Noura and I spent a fabulous Eid in this slice of heaven. KK is a short-stop before KL with a mild yet vivacious city climate and a silky serene island scene. We jettied our way to Manukan Island which is located just off the edge of earth between nowhere and no care. Shot great pics. Fabulous.

I have been recently peeping around the market for a solid phone that supports social network services in an integrated way (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter); this all in a phone that does the usual organizer management without toying around. I’m sick of Windows Mobile and its issues primarily because it’s interface is function-based and overly complicated. (I’m not doing File, Open, URL… to play music). On the other end, I am not too excited about Nokia’s interface, case-in-point the Nokia N97 and my wife’s XpressMusic 5800…

Enter HTC Hero. From the HTC Hero website, I quote… “HTC Hero is our first phone to embody HTC Sense™ – an intuitive, seamless experience built upon three fundamental principles – make it mine, stay close, and discover the unexpected.

Make it Mine: With HTC Hero, personalization reaches a level never before possible. Rather than burying important content under layers of menus, the HTC Hero lets you put it at glance view, with a selection of widgets that can be placed right on the home screen. The widgets themselves can be personalized with a variety of designs and sizes that best match your personality.

With Scenes, a new profile feature, HTC Hero becomes multiple phones in one. Create and switch between Scenes that reflect different moments in your life. Your Hero becomes a weekend phone that helps you relax with your choice of tunes, catch up with your favorite friends and capture some memories with HTC Footprints™. And when you go on a trip, your phone becomes your personal guide and gives you instant access to local time, weather and maps.

Stay Close: Today, staying in touch with the people in your life means managing a variety of communication channels and applications ranging from phone calls and emails to Facebook updates.

HTC Hero makes staying close as simple as turning to your friend and saying hello. When you view people, you see the different ways to get in touch, you also see all your interactions like emails sent to your personal and work accounts. You can even check for social network updates and event notices as well as see the latest pictures your friends uploaded to popular photo sharing sites.

Discover the Unexpected: Many of the most memorable moments in your life are experienced, not explained. Even basic functions like the dialer will pleasantly surprise you on the HTC Hero. You can find a person by dialing their phone number or simply by dialing the first few letters of their name. With HTC Hero, you can look at things through different perspectives. Your inbox is not just a list of emails, but a catalog of conversations, a collection of notes flagged as important, and a document library of all your emails with attachments. Your Album is the gateway to online collections of you and your friends on Facebook or Flickr.

Search just about anything, anywhere on your HTC Hero. The dedicated Search button combs through tweets in Twitter™, locates people in your contact list, finds emails in your inbox, searches through appointments in the calendar and very nearly finds needles in haystacks.”Yes

Switzerland can be expensive. The weather is starkly cold compared to Oman. It has been a complete 180 for me. Going from secluded, dull, and hot to open, colorful, and cool was a complete change of pace. I feel a little ill; maybe it’s because of the drastic environment change. I’m rocking it out, though. I don’t get to come here every day now. I really wish my family was with me to experience all this beauty around me.

The green and blue go really good together here. The rolling prairies, picturesque mountains, white picket fences – it’s all too perfect here. It really seems the clock works slower here. I went to Heidi Park today. The story of the legend was pretty cute; you should Google it.

I get a feeling of elitist independence around here. Like people are completely unaware of the wars and movements happening outside the country. Not that it’s bad, it’s just so interesting each country is living exclusively its own past and executing on solely its own objectives without being very apparently aware of the outside world. Maybe it’s the socialist side of me. I’m not being a hater, this place is beautiful; just a thought that came to mind.

Anyways, was a really short trip. I desperately need to make it back here to catch winter on the Swiss Alps. Would love to test the slopes here. I think this has a completely different flavor when the winter blanket covers this heavenly country.

Today I spent my second day in Córdoba. I’m taking tons of pictures, video, audio recording. I don’t want to leave!!! This is like Syria with a different twist and also beautiful people. Allahu akbar. Allahu akbar I say with the same voice you do when you see this diversity. God gave them Islam and they took away our opportunity to display its vanity and sheer success. If you haven’t been to Córdoba, you really need to come at least once in your lifetime. The resemblance of culture, architecture, and food to the Middle East is quite striking – a real treat to witness the beautiful influence of our Islamic history.

I love life here. Everyone gets together to enjoy life. Girls and guys holding hands. People randomly dancing in the streets- outbursts of laughter from the heart. Groups of 4 and 6 and 8 friends walking around, saying jokes. Not too much American influence but it exists. The girls are so unprissy and easy to please and talk to. They ask you questions instead of being locked up and reserved. Waistlines all perfect. Classy dresses and style like JCrew and then a scarf or shawl. The girls are the most beautiful I have ever seen in my life, I can’t stress this enough. It’s as if God blessed every girl here with beauty…every single girl on the street from Sevilla to Spain is stunning. Girls with cinnamon skin, perfect waistlines, dark and enchanting eyes, passion in their voice, their addiction to smiling, their free and dancing spirits…even older women in their 40s are very classy, talk very expressively and courteously.

It seems everyone gets along here. Arab-like upbringing and family discipline. The dads I talked to are like they are young and happy enjoying life. They are so positive overall and the young and old, husband and wife, and elderly all roam the streets, dance, take interest in your conversation. Nobody I ever asked for directions showed me they were in a hurry. They touch you a lot when they’re talking to you. Call me weird but I like the close comfort zone labido – it reinforces trust when its with guys, and turns me on when girls do it. I’m like uh-huh I’m sorry, then I turn izquierda??

The little girls are so cute here. This one was fascinated with my camera. She was adorable! Kid teenager not much younger than me said de nada hombre when I said thank you. Respect is key. I treasured those words. I speakish Spanish nowv. Ok I tell you. I started out yedsterdays not knowing how the people. En…I was like in state of Chaos…I was not smiling, not talking, when I saw a beautiful girl (like every girl that passes) in my mute frustration I’m like beh beh beh like a caveman. The power of language is an amazing catalyst. So then I remembered what my friend advised and adopted a cute smile. It helps that I am happy and so I learned…smiling is required with everyone you talk to. I like feedback. Since I like it, people like receiving it and feel unattached and threatened when you don’t respond back frequently, when you don’t smile. People actually want you to talk to them! When I got that in my head, I tested it and it kept pinging back successfully. True I lost my bags first day but I was like screw it, think the positive side…I didn’t have to tout my luggage. I was negative yesterday in the beginning and saw negativity all around me. Then I judged negatively. Being negative is unfair to others and your perception. I conclude people have a right to your happiness.

I have found out a lot about life and myself while traveling. And yes, I am independent but u should have seen me yesterday. Traveling without conveniences is a true test. No bags, poor language, cold in shorts, no group, limited time. I was literally walking in circles for an hour before leaving the airport to the clutches of the city. I was waiting for a plan but that was never served. Then I busted out, got lost, got frustrated, I shut off my feeling of pain in feet, need to use restroom, need to eat voices to go into full lean and have fun exploring mode and my body responded positively.

I feel like I’m in an old black and white history book. The owner of this hostel is treating me like his son, he tells me where to go, what dishes have pork to avoid. He promised me a tour tomorrow morning just to chill. Ill probably pick up his dinner tab. Speaking of which, I lost myself writing. Its 3am I’m going to take a walk. I’m going to take an Arab Bath at this place tomorrow morning. I’m resting between my 6 hour walks here! Voy a regresar a Sevilla mañana. Still, indescribable. Spain is all that I fantasized and more…I am really in love…in love with gods wonders…in full stupor of how I choose to live elsewhere.

With lots of love…adios!