Day Dreaming!

Remember those days when we were young and carefree, when our thoughts spontaneously carried us into a future of our own making, when thoughts of feelings, places and things that we imagined transported us into a world that only existed in our mind?

That was the time in our life when our imagination was allowed to wonder freely without the physical boundaries and barriers, in there many shapes and forms, that we were to later encounter!

A very few of us may have had a fertile imagination and whose early dreams may have partially or fully been realized whereas many of us move on beyond our youthful thoughts never to go back for even a short visit of our imaginary world!  In either case, however, our life is inevitably conditioned by many factors which would have been impossible to fathom or foresee at our younger years.

What our minds may do to us at a later phase of our lives is to travel back into an imaginary world where we would conjure up making changes to our lives to effect a different course than the one we ended up charting.  

Whatever our age may be, our day dreaming may serve as a source of self entertainment. The trick is to not let that entertainment lead to disappointment or regret!

Hani Badawi

May 4, 2018

A Proud Moment

I was recently caught by surprise when I was asked by a friend to come up with a story about a time in my career when I experienced a Proud Moment. At first I had a momentary brain freeze and felt like a deer in the headlights! Luckily my memory at this stage of my life remains reasonably vivid, so, upon taking a deep breath I was able to recall one such event and I commenced to narrate my story!

The one that came to my mind took place many years ago when I had just started working for a highly innovative company where my job description entailed supervising a team of brilliant scientists most of whom had just earned their doctoral degrees from very reputable US schools.

I was thrilled by the challenge that the job promised and was amused by what my boss at that time told me. He said “I am relying on you to herd the wild cats in your group”!

Actually, when I had the chance to get to know each member of the group, it turned out that each and every one had a strong opinion about their research ideas and projections albeit some of these converged and others diverged from the vision of the company. In summary, I realized that, whereas they predominantly had fresh innovative ideas, they needed guidance on how to go about managing their ideas and time and aligning these with the company vision and mission too. A tall challenge for them as, in their graduate studies, they did not have to conform to any equivalent limitations and disciplines.

Adding to my challenge, amongst the group members, who were mostly in their mid to late 20’s, there was an older scientist in his late 30’s. Although academically adept, he was described to me by the company management as “stubborn and a poor team-player”! I will refer to him as Dr. Oldman!

At the time I took on the responsibility of managing the group, Dr. Oldman was on probation for not only the above mentioned shortcomings, but also for what was deemed to be a “below average technical performance”! At that point I realized that my job will have challenges beyond my initial impression of what to expect and how to go about it! Furthermore, based on the above shortcomings I was guided by management that I have three months to work with him on a performance recovery plan that, should he not show the expected improvements, he will be asked to look for an other job elsewhere!

At the time I joined the company I had many years of managerial experience under my belt and believed that I had the necessary skills to deal with the Dr. Oldman issue but I still feared that this was going to be a daunting challenge! Remember, this issue was only going to be a part of a bigger picture that entailed managing a group of fifteen young scientists that I needed to coach in addition to the fact that I had to learn and digest the technical details of the company’s business model and associated roadmap!

After a few sleepless nights I decided that I’m determined to devise what’s needed to make this a successful mission.

Fortunately, with the benefit of my previous experience, I was able to balance my time equitably between all of the above job requirements. Amongst many other meetings, I had weekly one-on-one meetings with each member of my group and we jointly set clear goals and tasks with clear timelines for each individual and for the team as a whole. Of course, as you can imagine, my approach for harnessing the best out of each group member needed to be aligned with their specific skill-sets and aptitudes and I’m sure you can imagine that an extra effort needed to be assigned to Dr. Oldman and, indeed, that’s exactly what I did!

Dr. Oldman initially put up some resistance to my prescribed regimen of goal-setting, ratings, etc. but he finally started being respondent by the end of the first month.

Two more months passed and Dr. Oldman continued tirelessly to work with me to prove to himself, to me and to the whole company that he is worthy of retaining his job. So much so, that at the end of his probation period he was able to demonstrate a tremendous comeback and he attained, with flying colors, all his goal targets! Needless to say, at that point I finally breathed a sigh of relief! This however was not the Proud Moment!

The Proud Moment occurred nine months later when, to my heart’s content (and teary eyes!), he received the quarterly award of “Company’s Best Innovator”.

Hani Badawi
April 17, 2018

Our Legacy

Have you ever wondered as to what your legacy will be after you’ve departed from your physical being?

Is it important to leave a legacy behind?

How far in time will one’s legacy live?

How is one’s legacy remembered and by whom?

These are deep and personal questions and I’m raising them here with the intent of stimulating my mind and hopefully yours to ponder further on this subject.

Unlike what historians or biographers do in capturing the legacies of famous, notorious, influential or criminal mortals, as individuals we don’t seem to have the same motivation to document the legacies of our departed family members or friends and the same argument holds true about others doing that for us.

Luckily a very few individuals will keep a diary throughout all or part of their lives and some will even write an autobiography, but these are even fewer and far between.

I suppose we all have memories of our departed family members and friends and, in some way, by reviewing those memories in our own mind and/or by discussing them with others we are somehow generating a verbal and mental image of their legacy. Alas, it is less common that we formulate a written version of our thoughts and we often find ourselves regretting that we did not keep good records of the sayings and doings of our departed ones.

By the same token, memories of our lives as seen by others will follow the same trajectory as the above described one.

I will deviate a little from the topic here to briefly address a physical phenomenon known as radioactive element decay time. All radioactive elements continue to lose their radioactivity over time and the metric that scientist most commonly use is known as decay constant (or half-life). Radiation emitted from the isotopes of the different radioactive elements will decay with different time constants and I won’t take a deeper dive into the physics of this matter any further, but please hold that decay notion!

Bearing all of the above in mind, it is fair to say that the chances of having one’s legacy survive within a fairly narrow circle of friends and family will likely follow a memory decay process analogous to what happens to radioactive matter with differing decay times depending on what continues to be remembered and what was documented during one’s lifetime and/or after one passes on!

Hani Badawi
February 27, 2018

Fresh Air: Experience, Feelings and Thoughts

As yesterday was a very bright and sunny day in Evanston, IL, I was propelled to take a long walk by the Lake with the intention of getting some “fresh air” and breaking loose from the indoor confinement that is often dictated upon me by the usually unfriendly winter weather in this otherwise beautiful and scenic part of the world!

In addition to the reward of breathing in and filling up my lungs with fresh air, my visual senses and appreciation of nature were rejuvenated and my brisk walk reinvigorated my physical functions.

Clarity of the sky and the relatively warmer weather combined with a superb surrounding nature and architecture, all worked together in harmony to create a magical experience prompting me to keep taking photos all along the way!

Photos, lamentably, do not capture the feeling of fresh air!

Begs the question: Is Fresh Air only a physical sensation?

Here’s a thought: We may have a positive encounter or experience in the course of our lives that we may declare as “a breath of fresh air”. I wonder if it’s truly a sensation of fresh air or is it “like” breathing fresh air?

Perhaps the exhilaration derived from the foregoing situations allows us to imagine the feeling that we normally experience when physically breathing clean and otherwise unadulterated fresh air! On the other hand, that exhilaration may simply lead us to take a deeper and more relaxed breath which by some mental magic is truly “fresh air”!

Hani Badawi
February 27, 2018

Memories and Recollections

There are memories that lie dormant in our minds only to be stirred up and refreshed when:

1- We meet friends that we hadn’t seen in a long time, and
2- We physically go back to places that we once lived in or had visited in the past, and
3- A situation and/or a discussion takes our thoughts back to the old times.

Our minds are capable of archiving events in the form of memories but these memories need to be refreshed from time to time otherwise they may fade away!

Hani Badawi
February 16, 2018

Am I Ticked Off!

Tick! What an intriguing word!

On my daily “To Do List” I feel good when I proudly put a check or tick mark by a completed task. I do so while listening to the clock ticking with the familiar tick-tock sound!

Beware of ticks! Some of these insects are infected with bacteria and can transmit several diseases, worst of which is Lyme disease.

In economics lingo, A tick is a minimum change in the price of a security. Also known as a downtick, a minus tick occurs when a security sells at a price less than the preceding sale. A minus tick is the opposite of an uptick.

Some of my friends urge me to write a book and they often ask me if my book is ticking along nicely! I wish it were for I would have responded “I shan’t be a tick”!

Alas, I’m ticked off by some unbecoming and irresponsible behavior and actions of some politicians (and you know who I mean 😉) and pray that they will eventually go down the dustbin of history!

Rest assured, the time is Ticking!

Hani Badawi
February 16, 2018

Days of past, present and future

The 1967 musical album “Days of Future Passed” by the Moody Blues was and remains to this day amongst some of my all time favorite albums.

It is not only the lyrics and composition that render a special liking to a song/album but I think it is the memory of the times surrounding the initial exposure to it that colors it in an unforgettable and endearing way.

In the past few weeks here on my visit to Egypt, where I’m thoroughly enjoying the company and endless hospitality of my dear family and friends, I’ve been very lucky to relive some of my past through touring of both previously visited and unvisited areas of the country as well as meeting new extensions of my family and friends.

In this, as in many previous sojourns in Egypt, invariably I find myself humming tunes from the above mentioned album as if I’m trying to hold on to past memories and at the same time enjoying the present while wondering about the future!

Hani Badawi
January 23, 2018

Perception, induction, rejection and conviction

At the early phase of our lives, many of our notions and beliefs, rightly or wrongly, are seeded in our perception of things. We may, amongst other things, because of our limited exposure to details of the otherwise complex world, perceive that the world revolves around our family, home, school etc. Over time, our perception of things evolves and we start observing many exceptions to the rules and notions that were previously imprinted in our minds and corrections ensue. Effectively, in modern parlance, our perception goes through revisions in a very similar way as software or hardware do over time as a function of evolution of the sophistication in these respective areas of technology.

Adjustments and fine tuning of our perceptions occur via a multitude of mechanisms, some of these are unique and others common or shared, depending on our individual circumstances. Induction through education and media, rejection via our ability to reason out facts and conviction via numerous complex paths, are amongst many variable processes that we encounter at different stages of our lives, all of which constitute the forces that color and continuously recolor our perception of facts.

The notion of “Perception is Reality” is therefore predicated on the foregoing diverse factors and consequently it is impossible to claim that our perception (or reality) is identical to that of anyone else’s.

Conclusion (open for debate): Imposing our perception and/or reality has been and will continue to be a source of angst amongst individuals and nations too!

Hani Badawi
January 17, 2018