Samer Qwaider of “Memories Documented“, “Qwaider Planet” and “Jordan Blogs“, yes Jordan Blogs, tells us more about himself, he is a blogoholic, a movieholic, a chef and a poet!

Q. Tell us more about yourself
A. Hi, I’m Qwaider, and I’m a blogoholic
I’m a Software architect working on a number of computer technologies that touch the lives of many people, my main focus are security related issues. Privacy authentication and encryption.

My first name for people who don’t know me is “Samer”. I was always called “Sam” when I was back in Jordan. When I moved to the US, there were 15 other “Sam” anywhere I went. It was very difficult for most people to pronounce Samer correctly (at best they would call me Seymour. Qwaider was much easier for most (go figure) and it got stuck since then

Qwaider is also the name both my father and late uncle used to sign their names.

Q. Documenting memories, what an interesting approach for a blog, tell us more about it
A. In a way, every time we write something on our blogs we’re storing part of our thoughts, ideas and emotions in the cloud. It’s somehow a paper trail of everything we’ve done so far. Many people like to keep their blogs professional, political, or technical. I like to mix it all up. A thought starts, and once it’s written it becomes a memory that has been just documented Hence the name

Q. Qwaider kitchen introduced a lot of scrumptious cuisine; tell us more about your cooking skills
A. Couple of years ago, I discovered I have a passion for cooking and a major distaste for junk food which has filled my life with fat and unhealthy living.

I discovered that cooking is actually an art, people are either good at it or not. But many parts of it could be learned, so I decided I’m going to learn as much as I can and I have come a long way since then.

Another reason is that I’m continuously in this home sick phase. Food, surprisingly helps me with my home sickness feelings. It brings me a part of home to my home

Q. What’s with the movie reviews?
A. I’m a huge movieholic! I even started a movie club where I work and now we’re around 20 something movie people, the club is conveniently called Movieholics.

We are in an amazing position to go to advance screenings, not only do we see the movie before everyone else. But we get to meet the directors, producers, writers and stars of the movie. To add icing on all of it, we are asked sometimes to pick between two alternate endings to pick the most suitable one. All of that is wonderful, but get this, we see all of these movies for FREE! You can’t beat that.

I’ve been a movie fan ever since I could remember. My father is a movie fan himself and used to take the whole family to watch movies in theatres at least once a month. I was fascinated with it ever since.

Q. So you have a planet of your own, tell us more about Qwaider Planet
A. Qwaider Planet is an idea. The purpose of it is simple, get readers to blogs and blogs to readers. I was frustrated with the solutions presented at that time. New -and promising- bloggers had absolutely no way to get to the audience. It was a catch 22. Bloggers couldn’t get well known without getting published, but the major sites will not give them a chance to get popular. So it was almost impossible to get known. The fact that there was no guidelines, no policy, no -clear- selection criteria and no one to answer users queries meant growing resentment among the masses. A bunch of bloggers decided to create something called iBallou6, which was preempted and the site was snatched before the idea finished materializing, Therefore we decided to call it Fruitville. I found it taking too long, so I decided I will go ahead and start trying under Qwaider Planet as a proof of concept, to my surprise, it was pleasantly received, and the site soured to tens of thousands of hits on the first few months. The name wasn’t my own choice by the way. I had many people suggest it for me. Kinzi was one of these people and I decided that I like the name and went ahead with it.

Let me reassure you that there was not a single ounce of vanity in creating that name. I was keeping the domain for future use, but what better use than to serve the community.

The demise of one my most loved sites, “Jordan Planet” caused Qwaider planet and Jordan blogs to become the major players. The honest competition became the users and bloggers gain.

Towards the end Khaled became frustrated with a number of matters and then ended up selling the venture and retiring from the Internet. I picked it up, and decided to implement the same rules I have been following for Qwaider planet, on Jordan blogs. Unbiased, neutral management that cares for the welfare of the Jordanian blogosphere and not for personal interests or rivalries.

So yes, this is a Scoop for Casual PR, Qwaider is also the owner of Jordan blogs and has been for almost 6 months now.

Q. One can notice that you back to the roots with Arabic poetry and stories, do you have passion for Arabic poetry?
A. I love Arabic, and I’m ashamed to say It’s starting to become my second language. I type, write and express my self better in English So I decided that this shouldn’t be the case and that I’m going to start writing more in Arabic. I started my attempts and hopefully they will continue

I used to write so much in Arabic in the past with the pen. Unfortunately, the majority of my writings are still in English.

Q. You have launched an interesting initiative “Blog About Jordan Day“, can you please brief our audience about it
A. I noticed that if you do a Google search on Jordan the first few pages are talking about celebrities and a bunch of other things that completely don’t relate to my country. In fact, you will find Nike Air Jordan ranking higher than Jordan. This disturbed me, for a while as I started thinking of ways to bring Jordan more to the hearts and minds of the world. I think nothing is better than having hundreds of blogs talk about Jordan on the same day.

The initiative is open for anyone, and will be doing annually from now on. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t talk about Jordan on a daily basis. But from this year onward, March 12th will be Blog about Jordan day.

I also recommend that anyone who has a blog, and loves Jordan to take part of this day. It’s the least we can do

Q. Being an expat, do you believe that your blog helped you to stay closer to your homeland?
A. Absolutely! My blog has been the best mechanism for me to stay in touch with home. But that’s not all, it also helped home stay in touch with me. As I got to meet and befriend so many people from back home. It made me realize how much is going on back there. It helped me stay in touch with the pop-culture. Something that just about everyone who lives abroad will usually suffer from.

Q. Do you believe that Arabian blogs could help in changing the dark image of Middle Eastern and Arabs in the world?
A. Completely! The message here is two folds. First it will help the west read us and understand that we’re simply just like everyone else around the world. We are people who are passionate about life and we are certainly not terrorists as everyone tries to demonize us. The second part is that it will give the young men and women in the middle east an avenue to release their ideas and frustrations something that wasn’t even possible few years back.

All of this help normalize our relationship with the west. The voice of the majority of people in the middle east is with moderation and you can’t see it in greater numbers than you can see it in blogs. Sure there are a few crazy suicidals here and there but the vast majority is composed of regular people with regular dreams and aspirations

Q. How do you describe the blogging scene in the Middle East compared to the USA?
A. Blogging is catching everyone off guard. The major media is paying so much attention to it and best selling authors are heading to blogging. In fact, shows on TV has the word “Blog” as the buzz word these days. From comedy shows to news, everyone has a blogging section.

The scene is similar to what’s going on in the middle east. An ocean of personal blogs with a few islands of very serious blogging efforts.

The Middle East however has a specific advantage. People in general suffer with freedom of speech. They also have many issues that has social shackles associated with it. These have finally found a breather. They’re finally able to talk, discuss and enjoy feedback on their ideas. Something that is very new to the whole middle east scene, away from the eye of the watchers and the scissors of the censors

Q. Some people expect that blogs will die soon, what do you think?
A. Blogs are a form of expression. We have discovered that humans have been expressing themselves and ideas since the cave man. When people started drawing on the walls. Those were the very first blogs. True, now with the internet, people are writing in the ether. But this is not new. I used to write my poetry on paper and stick it on the walls in the university. That is probably my first blog. And now it has evolved to what we see, and in the future it will continue to evolve..

The word “Blog” is going to be part of the human heritage for ever. It might be the only thing left of us after we’re all gone

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