#except for the East India Company who completely deserved it

[alphawave-writes]

Pst pst.... sigrold snippets?

With Sigma getting the very predictable FLYING DUTCHMAN skin (I knew it was going to be a pun, and I was right), it’s time to turn these space dads into PIRATE dads!

—

Well, he’s finally done it. Sailing Master Harold Winston has gone and got himself captured by pirates. To be fair, it should have been expected it would happen sooner or later. He’s been told countless stories by his contemporaries of the struggles of being a sailing master. To literally chart the unknown waters, make sense of the stars and land to map out routes through the ocean, to be one of few who can make sense of what seems like madness, it’s a tough job that few have been educated on. That makes people like him valuable, for better and for worse. He’s had many jobs aboard many ships, but he thought he might have something steady with the Horizon and its crew. The things (or rather animals) he was bringing back from his latest expedition to the African continent was sure to be revolutionary in the field of science. All he remembers is thinking that as he drifts asleep, safe in his small but comfortable lodgings amidst the ship.

When he wakes up, he’s on the deck of an unfamiliar ship, the sun beating down on his back. For some reason he’s dressed in his navy master uniform, hat and all, even though he’s sure he was only in his undergarments when he went to bed, but before he can attempt to remember why he’s already dressed, a pair of arms forcefully pulls him up. Not a second later and another, softer pair of hands pulls his face up. Harold knows he’s not intimidating, but he puts on his best snarl, hoping to instill some form of fear and 

Instead, he comes face to face with an old, dear friend, smirking cruelly at him.

“Well well well, if it isn’t Master Winston. I must admit, I did not expect our reunion to go like this.”

“S-Siebren?”

Siebren laughs such a cruel laugh. It would sound malicious if Harold didn’t already know that this was how Siebren laughs. His voice is always so delicate and polite, even when his actions and words cut sharper than the blade that’s sitting at the edge of Harold’s throat. “It’s Sir or Captain aboard this ship. You’re smart enough to know that.”

“You attacked my ship?” His eyes dart around the deck, hoping to see a familiar face, a familiar person from the Horizon. But he sees that flicker of doubt in Siebren’s eyes and feels the dread build up like tar in his throat. 

Before he can speak those words into existence, Siebren beats him to the punch. “We found your ship. Blown to smithereens, as the English say. Not a scant of treasure or people to be found, just you, lying on a piece of driftwood, nary a scratch nor droplet on you. Like yo”

“So the crew?”

“Dead. At the bottom of the merciless sea, no doubt.”

Harold gulps microscopically, careful not to let the blade sit closer to his skin. “And...nothing else?”

“Is there something you’re hiding from me, Master Winston?”

Harold feels the emotionless gazes of the other pirates picking him apart piece by piece. They’re judging him, observing his every move. If Harold is to reveal his past relationship with their captain to the crew, would they accept him or take him to an early grave? 

Siebren smiles. “You’ve changed.”

“I haven’t changed,” Harold says diplomatically. “I’m just now in the presence of pirates.”

“Pirates that have saved your life. Pirates that would like you to repay your debt by joining our motley crew.” 

Someone by Harold’s side hands Siebren a piece of paper, who hangs it up just enough for Harold to see. There in print is the Articles of Agreement, the Pirate oath of allegiance for all those on the ship. Siebren’s name is there towards the top, as well as what Harold assumes to be the name of every other pirate aboard this ship. For a contract, it’s as standard as it can get. As a full member, Harold will get a share of any and all plunder, injury compensation, and a list of punishments for the disobedient. Noticeably, the roles of each specialised member is there. Siebren is listed as the Captain, Ambroos is the Quartermaster, and so on. Noticeably, there’s no one that has the official role of Navigator. 

“You want me to be your Navigator?” Harold asks.

Siebren smiles, much softer and kinder than before. More similar to the Siebren Harold once knew back at the Naval Academy. “It’s no coincidence we’ve crossed paths. You were always the best Navigator in our classes.”

“And you’re not?”

“It’s a bit difficult when you have a ship to run. Much better to have an expert of the stars make sense of the waters, no?” Another shipmate hands Siebren a pen. To Harold’s mercy, Siebren retreats his knife and lifts his head. “You can let go of him, Coen. He won’t do anything.”

After a few seconds the hands on Harold’s arms let go. Harold stumbles forward, almost crashing into Siebren’s chest, but he manages to correct his footing. In all his life he never thought Siebren to be the type to go to piracy. He was well-respected in his native Netherlands, could have easily gotten a job with the Dutch East India Company in whatever capacity he so wishes. In their youth, Siebren had been so passionate about charting the stars, of the ways science can meld with superstition. So often Harold listened along, entranced by the siren’s song, waiting for the day he might meld Siebren’s thin lips against his own, fuller lips. Before that day might come, Siebren had left suddenly, and Harold was left all alone at the Naval Academy.  

Harold stares at Siebren’s face and despite everything still sees the man he used to know. An older Siebren, a wiser and crueler Siebren. Except he can’t be cruel to be the Captain of his own crew. They all listen to him without complaint or hidden betrayal. In their past friendship, Siebren has always been soft and caring for Harold. Maybe...just maybe, even in these circumstances, it might be the same?

“Well, Master Winston? What’s it going to be? Will you sign this willingly, or will I have to force your hand?”

He’s almost tempted to see how Siebren might force him, his mind immediately concocting explicit tales the likes of which not even the dirtiest of sea shanties could ever sing. Thank goodness he’s able to hide the smile behind his moustache. “Hand it over to me,” Harold sighs, faking stoicism.

With that hypocritical delicateness of his, Siebren hands the pen and paper over to Harold. Their fingers brush for just a second, a tidal wave of need and longing drenching Harold to the bone. He sees the flicker in Siebren’s eyes, cold still water now crashing upon blackened shores. Harold thinks for a moment that perhaps Davey Jones himself has turned him delirious, but then Siebren blinks, and the magic fades. 

Harold signs his name, and places a caricature of the moon beside it. He hands it back with less ceremony, being careful not to let his fingers drift across the surprisingly smooth expanse of Siebren’s hand once again. “If I get captured, I’m saying I got coerced into this.”

Siebren grins mischievously, and before Harold can make sense of the expression, his arm wraps around his shoulders, pulling him into a tight one-armed hug. “Listen up, everybody. We now have ourselves a new Navigator, Master Winston. I want you to treat him with the respect deserving of our new Navigator, so no pranks and no name-calling for the first week. Tonight, we’re breaking out the Caribbean beer!”

There’s shouts of approval sounding all around Harold. The hand leaves his backside with a slight pat goodbye, and then he’s surrounded by the other pirates, changing their mannerisms and tone almost completely. Music starts playing, the sea shanties are being sung, and he’s swept in to the celebration. His eyes glance back at the entrance to the Captain’s quarters, Siebren staring back right at him. Millions of words die at the sword edge that is his tongue. A million words that might express to Siebren how Harold truly felt back in the Academy, and how he suspects that feeling has not faded much since then. A million words of gratitude, of anger, of grief, of relief, and so many more emotions. 

Later, when the celebrations cease, Harold will give a short, proper goodbye to Winston and Hammond, and he will pray that Davey Jones did not take them to his locker. Until then, he will sing along as badly as he can and make himself comfortable. After all, he’s going to be on this ship for a long time. 

[scottishoctopus]

Not So Heartless After All,

A small red haired abused girl is knocked off her already sinking ship, and as she floats off to the unknown, she eventually gets herself abroad the Flying Dutchman, a cursed ship she only knew from myths. She meets Davy Jones, who quickly learns that this child has hardly been loved, and he decides to look after her even though he is just a heartless wretch. But is he that heartless?

This is the tale of Diana, the adopted daughter of the legendary Davy Jones.

Chapter 1: A damned voyage.

(Mentions of abuse and neglect so if you don't like that, then skip those parts.)

~ ~ ~

The ship rocked against the violent crashing waves, rain poured onto the decks and lightning filled the dark sky with a roar of thunder. The ship could take on harsh waves like it was made of steel but these waves were certainly trying to at least run it into rocks so it would sink.

It was a stormy cold night upon the seas, the ocean thrashed the ship about on the waves, making loud piercing sounds as the large watery waves fought at the ship. It was certainly an intense battle between the two.

The sailors on board, who were exhausted and freezing their fingers off as they were soaked head to to with water, attempted their best to stay focused as they did their jobs whilst trying to not slip and fall over on the wet decks. 

One of them, who stood high in the crows nest shivering, tried to find land in every direction with a telescope. However, he was having no luck finding land or hell even a beach they could rest the ship on.

It was clear that everybody abroad was lost, even a wet map wouldn't help them now which was a bad sign. Their only hope now was for a ship, not a pirate one, to come and assist them. 

That was basically all to hope for abroad the Darkened Thorn...

~ ~ ~

"What do you mean we must abandon our voyage?!" 

A harsh voice yelled out angrily of the captain's cabin. The voice was gravely, like the person had something stuck in their throat.

Inside stood the captain himself in his late forties. The captain's name was Justin Daniels, furious deep brown eyes staring at his first mate and a person who looked like he had been hit badly in the head The person's head had blood dripping down the side of his left cheek, even though he was holding a rag on the cut.

The captain wore a scarlet red uniform, with a patch on his chest that bore the logo of the East India Trading Company. A white wig was noticeable below his brown hat, hiding back his greying blond hair.

His features on his face looked like he hadn't had a stroke of happiness for a while. From the wrinkles on his forehead, to his mouth that was seething in frustration.

"Sir. We must abort immediantely! The storm is getting too rough, and our sailors outside deserve some rest." 

The first mate, who was an admiral, wiped his brow under his small navy hat that had a white trim. He was almost the same age as his captain, but his face looked younger. More brighter than Justin. He was sweating pretty badly, droplets of sweat trickled down the side of his head and for good reason.

The captain had a horrid temper, and made sure that nobody got on his bad side. Sailors aboard his ship, the Darkened Thorn, feared his temper very much. Even if you never worked for him and were meeting him for the first time, you would instantly get the feeling that he was not someone you'd like to be trapped in a room with.

One time he had let his ugly anger out on a young lad who had disobeyed his orders on purpose, the poor boy was thrown overboard and never seen again, presumably he was eaten by sharks or lost to the dark abyss of the sea and then shortly drowning. 

Not many talked about that day since. 

"You dare question my authority, Spencer?" 

The captain spat at him, taking a step forwards to his first mate to intimidate him. Spencer let a very noticeable gulp trail down his throat as he was threatened by his own captain. He quickly took a step backwards in return.

"N- no sir." 

He took a step back away from Justin and glanced at his friend, who was sat at a table pressing the injured side of his head. Wincing in pain and gritting his fingers against the palm of his hand.

"I just think that the sailors outside are working themselves to the point where they are going to drop dead to the floor, sir." The captain sighed like he just tossed the matter aside, not even bothered by the fact that his own crew were working themselves to the limit.

"They are perfectly fine and we will arrive at Port Royale in time for them to have a good night's rest. Now, get yourself and your friend back to work." Captain Justin turned his back to his first mate and sat at his desk, propping his feet upon the surface and opened a book to read. Spencer went to help his friend, carefully lifting the man to his feet.

"Oh, and get Worthless to do some damn work for once. If she falls on her knees then do her a good beating." He then grabbed a nearby apple, not even remotely looking to see if they had exited the cabin. The man bit into the apple and got comfortable in his seat.

Spencer sighed in defeat and helped his friend to his feet, knowing that himself would never beat up a poor little child like that.

"Are you really going to let him order you around like that?" 

His friend muttered quietly in disbelief with a angry frown so that the Captain didn't hear him, he still held that rag against his face.

"I have no choice. I just hope he doesn't take out his fury on his poor little niece again." 

Spencer lowered his head and exited the cabin with his friend, tired and his bones aching for him to sleep. 

~ ~ ~

Below deck, was a small skinny little girl, around the age of twelve or thirteen, with dry hair that was fiery red, put up in a pony tail. Her eyes were the brightest blue, but looked sunken, as if she hadn't slept properly for a good while.

Her small face was pale, and looked like a ghoul. Her cheeks were badly bruised and swollen, purple and yellow colours were covering her prominent cheekbones, and her nose was crookily healed, which was also a horrid shade of purplish black.

She was dressed in oversized clothing, but was ruffled around her arms and ankles, they looked as if they hadn't been washed for a century as there were red brownish stains on the front of her shirt and on the legs. She wore no shoes at all, except from some ripped dirty socks.

She was kneeling on the floor, scrubbing the floorboards with her fingers that were speckled with cuts, her nails were chipped at the ends and looked very sore. 

She winced in pain as her neck and wrists were hurting really badly. She was used to this pain though, she had it every minute of every day. 

The girl knew deep down in her gut that she deserved to feel this pain no matter what happened to her. Even if she got comforting hugs from the crew, even if they gave her food secretly, even if her uncle hit her. Nothing mattered to her, except doing what her uncle had ordered her to do. 

She had been living this way for since she could remember, her mother had died of a terrible disease. After that tragedy, her dather took care of her for a little while before he had died at sea. Leaving her to her uncle's care. And that was it. 

All she could remember of them were just faint faces in her head that were fading away. She couldn't remember their voices no matter how hard she tried to. She couldn't help it. 

Every time she tried to sleep, a part of them had then been forgotten, and she ever so badly tried to remember, but she just could not be able to.

Before she could continue her duties any longer, there were panicked shouts and yells above her. They went quiet for split second before,

CRASH!

The ship rocked back and forth rather quick!

The girl felt herself fall onto her back as everything around her had moved all at once. A harsh sting of fire and pain shook through her bones as she made contact with the floor.

A horrible noise echoed throughout the deck as the skinny girl, who was now frightened, got to her feet and looked around hurriedly to process what had happened to make that ugly sound. A sound that something had been through a wall, a loud thing that was forcing it's way through wood. 

The girl gulped, hearing more yells above, she couldn't translate what they were saying but it definitely sounded like panic and trouble as before.

Curious and yet still afraid, she dropped the small broom on the floor, and slowly made her way to the stairs, she was careful as to not let somebody spot her. She had been caught once trying to escape with a boy that was older than her, but that resulted in never seeing him again.

She had tried to ask nicely to her uncle about it but she had received a hit on the side of her face in return. Which she really deserved for being so clumsy and stupid. 

She was now alarmed to see ripples of water now coming towards her on the floor, it reached her feet and she gasped when it was very cold. It hurt her cuts that were all around her toes. 

Her teal blue eyes quickly glanced at the stairs and back at the watery floor, knowing full well she was going to be in trouble for letting something like this happen. She gulped, and headed up the stairs fast. 

~ ~ ~

Spencer was in frantic panic as he ran to the front of the ship. 

What had happened?! 

As soon as he left the captain's cabin earlier, things had gone downhill, from two sailors falling off the ship and disappearing into the sea, as he remembered that one of them could not swim, to the ship making contact with something!  

The hull of the Darkened Thorn had hit a hard surface! 

Had they finally found Port Royale? He was desperately wishing that the ship had been just crashed into land. 

No, he was obviously wrong about that.

The Darkened Thorn had went head first into a rock structure that had surfaced from the ocean! The front was completely in ruins, wooden planks from the ship were floating on the waves, and water was pouring into the large hole! It was like someone had blown up the front by the looks of the wood that made the floor, stick upwards like jagged spikes.

This ship was no doubt going to sink! 

"No!" 

Spencer quickly ran back to call for abandon ship, but the captain had exited his cabin already, livid and red faced. He couldn't be bothered to notice that his crew were all running around the deck like mindless chickens, screaming at eachother in a panic. 

"WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON OUT HERE?!"

He roared at practically everybody, spit flying out of his mouth, he looked like a furious bull about to attack, like a lion about to chase after his prey. 

And unfortunately Spener was prey right at this moment.

Spencer raised his eyes in almost fright when Justin had now spotted him, eyes were like they were fire as he stomped towards him, and gripped onto the front of Spencer's shirt, now nearly nose to nose. The man growled angrily. 

"What the hell is happening?! I give you one job and you fail it!" 

He spat at him, pointing his finger sharply into his chest. Spencer could feel a bruise becoming to form in his flesh.

"Sir! The ship is sinking!" 

Spencer quickly replied, attempting to get out of the captain's grip that felt like a vice. He really badly wanted to punch him but that would end up with Spencer in the sea, possibly drowning or eaten by sharks. 

"Get out of it. My ship is indestructible!" Justin pushed him to the wet deck, making Spencer fall over onto his arse. 

Yep, another bruise will form there too.

"Please sir! Look at the hull!" Spencer protested, pointing towards the front with a gulp trailing down his throat as he got onto his knees.

The captain lowered his eyebrows as a frown grew onto his face, before he had quickly walked over to the side of the ship to assess the supposed damage. Spencer was a little relieved to see that now Justin looked very shocked now, his eyebrows at the highest it could go.

"We need to get off this ship. Now!" 

He yelled. And quickly ran towards the long boat that was tied next to the ship, the crewmembers already trying to get it into water. The captain didn't even bother helping his first mate after he had pushed him earlier.

Spencer, thankful that his captain was actually listening to him for once, followed closely behind, spotting the sailors abroad the sinking Darkened Thorn, who were all preparing the boats out ready for everybody to evacuate. 

"Abandon ship! Hurry!"

One by one, the captain obviously first, sailors had climbed down to sit down on the boats, as fast as they could possibly go without knocking anybody off into the sea. Spencer, who was last, quickly looked around the deck to see if anybody was waiting to exit the ship, which was now tipped down slightly at the front, nobody else was here. 

He nodded before climbing down to join his crewmates and captain, who looked mightily furious at the state of his ship that was supposedly indestructible as he said.

Something was off though. Like someone wasn't here. As he was untying the rope that connected the long boat to the ship, he did a quick check to see if everybody was here and okay. All were there waiting except from one little red haired girl. Spencer immediately panicked, he felt sickness overthrow through his body as the girl wasn't on board.

"Sir?!" He quickly spat out. The captain wasn't really pleased with how the first mate was speaking to him right now. He looked questionable, his eyebrows lowering down on his face.

"Yes?" 

"Where is your niece?!" 

Spencer hurriedly asked, now in a worried state. 

He liked the Captain's niece very much, but he didn't like one bit how he abused her. How he treated her with no care at all. It was like she were a rat in the sewers. Spencer gave her food secretly, and treated her like she were his, he couldn't stand her being alone and upset. He couldn't stand her being treated like this. 

Because she had been treated so badly. She couldn't trust anyone who came up to her to help. And that was a problem because the rest of the crew knew about her, and really wanted to help her. She just couldn't trust them to. Spencer was the only one she trusted, apart from that young boy that tried to help her, but had been caught doing that by Justin.

The first mate was planning to run far away with her, maybe become a pirate, and give her the love and care that she needed. Give her a proper family. 

Maybe after they had all found land, he could adopt her as his own. Take her far away from her uncle. Just maybe. 

"Worthless? She's not here?"

He questioned with little care at all. Spencer gritted his teeth together as Justin called her that. 

That horrible name...

"Should I go quickly retrieve her?" He quicklly tossed the ropes from his shaking cold hands and they landed on the floor of the boat. He didn't care if the captain had even allowed him to.

"No. Just leave her abroad, she's a waste of space anyway. If we're lucky, she'd hit her head when the ship crashed." 

Spencer's jaw gaped open, completely taken aback by the response. By the fact that he would just leave his niece behind without a care in the world. Justin had said many harsh things about her before, but not as quite as evil and cold-blooded.

"But sir! She's--" Spencer attempted to persuade him but Justin had just cut him off, having none of it at all. 

"Untie the boat, Spencer." 

He coldly commanded him, his eyes only showing fury and no worry, just no emotion at all, like a solid brick. 

"I..." 

Spencer gulped, stunned silence filled the boat, nobody dared to attempt to protest against their captain. They knew how monstrous he could get, so they kept their eyes firmly set on the floor. "No sir. I'm going to rescue her whether you want me to or not." 

And for the first time, Spencer disobeyed the captain's orders, not caring if he got thrown over the board after he had saved the little girl. Then, suddenly there was the sound of a pistol clicking and being pressed at the back of his head forcefully.

"You'll do no such thing. She is a diseased animal, and you need to...Untie. The. Rope." 

He pressed the weapon right at the back of Spencer's skull, livid and prepared to blow the man's face off with the gun. Spencer's eyes lowered, tears now threatening to pour from his eyes, he wanted to climb abroad the ship but if he did, he would most definitely be shot dead. 

He couldn't just leave her behind. 

She was like his daughter.

But he would be dead if he even tried to go up to save her. 

Sighing in pain, deep heartbreak in his tight chest, he slowly sat back onto the boat, and proceeded to untie the ropes. Tears slowly poured down from his blue eyes, dripping off his chin. 

It wasn't fair.

Life was cruel...

And the boat descended away from the ruined ship, as he stared at his own feet, ashamed of his actions. Ashamed of himself. He lowered himself to his knees and rested his elbows ontop of them, gripping his head tight, his navy hat blowing off of his head and onto the surface of the ocean waves.

~ ~ ~

She ran up to the top deck, the bottom of her feet were stinging with pain that shot up her legs as she hurriedly went to find somebody, somebody who would give her an explanation as to what was going on. 

But to her confusion and shock, nobody was here?! 

Where had everybody gone?!

"Hello?!" She screamed at the top of her lungs, her eyes dashing everywhere to find somebody but no person was to be found here. Not even her best friend Spencer.

Had they abandoned ship without her? 

No. They couldn't of left already! 

She screamed in fright as the ship had without warning tipped backwards and forwards, the sharp rocks digging into the hull of the Darkened Thorn. 

And as she wore nothing on her feet, she couldn't grip something to hold onto in time as she slipped off the deck, and plummeted into the icy water with a high cry escaping from her lips. Small body pathetically twirling in the air right before she hit the surface.

Was she going to be lost to the ocean she had loved for most of her life?

Was she going to die?

She couldn't see anything, the sea was dark and horrid, the salt water filled her mouth and stung her injuries. Her panicked thoughts raged on inside her small head as she frantically flew her arms about in an effort to breathe again. The salt water filled her lungs and she felt like she was suffocating!

The currents swept her away from her broken home, if she could even call it that. And she found herself back up to the surface, watching the ship sink into the depths of the Caribbean in a smokey blur. She greedily sucked air back into her lungs and attempted to stay afloat.

Her teal eyes looked around hurriedly for land, but it was far too dark to even see, and the lightning in the sky didn't even help either, only showing her how alone she was now. "Uncle Justin!" She screamed in terror, tears now streaming from her already wet and stinging eyes. There was a plank of wood floating nearby and it looked like she could swim towards it and take refuge upon it, which she did.

She quickly attempted her best to try to get to it, falling back into the water again and again, her head bobbing right above the surface of the cold waves that splashed against her face. She felt yet more salt water enter her throat and tried to gasp for more air. She managed to grip her weak fingers onto the wooden plank and painfully pulled her heavy beaten body on top of it. Her head rested against it, the water splashing against her dirty red hair. 

Her eyes slowly closed, exhaustion taking a toll on her body. The last thing she saw, was the fiery mess of the ship she had spent most of her life upon.

She was terrified. Not because of what she just went through.

But whatever would come for her now...

[mst3kproject]

504: Secret Agent Super Dragon

Let’s move on to another oft-overlooked subset of MST3K – the Budget Bond films.  These are always very bad, but often a lot of fun if you’re in the right kind of mood.

Brian Cooper is Super Dragon, pulled out of retirement to find out who’s distributing poisoned chewing gum to co-eds!  Boy, if that doesn’t sound like the setup for a thrilling spy caper, nothing does!  The plot seems to revolve around a Dutch student named Christine Bruder, so Cooper goes to Amsterdam looking for her.  There, in between fucking his female colleagues and flirting with every woman he sees, he learns that Bruder was part of a plot to smuggle deadly drugs into the United States, hidden in fake Ming vases.  An evil conspiracy is planning to dope the free world on a chemical that will cause us to violently attack one another, and then… uh, I don’t know what happens after that, but it’s probably safe to assume it’ll end in the bad guys ruling the world.  That’s always the goal.

What’s with that spy movie cliché about the glamorous secret agent who sleeps with every woman he meets?  Friends, enemies, co-workers, random waitresses… our suave hero loses no chance to insert Tab A into Slot B.  He can’t walk down the street without having women throw themselves at him.  This trope has been parodied to hell and back in everything from Austin Powers to The Million Eyes of Sumuru and it’s actually sort of weird to see it played straight, as it is here.  As a PSA to my readers: never sleep with a glamorous secret agent.  He probably has like nine venereal diseases.

The weirdest thing in the movie is a facet of this trope: it’s the bit where Cooper and Agent Farrell are busily smooching when a man breaks into her apartment and tries to kill them.  They fight him off, and he commits suicide so they can’t question him.  Cooper then throws his body out the window, turns the soundtrack back on, and the couple just pick up where they left off!  Maybe it’s because I’m not a glamorous secret agent but I gotta agree with Tom Servo on this one: I don’t think I could have sex in the same room where I just watched a guy kill himself. It wouldn’t be right, you know?

I will say that this indifference towards death bothers me less here than it did in Master Ninja I, but the characters in Secret Agent Super Dragon have presumably have years of both physical training to kill and psychological coaching to deal with the consequences. Even so, just getting right back to the makeout session before the body’s even had a chance to cool seems unnecessarily callous.

The other trope I notice a lot of in Secret Agent Super Dragon is the death trap. Our hero’s life is threatened repeatedly but always in some contrived way that allows him a chance to escape. The first time he’s tied to a rail so some machine can come along and roll over his head.  He gets out in the nick of time and it crushes a can of red paint instead.  The second time he’s nailed into a coffin and thrown into the river.  He holds his breath and inflates a flotation device. The third time, he’s trapped in a building rigged to explode.  His buddy flies in with a helicopter.  Why doesn’t anybody just shoot this guy? Villains that stupid don’t deserve to take over the world!

Yet another thing that stands out as remarkably dumb is the cause the charity auction is supposed to support – ‘an International Hospital for Babies with Malnutrition’.  Okay, so, imagine you’re somebody whose child is starving, which probably means you’re dirt poor.  Instead of sending food to you, these people expect you to bring the baby to a hospital, which may be in another country, so that they can feed the kid there. Is the complete impracticality of this supposed to be our clue that it’s a scam?  The script never references that, though.  Did somebody just pick a bunch of charitable-sounding words?  Was it a bad translation of something that actually made sense in the original language?  Are the writers just that stupid?  We’ll probably never know.

Beyond that… it’s honestly really hard to say anything deeper about Secret Agent Super Dragon, because this is another movie that’s not very ambitious. It has some vague themes about drugs as the downfall of western civilization, but its characters don’t have appreciable arcs and there’s not much by way of symbolism for me to analyze. All it wants is to keep us mindlessly entertained for an hour and a half – and there’s nothing wrong with that, honestly, but Super Dragon isn’t even any good at it.  Trying to watch without Joel and the bots I found myself drifting repeatedly.  There’s the charming super-spy, the parade of blandly beautiful women, the evil mastermind with a vague plan to take over the world, the easily-escaped death traps… we’ve done this all before, and Super Dragon doesn’t even use the stereotypes in skillful or interesting ways.

The thing about spy movie tropes is they’re so easy to parody, and have been parodied so many times, that even somebody who doesn’t actually watch spy movies can spot them because we all absorb them through pop-culture osmosis.  Playing them straight therefore runs a very serious risk of boring the audience.  Of course Agent Farrell is working for the bad guys, because in a story like this, a character like her does – and of course she falls in love with Cooper and betrays her bosses for him.  None of this stuff is even really foreshadowed (except that Farrell dyes her hair – can’t trust those unnatural redheads!) but we still know it’s coming because we’ve seen the same shit in fifty other movies. The bad guy wants to cleanse the world so it can be made anew?  Been there. The movie wallows in misogyny but in all the same old ways, so I’ve got nothing new to say about it.

Throughout the film people talk about the ‘legendary Super Dragon’ but I don’t think we ever get a reason why Cooper’s so great.  Bond films begin with a breathtaking action setpiece to show us that our hero has nifty gadgets and balls of steel – Secret Agent Super Dragon begins with Cooper playing dead by the pool.  His most remarkable ability seems to be holding his breath for a really long time, and his gadgeteer, the kleptomaniacal Babyface, makes most of his gadgets out of literal toys.  I think this might be a joke about the obvious miniatures some of these movies use… but I’m not sure.  All I’m sure of is when that dinosaur waddled into the room I was halfway expecting it to demand the return of the Golden Ninja Warrior.

About the only place where the movie seems to accidentally brush by a real statement is in a moment that resembles a historical reference.  Cooper has infiltrated a conspiracy meeting (by wearing a half-mask that leaves his rather distinctive chin fully visible) at which the Big Bad, Mr. Lamas, is delivering an expository monologue: their factory in India is in full production of the drug, which will be shipped to America in phony Ming vases and bring the world to its knees!  If you’re going to talk about drugs making and breaking empires, China and India are where it happened.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the East India Company fostered opium addiction in China because they wanted cheap tea and because the British government had vague plans, which never came anywhere close to fruition, to add China to their empire.  The opium to feed this addiction was grown in India, often by farmers who would rather have been growing actual food but owed too much money to the EIC. This all led to the Opium Wars and a lot of other unpleasantness in which the British Empire came out looking even more like assholes than they usually did.  In a story about conquering the world through drug addiction, then, having the drugs created in India and slipped into something Chinese looks like a reference to history repeating itself.

It may also mean something else.  Secret Agent Super Dragon is relentlessly white, set mostly in a city in northwestern Europe, where conspiracies of middle-aged white guys drink booze and decide the fate of nations.  The actual work that makes this possible, however, is being done by people of colour in the east.  Not only does this seem to reference how western nations use other countries as battlegrounds and bargaining chips in their own power struggles, it can also serve as a reminder of something we frequently forget: a lot of what makes our comfortable lives possible comes from other countries, made by people who could never afford to buy it.  My eyeglasses, the sweater I’m wearing, and the chair I’m sitting on were all made in China.  Our entire economy depends on cheap foreign labor, and I wonder sometimes how much longer that can last before the whole thing falls apart.

Is any of this the movie’s intentional theme or message?  I doubt it. The historical reference seems to be just a ‘hey, look how clever we are!’ moment and the rest probably goes no deeper than ‘oh, no, our children are doing drugs!’, which has been on the verge of ending civilization since at least the thirties.  Secret Agent Super Dragon is just a dumb trashy Eurospy movie, and not even a very good one.  I don’t hate it, but mostly because it’s not worth that kind of effort.  The MST3K treatment renders it infinitely more enjoyable, especially when Tom and Crow do Jazz.

Agent Cooper was played by actor Ray Danton, who died in 1992, a year before the episode aired.  Probably all for the best.  I doubt he’d have been into all those jokes about how his character is perfectly smooth.

[lashandrahcanatoliamp43insu-blog]

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Internet pace scores: Australia behind SL

Australia’s Net speed has ranked as the 51st slowest out of 108 nations around the arena, lagging in the back of underdeveloped international locations which includes Kenya and Sri Lanka. Net connections Down Below are taken into consideration poorer and slower than 50 other countries, with South Korea topping the listing as having the quickest connectivity.

Australia’s online bandwidth has pathetic Net speeds as compared to the likes of South Korea, Norway, Sweden, Hong Kong and Switzerland – which all have speed above 20 megabits in step with 2nd (Mbps).

Australia’s average speed was recorded at 10.01 Mbps, seven megabits in the back of the USA which hits 17.2mbps, Akamai’s Country of the Net record observed. Underdeveloped countries inclusive of Kenya recorded some distance better connectivity speeds than Australia – the east African united states listed on the twenty-third quickest in the world with an excellent average of 15mbps.

The Philippines have been recorded as having the worst Internet speed of all of the nations surveyed. In 2015 Australia becomes sitting at 48th at the listing with a mean Net speed of 9.6mbps, however remaining year we of a slipped out of the pinnacle 50 totally. ‘Quarterly adjustments were wonderful across the board except for Australia, which posted a 1.9 in keeping with cent decline in adoption,’ the document notes. Vietnam and India have been the simplest international locations to enjoy double-digit growth. but cell connectivity in Australia is topping the Asia Pacific location at thirteen.8mbps, which is higher than the worldwide common of 7mbps.

The disappointing connectivity in Australia turned into blamed on its unfinished implementation of NBN throughout the USA. ‘Providing rapid, dependable Internet to a great rural population of this scale is an undertaking that no different country has to address,’ Akamai said. It is tough to evaluate Australia’s speeds to a small and densely populated u. S . A . like Singapore, for example, wherein a single switch affords hundreds of thousands of humans with Net.

Net speed Check – Review And Information

The Net has changed our existence totally. This new technology has to turn out to be a first-rate detail which influences all that we do at work and at home. Therefore we can say that our entire pastime relies upon on the Internet pace because in line with this we can spend extra or less time to perform what we intended to do. Considering we live in a speedy century, we all are searching out a very high Net speed, however, this isn’t always a smooth deal.

The first step is to learn how to discover what your Net speed is. The Internet speed is determined by way of 2 components: the download price and the upload charge of facts which might be typically measured in Kilobits in line with 2nd. The download speed is the most critical because we generally transfer documents from the Internet to our laptop, however, there are cases whilst we need an excessive upload pace.

We may additionally Take a look at our Internet velocity in the guideway, by way of calculating the time our laptop wishes to transfer a document of a regarded length, however, this is the vintage method.

The new manner to determine our Internet velocity is to get admission to a provider that permits us to run a Test via their servers by sending our PC a statistics packet which our laptop will send it back to them. In this way, the website online measures the time our PC had to download and add the records packet and informs us the Internet speed of our bandwidth.

with the aid of this Take a look at we measure the actual pace of the Internet and in the identical time, the actual Net speed of our get right of entry to the Internet. A real space restriction is a number of beneficial facts that your Net connection can transmit and obtain in a second. On the opposite aspect, the real Net speed includes also non-tremendous records. but whilst we make the Check, most effective the actual velocity is measured, the actual Internet pace isn’t vital On this calculation.

Now that we realize what our Net pace is, let’s examine what we can do to enhance it. The primary answer is to put in optimization software. If you have a Dial-Up connection and use Home windows ninety-eight or Me, click on Start, Settings, and then Control Panel. Proper click on the Modems icon and from Residences tab choose the general tab. Use the Most speed Drop-Down menu to choose 115200. If this putting reasons your Modem to now not connect, exchange it to 57600. Home windows XP customers ought to click on Start, Control Panel and transfer to classic view. Double-click on the Cellphone and Modem options and pick out the Modem tab. change the Most settings port speed to 115200 and if the Modem responds badly or never, change the velocity to 57600.

Broadband users have to think of using a tweak utility consisting of TCP Optimizer. After downloading the software program we have to run it and make a backup of our present day settings. Save the backup, and comply with the instructions within the software program to optimize our broadband velocity. Recall clicking on observe changes and click on Sure if the software program asks you to reboot the PC.Now our laptop must run faster. If The brand new settings do no longer fulfill you, return to this system and repair your backup settings. If you failed to make a backup, restore Windows default settings.

And the ultimate solution might be to trade your Internet provider with a better and dependable one. We may also choose from a big scale of opportunities. There is no motive to waste our time with a lazy Internet speed when we can spend our precious time with a high-velocity Net connection.

5 critical Regions Stricken by Net pace

Net pace performs a huge position in your browsing enjoy on the web and whether or not you are using the Internet connection in your non-public needs or for enterprise wishes, you actually want to have a smooth and pleasant revel in whenever. Not anything is more frustrating than web page loadings that take for all time to complete or buffering that might not assist you to watch your preferred movie or track video smoothly. As an enterprise, you can’t come up with the money for to have gradual speeds In case you want to have the highest productiveness at the give up of the day. It makes it very critical to pick out an internet company who is trustworthy in reception and Net speeds. There are such a lot of Regions that sluggish speeds can extensively affect and they include the following:

Downloading – The Net velocity you currently have will decide how quick you get to download visual and audio files, software updates in addition to programs. They may be all very vital to Internet customers and as a web consumer, you deserve Nothing short of downloads which might be clean and speedy.

Uploading – Just like downloading, whilst Importing files, whether or not They’re visual or audio, films and pictures, your Net speed will decide how quick the system is made for you. They also can affect compression and resolution making high speeds very important. Delays will cost you time and In case you run an enterprise you know how treasured time may be in hitting your daily objectives.

Streaming – that is another location that may be frustrated by means of low Net speeds. To movement audio documents and motion pictures easily and without the demanding buffering issues that many humans face, then you would want to ensure that you have excessive speeds. It really gets irritating whilst a record load stops halfway and seems to be caught there forcing you to restart the entire thread.

browsing – whilst browsing internet pages, It is the dream of every Net person to experience rapid page loads and revel in fewer or no display freezes. Properly excessive Internet speeds need to not intervene with how lengthy it takes to load pages irrespective of how many tabs or Windows are open. As a consumer, you should now not be forced to close some of your vital tabs on the way to speed up the Net.

Telephone get right of entry to – Current technological trends have made it possible to make Smartphone calls Right out of your computer without needing Cellphone traces. The Internet space you are going for walks on but determines how smooth the calls are. You, therefore, want to have higher speeds, especially if the calls you are making are business related making them critical to your enterprise and your clients or clients alike.

The blessings of high Internet speeds can not be unnoticed from a personal degree to a commercial enterprise degree. You might need to be inclined to pay a touch better to experience quicker speeds, but it makes all of it worth it on the stop of the day because you will now not be pissed off whilst getting matters completed at the Net at home or at work.

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22 Successful Women Entrepreneurs from Middle East share their Best Time Management and Productivity tips

It’s not a secret to anybody that women entrepreneurs in Middle East are one of the strongest and powerful ones, as they tend to manage their social life, family and their business. All of them, together, at once.

Although the share of women entrepreneurs comparing to men might be lower in Middle East countries, we’ve seen that there has been a huge increase in women taking up the private sector in recent years. Due to the accessibility of local and global marketplaces via social media and the Internet, there has been a rapid growth in the number of women leading the tech-business world.

Women entrepreneurs in Middle East and North African countries should definitely know how to manage their time and be productive.

That is why we decided to interview 21 women entrepreneurs around UAE, Bahrain, Egypt and Turkey to let us in their time management secrets.

We were interested in two questions:

What Does the typical day of women entrepreneurs in Middle East look like

What is the best time management and productivity strategy that every entrepreneur should follow?

We received variety of interesting answers and stories.

WARNING: Lots of the answers in this article are truly inspirational! 

So without further introduction let’s dig deep into what experts need to say:

 Esra’a Al Shafei is an influential civil rights activist, blogger and the founder and executive director of Middleeast Youth and number of civil rights projects including CrowdVoice.org. Mrs. Esra’a is from Bahrain. She is a senior TED fellow and according to a FastCompany she is one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business”. She is also in the list of 17 bravest bloggers worldwide according to the Daily Beast.  Esra’a Al-Shafei received Berkman Award for Internet Innovation from Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School in 2008

1.  What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical day usually starts on a flight. I’m constantly traveling, and it never gets less hectic. I’m lucky that I get to do my work remotely, so if I’m home in Bahrain, my day would start checking in with our teams who work across different time-zones (anywhere from Mexico to India.)

Then I’d dive into a meeting with our developers or project managers to outline our week and responsibilities.

In the afternoon, I do my best to take a much deserved break, working out (lifting a 3kg ball is definitely working out) and visiting family.

My day ends with me planning the next day, or checking in for my next flight.

2. Productivity tips from Esra’a al Shafei:

  I think reasonable daily to-do lists are crucial to any healthy work ethic. Give yourself a hard stop instead of pushing the limits of your mind and body.

When you can’t cram in a speaking engagement halfway around the world, don’t do it regardless of the potential opportunities. More will come your way, when you’re more ready and engaged.

Never feel guilty for putting your health first. I wish someone told me this in my younger years.

Sahar El-Arishy is the founder of 18.213- an exceptional marketing and event management service that focuses on making your brand unique with creative storytelling and Popup Venues in Cairo, Egypt.  Her startup specializes in the following services: brand storytelling, event planning and management,venue rental, social media marketing and networking. She also has founded a Communications Boutique a brand  that provides innovative image building and corporate communications campaigns for companies that need a powerful digital and offline market presence. Mrs. Sahar supports young entrepreneurs in Egypt by providing them huge discounts for her services. 

1.  What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

To choose to be an effective Solo-entrepreneur that juggles between both work and family, you have to build a time management system that allows you to not only achieve your goals but more importantly keep your physical and mental well being balanced.

My day starts at 5 am with a 15 minute meditation and breathing exercise that helps me center and infuse my mind and body with positive energy and my intentions for the day. It gives me focus.

I then spend 10 minutes reading journals and doing a brain dump of all the ideas that I want to explore throughout the week.

I then take a walk around the track for one hour and end my routine with getting on a swing in a playground and going as high as I can.  It helps me to articulate my affirmations for what I want to achieve. I highly recommend to do this for everyone.

Breakfast is crucial to keep my energy in sync so I make sure to have a nutrition-intense meal and then my day at the office can take off.

Before addressing any work, clients, emails I start by watching or reading the stories and insights of inspirational thought leaders so I start my day by learning something new. I then proceed to deal with my clients and work load. I divide my work systematically to make sure all my deadlines are met and the output of my work is of an impeccable standard of excellence. I love LISTS and to check off all that has been completed.

After working for at least 7 hours I then go home to cook and do any errands that are family related. I share a meal with my family and then if I still have work that is not finalized I go back to the office for 2 -3 hours. I end my day by reading a good book and writing in my gratitude journal with 3 things I was grateful for in my day.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Sahar El Arishy:  

Be FOCUSED and CLEAR  on your short term goals for the day

REMOVE any distractions that could hamper your focus .. namely your PHONE and SURFING on Social Media platforms. 

Do what you LOVE and what makes your heart sing because that is the only way you will do your best work. 

SURROUND yourself with people that inspire you to be the best version of yourself and what you do. 

When you get STUCK… go out in nature .. take a walk… sit in a beautiful space and recharge. 

CONNECT with a mentor someone that is passionate and has relevant knowledge that can help you take your business to another level. 

Be MINDFUL and PRESENT with each new day and learn from your mistakes if something isn’t working just look into why it isn’t and PIVOT quickly don’t procrastinate and self-doubt and LOSE the momentum. 

ALWAYS have an open mind and be RESOURCEFUL in finding and exploring new possibilities for how to do things.  The internet is a school for the best entrepreneurial stories from across the world that you can learn not only from their successes but their failures which are the most important learning lessons for any young entrepreneur.   

Narise Kamber is an entrepreneur and business owner of Saffaron and Jena Café Bahrain. She’s also a director and a cofounder of Women Professional Network. The story of Narise Kamber is really inspirational. She has grown her food restaurant and Cafe to four location in just one year. Her outlets are very popular and she has started a trend by serving Bahraini food at local eateries.  The story of Narise Kamber has been featured in a number of magazines including  wamda.com, gulfweekly.com, perle-magazine.com, Gulf Daily News and etc… Narise is passionate about cooking and creating new dishes. She supports women entrepreneurs in Bahrain by sharing motivational secrets in business in Women’s Business Events. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical day is waking up with the children. I have four kids, 3 boys and one girl ages 8,12,15,17. We have a small breakfast together, then I drop them to school and then I head to work. I have an office in Manama where I have one of my branches of Saffron by Jena cafe. This is where I spend the majority of my work week.

As soon as I reach the office and in order not to feel I flustered or overwhelmed with the work load, I devise an hour by hour to do list.  It includes everything I need to typically do in a day’s work where I address the most important matters first and then create an action plan where I make sure that myself and my team follow up on all things discussed that day.

The list also includes organizational tips for the office and kitchen. You can’t be creative if you are not organized and there is always a time to have a short break to breathe. I have a small bite with an espresso while watching a little Downton Abbey because it’s important to refresh the mind.

Also I make sure I visit each one of my branches and address the main issues with the branch’s supervisor to ensure a tight service operation. At the moment I have three Saffron by Jena cafes, each is located in a traditional heritage area in Bahrain.  I also have a bakery/ patisserie (Jena Bakery) in Hamala area.

I leave work by 2.15 pm which gives me enough time to pick my kids from school which leads to my favorite part of the day and that is when the whole family sits together for lunch.

Sometimes it’s not possible that we all gather in the same time, as my husband has different work commitments and meetings, and the kids have random activity days. Nonetheless we have a rule at home, if you are there at lunch time, you have to sit at the dining table with the others for lunch – even if you don’t feel like eating.

Then I allow the kids to have a one hour break to play with their toys, iPads ,to watch tv, to rest, to rea . Then it’s homework time. I try to make this time very concise because I believe that the kids’ afternoon – all kids not only mine should not be wasted in doing school work.

They already spend 7 hours a day learning new things academically so the rest of the day should be about play and pursuing hobbies etc. While the kids are doing their thing, I usually rest in my room and watch a documentary or read while having a small cup of Turkish coffee with a piece of chocolate.

I have a small decorative desk in my room that I like to use for different things ,enhancing my language skills (I love studying French and Spanish), making vision boards, exploring new ideas for my business, planning my next trip…. It’s my small space to dream , to better myself, to pursue even more goals.

Just before dinner time my husband comes home and we spend some time reconnecting by asking about each other’s day and what new exciting things we have discovered or think of alternative ways to solve work issues etc . Then I make sure that the kids’ bags are set for the next day, that they ate dinner, showered and washed before wearing their pajamas and then a bedtime story for the little one, and finally it’s lights out for all kids.

Later in the evening I either decide to eat in with my husband or go out to a friend’s house for some tea. When I return home I prepare the next day’s clothes ,organize my handbag and make sure I keep money change for myself and the kids for the next day.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Narise Kamber: 

1. Organization. It’s impossible for anyone to be creative or successful without being organized. That means that you should really sit with yourself for one hour and make a list, make a mechanisms for how to conduct your day/week/month. My best find is a diary. I have old fashioned paper notebook diary in which I can see my full week, my full month and year.

2.Be ready for challenges and unexpected stuff. Work on yourself. Take courses. Have a fantastic life coach. We are all humans. We all have weaknesses. We have to constantly work on our weakness. Because as a humans we always need to be growing.

It’s a proven fact that humans grow only in times when they experience discomfort and pain. There has been some tough episodes in my life concerning work. Only because of those tough episodes I became stronger, I grew. You need to have inner strength to meet those challenges. And motivation not to give up.

3.Never think of giving up. It’s so easy for someone to feel defeated and wanting to do something else. And this is the most important advise I can ever give – never give up. No matter how much you feel inside that you are broken. Wonderful things happen exactly at the same time when the night is at it’s darkest. When you feel like there’s no light. When you feel like “I’m a failure”, I can’t do this. That’s when miracles happen.

As entrepreneurs we shouldn’t ever think of giving up. We should keep on fighting. For a very long time, I used to doubt myself. I used to think maybe I am not in a right field. Maybe I should be sitting at home. Maybe I should be doing something else.

I have to say only after very long time of working on myself I achieved the success. Instead of complaining on weaknesses, work on them. Take courses. Learn what you don’t know.

I made it a daily mission to learn something new. To tackle the thing that’s scaring me the most. If I was scared to talk in front of people, I would ask myself “Why are you scared to talk in front of people?” And I would take courses to improve that skill.

Constantly learn what you are afraid of and then do it! Your weaknesses should not be an excuse for not doing it.

Gulsum Ciraci directed the Turkey’s first entrepreneurship project with World Bank in 2002. Those years, there was no ecosystem in Turkey and has never been documentary about entrepreneurship.Under these conditions, she has carried out entrepreneurship projects in 3 different regions of Turkey. In 2012, Gulsum established Istanbul Startup Angels that is one of the first turkey angel investors network. Gulsum brought Europe’s best acceleration program Startupbootcamp to Turkey. Thus startupbootcamp has been in the MENA region for the first time and she managed to complete the foundation work in 6 months. All these works comes with its price, Gulsum was the first female executive and founder in all Startupbootcamps. In 2016 ISA started to invest in seed stage startups by initiating Vertical Acceleration programs, first being the IOT-Telco Labs. Within the scope of this program, Gulsum and her team have graduated by investing 6 seeds. They decided to open the second of the program and invest in about 10 IOT Telco entrepreneurs this year. Most exciting news about ISA is the Turkey’s the second best angel investor network according to Webrazzi readers. Istanbul Startup Angels invested in 13 startup project and became as the most active angel investor network in 2016.

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I am starting a day with typical breathing exercises for 3 years.Its helpful for having an open mind and making my day better.

During the day ı have meeting with entrepreneurs and business partners go through meetings.

After the day is over, time is for mailing and doing some works.I’m trying to do pilates at least 3 times a week.

Work and normal life is needed to be separated i think there will be a balance.I prefer not to work at weekends unless something are very important. I separate weekends from myself and my child. I have a book I’m working on so I’m working on it in weekends.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Gulsum Giraci: 

Time management is so important. Especially entrepreneurs need to be multitasking because they have to become up-to-date and handle more than one task at the same time.

Investment negotiations, operations, management, business development, etc. These jobs have to be synchronized, not sequentially. for these reasons they should be able to follow a few things at the same time.

The recommendation in this regard is to prioritize deadlines for each job.Setting a specific deadlines will help them to create a work discipline.

If little tips are given, quick mail responses decrease the business accumulation or making phone conversations while on the road is saving time.

Decisions taken after each meeting need to be made quickly and dedicated. High number of urgent tasks lead to time management difficulties. It is a productive way to do jobs that want to focus on the most calm day of the day (evening or early morning). This situation brings  a motto the more you work, the more you earn although entrepreneurship is the most difficult part of time management.

Eida Al Muhairbi is an Emirati entrepreneur and inventor who has 100 international inventions under her name. Out of those 100 inventions, 46 are recognized within the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Eida currently works in Zakum Development Company (ZADCO) in Abu Dhabi as an operations financial manager. She is a winner of the ‘Shaikha Shamsa bint Suhail Award for Creative Women’. Eida is an inventor of multi-purpose drone and the ‘universal car cover’ – accordion car cover, which received a Chinese patent in 2012. She also invented 3D phone, a semi-inflatable tyre, a washing machine with separate chambers for cleaning different colour and type clothes at one time, and a disk-operated iron and much more. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My day looks like any other person’s day.  I’m working in a company, doing my job in the way that I would be satisfied, and providing a helping hand to anyone who needs anything from me related to work or hand-able family needs.

Our team work together starts from putting thoughts, running after them until we finalize our project and when we set to work with all efforts, time required and commitments need to lead the completion of our mission.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Eida Al Muhairbi: 

My advice to the young entrepreneurs to manage their time and to be more productive:

*Focus on the target. * Put your investment in the right place: time, money, strength, efforts and life * Start the choice without emotion * Patience in the initial stage * Do not stick to the first thing in your life it could be too advanced to your community * Find out what is missing and how you can collaborate such that you can help your community.

Dunia Othman and her husband Ibrahim Holak are husband-wife business owners of mrUsta.com. It is a UAE startup that focuses on  linking skilful and reliable maintenance and repair workers individuals who need something to fix something in their home or office urgently. Dunia and her husband decided to launch this platform back in 2014. Currently, the platform contains more than 10000 various plumbers, maintenance workers and repairers. MrUsta.com generated about AED1 million revenue since the launch of the platform. The platform sees increase in customers, month by month. More and more people are trusting mrusta.com to find the quality service providers. Dunia Othman is passionate about marketing, business management and technology and her startup. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I am not a great morning person and I know that so I aim to spend the least amount of time in the morning getting ready before getting to the office in order to sleep in. I am also a coffee addict so I would generally pick up a coffee and something to eat either on the way to the office or order it to arrive when I arrive.

I like to start the day going over how we did the day before. I admit I am a huge excel fan and I love tracking everything in order to pick up trends and get clear health checks so that tends to be the first thing I do in the morning. I also try to avoid scheduling meetings before 10am in order to be mentally prepared to discuss any topics.

Generally, as we are a start-up there is a lot of collaborative work within the team, many discussions happen be them scheduled or simply when certain things arise.

I try to run all my meetings (internal or external) before 2pm (before lunchtime) to give myself the afternoon to do all other work I need, reply to emails, articles, presentations, working with my co-founders brainstorming features etc.

Most days I aim to leave the office by 6pm and try to pick up some easy ingredients to cook a quick meal. My husband is also my co-founder and the CEO of the company so we leave together shop together and cook together. Which also means that we are very likely to discuss work as we are cooking or eating (as much as we try to avoid that).

Depending on when we manage to get home and have dinner we try to sometimes go for a walk (weather permitting) or go down to the gym and get in some form of exercise after a full day of sitting in the office.

After that I need to have some brain shut-off time before bed otherwise I would be too wired up to sleep, so if there is an urgent work matter I tend to it after dinner in order to get 1-2 hours or watching TV or reading the news etc.

Roughly:

8-9 I wake up get ready for, drive to office.

9-10 à review of yesterday’s traffic and usage

11-2 à meetings (internal and external) checking marketing campaigns, discussing with staff if there are any issues etc.

2 – 2:30 à quick lunch (mostly at desk!!)

2:30– 5:30/6 I catch up on emails, presentations, content, articles any work that needs my attention.

6 – 8  home and dinner

8 – 9 a walk (or light exercise)

9-11 a brain shut down and get ready for bed

(in some occasions the four of us co-founders would meet after 8 in order to discuss any major issues to mrUsta)

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Dunia Othman: 

One thing that I incorporated in my way of working that has helped me a lot is to cut out double handling, whether its emails, documents, excels etc. You don’t realize how much time you waste. If you open an email to read reply, then and there. Don’t file it in your head and then come back to it again (and sometimes again and again).

If you don’t have the time to reply don’t read it. Same goes for documents, reports etc. Try to touch everything only once and get it out of the way. If need be remove notifications etc. to avoid getting the urge to check and read.

The other advice I will give is understand how you work, when are you most productive focusing on details? After the morning coffee? After lunch? At night when all is quiet? And when are you unable to go as deep in focus, do your emails your light concentration tasks then etc. Everyone works differently and has different styles so don’t try to copy someone else’s schedule it may not work for you.

Amira El-Sayed

Amira El-Sayed is a business coordinator, jewelry designer and an entrepreneur in Egypt. She is a founder of M.F.A Accessories that designs and builds custom jewelry items from polymer clay to copper sawing. She has a degree in marketing and business strategy. She worked as a marketing specialist and an events coordinator in the past. Amira is passionate about changing things to the better sides. She likes challenges and doing a research. She decided to turn her hobby into a small business in June 2009 and it turned out to be a great endeavor. Currently, M.F.A handmade accessories has more than hundred clients and she never feels tired of doing what she likes practicing her marketing and entrepreneurship knowledge. 

1.  What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

Currently, I am travelling to the United States to take my MBA degree in marketing. That puts up a challenge for me to run my own jewelry business in Egypt.

I would say that my typical day wouldn’t be the same as every day because I hate a routine.

I think it will be like studying, meeting new people from different cultures, searching for new techniques to improve my jewelry business. I also attend meetings in my University Student Entrepreneur Center to discuss and plan my new startup idea.

At the end of the day, I like cooking, listening to music, watching movies/TV series. I also plan several activities for weekends. They will be hiking or walking with my friends, going to the gym and finally attending different kinds of entertainment events.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Amira El-Sayed:  

  I would advise young entrepreneurs to keep their passion alive. This is what keeps you willing to achieve your dreams.

Find out your prime time and complete your important tasks in it.

Find a place where your mind thinks best in. The place where all your bright ideas come to life.

Go to co-working spaces and attend different startup events in your country, mingle there with others who can add value to your way of thinking, this will help a lot in conducting your startup plan; brainstorming is always the key.

Search the internet for challenges faced by other entrepreneurs. This will prevent you from falling for the same mistakes others made.

One shouldn’t forget about taking care of their body and soul. Doing new things like meditation, yoga, hiking, skydiving once and awhile will boost your memory and refresh your energy. It will kill the routine and make you more productive.For managing your time, I would recommend that one should set their goals first and prioritize them, that way you will have a clear view about what’s need to be done and when.

Different mobile apps help you manage your time and tasks (e.g. Any.do, excel sheets).

Use the S.M.A.R.T goals technique and update it every month.

Use your time on social media to search for competitors, new ideas and potential customers.

Practice yourself to focus on what you are doing without getting distracted by your phone, this will save time doing your task and make you more productive.

Nesma Saad 

Nesma is an entrepreneur, real estate agent, wedding planner and much more. What is striking about Nesma is that, being only 22 years old girl in Egypt she manages to combine different types of businesses, at the same time of being active in social volunteering activities and causes. Nesma is a founder of “Live on Top Oikaa” eCommerce company which provides a platform for online shopping that contains exclusive range of products and services. Oikaa took a different route of marketing and distributing products by rewarding its customers with its points. Customers can redeem these points in the future from Oikaa products and services. Nesma actively blogs in Linkedin. 

  1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I’m only 22 year old, I have much time to do a lot of things at the same time and I love it.

I love exploring more and more that’s why I liked to start my wedding planning career beside real estate. A new day for me means a new chance from Allah to reach to my dreams. Every morning I put a plan for current day and try hard to achieve 99% of it.

I don’t like routine and traditional life. I love change and love doing this everyday even if it is a little one. My life is like a brisk. I have family, work, friends, shopping, food & drink, meeting new people, discovering more information, trying new things, failure & success, … and so on.

Briefly, my typical day is very hectic with no room for a routine.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Nesma Saad: 

Young entrepreneurs have more time to learn today and lead tomorrow, waste your time on learning and trying everything new.  It’s very good to grow early and to leave a beautiful legacy in people’s lives.

Keep going toward your dreams .. It’s your real life .. And always thank Allah for his blessings. Trust Allah and move ahead.

Reshmi Mukherjee

Reshmi Mukherjee is a writer, entrepreneur, fitness enthusiast, soul traveller and much more. She is  Co-Founder, Entrepreneur & Creative Director at The Buzz People an advertising agency in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The Buzz People, is a highly ambitious enterprise conceptualized out of creative and engineering minds looks to provide differentiated value to clients through its key products. Established in 2014, The Buzz People is a group of highly intellectual, motivated and smart-thinking entrepreneurs who want to revamp the consumer purchasing behavior from start to end. Moreover, Reshmi is a blogger and a frequent traveller. She writes about her experience in reshmimukherjee.com. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

The thing most people think about entrepreneurship is that, you can wake up whenever you want and work as per your own terms without worrying about a 9 to 5 format with check-ins, bosses et al. While that might be true till an extent, it is that much harder to stay disciplined and wake up early to start your day without “needing to do so”.

My typical day starts off with a cup of coffee and scrolling through my emails. I like to respond to emails/ pending work as and when it comes up. It is a result of being obsessive about keeping your slate clean at all times.

After a quick breakfast, I either head out for meetings at clients’ offices or my own office depending on the schedule of the day. Because of the nature of our business, recruitment for projects happen all year long and a large part of my day goes into meeting prospective candidates, interviewing them and fulfilling vacancies in a pretty tight time frame.

If I am out for the entire day, I usually grab my lunch from my favorite deli, but most of the times, if possible, I try to come home for lunch. The mantra to stay on top of things during a busy week is to prepare for the week in advance.

So, I do a lot of meal prep during the start of the week so that eating lunch at home is quick, easy and nutritious. And the fact that I love to cook my own meals only helps.

After lunch, I try to sit for an hour or so with a cup of green tea to write my weekly blogs. I find this time to be having an extremely calming and positive effect on my whole day.

They say entrepreneurship is hard – I say that it is as hard as anything else that you are doing. It is as hard and as easy as you make it out to be.

But at the end of the day, everyday, it ends up becoming the plant that you’ve been watering, the baby that you’ve been feeding and the rise of the sun that you wish to watch everyday.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Reshmi Mukherjee: 

The first advice that I would like to give to young entrepreneurs is to believe in themselves. There will be times when the most stoic believers will begin to lose hope and vision of their own dreams. It’s normal, but what makes you into an entrepreneur is the simple fact that you have the knack to wash away these fogs of disbelief and get up stronger.

That’s my first advice �� believe in your vision, believe in yourself and believe that everything will work out in the end.

The second thing that I would like to tell anyone who has started off their own businesses is that, keep your cash flow very strong. Finance is king when it comes to entrepreneurship . Make it a habit to sit for an hour every week on your PnL (Profit & Loss) sheet. It will help you to see what is going on clearly.

As a young entrepreneur, spend only on what is required and avoid splurging on things just for Instagram. Hire those who can really visualize your dream. And each day, every day – make sales happen. Because while marketing is great, without sales, the backbone crumbles.

My final advice would be about time management. I have always been a big-time planner, and that has helped me immensely while juggling multiple tasks at one time. Being an entrepreneur in a startup, you are the creative, you are the marketing department, you are the finance guys, you are even the PRO.

Therefore, if you don’t plan your day/week, you will see yourself sinking very often.

Keep a daily planner where you note down everything that you need to accomplish during the day and in the course of the day, keep striking off everything that you have completed. Organizing your day is a key and this is what is going to make the difference.

The pivotal reason you took up the path of entrepreneurship is because you wanted the world around you to be something that you have dreamt of. It is time to wake up, dress up and show up and do it.

Reem BuQais-Rivera

Reem BuQais-Rivera is  only 24 years old. She is a graduate of New York Fashion Institute of Technology which is the school of top designers like Carolina Herrera, Calvin Klein and Michael Kors. She has a great interest in fashion and clothes. After completing her studies in New York, Reem returned to Bahrain and started her own label Reem BuQais-Rivera. Reem is a well-tailored luxury Ready-to-Wear brand with Latin and Middle Eastern influences as Reem comes from an Arab-Latin background. Reem is also a blogger and she is active in twitter. She recetly won ahrain’s Top Stylist competition. She has a number of awards for developing fashion industry in Bahrain 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical weekday includes me going to work as I do have a job aside of my business. After my job I have lunch then work on my business which includes, designing, creating samples, looking for fabrics for my designs and overseeing production.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Reeem BuQais-Rivera: 

The advice I would give to young entrepreneurs is to be dedicated and passionate about the business they are doing. Because when you’re an entrepreneur, the work never stops, so if you love what you are doing, you will sacrifice the time and effort into your business.

Prioritize your business more than social events, write a to do list of things that need to be done and try to at least get 3 done per day.

Stephanie Khouri

Stephanie is an entrepreneur and word aficionado. She is the founder of Gourmet stop – the first Automat machine which dispenses meals in just minutes in UAE. Compared to junk food, the food vended by gourmet stop is real and healthy. The gourmet stop is located in eight locations and contain eight types of food available each day. Stephanie is also a founder of Nomadic Capital, a company which specializes in importing the latest inventions from around the world from UAE as well as developing the new apps. Stephanie also founded the Urban Steel shop, the first official body piercing shop in Dubai. What is inspiring about Stephanie is that she manages so many different types of businesses and never gets tired. 

 1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

A typical day is quite a challenge to come by as an entrepreneur, and especially one with a startup. There are so many different and changing moving parts that need to be taken care of.

With that said, I try to start the average day by going to the office, which is a wonderful environment, and I catch up with my team who are the best people around!

I then visit our locations, where Gourmet Stop, our automated food dispensing machine is located, to make sure things are running smoothly. Meetings are an almost daily occurrence. I love Nomadic, it’s my passion and even with the hardships that come along the way, that drives me.

Once, the full work day is done, I head home and that’s where my second passion comes in to play! I love cooking, it’s an art for me and it relaxes me completely. My business partner is also my husband so even when we are home work continues!

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Stephanie Khouri: 

Time management and productivity? This is the most important lesson they will ever learn, and it’s a tough one. Time management will be your most significant tool, it makes success that much more attainable.

If you do nothing else as an entrepreneur, do this!! Plan your day, stick to your plan, use the hours available to you to the best of your ability.

To do lists will help, it might sound silly but believe me it keep things under control. If proper time management isn’t exercised at the beginning it becomes incredibly difficult to fix later on and you will become overwhelmed.

Focus on one thing at a time as much as possible and listen to those who have walked the line before you.

 Kpi.com is Easy to use Business Management Software that Handles Your Daily Entrepreneurship Tasks and Finance. Click Here to Signup and to Learn MoreTry kpi.com for Free

Rania Badr El Din a humanitarian, social entrepreneur, proud and dedicated mother of three and CEO of Mother & Child, Egypt’s trusted source of information for families. She is a participant of TED talks in Cairo, Egypt. She gives lectures about balancing work and life being a female entrepreneur and a mother. Mother and Child is a digital publication  that offers family care advice to young mothers. She also proudly participates in various women empowerment programs in Egypt. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical day now is very different from my typical day 21 years ago when I first started my business! I used to run around all day, working extra long hours and relying on others to manage the home.

Today and through the years I have managed to turn things around so that my days are more relaxed and I have more time for myself and my family, while delivering even greater value to my customers. A different mindset, a focus on what matters most, delegating more, and the transition of our publication from print to digital have all made this possible.

My typical day starts with spending an hour or so with my husband at a nearby coffee shop after our 10-year old daughter has left for school, followed by several hours of working on my laptop from home and managing my team remotely.

If I have a work meeting I will drive over to that and then back home in time for my daughter’s school bus to drop her off. Alternatively, I may have one of my weekly meetings with a member of our management team or our full team meeting every two weeks at the office.

In all cases I tend to spend many hours each week working from home, where I manage to focus better while being more hands on around the house and getting some quiet time for myself. Some mornings I will take out some time to catch up with a friend or do charity or community work or attend a school function.

Evenings are spent with my daughter and my husband. Weekends are for family and fun and relaxation (even though I always do manage to sneak in some work here and there as needed – replying to emails or messages – without disrupting the peace).

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Rania Badr El Din: 

  First and foremost, decide what’s important to you, not just in relation to work but with regards to life as a whole. Decide what you really want out of life and what values you want to live by, and let those guide you. Second of all, love what you do and see the value in it.

Third of all, surround yourself with the right people, at work and outside of it. I could go on, but when these 3 things in particular are in order, it’s surprising how much more productive one can become.

We tend to be more productive when we are clear about what we are trying to achieve and how we intend to achieve it, and when we have people to help us achieve it. And of course loving what we do means that we can find more joy in our days and not just in our evenings and weekends.

 Haneen Dabain is a co-founder of pricena – a comparison website that gathers best prices of various electronic products across the stores inUAE. Pricena compares prices of electronics, appliances, fashion and other products to help shoppers find the best prices online. Haneen has an IT education background and she managed several tech startups before. In June 2015, Pricena partnered with Daxx and hired mobile developers who helped build Pricena’s iOS and Android apps. Haneen Dabain has been featured in entrepreneur.com and khaleejtimes. She eagerly shares tips about launching a new company and starting a new startup in various events of UAE. Pricena was recognized as the Online Startup of the Year by Du Enterprise Agility Awards.

  1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

  I start my day by having coffee and going through my emails. Then it’s time to have a meeting with the team to discuss progress, tasks for the day, questions or concerns, and risks and mitigation plans to make sure we meet the deadlines.

We also frequently have a founders’ meeting to discuss the products road map,  future  plans, and brainstorm ideas about new features.

2.  Productivity tips for entrepreneurs from Haneen Dabain: 

Team communication is key, there are  plenty of tools to help make the communication efficient. We use slack and we like it, it definitely made team discussions a lot easier.

Elissa Freiha  an Emirati of Lebanese-American decent that was born and raised in Paris, France. Elissa is a co-founder of WOMENA – a Dubai-based women-only angel group that empowers and educates women investors. It provides a supportive, professional network and dependable guidance to invest in new companies in the MENA region and facilitates the investment process from deal sourcing to close.  She was recently named as one of Forbes’ Middle East’s Inspiring Business Leaders of the UAE. She has been featured in BBC for creating change among women entrepreneurs. She is included Arabian Business’ 100 most powerful Arab women and Arabian Business’ 100 most influential Arabs under 40.Since launch in December 2014, WOMENA has invested in four UAE companies and has educated and empowered hundreds of women to invest. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical days as an entrepreneur are very hectic and never seem to have enough time.

I wake up, shower, podcasts on the way to the office, breakfast at the office, morning meetings, lunch at my desk, internal office meetings, admin work, evening pitch events.

I then go home try to spend some time on overarching business strategy that gets overlooked while taking care of admin.

Then I watch a show and sleep, wake, repeat.  

2. Productivity tips from Elissa Freiha:

Be honest with yourself about what you like to do: you’re the boss so you have the luxury of choosing where your skillset should be applied. Outsource or delegate the rest.

Doaa Adel Hosny is a recognized Professional  Makeup artist since 2012.  In 2013, she started her own workshops. Putting art, creativity and talent together made her workshops to standout and recognized by some talented Makeup artist. After that, Doaa started her private sessions as she found that this will be much more beneficial for the customers. In the last few years, she has been attending most of the fashion events to keep myself updated about the latest trend in Makeup.  To make her work more professional, she studied Image Consulting and  started her career as a certified Makeup artist and Image Consultant. We can see thatMakeup and Fashion will always be her passion as she believes that “Beauty is her Duty”. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I start my day at 7:00am and this is the first secret. Early morning is the best thing to live a positive day. Also you can manage your time depends on what you do in the first hour in you day first hour should be like:

10 mins for coffee 10 mins meditation  praying  the 10 mins writing what I’ll do in my day ( my plan for today)

and sports at least for 45 mins with music to recharge yourself with positive energy, shower then start the day.

Then, I am busy with doing my work very well like checking emails and making the meetings. I  train my team and motivate them. Then I head back to my family to listen for their problems and what they achieve during the day.

2. Productivity tips from Doaa Hosny:

Try to develop your self with a course or book reading is the best thing can help your to grow fast

Consistency for your dream.

Write your Dream every day

Relax

Make a wish list and everyday write how can you achieve every dream of them

Find at least one hour with someone you love to talk with him/her

Find time for yourself everyday to filter your day and your goal

Your vision board is the best thing to achieve your goal

Maria Kalenskaya is an entrepreneur, the founder of Mashoonya Gifts ecommerce shop based in Dubai. Maria has started her ecommerce business with a unique idea. Mashoonya store includes all the products that can be presented as gifts to your loved ones. The products in the store are both hand made and from factory. She has a huge experience in marketing and customer service. She worked for big brands in the past. In May 2016,she decided to start her own small business based on the experience gained from the biggest brands. Currently, Mashoonya has more than 500 products and a constantly growing datababase of customers. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

As a young single female entrepreneur, perhaps, my typical day is different from that of many others who are settled in their lives. If anything, my typical day is far from routine. Generally my day begins with updating myself on regional and global news and light breakfast.

Being a person who is more active at night, I often sleep very late working on my business. My day could be decided into overseeing execution of outstanding tasks on priority basis, engaging with my vendors , clients and attending to my marketing and business development activities.

Before I call it a day from work point of view I also review my revenue and then prioritize my tasks for the following day. I must add that as an entrepreneur, I am engaged mentally 24/7 in my business. So there is no end or start of my days.

 2. Productivity tips from Maria Kalenskaya:

Planning, prioritizing and timely execution is fundamental. Reviewing and rectifying on an ongoing basis the shortfalls in all the above.

Sirine Fadoul is an Incubation Manager at DTEC Tech Startup Incubator, Dubai Silicon Oasis Authority. She is a founding member of Girls in Tech Middle East and a Mentor and Coach for The Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s Mentoring Women Program. Sirine is also the founder of Generation Disrupt, a nonprofit product design educational program for children. She works closely with a portfolio of 14 tech startups providing them with strategic and operational support in addition to assistance with follow-on funding. She is a founding member of Girls in Tech Middle East and a Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s Mentoring Women Programme Mentor and Coach. She has more than 12 years of Marketing, Business Development, Management and Entrepreneurship experience between Europe and the Middle East

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My day starts and ends with either reading the news or/and listening to a podcast or audiobook. I try as much as possible to maintain a sense of urgency and plan my day in a manner that allows me to achieve tangible results rather than reacte to issues that arise. On that I share an article I recently published www.entrepreneur.com/article/287904

Every day is different but what is absolutely vital to me is having at least one brief conversation with a colleague or a client.

 2. Productivity tips from Sirine Fadoul:

Focus, focus, focus. It is very important to stay focused on what yields results and delegate what should be delegated. There are many productivity tools out there that are easy to use and affordable, read about them and pick the ones that suit you and add value to your startup.

Don’t shy away from asking for help, seek a mentor or an advisor to guide you and support you.

Andrea Antal is an entrepreneur, founder of  Andrea Antal Communications, brand management and marketing agency located in Bahrain. Anrea is originally from Toronto, Canada. She started her career in the hospitality industry, working with Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts for over ten years. As her career path took shape, she discovered my passion and natural ability for marketing and public relations.  In 2013, she recognized the opportunity to start her own marketing and PR business when a number of business owners asked her to help them start, boost or save their businesses. Over the years, her marketing and PR services have developed razor-sharp focus, committed to delivering the strategies and tools that work best in today’s competitive landscape.

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

Each day, I wake up, get my son ready for school. I manage to get ready during the short time he’s having breakfast, and then we’re out the door by 7:45 am. I need to pick him up at 1pm, as he’s only in nursery 1/2 day. This is the only constant in my schedule, so everything else pretty much revolves around that.

On the professional side of things, the fun part about being a marketing consultant is that each day is different. Working with different types of businesses, I could be creating new campaign strategies on one day, and on other days, I’m working on implementing them or analyzing campaigns that are already in action.

My services range from email marketing, social media, webinars, direct mail, search engine optimization, advertising, business advisory, product development, customer retention, PR, etc., so there’s never a boring day. I absolutely love what I do!

In the evenings, I try to log out at a reasonable hour (7pm on average) so that I can spend time with my family and catch up on everyone’s day before bed. I think it’s important to stay grounded and in touch with your personal life, because the days may be long, but time certainly flies, so I don’t take that for granted.

  2. Productivity tips from Andrea Antal:

#1: Deal with small tasks immediately 

If a task takes less than two minutes, get it done and cross it off your list instead of saving it for later (which often never comes!)

#2: Don’t let distractions slow you down

Avoid checking your personal social media accounts until you’re finished working. The average worker spends 55 minutes during a workday checking Facebook. It’s a major time-suck and can be hard to get back on task.

#3: Prioritize your tasks in order of importance

Making the most of your day involves completing crucial tasks. Feeling productive is very rewarding and motivating.

#4: Set realistic deadlines

I always say, “under promise and over deliver.” Always give yourself a little extra time to complete tasks so that you have a little extra breathing room. Finishing a task earlier than expected is always a great feeling.

#5: Get organized

Using lists and tracking your progress is a must if you want to stay on course. Entrepreneurs have a lot going on, and often feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders, so the best thing you can do is stay on top of your daily activities.

 Randa Ayoubi is a cofounder and CEO of Rubicon Holding Group. Rubicon Group Holding, is a diversified global entertainment and production powerhouse devoted to the creation of outstanding innovative entertainment experiences and interactive educational content across all media platforms. RGH has a team of several hundreds of employees in four locations Amman Jordan, Los Angeles United States, Manila Philippines and Dubai United Arab Emirates. Ms. Randa Ayoubi founded Rubicon Group Holding Limited in 2004. Ms. Ayoubi serves as Chairperson of Red Sea Institute for Cinematic Art and Board Member of Children’s Museum of Jordan. She received Business Woman of the Year, CEO Middle East Awards. She ranked 11th on the list of most influential woman in the Middle East (Economist Magazine 2007) and 12th most influential woman in the middle east, Arabian Business 2010.

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

My typical day starts with 45-60 mins of yoga and meditation, followed with coffee I go have with my mother every morning, then the office.

I typically have 4-6 meetings a day besides regular management duties and follow up on projects and clients.   Most evenings I spend at home with my family.  We watch a movie, play a game or visit or receive friends.

     2. Productivity tips from Randa Ayoubi:

Segment your day so you can give all of your focus and attention to each segment.  Go into each segment passionately and leave it where it should be when it’s time for the next.

I always find that doing whatever you are doing at the time passionately, without worrying about what you still have to do or haven’t yet done, increases productivity and enhances life’s quality.  Live passionately in the Now of each moment.

Eman El-Koshairy is a cofounder of AlMakinah,  UX Training and Consulting Specialist, freelancer, and UXD & Design Thinking Evangelist. AlMakinah is a programming bootcamp that aims to produce production-tier software developers in a short amount of time. She loves teaching and sharing knowledge. Although AlMakinah is relatively young programming bootcamp, it has already anumber of successful students and customers. Eman also loves blogging and helping others to learn programming. She is still making sense of my world. Eman El-Koshairy  is passion & coffee driven person as put in her own words. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

So our startup AlMakinah is still in it’s early phases, and we still don’t have an office so things are pretty random here. So before I get to how a day would look like, that’s what we do to put some structure is the days:

We have meetings early in the day, later in the afternoon, and we try to squeeze them on same day back to back so they don’t interupt the work flow of the day.

As we wear many hats, we found it’s best to have themselves for the days, so we don’t keep on doing too much context switching each day. Of course it’s more of a general theme for the day.

A typical day outline would look like this:

I start off my day with a cup of coffee and a good breakfast, then I get dressed and off to my work destination for the day (a coffee place most of the days)

I take a minute to organize my day and what I need to get done

I usually have an important task in the morning that is to some extent finite, meaning that I can complete and finish it before lunch,  this gives me a sense of  achievement for the day and keeps me motivated.

Then comes lunch and maybe some unwinding and doing some calls or answering some emails

Then I go to the next chunk of tasks, these could be more open tasks, that need more creativity or discovery, this way I give them more time, and I already got something major out of the way in the morning, so I am more comfortable working on them.

I usually leave some mindless – easy tasks for the end of the day, more emails, answering fb page, or reviewing stuff.

I usually allow myself some unwinding at the end of the day, I watch something, chat/meetup with a friend or so.

2. Productivity tips from Eman El-Koshairy:

I come for a design thinking background and one thing I have learned from it is the power of iterations and feedback! I used to look at a task and think that when it was done it had to be perfect from the first attempt and before I showed it to anyone. I usually take a task on different stages with different levels of fidelity, and in fact this is more efficient in many ways, I start off with the core of the task and I seek feedback and I use this input to make the second round of work and enhancements. As an entrepreneur you need to quick, flexible and lean, which means u need to be very efficient in getting things done, and having perspective on spending time on the things that will matter the most.

If a task feels to big, and you have been procrastinating it for some time, look up the pomodoro technique, It really does work !

Use tools and automate tasks, you don’t have to do everything manually.  Work smart, find smart ways to do things faster!

It’s easy to feel that u need to be 24/7, there is always more work to do, it never seems to end, however make sure you give and allow yourself break time. I do that every weekend at least half a day is completely free of work. I do it without feeling guilty, and I do it no matter how busy I am, it’s important to avoid burn out and it’s really important to have legitimate guilt free off time, believe me it does wonders and helps you energize and avoid procrastination!

There is no one size fits all, you have to try different methods and approaches to managing your time and tasks, untill you find the right balance that works for you!

 Yasmine Helmy currently works as a growth marketer at instabug.com. However, she has lots of entrepreneurship projects in her profile. She is a national director of Hult Prize Foundation. Hult Prize is the wold’s largest social entrepreneurship competition aimed at students creating sustainable solutions for the most pressing challenges. Each year, a global winner receives $1 million USD sponsored by Bill Clinton to work on their social enterprise. Yasmine also worked in many other startups as a business development manager and a director. 

1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

I usually prepare food a day before to make sure I don’t rush myself in the morning. I typically plan my meetings as soon as I reach the office to coordinate with the team and set a to-do list.

I then zone out to read my emails and get things done. I usually do so by listening to indie music and sit in a quiet room. The second half of the day I dedicate it to revisit the to-do list and finish everything that needs to be done before the end of each day. I then go to the gym right after work for about 45-60 mins to re-energize.

2. Productivity tips from Yasmine Helmy:

It took me a long while to figure out a routine that actually worked and didn’t feel like a typical routine. I used to struggle to wake up early and maintain a social life after work, but planning ahead made it easier to know what’s on my daily plate and what needs to be finished faster. Using a personal to-do list like wunderlist and one for work like Trello helped me in setting deadlines and priorities.

Also, working out made a huge difference as it really releases the negative energy and increases stamina levels. I suggest you try out a routine and stick to it for about 21 days (some research says you are more likely to stick to a habit of you do it for 3 weeks straight) and see if it sticks with you as it did with me

Try to put yourselves a personal weekly goal so that you have something to look forward too.

Ola Allouz is an entrepreneur who is passionate about photography. Ola believes that being creative is defined by a unique way of thinking.  Ola has a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from the College of Banking and Economics, UAE University and she has practical experience in the banking field. Currently she is an e-commerce entrepreneur and a Professional Network Marketer. The world of photography wasn’t introduced coincidentally to Ola. Rather, she was encouraged and motivated by the Emirati artist Dr. Najat Makki, who gave her enough determination to pursue this.

  1. What does your typical day looks like as an entrepreneur?

For me being an entrepreneur means time management.  I have 24 hours a day to do a lot of things, by managing my time and tasks I can I achieve them.

I am an e-entrepreneuer, as I do my work any where and I mostly prefer to do it at home, so I can do my work and the same time be at home with the family. I choose to be an entrepreneur after a 7 years of being an employee to have more time for my passion which is photography.

Doing what you love is the best thing one can ever do, as you will never get bored!  I think everyone should do more of what they love and will keep them going to the right direction in life.

2. Productivity tips from Yasmine Helmy:

My advice to young entrepreneurs is to enjoy what they do, and to be successful in it they have to plan it well as planning is the most important element of success in any field.

Having a planner and writing your to do lists with specific deadlines is what can make a difference in what you do.

Last advice: NEVER GIVE UP!

 Kpi.com is Easy to use Business Management Software that Handles Your Daily Entrepreneurship Tasks and Finance. Click Here to Signup and to Learn MoreTry kpi.com for Free