Final Project

After lots of hard-work and dedication from everyone in the team, we managed to complete our final project, which looked at the lives of four people living and working away from home.

We covered aspects of their homesickness, and how this was exacerbated during the Covid crisis. Being away from their loved ones, plus the added burden of financial problems, took an emotional toll on them.

Working on the final project was quite an interesting experience, and one that I learned a lot from.

You can see the final project by clicking here. Be sure to see it and leave your comments below.

My thoughts on this course

In this course, I was supposed to learn how to create a blog. As you can see from the posts in this blog – including this one – I can say with certainty that this is something I learned.

The course was very useful, and I enjoyed creating the blog posts. While preparing content for the blog, I had a chance to learn how to record audios, videos and take interviews. I also learned how to take clear photos and the right way to edit them.

One of the things that made this course so enjoyable is that it is very practical, and I can use what I learned to create a blog. I was very happy to be a part of the group that I was in, as every one of my team members was very helpful and cooperative. Working as part of a group to complete a project, taught me how to work as part of a team, and how to overcome challenges such as convincing others to consider my suggestions, sharing of ideas and tasks, and coordinating with each other to complete the delivery of the project before the due date.

Although the course was supposed to last about 3½ months, due to the pandemic and the stoppage of classes, it has taken almost 9 months. This also affected the way we were able to gather content for the blog, particularly where we had to interview people at their workplaces, as several people we approached were not able to help us due to restrictions imposed by the government to prevent the spread of the Corona virus. Of those people whom we were able to interview, we learned a lot not only about their work, but their background as well, which gave us a personal insight into their lives.

Finally, what I also learned from the course was that blogging can be a very powerful medium to share stories that can be fun, inspiring, educational, emotional, and influential. I hope you enjoyed reading my posts, and that you too have been inspired, educated, and had fun. If so, please let me know how you felt about my blog in the comments below. Perhaps I have convinced you to also make your own blog and share your stories with others!

The Local Florist

There is a lot to keep in mind when thinking about creating a video story, especially with the current situation, as a lot of places do not allow entering their premises. And that was not even the hardest part about making this video.

I had initially thought about making a video about a pastry shop, but the owner of the shop told me that I was not allowed to enter and take a video there, as I did not have a permit.

After a lot more thinking, I finally settled on choosing a flower shop, which was not that far away from my home. The florist was very kind and understanding that the reason for being interviewed was for my college project. He immediately agreed to be interviewed and was quite happy to talk about all the things he does there.

Taking the video itself was not as hard as I had anticipated and was in fact quite the opposite. I was easily able to capture all the necessary shots for the video. However, a few of the scenes were hard to take in one position, as they required me to move along with him to record the video. There was also the sound of the fan that affected the quality of the sound during the interview.

Overall, the experience was a little nerve wracking as I am not used to talking to strangers, while videoing them during an interview. However, once I edited the video, I was happy with the end result, which you can see below. In the end, I also purchased some nice flowers for my Mom.

An insight into a local florist’s life

Internship at Kuwait Airways

Alhamdulillah!! At last, after going to 11 companies in only three days, I landed a place for internship at Kuwait Airways as a public relations student, and the experience so far has been great.

Some of the things I have done so far are:
– Editing images from different online newspapers related to Kuwait Airways, and uploading them to the Kuwait Airways website.
– Archiving photos of events in their central database.
– Supporting with translating documents from Arabic to English.

I expect that I will be doing more work in the next few weeks and get a better understanding of a real work environment in public relations.

Kuwait Airways Corporate Office

Audio Story

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to interview a British national, Mr. Abdul Aziz, who was in Kuwait during the Iraqi invasion. He hardly came back to Kuwait from the UK after finishing his first year of studies when a week later, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait had taken place.
Listen to his story about how he was caught up in the war, and how he managed to escape from the country.

Interview with Mr. Abdul Aziz

My experience in creating the blog

Since the very first class I had attended during this course I realized that this will be a rather fun and interesting course as opposed to the regular theoretical subjects that we usually have, having said that this subject involves a lot of creativity and hard work in order to produce a successful and engaging blog.

Due to this being my initial blog I think it took me longer than I anticipated in order to complete it, which was four days. However, I enjoyed the experience and now motivated to continue blogging.