Adonis Diaries

How complex is Your life experience?

Why well to do people cannot help but judging and belittling people life experiences?

How many of you experienced a few of these events in their life?

Visited the sinks of small restaurants serving Mexican food? And hand washed and cleaned dishes soiled with all kind of cheese and fat?

Cleaned restrooms and toilets? Vacuumed 4 floors of libraries and collected the trash?

Mopped and shined wood parkets?

Had to wake up at 4 am for years to work on 4 minimum wage jobs in order to pay the tuition for graduate courses?

Was awaken at 2 am by the manager to observe the dead bodies of 4 night guards, killed with machetes to rob the safebox of the manager?

Who suffered from malaria in Nigeria and was taken to an Egyptian doctor, living alone in a shanty house, deep in the forest?

Who slept hungry?

Who rented a space to sleep in guesthouses and had to vacate early morning?

Who cared for years for his bedridden elderly parents (both of them in their 90’s)? And had to wake up twice at night, go down stairs to switch the interruptor for the private electricity provider in response to the sound of the air ventilator machine?

Who rented rooms in basements?

Who lived with elderly people because their children “feared” to leave them alone in the house?

Who managed a retirement community in a 9-story building, hopped with them in a van to visit sites in the city, take picture of them, interview them for the monthly gazette to promote this lousy private institution? And witness several clients commit suicide by throwing themselves from windows?

Who boarded the slowest Amtrak train of the 70’s that made you feel you’ll never reach destination.

Who got on a Greyhound bus for 3 days and nights to cross from one state to another, just to attend a convention?

Who was awaken at midnight in a hotel room by your advisor to say “you are snoring”

Who tried all kinds of jobs, just to discover a single job that he would consider worth a life endeavor, a passion that will make him wake up happy and excited to go to work, and miserably failed to find and settle on this job/passion?

Who was 2 hours away from certain death when he got typhoid fever in Africa at the age of 5, and had to re-learn how to walk after a month in the cold chamber?

Who lived alone for 20 years in a foreign land, no relatives around, and had to fend for his survival everyday?

Who had to learn to place 50 cold calls every morning to strangers in order to fulfil the requirement of a real estates company?

Who walked every single street in an entire county and knock on every house to distribute promoting leaflets?

Who attended every conceivable university courses, math, chemistry, physics, engineering (industrial and human factors), psychology, econometrics, economy, accounting, higher education… All the probability graduate courses, experimental designs applied by different fields and their statistical analyses packages and interpretation of results, running experiments with subjects, designing ATM interface that never changed through the decades…

Who took Artificial Intelligence course in the late 90’s, the kind of “If…then” queries from experts in their fields, and neutral network created by psychologists?

How many international exams and tests, national and syndicate exams and tests, language proficiency exams and tests, including driving exams (oral and written) in every state you settle in? (Obviously rules and laws of driving do Not change that dramatically, but governments need fresh money. I did all of them in 3 languages (French, English and Arabic) and stopped counting long time ago. Multiple choice exams ae no brainer if you know the order of dimension in every engineering field. Without preparation, I managed to pass, and that was good enough.

Teaching at universities with 60 students per class. Students Not there to learn anything, but to secure a certificate for attending a university. Heavily copy/pasted internet homeworks to depress you.

At universities that don’t believe in subscribing to peer-reviewed scientific papers, and I had to write my own course material and distribute the chapter one session at a time. Great exercise for me to relearn and offer what the class could assimilate. And testing and exams requirement to my chagrin, since only a couple students per class cared to learn and appreciated the material.

Never settling in one location for more than a couple years. Carrying barely a couple of suitcases and leaving behind all my possessions. I even gave away for free 2 cars because I could Not afford the repairs.

I read the original books of the famous and known authors of every state I settled in, and read in 3 languages whatever book I could get my hands on and was available. And translated many passages to spread the “learning” of different social fabrics.

I have been reading since the age of 13, and started with French books, then Arabic and finally books in English. Though I can write proficiently in 3 languages, I got used to writing in English.

I have been maintaining a blog (about ten thousand article/posts so far) of what means to me and is worth communicating.

I survived so far and don’t miss the belongings that I left behind.

What of the millions upon millions of refugees?

Fleeing war-torn countries. Walking, for days, with toddlers and children. Hoping to stumble on a UN facility. Sheltering under a makeshift tent, if available, in the snow, pouring rain, scorching sun. Encampment burned by the locals.

Camps closed and transferring again, to nowhere. To the unknown, wishing to live one more day, the whole family intact. Drown in the sea, dying from curable diseases for lack of medical treatment. Hungry most of the time, thirsty all the time.

Tear-gassed, beaten, harassed, maltreated, chased away like dirty dogs, regardless of level of education and many spoken languages.