Fakhroid Muse…

Well, schools are back here and traffic jams as well of course. The typical "normal" life I usually lead is here. What is not normal for me now is the fact that I'm not traveling this year anywhere. No plans so far.
My friends urged me to follow them to Germany for Photokina event (even if not from the very first day of the opening) but anyway I couldn't just skip everything on my shoulders and fly away; beside the budget that I'm trying to manage. According to news, our club did pretty well and the most astonishing part is the fact that we are the first "club" to participate in the history of the expo, and the first Arabian party to participate as well! Unfortunately, I don't have a proper coverage to post right now but I might try to get some for later.
Meanwhile, after ensuring that everything is going fine with the group, I asked for pardon from the founder to withdraw for a while from all the activities in the group, mainly to touch my camera more and create something.

Muse

My hands and mind are eager to work with some panorama, but the lack of locations in mind still put a block on my way. To find some rest, I decided to try to work on something at home and try hard to push my imagination further. For this reason, I've started to attend the theaters for a while, but the most significant effect took place via music, and specifically, Arabic classical music.



I've been fascinated lately with his voice: Sabáħ Fakhry [صباح فخري]. Even though I do remember watching him on TV when I was just a kid but I wasn't much into this art back then of course, and my mentality had changed drastically since then of course. His voice and the lyrics of the Syrian folk songs as well as the traditional classical Arabic Mowaššaħát do make a mesmerizing mix; specially the song posted above, with the title Send Me A Letter. I will type the lyrics at the end of this post if dear non-Arab reader wishes to know what the song is about.
Listening to Sabáħ would eventually form some ideas and created a sort of muse inside my head, but still lot of work is required to perfect this sense. My first trial is sloppy but I will post it here anyway, since this is all I could do for now; and probably I will try to make it better next time if I get any new "museful" input! 

إن كنت هويت ونسيتني
(if you have loved and forgot about me)
Sigma 70-300mm @120mm, 250^-1sec, f/29, ISO100

In the beginning, I was thinking of something with a romantic look, but my mind doesn't wander much into that arena. I wanted to point out a break of heart, some emotional breakdown of some sort, and after doing some tiny brainstorming, I arrived at the idea of reflecting a line from the lyrics off a broken mirror; the envelopes and drops of color (mimicking blood) came out later to fill some of the emptiness which was abundant around the writing. The hard time was delivered for breaking the mirror, placing the mirror, and placing the speedlite properly.
I decided to work here with my converted camera, and with a calibration from the WB disk, the colors were almost back to normal (some bits of color fixing was required later). The shot above is in fact a tone-mapped HDR slide, which after all, probably, wouldn't differ much from editing a single RAW file in a proper manner, but it was an experiment I loved to make. Later on, it was time to take "real" Infrared shots with this converted Canon EOS 7D…

 (IR) إن كنت هويت ونسيتني
(if you have loved and forgot about me)
Sigma 70-300mm @120mm, 250^-1sec, f/11, ISO100

Now, because of applying the infrared filter on the Sigma lens, I had to decrease the f-number a bit to allow more light in and make the exposure faster (even though the camera was on tripod). The fact that the camera is converted would still, at such high f-number such as f/29, require a second or so for exposing with the infrared filter on (threshold=650nm). The drop in the f-number proved drastic in terms of depth of field here as the envelopes and the cracks as well got blurred quite easily while focusing (using AF function) on the reflection of the writing itself. Processing the image later was quite easy but fixing the tilt (unlike the first version) made some out-of-ratio crop (i.e. 3:2) and produced quite a space on the left side. The first image was cropped as well but according to the ratio (3:2) and the tilt was not fixed there.
Now, generally speaking, it was sloppy idea as I said before and I had some imagination for it to be taken with a candle and some quill and ink. However, seems, to me, that such depiction is quite "soft" and doesn't reflect the meanings behind a broken heart.



Listening again and again to Sabáħ Fakhry has some hallucinating effect to my mind, if I dare say. For my break from the group's activity, I'm thinking of getting inspired constantly from his songs (though lot of them are actually traditional and Syrian folk). Thus, I might as well continue to think of something to create out of the lyrics of his songs, or at least the first song posted above. Sounds weird that despite the fact that I'm an Arab, I'm indeed discovering my own culture like I've never seen it before, and even deeper a bit to the limit of reading about Arabic musical culture and Maqams, beside calligraphy (which is a passion as well). Sad to realize that we have a rich culture, abandoned by its people…

Finale

Well, I won't go strolling about life matters for now and all my ups and downs and mood swings. As I've mentioned above, I'm going to put the lyrics for the song above (first Youtube post). The language is colloquial Syrian Arabic, and in translating I'll try to stick to the meaning as much as possible (and of course no rhyme). Notice that some lines and verses are repeated all over and over again and that's why one song takes such a long time. Each repetition is supposedly done in a different vocal style or Maqam. The lyrics are as the following (but without an order of stanzas or lines):

Send me a letter and let me rest*
if though it is a blame
but don't abandon me

Your absence has been long
and I'm waiting
and your heart is in rejoice

If you have loved
and forgot about me
and been cruel to me
without consideration
Just send me a letter
and let me rest*

Been patience with you
and tasted bitterness
and sent to you news and news
just to find that
you have forgot about me
along the days
and you were satisfied
to let me through the pains
but send me a letter and let me rest*

I have a God who knows me well
Who will bring justice
for the heat of my sighs
I cannot say you are the culprit
I'll be patient with my sorrows always
just send me a letter and let me rest*

* "rest" as opposite to worrying about something or someone.

Well, I hope dear reader enjoyed some of the music for this post. I'll just hope that I'll create more work and get inspired more to work on some of these projects!

Heedless…

Well, this is a quick wrap for the latest events here, after some long pause during Ramadhan. Ramadhan is over now and I'm trying to hop to the regular pace of a normal life (figurative speech). So many things to do here, including preparations for the vacation I'm planning to have on September, in which I'm supposed to travel to Oman first with the group for a workshop, and then I'm planning to head to Malta few days after that trip. I didn't organize the trip and timing still, and one thing new to me here is the transportation (supposing I'm going to land in Malta's main island, while I'd like to stay on the other island, Gozo). Up till this moment, I didn't even do anything about the visa.
Meanwhile, I'm not doing much with my camera except for visiting old photos and trying to do retouches and reworking some of them (specially converting some to B&W). I'm still aiming at that goal of doing a B&W panorama in JPEG format, but I'm still not sure about the location. Needless to say, summer is killing my chances in "cold" blood… pun intended.

Arabian Eye
One of the reworked images from 2014, adding luster to the iris and more sharpness.

This said, I did spend a considerable time with my Geltani trying to prepare some graphics to put on the page. I'm still not sure how I will send this to Omniglot, but anyway the process is going on. I prepare the characters for the syllables by scanning my own handwriting and then cutting the shapes and prepare them in a specific squared sizes to fit the main document about Geltani. This said, I did already add some more sounds to the syllabic system, beside adjusting some shapes for the 3^rd or 4^th time. Yet, there are things to add, and a numerical system to fix.

ِA scan for some doodles with
trials for the numerical system.
Click to enlarge.

In addition to that, I've added (or made up the idea) a symbol for stressing the syllable just as in Japanese syllables as well. The number of syllables so far exceeded 100, which seems a lot, but the virtue here lies in the fact that they are mostly systematic in derivation (or composing so to say). It is a leap if  I should say; there was nothing and now I'm already in the middle of something. I need to check some of those phonetic values and the transliteration system, essentially to be noted down in the document I'm going to send to Omniglot. The document must be in HTML, and with so many pictures, it seems I'm going to zip it all and send it over. Doesn't sound quite right though, don't know why exactly!

With all this work, and Ramadhan is over, I'm planning for some "move" that might probably get me to set a foot in some direction. Some celebrities did ask for the collection of photos I've taken for them on the stage after checking them out on Instagram. However, because of the malfunctioning endeavor with Instagram (which is embarrassing me a lot), it seems that I have to do it in person. I'm planning as well to make a print for a celebrity as a gift. I just need to know a way to deliver those to them!

Young and Old.

Meanwhile, I've trying to push myself further with poetry as I'm trying to get in touch with my inner feelings and expressing more of myself as I used to do in the old times. I've found out that some abstract photos that I've taken before do entice the memory and some writing capabilities. Well, it's not a joke to say that sometimes you have to be tortured just to do art, any art, if possible. Anyway, I did write a piece, which I called Young and Old, inspired by an abstract photo taken from Ireland in 2010!

Not sure for now what the coming days hold for me in store. All what I really want is just a vacation. A vacation... with that I should also be sleeping without thinking about the next day! I'm sort of having what I like to call a "relapse" to Phil Collins music. I was more into Irish music for some time. Well, Phil's music is good, pretty good, but I tried to avoid it in the past trying not to lick over my injuries… and I failed.

Webbology...

Another week now without any success with my camera. But hey! at least I've tried my best with it! Well, maybe I will explain a bit about it later. In the meantime, I'm still coping with my disturbed sleeping schedule which drives me to more naps in the office (yes, in the office). On the other hand, I had my own trials with Geltani a bit, but I'm wondering when it is the proper time to publish this work?

Emergency

The family had to face some hard time last Thursday when Mom is said to have low blood pressure and shortly went into coma, or she might just have slept as she said, during the dialysis process. The doctors wanted her to be transported to the hospital ASAP but she told them that her son (me) is waiting outside. Thus, I had to drive her myself to there amid some crazy traffic. They got her into the observation room for a while and it wasn't till my sister arrived that I could leave the place. Later on, my sister called and said that everything is alright and they wanted to check her in for 2 or 3 more days but Mom and my sister refused and they got back home that same day. Talk about exhaustion all day and not being able to think of something to do. In fact, I tried to sleep most of that day, while headache stroke me later at night. Wondering how to even enjoy my weekend amid this turbulence.
The load had increased even more, with Mom preferring me to drive her to the dialysis center in an early time instead of my (freak) sister who used to go out late into the traffic jam and drives Mom's nerves into a panic status. And of course, I'm the one who picks her later from the dialysis center 4 to 5 hours later. I do have a family that I can depend on as it seems. Then everyone is wondering: why do you like to do things alone?

Dine-In

Saturday, it was the time for the dinner invitation that I've set up for the group members and some friends.  I can't hide my surprise and disappointment here, for the 19 guests who were initially invited, only 7 showed up. Imagine booking a whole restaurant for that night, to find yourself with such small number of people. I did take some photos but they are less than 10 probably and I didn't even bother processing them.
The invitation of ladies into this was another comical matter. Despite the fact that we used to gather in meetings and occasional gatherings in specific events (like the last week before Ramadhan), yet they found it embarrassing to gather with the guys in a restaurant to have dinner, even though it was possible (and I did) to separate the seats to accommodate males and females separately. When she heard the story, the owner of the restaurant laughed and wondered about such a strange mentality.

Lingua Geltani

On the Geltani front I've decided to change the previous statement for occupations from (-ji) and (-jin) suffices to something a bit far away from Japanese. The masculine occupation title would be (-árí) wile the feminine would be (-ází). The Geltani character is the same still but for the feminine title it would be flipped upside down.

-árí

-ází

Been working some time as well on the possessive articles (my, our, ...etc), and they were a bit tricky for me actually and in the end I had to formulate special characters and wording with loose connection to the original pronouns. At this point, found myself changing the plural as well (which was a repetition of the last syllable). Possessive articles come at the end of the words just like in Arabic (and a bunch of other languages as well), but their characters are not related to the transformation from Arabic orthography as I've planned Geltani in general.

Click to Enlarge

As for the reformulation of the plural, it is generally looked up again because of the fact that some words would up with nasalization and it might be hard a bit to repeat a nasal sound at the end, thus I thought it might be better just to stick to the regular method: adding a fixed suffix, with special rule for words with nasalized ends:

• If the word ends with consonant (without counting the regular schwa) or if the word ends with a vowel, then the plural is -(a)no.
• If the word ends with a nasal, then the plural is -wo. 

And these were the basic rules that actually affected the make of possessive pronouns in the beginning. The character for plurals is not changed and it is the same for both cases, as it is supposed to be a logographic script and has nothing or let's say just a bit of connection to the spoken sounds. How ironic that I'm doing all of this without even fixing the final vocal values for syllables! I think this is a mistake, and probably a big one, but my work pace is slow and nothing to published so far. Thus, I have the freedom to change anything for the time being. All the news about Geltani come from this blog, I presume. On the other hand, I shall work a bit more on syllables for foreign words as I've stated before because some characters and their strokes seem to be not suitable or misleading (for me). Shall see about that later.

Laser Point

I've finally got me a laser pointer to do some experiments with the trigger. My initial happiness with the toy was not complete when I, out of curiosity, scrolled open the pointer to see what type of batteries it uses. BANG! Two out of three batteries jumped out of their place and got lost under the car's cushion. Took me some days to find a replacement in some watches stores (yes, I was that busy and that much tired).
I've looked up settings for laser triggers on the internet and they seem quite easy like what I had in my mind. However, doing the setup for my own simple idea, was not something simple at all!
I didn't take pictures for the setting I was trying to use, but generally my idea was to catch a flying sugar cube over a mug. Thus, the pointed (after some really hard work here) was fixed pointing to the trigger, with the laser line passing over the mug. The good news? The set did work indeed and the laser pointer with the trigger did indeed trigger the camera. Bad news? Here we go:

• I've used a paper clip to press the button of the pointer and keep the laser beam on at all times. Later, however, seems it is either the battery or maybe for the sake of safety, the beam became fainter and fainter, till finally switched off. To turn it on again I had to remove the clip and wait for some time and put it back again (and adjust the position of the pointer all over again to fall on the trigger's sensor). 
• All my trials didn't catch a flying cube. I've changed the height of the laser beam and made it higher but to no avail. Not sure if the problem was the high shutter speed (reached 8000^-1sec) or is it the delay in triggering. I have to add here that because of the long wire connecting the trigger to the camera, it probably does propose a significant delay in the process when the signal has to travel.
• The place was hot and I was sweating waterfalls!
• Lighting from the speedlites were just enough and I didn't want that type of lighting actually but this is the best I could do. It is such situation that makes me wish for a 3^rd speedlite.

On the other hand, I was still struggling with the make of a silhouette image for my brothers. Despite the fact the Redbull contest is over already, but I had the idea alive in my mind still. I was planning to take pictures of different poses and all in silhouettes. Yet, working with family members is always something I don't like because no one is really reliant. Well, I guess I have to forget about the idea and just do something else more (useful) for the time being. Probably make a silhouette profile of Mom? Just an idea.

Webbology

With me being like a grounded boy now and not having the ability to work much around my camera, beside of course the empty mind and the flying ideas out of this head because, as it seems, my brain has lost its field of gravity - because of all these matters, I've had the internet to look for solutions and inspirations as the only thing that might spark something in me.
I've found some plenty of websites with tips and so on, typical, but few of them did really help me through and just loved to share them here.

1. Creativity Games: This website will be used a lot in the near future. It has a random word generator and some other stuff related to words (and I think it expands further than just words, but I didn't go deeper). From time to time I would seek this website for some random words (8 to 12 words usually) and just stare them and try to make some connection between few words which, hopefully, later would be translated as an idea to photograph. There was some old website that I used long time to write poetry but unfortunately it's not available anymore and in that old website you would type some words and in some way by some algorithm the computer makes you connect words together. Anyway, this new website is completely automatic if I should say and the words are completely random. Beside the single word generator, many words can be produced at once (up to 8 words a time) and there are plenty of creativity games (duh! hence the website's name!) that ask you to force a connection between some words. Quite useful for writing processes I presume, or maybe for business as well.

Screen Shot (with the damn ads pixelized!)
Click to Enlarge

2. RANDOM.ORG: This website offers many random things. However, my interest was in random numbers. Why? These random numbers in combination with random words from the above mentioned website, makes me reduce the range of thoughts into some specific words only and from there I try to imagine some photographic project. For example, if I collected 12 random words from the website mentioned above, I would write them down in a specific pattern (let's say in 4 rows with 3 words in each), then ask RANDOM.ORG to give me random digits from 1 to 12. After collecting 3 random numbers (of course this is my choice, otherwise it's free!) I would go on the words from the list with these orders (the order can be vertically arranged or horizontally as well) and jot down these words and try to make up something out of them. I'm not expecting success in every session of course yet it is some way to start and to break the boredom around!

Screen Shot with the generator on the right side
Click to Enlarge

Brainstorming trial with the help of Random.org and CreativityGames.com
Click to Enlarge

3. LightingDiagrams: Generally, I was looking for something that would help me imagine the effect of lighting on location. Anyway, this website was cool enough to provide the ability to make a diagram (but without the effect of lighting on subjects). From there, after making the essential diagram, it can be exported then to some formats like JPG or PNG. Quite useful! And I was doing it all by myself in Photoshop!

Screen Shot
Click to Enlarge

Finale

Trying to break the routine around me and force myself into things I want and like to do, despite the limitations in my physical status. All of that is driving me to even lesser sleeping time and more exhaustion. It feels like if my world is falling apart and I, myself, am the only thing standing. Many people I had to stop thinking of depending on even. Partner and Love? That was forgotten long time ago and I guess no back to that anymore...
As for now, all what I'm going to do is rest a bit, and listen to some Greek Music, and keep dreaming of some vacation...

Festum Culturalum

It had been a slightly busy week, but a tiresome one too. I'm typing the opening of this post at the location of the expo of Kuwait University, entitled Cultural Festival, and in hope that I will get some time later to do the rest.
The situation in the morning is quiet relatively but it was a busy at the time of the opening ceremony despite the humble preparations. The time was not on our side, and we had to do everything in the haste; even the TV set the I've planned to use for our advantage to display videos of the group and maybe some QTVR directly from laptop, all these ideas were abandoned facing the technical problems and the unavailability of technical items (specific wires and cables).
However, the opening ceremony was nice and I was the first to explain my photos for the vice president of Kuwait University. My photos were already framed and printed since last year for last March's expo; Mawahb 2.
Back at home, during the second day of expo (and I told the group members that I can't be there afternoons in the rest of days), I've noticed that on TV they showed the expo, and then to discover that I was shown while I was explaining my photos to the vice president. No interview was done with me (but with other members of the group) and I was shown with background music playing... better if you ask me, as I hate my own voice!
I'm currently looking for an online source of this program but so far, nothing useful.

I leave you now with some coverage of the event. The total number of images is huge and I need some time to sort them thoroughly, but I've sorted out some snap shots. Of course such shots are documentary and not aesthetic in any way: Please give some time to load as some of the images are 1-2 MB in size.

The main part where and when the bulk of the documenting took place was at the end of the ceremony when the TV musical band started doing some folklore songs and dances on stage outside (beside a swimming pool). The main problem was that I couldn't get any help and everyone was putting responsibility over my head. I needed someone to shoot videos while I work on documenting with still images, but none wanted this job and I went on doing videos and still shots. Videos were shaky of course since I didn't bring my tripod there, but only a camera and 2 lenses: 50mm, 18-55mm; while the guys who got tripods already, didn't use the tripod and didn't want to shoot videos as well! However, I was fluctuating between the two missions and I've recorded some short movies (but large in size).

The video above is just one of a total of 7 videos. However, away from the technical thoughts, there was also a mental process on the side that sparked my thinking about the local folklore and music. My mind was completely absent from such arts and always concentrating on foreign music and arts, specially the Irish folk. It's just amazing how it sounds and looks like I've discovered something new and exciting, while the fact is, it is my OWN culture.

Compressor!

The new logo for the group

With the expo at Kuwait University more pressure is building up and weighing down on my shoulders, specially after the last meeting with the group. A new system for the membership as well as a new logo and a whole load of some protocols. Further more, I was appointed as a responsible persona for competitions and organizing for them. Also, after asking the leader about giving some info to the members about the concept of the workflow and the color space in order to enhance their work (after serious and bad surprises in preparation for Kuwait University's expo). He asked me if I'm able to give a lecture about that, and I agreed. I've created some outline for the type of lecture I would be giving but of course it's only a draft so far and I would need to check up with him further in order to make it efficient. Yet, more expos and events are coming on the way and another load of pressure shall be prevalent soon! I'm afraid that the group is spreading itself too thin in all directions.
A main issue at hand right now is to organize for a library with ready-made prints for any coming expos in the future in order to avoid all the hassle and the technical problems.

Mr Coffee!

A History of Coffee 2
Canon EF-S 18-55mm @40mm,
f/5.0, 1000^-1sec,
ISO 100.

Last week I've been working on some shots for some local coffee brand as part of a competition for making an ad. After making some of the shots with an old map as a background (posted in my last week's post) I've worked out on some photo with my brother as a model.
One of the hard things to work out with a model who is a relative (or a friend) in the same time would be the inability to control the situation as it would please you. A professional model, for example, would just do whatever the artist (photographer) want him or her to do without interrogating about the usefulness of the pose. One the other hand, the fact that I'm not owning a proper place or studio props and tools, made my work pace sluggish.

Mr Coffee
Canon EF 50mm, f/5.6,
400^-1sec, ISO 100.

One of the first things to ask from my brother was to wear black clothes in hope that the steam would show in contrast to his clothes (however, the effect was weak as it showed later), as well as wear a turban made by my scarf and beanie for more comical look of a guru-like appearance. My idea in the beginning was to have flying books but he emphasized the idea of adding a table and books. An idea that proved to be a focus of criticism from some criticizing groups on Flickr - and I agree with them as well. My brother looks like in a balancing act instead of levitating in the air!
Technically, the problems were abundant starting with the speedlites. Apparently, two speedlites aren't enough right now and I do need a third (and even a fourth). I can imagine this now in high-key technique - something hard to be achieved with only 2 speedlites, if not impossible.
After taking a shot of my bro with a mug and beans bag, inclined on two chairs with pillows to make an angled tilt (to break the usual levitating look), I asked him to remove the chairs slowly out of the scene and I took a shot of the scene being empty except of the books and the table. The rest was a Photoshop work to layer the two shots and clean the chairs off while enhancing the lights of the background and contrast of the foreground (my brother's).
On the side there are other problems, like the floor and some light spill on the right, the harsh shadows a bit on some areas, the tiles and lines on the ground are not so proper for the scene as well. I'm going to submit the image anyway - if any time limits is extended, I might re-do it again without the table and the ground.
I wanted to do another idea expressing the eruptive energy of the coffee, which required some splash to be happening in some unusual way - not the usual dropping something into liquid. I was trying to use a paper cup and blow some air on the side with a thin hose but this idea is not secure enough and water would keep dripping on the side. Finally I've tried using a vacuum cleaner which can be flipped back to be a blower, but I got stuck with my speedlites not being able to direct enough and suitable light beside making harsh shadows. It is times like this that make me think of another speedlite!

Eerie:

It was last Friday's morning, January 25^th, and the fog was so dense that I could barely see for 50 meters in front of me while driving. It was a surprise in fact as I was supposed to go to Al-Salmy for some star-trailing the night before but the plans got canceled. However, they say the fog was only close to the seaside, but the sky is clear far from the sea side.

Eerie
Canon EF 50mm, f/16, ISO 100
HDR

Despite the apparent fog, I've decided to head out since I've been sleeping on and off all night and found myself quite awake in the early hours of the morning just before the sunrise. I headed to seaside to the (usual) gazebo. As I was walking to the gazebo, I've noticed some scattered clouds even though faint ones, and I thought they are a good target for long exposure with the gazebo in the foreground.
Ironically, however, as I was settling down with my stuff, the fog accumulated by the time I've finished the configuration for the camera. Slowly, my thought developed and decided to do a HDR but in a long exposure format. The configuration was as follows:

• White Balance is set to Fluorescent, to add that bluish-pinkish atmosphere. My favorite WB for early hours of the morning and evening.
• A polarizer was used to darken the sky (t this point I didn't notice the fog was accumulating).
• An adapter ring for filter was fit upon the polarizer and a 3 stops ND filter was fixed on top. I've used only one slice of ND filter in order to avoid any unnecessary color tints with such experiment.
• Several shots were taken with different exposure times: 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 100 seconds.

Banding while tone-mapping

Source: B&H

When merging this HDR, however, I had to face other technical problems. It seems that the usage of a polarizer with HDR is not a good idea of some sort. As tone-mapping process went on, the image showed some hard banding in shape of circular or semi-circular lines all across the image. Having in mind that my new polarizer is of a circular type (as the specs say), I do feel that such banding is caused by the polarizer and not the rising sun behind the fog (and it was faint light after all!). To overcome this problem, I had (and probably for the first time in my life ever) to use the Highlight Smoothness slider in Photomatix when tone-mapping; and to the max.
This image, Eerie, after being over with, did send a chill through my spine. Maybe lot of people would call it a failure because of the blurred appearance, but the atmosphere and the blur itself made me remember the mysterious aspects of life, those Agatha Christie's novels, and Jonathan's The Last Crown game. I was simply not in Kuwait for moments. I'm in love with winter even more.

Geltani:

The work, or should I say, the thought, is still going on to digest and produce some aspects of the new conlang. I've decided that since Ayvarith, as a conlang, is already a conalang based on memorization of words at most, so may Geltani be. This is the resolve the issue of confining the word into either one or two characters altogether. It would take a trial and error to find a suitable division for the characters I believe - and both might be suitable as well. Also, I'm not intending on explaining how I did derive these strokes of lines from Arabic, thus I think there is no need to systemize the conlang in the eyes of foreigners.
One big issue now, which stands off like one big rock on my way that baffles my thoughts, is Arabic words of similar letters and different vowels. As an example:

Root: R J L
RaJoL = Man

RiJL = Leg

The vowels are in minuscules here, since usually they are not written in a regular Arabic text in modern times except in times where some elaboration is needed. Since Geltani is based on the letters (consonants) without the vowels, how am I going to implement a method of differentiation between the two words? I might go around this problem by substituting one word for another that has a similar meaning but how long I can keep this practice with a vast language like Arabic? Digging for answers in my thoughts seems to be a hurtful process for the mind!

Another idea occurred to me is to add sounds to Geltani that are Semitic in nature, and this might help a bit for making more diverse sounds giving chances for more different dual-letters (as I called Leading and Driving in previous posts) combinations. It might also create a weird sounding language and might, just might, attract some attention when the language is Chinese sounding but with Semitic sounds in between.

Plural, for the time being, might be composed by a repetitive mean of the last syllable in the word. Meanwhile, on the grammatical front, I think the first step is to start a sentence with a verb only. 

Finale:

Source: Amazon

A book that I've ordered since 2011, has finally arrived few days back. There were some delays in its publication which was supposed to take place in 2012. Anyway, the new book arrived in a time with so much pressure on my schedule, and since I'm a book-worshipper, I find it as just another obligation. I'm trying hard to divide my time at work to read and to work on Geltani, and sometimes chasing after some other duties, specially those for the group.

Seems, however, that being busy most of the time is good somehow. Making my mind busy with ideas and plans rather than daydreaming, or even using daydreams to organize my thoughts and enhance my planning - even though I get those limitations with my exhaustion and my body's behavior. It is, however, times like these that I'd wish for a patting hand or a supporting shoulder. Even a German engine needs some rest from time to time...

Sometimes though, I would stop and look back and see all the things and the steps taken alone. An ecstasy of pride occupies my mind at times, with a sense of pity deep at soul in other times. How would it sound or feel, if I did have achieved what I've achieved already, with someone holding my back? Am I really strong enough?...

Betenic...

Finally, Betenic is online: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/betenic.php

I removed a wisdom tooth which I guess is the final one to remove, since I removed most of them when I was 17. The pain is gone but I have to cope with the blood still.

My mind is still scattered. I didn't write much in the past few days, plus, removing my tooth actually made me prone to stick to bed, thus I did not go to work today. My mood is just to sit and listen to Irish music. Still preparing for my trip in October though. There had been some ideas to shift it earlier to September but I guess I will make it on October. It is hard to change all the stuff that I did already.

I need to refresh my poetic memory and write something new. I get visions of some words but I can't make a full picture of it. I got lot of things to do tomorrow thus I don't think I would be able to write or think of something to write tomorrow. But in general, my life is peaceful for the current time, if I should say!

Celtic...

Been working on my writings for some days, and doing several things. My mind is kind of scattered, but one thing is assured, I have this weird urge to write poems like.. Lynn. I'm trying to chase after beauty wherever it comes, where it goes.
I've started to stay in the office all the day (I mean all the working day) instead of going back home and then come back here to do a fingerprint. My colleague is not helping when it comes to giving a helping hand with this!
However, I'm getting myself busy with so many things that I know I wouldn't be able to do them when I get back home or just get lazy about it! The only bad thing is that some stuff need a better PC than this laptop which I take with me to work. During working in that manner, I just keep the music rolling on everything Irish. Time passes so fast, specially when you play the same song or music again and again and never get your enough of it! It has been some time since I listened to Celtic music. It helps also to spark some ideas for writing the story of Alexander, and poems as well.

Weird toothache! I can't locate the pain, and even my dentist said everything is OK. I'm on antibiotics for some time now until next Saturday to check back for any changes. The pain comes specially when I have a raise in my blood pressure.

Planning to go to Failaka next weekend but not confirmed yet. Hope to get more and more nice photos from there! And, less seasickness.