يوميات معاذ - حيث تجد #حديث_الأربعاء وقصصًا أخرى

Category: English Post (Page 27 of 97)

I reached 300,000 views on my blog!

2017-08-06 / / 0 Comments
Today I celebrated a significant milestone on my blog, as I reached the 300,00 view mark!

It’s been quite the journey, like the life we live it’s been a series of ups and downs. But I’m glad with the result.



It took me a while to reach this milestone, a little faster than I expected, but my blog isn’t doing as good as I hoped for, I guess the gold age of blogging has turned away for good.

My site had a boom a while ago at the heat of the passport crisis, now it seems like things got better because it’s not drawing as many readers as before (I measure the severity of the crisis by how many readers view the post over a period of time). As the views dropped to the way it used to be before I started blogging about passports.

For my next milestone, I’m aiming for 400,000 views on the way to half a million views (it has a good ring to the ear doesn’t it).

I noticed that I don’t blog as often, I don’t have as much time or as much subjects to talk about as before. I’ve done experimenting with software and I’m trying to settle with a set of tools and master how to use them.

 A quick reminder of what I use on daily basis: I use GNU Linux Kubuntu 16.04 as a daily operating system with LibreOffice as my productivity suit. I also use Zimwiki as my personal database to collect data and snippets from all over the web. Android has proven to be a good choice for a smartphone so far.


I’m on vacation for the next few weeks, it’s not like I have anything to do or anywhere to go, I do visit the bank regularly to try and withdraw some cash (the liquidity crisis continues for the third year on a row) and with the daily power cuts and heat, it’s a tropical paradise indoors! (Power cuts affect the Internet and thus makes blogging more difficult).


I try to mix things with the Arabic posts which has attracted a slew of followers! I actually have subscribers on my blog now, which is pretty nice!

I will continue to blog tho as there will always be something to write about.

What I like about blogging is that the page views increase everyday, there is no way that the stats will go down, and no one can take the progress I made away from me.

Have you reached a milestone on your blog? How long did it take you to reach there?
Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

An interview with Mrs. Angelika Gutsche!

2017-07-20 / / 0 Comments
It was three months ago when I got an e-mail from Mrs. Angelika Gutsche saying that she wanted to translate a post from my blog to German and post it on her blog.
I was both flattered by the request, and felt a tad bit skeptic! Why would a German blogger be interested in Libya? She seems to know so much about whats going on!

 That question is a question that many of my followers and blog readers have been asking for a while now, and in this post I’m going to answer two questions:

Who is Mrs. Angelika? And why is she interested in Libya?

First of all: Who is Mrs. Angelika Gutsche

Mrs. Angelika is a true Jill of all trades! She studied psychology at the University of Munich and worked as a program coordinator at the Goethe Institute for several years, before embracing a lifestyle of world travel with her husband. 

She also enjoys art, history, cooking Mediterranean cuisine, reading, and translating -whenever she finds time in her busy schedule.

Which takes us to the next question: Why is she interested in Libya so much!

During her trips across the world she visited Libya several times and fell in love with it! So the news of the 2011 civil war were shocking to her, and what was even more shocking was how the western media covered the news coming out of Libya, saying it was: “filled with horrible things about Libya and Libyan politics”.
So she decided to do her own research into the Libyan struggle, and in April of 2011 she started her own blog to cover the news from Libya and help show the real image of Libya to German readers.

Feel free to visit her blog and see the wonderful work she has been doing now for over 6 years, writing about Libya and showing the world what is going on in our country.

She has nothing but good intentions and wishes for the safety and prosperity of Libya. These intentions transcended across the world and could be felt by anyone who read her words and saw her passion for Libya.

Hopefully this post satisfied your curiosity about Mrs. Angelika, please leave your comments and questions below as she will be reading those too, so be nice!

June update: I’m trending in Germany!!

2017-06-21 / / 0 Comments

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post! So here is an update!

Ramadan productivity

Well I’ve said before Ramadan that I won’t be posting as much and will try to avoid the Internet all together (I love these promises that I always fail to keep!), so I’ve decided to write a quick update to my readers!

It’s the final week of Ramadan, despite the liquidity crisis and inflation people are preparing for “Eid elfitr” (the holiday of breaking the fasting), the streets are packed at night, but in the morning it’s empty as a Libyan bank safe (pun intended).
Sleep cycle is a mess

To be honest I’m not getting much done, I’m too tired in the day and too full at night, and since I have to work this Ramadan, I am staying up all night to make it at 9:00 to work- I stay up all night to make use of it to eat and drink-.

And today happens to be the longest day of the year, how lovely!

And to make matters worse, I have to adjust my sleep patterns because I’m coming back to work the week after Ramadan, the same old schedule.
I’m popular in Germany! Sort of!

Mrs. Gutche has translated yet another one of my posts to German, and this time it trended in Germany! The picture below is of a German news site that shows the trending stories in the last 24 hours. The post can be found here. At least I’m relevant somewhere!

Who is Mrs. Angelika Gutsche? And why is she translating posts from my blog to German? I’ll leave the answer to these questions in a future post! I think it’s going to be a good story for you guys!

A screenshot from a popular German news site.

Bad call on the blog

I’ve decided to send automatic messages to followers on Twitter, not the best of judgment, now I have a box full of spam, and someone is leaving spam comments on my blog constantly (chances are it’s a bot), and the stats haven’t increased as much as I expected, but I guess it’s too early to judge such a move.

A sample of the spam I’m getting

In case the person who is spamming me is reading this, at least make your comments relevant to the posts you are commenting on..

Final words

I wish that this Eid would be a peaceful one, that we could find joy and peace rather war and fear. I wish for these dark days to end, this war and this situation has gone long enough. I’ve grown tired of writing about it and talking about it, and my ability to change this situation is very limited.

Have you tried sending auto messages? Did it backfire on you? How is your sleeping? I’d like to know that so please leave a comment. And have a nice day!

Cross roads

2017-05-30 / / 0 Comments
Good day to my English speaking readers. Assuming you can’t read in Arabic (or that you are too lazy to copy the text and paste in Google translate, just kidding!) I’ve changed the blog’s name to Black coffee, I’ve been blogging on this blog for 5 years and I’m almost at 300,000 page views! How about that?

The age old question!

I’m faced with a conundrum: The top read posts are in Arabic but most of the comments are in English. A mix between the two seems to be the answer, but I’m yet to balance the two.

Catching up

Life continues to drag on as a bit of the same old, with some clashes every now and then erupting in the middle of the city to make us appreciate the status quo.
Ramadan has been pleasant so far despite the astronomical prices, the weather is cool and GECOL are itching to find an excuse to start cutting the electricity. If it can only last until the end of Ramadan? Third world problems at it’s best.

My job

My job continues to be a soul crushing cycle of routine and melancholy. A cycle that I waited for two years to be a part of. The salaries are meager, when divided by the black market rate of the US dollar (which controls in the price of everything in Libya) I find that I get paid a little more than 80$ a month. Try living by that tiny amount of money (which I’m not even getting due to a nation wide liquidity crisis, it’s so bad my account has been frozen by the bank because I haven’t cashed out money in over a year).

Getting married?

Everyone I know seems to be either getting engaged or getting married. It’s like they are answering some mating call that I’m not receiving.
When I ask my friends why do they want to get married. Their ready answer for this is that it is the next step that everybody seems to be taking.
Go to school, graduate, get a job, and get married.
I’m not too eager to share my life with someone else (assuming that I can afford the long and complicated courtship process that is a Libyan wedding) so for the next few years god willing, I’m staying single..

It doesn’t seem fair!

When I come to think of it, I haven’t done anything with my life, I graduated from college only to start working almost right away. And now when I’ve finally settled at a job, I find that the next step other than post graduate studies is getting married. What?

What I REALLY want to do

What I really want to do is travel! I’m yet to travel abroad with the exception of Tunisia (with all due respect, my two trips to Tunisia were awful). I’d like to go to new places and explore the world. It doesn’t have to be fancy or glamorous, I just want to gain experience and see the world, that is one of the things I have in my bucket list. And none of those items is getting married, none!




Delaying marriage is a personal decision, I’m not going door to door canceling weddings and breaking hearts! Maybe in two or three years I will be convinced to go through the bells and whistles for someone, but for the time being this seems like the worst idea I could think of (right after staying in Libya!!).

Sour grapes

What’s so good about marriage anyway? I’m not saying it’s sour grapes. But every married person I know is complaining about one thing or the other. Be it the spouse or the children or the high cost of life. I know I’m not the happiest person you would meet, but I know well enough not to sign up to a misery camp when the subscription fee is everything I made + my life taken away from me.

Final words

Are you married? Getting married soon? Single like myself? I believe that everyone has a story to tell and a unique perspective of his own. And I’d like to hear your story in the comments section below.

Have a nice day. And hug your kids if you have kids.

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