Hello all you Deviants out there, a special shout to my friends and watchers to whom I'm really grateful for all the support and comments.

It occurred to me a few weeks (maybe even months )back that I haven't been that active here and haven't really done much of photography or anything outside my university studies for that matter, so I had the intention of updating this journal but wanted to have more news so I can jam into one journal entry and finally I have all what I wanted to say and confirmed too.

So here goes.

As some of you might already know, I was doing a Master degree as Manchester uni in management of Projects, and I'm happy to say that I finally finished it did my dissertation and submitted it early September. Results will be out sometime late Nov to early Dec as the school mentioned.

Having done this, I must talk about the next step after the MSc , which was a really hard decision to make as I was basically split between 2 main routs. The first,to stop at the MSc and look for a job or go back to my old one as it was still on hold (more or less. this meant that I only think of myself and not fully use this once-in-a-lifetime chance of moving to another country to study and gain all what I can from this culture and environment.
This also meant that my wife would have just stayed with me here and became a somewhat typical Saudi wife in a western country, who came with her husband and stayed at home most of the time if not all of it. Just like back home.

The other path was to apply for an upgrade for the scholarship program I'm in, and make it into a PhD. Obviously this will result in a 3-4 year stay with all the added pros and cons. It meant I can further my studies, do more to my future, have more chances to do more and more of what I wanted to do and learn here, not just the academic stuff but also the other finer things in life. My wife could also be included into the same scholarship program and do a degree here as well.

To try and keep things short, I took the second choice. I felt that if I do go back with an MSc, I would feel like I've cut things short and just used a small portion of the potential that this opportunity has to offer. I WILL regret this for the rest of my life if I did go back with just the MSc. During my time here, I gained many friends whom I will lose very much if I went back so soon. So many things that are available to gain from, learn, and achieve are incredibly within easy access. So much personal development will be prematurely aborted and simply severed before any real advancement was made.

Yes the Certificate at the end of one year of studies and reports is a good thing. But is it just that thing that is achievable. Or is there more, much more. I would miss out on so much back home with family and friends, so many things I have not part of or been at in the past 18+ months. Would I miss out on more. Will they be worth that I loos this bird in my hand for that 10 in that tree.

I want to give you just a taste of the thoughts that went through my mind as I considered what to do and who will be affected. It was, and still is, a life changing decision.

The choice was one of the hardest in my life so far. Some might see the second rout the logical way to take, I agree. But, not every person is in the same situation as the other. If I've learned one thing here, its that choosing something for someone else if you were in his shoes is not as easy as it sounds.
So many complex and inter-connected issues come into the picture when you are the one making the choices for yourself.

So wish me luck, I will be doing so many things that I hope I will get a chance to experience in mu life. Yes Photography is defiantly a big part of them.

Oh, before I go I wanted to say that Fatima and I are expecting our first child to arrive sometime early Jan 2010 . As a dear friend of Mine said when I told him this, " the most photographed baby in the world" I'm not sure of the "world" part but there will be photos more than I can think of now. I'm already planning the first minute shots


Thank you for taking the time to read this I felt I had to share it with you.
Hani