person which you think you know. Maybe because when one of you moves to stay with the other the situation is not exactly the same for both of you, but in traveling you are both equal in everything. So there you get the chance to discover their way of living, facing problems, way of thinking, planning, dealing with people, internal thoughts …

I think that this should be the only way that you can say if you truly knew that person or you were mistaken about certain points and that was what I figured out recently. now I started to wonder what had my recent travel partners realized later.

The more you delay the time of drawing an image for a person, the more accurate it is. And keep it ready for updates all the time for changes; as you’ll never get to know a person 100%.

During any football match each member chases a piece of rubber called the ball and trying to let it pass throw a rectangular area called the goal. Aiming at achieving that they exert a lot of effort and people enjoy watching them trying to do so.

Now imagine while you were watching some match, someone came from behind and removed the bars & the nets of the two goals. What will be your reaction? Will you keep watching? Will the players keep playing and struggling? What will you think about the players if they went on playing with no goal ? Let’s say that they are playing for enjoyment. Will they keep passing the ball forever? And you know what, whatever they do, the ball will go out at sometime. Simply because everywhere is out as long as the goal is absent.

Now after you’ve got the ball at your feet. Do you know where you are going to shoot? Or you will only keep running with the ball till you get out of the field achieving nothing?

Build up that image in your mind and imagine it clearly. The life of every individual on earth can be represented as a circle whose radius elongates by time. The area of this circle represents the experience, knowledge gained and time lived by that person. Intersection between one or more circles represents a certain type of relationship between them. For instance, you will find your circle intersecting with your friends at university or school and that the area of the overlap will be larger than the overlap with your friends at work in case you haven’t known them for long time. And here’s your brother’s circle intersects with yours and your life partner’s as he gets in touch with both of you. Lots of circles will be intersecting at a certain area like area of work for example but it will be quite small, on the other hand only a few circles will share a large area with you which represents people closest to you like your life partner, your best friend or a close member of the family.

Overlapping won’t be only in case of long term relationships. Just you going to buy something from the grocer’s or having your hair cut at the barbers’. So overlapping is any interaction between you and another individual no matter how long it takes.

Unfortunately due to difference in way of thinking, education, standard of life, age, experience and lots of factors of life conflicts arise. Some people are not flexible or adaptable enough to be able to intersect with other circles without causing troubles to themselves or others. So you’ll either expand your area of intersection or stay isolated. Live together or die alone.

I was thinking about the top two intersections. The first in terms of area and first in terms of number of circles meeting at the same point. The first one I guess it can be your life partner who you will be living with for the rest of your life. For the second one, I think it will be for the greatest number of people doing the same thing and having the same thought at the same instance. I think a picture will do a better job in that case. You’d better see it at full size.

The little child kept talking to his father while he was reading the newspaper. The man was concentrating on a map in the newspaper that he flew into a rage because of his irritating child and torn the page of the newspaper. To teach his child a lesson he gave him that page which was having the map on and put him into his room telling him not to get out until he had put the torn pieces of map into right order. That was considered to be a very difficult task; how will the little child know the continents of the world. To his surprise he found his son coming out after a few minutes showing him the map in the correct order. The man wondered a lot and asked his son how he did it in that short time. That was the little boy’s answer “If I had managed to fix the earth I would have failed. I looked at the opposite side of the paper and found the face of the human. I fixed only the human and consequently the earth was fixed.”

Why not you? Why not you change the world? Thinking it’s too late, well then let it be your child who would change the world not just live and die as an anonymous. Why not take a decision from now that my son or daughter will be the person who will change the world. Work for that from now. Choose your partner who will bring up that person. What will change the world other than a sperm and ovum from a couple with challenging enthusiasm?

When you are walking down the streets, when you come to interact with people or see how people are acting with each other, you will realize that everyone hates the other unless otherwise shows up & may be will still hate you and treat you as an enemy. I was in a bus going to university then that situation happened. One of the passengers told the driver in a rude way that he wants another banknote because the change he was given was badly torn. Logically – and yet not so normally – the driver replied in a worse accent “Look at the money you have just given me before you open your mouth”. Two people who have never seen anything bad from the other are just treating each other as enemies. As if giving the other torn money is an insult. Why do people like to show anger and hatred? Is it for showing strength? Dignity? Honor? I don’t think so, but unfortunately they do think so. The most honorable man Prophet Muhammad would have done as they did when he was hurt. Or they think they have more dignity than him? When will the outrage is replied with goodness, you will be able to beat yourself and yet feel you are the better whatever the other thinks about you.

When I first knew about the acm-ICPC, the regional contest seemed like a far dream and even the summit of my dreams then. When I used to see the picture of friends who had been at the previous regional contest in Morocco and Kuwait I flew away with my imagination that I am at their place, but yet the world finals never came into my mind.

Today something happened that made me remember those moments mentioned above. I was checking the pictures of the team that had been to the world finals this year from Egypt from Cairo University who had won the last regional contest. So I remembered that and thought, is it possible? Last local contest I didn’t think we would qualify for the regional contest at all but we did take the first rank which I still don’t know how and think we were not the best. Now it’s nearly the last chance the next regional contest to qualify to the world finals, may be the preceding one as well but it’s yet too early to judge. But now, the circumstances are somewhat similar so shouldn’t I be optimistic?

Since about a year ago, I had thought about the idea of having a blog, then I came to ask myself “Who will be interested to read my blog?” so I just skipped up and forgot about it. I read something Dale Carnegie said was “Why talk about what we want? That’s childish. Absurd. Of course, you are interested in what you want. You are eternally interested in it. But no one else is.” But recently, I had the feeling that I want to write or talk even to myself. It’s like I have internal dialogs. So I decided to find somewhere to talk and shout at. The first section for expressing my opinions, ideas and thoughts. The second one will be about events and incidents of the daily life. But as I have started late, and there are some events that need to be written about, so there may be some very events that happened long time ago.