A few days back, I had an interesting discussion regarding discipline with a couple of friends that got me thinking ever since. The subject has specially been on my mind especially during my time here in Haifa, trying to improve myself in this department.

What I am talking about is having discipline in doing things. Lets start off by the things most people need to do throughout a period of 24 hours, including the basic needs (some of the points pertains only to Baha’is):

- Sleeping/relaxing
- Eating
- Personal hygiene
- Saying prayers and reading Holy writings in the morn and evening
- Say obligatory prayer
- Reciting the Greatest name 95 times
- Bringing oneself to account at the end each day
- Maintaining relationships, including writing/calling loved ones as well as socializing with people around you.
- Work
- Home chores

I will leave the list for now as I am fairly sure I have missed a couple of points. But this is to give you an idea that all these things have to be done every single day and most of these things might be done without thinking actively about it. Why? Because they (most of them at least) have become a core habit/fundamental part of me to the degree that if I don’t do them even for a day, I will feel the lack of it so extensively that I will not be able to go to bed until it’s done.

Enter the challenge. Make every single item on this list a core habit, introduce new habits into this list or drop bad (core) habits to make your day more fruitful, enjoyable and efficient. Maybe this new habit is for a short period of time (like studying for an exam) or you want it to be part of your life. To give you an example that I am struggling with on and off is to make a daily task list every morning as to what I am supposed to achieve that day and make sure those tasks are done by the end of the day. This would help free my mind from juggling a virtual task list that we all do maintain whether we like it or not.

How can I achieve it then? How do I make this to go from a on and off habit to a core habit so that I will not be able to sleep at night if you haven’t done it? This is were discipline comes in I believe and together with the will power is the fundamental way of succeeding in achieving goals. After all if you are persistent and disciplined you have done your part in attempting to make something to be (or to be dropped) as a core habit and this will undoubtedly help you in your personal development. Easy to say but harder to follow through…

After about a week’s time of reviewing and studying, today I took my first step towards getting my MCxD (x = A or S, Microsoft Certified Application/Solution Developer consisting of 5 different exams) certification by passing an MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) exam in Developing and Implementing Web Applications with Microsoft Visual C# .NET and Microsoft Visual Studio .NET . I have been planing to do this for some time, but you have to know the subjects fairly well in details before writing such an exam and on a day to day basis, you don’t wonder around the entire .NET framework exactly.

Going to the exam this morning I didn’t feel too hopeful after another late night study having not passed the practice exam, even though I felt I knew the subjects well. The real test didn’t start too well either with the four first questions being completely vague and difficult to understand what I was being asked about. Past that though it was nice and smooth until I went back to review the four first questions before submitting. Once I pressed the review button, I got an I/O disk write delay and failure followed by the crash of the exam application. Not a nice feeling after 2 hours of answering questions. So after the help of the staff of the Mediatek test center here in Haifa, thankfully, the application was keeping the state so I could continue where I left off with 10 minutes to go. And the score, 870 out of 1000 where 700 was needed to pass. You can even authenticate my passing here

I have had an eye open for a simple, good and free software that can sync my files with another source for backup purposes (external hard drive and my iPod) and that can easily be scheduled and the other day I found one that I think I will go with for now. It is called SyncBack and is free. There is commercial version too which has additional features, but the free one is enough for me.

I am sure there are ways to do this using xcopy and other commands, but I don’t call that simple or good.

Watching the video from hellogamer, here is a screen shot of the prototypes that were considered for Xbox 360 before they finally chose the far right one. Also, I came across the official fact sheet that Microsoft released.

The bummer part is that I don’t know when it is coming out, because even though I have not negotiated anything with my fiance, if it came out soon, I could have maybe gotten it on our registry. I guess it will have to wait since it won’t be out until Christmas.

A few short takes for future reference:

Housing maps – A combination of Craigslist and Google maps, for viewing rental and for-sale listings across the US of A.
You Send It – Upload up to 1 Gb and have someone download it. no registration required.
Get visa to Australia online
GSM Frequencies – Check to see if your GSM phone will work in the country you are travelling to.

So apart from getting consent from our parents, we also need the permission of the US government before we can get married in Seattle this summer.

Thinking about it just now as I am trying to formulate my thoughts on how to retell the process on this post makes me all drained and tired, but in all fairness everything has gone well so far even if it has meant a lot of work. It all started about 6-7 months by my fiance applying for the visa process to start through filing with the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Of course we prepared it together and there was a lot of documentation that was needed to be sent in.

Luckily, a friend told me about an excellent website called the visajourney.com, which is about (in their own words) marriage and family Immigration to the USA (K Visa). To give you an idea of how many steps a fiance visa consists of 23 steps as seen below:

This image I captured from the following page (since the page is long I had to do something better than pressing the PrtScrn button on the keyboard, so I used HyperSnap-DX). So long story short, I am on step 13, having had my interview and am waiting to get my visa.

As it turns out there is still another two years of paperwork ahead of me before I can take a break after getting my green card or become neutralized as the correct terminology for it is. Hope that at some point when the citizenship process has to start, it will be less of a pain.

It is customary (if you are old fashioned as some see it) that after a couple decides to get married for at least the man to ask the lady’s parents for her hand in marriage. In some cultures the consent of the girl is not even necessary which is tragic but outside the scope of this post.

In the Baha’i Faith, marriage is seen as a divine institution, the bedrock of the whole structure of human society and a fortress of well-being. And while importance is given to the physical aspect of such a union, this part is considered secondary to the moral and spiritual purposes and functions of a marriage.

Given its main and sacred purpose being the perpetuation and serving of the humankind, it personally gives me a hint of why it is considered a divine institution and what an amazing chapter of one’s life it is to enter into wedlock.

Something that many people find interesting and ask about is the fact that marriage for someone who is a Baha’i is conditioned not only on the consent of both parties but also on the consent of their living parents. In other words until you get consent from your and your partner’s living parents you cannot get married. And this approval is regardless of whether one or both sets of parents are Baha’is or not, are still married or divorced.

The reason for this law, and I would like to quote from the Baha’i writings, is

“… to strengthen the social fabric, to knit closer the ties of the home, to place a certain gratitude and respect in the hearts of children for those who have given them life and sent their souls out on the eternal journey toward their Creator.”

It is important to realize that this is by no means just an administrative regulation but rather if you think about it, conforming to this has great importance and effects the foundation of society.

Of course this puts a huge responsibility on the shoulders of the parents, to free from any prejudice and objectively take upon this duty, but given its importance and implications, it is without a doubt worth it. And of course it is easy for me to say that since I don’t have to deal with giving consent anytime soon.

Next post: Getting consent from uncle Sam is the most difficult part…