Showing posts with label Fan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fan. Show all posts

08 December 2006

Latifa & I

Everybody see a photo of me and Latifa asks me about it; How or What's between me and Latifa, I will take you back to 1999 when it all begun and I will try to keep this post updated.Note. If you don't know who is Latifa, then check out her biography at wikipedia.orgAs I said in one of my posts, I had chickenpox at age 17...So I had to stay home and that's when I thought to create my first site on 8th of September 1999.
I was thinking what should it be about, at the time Latifa's album (Wadeh - Inchallah) and her song "Kerehtak (I hated you) was a great hit; I was listening to the whole album all the time non stop. I always loved Latifa since i heard her song "Ew'ah Tegheer" , "Ashan Bahibbak" in the late 1980s and later "Eddeni Forsah Thanya", "Al Donya Betedh'hak Leya" (The world smiles at me) and "Beyihsibooni" (They thought).

This is the 1st site of Latifa online, It's one of the 1st Arabic languages websites, at the time there wasn't a unicode for Arabic language so if you can read Arabic on internet explorer you can't read it on netscape, so I had to write the Arabic text on a jpg to make sure everybody can read it!

I knew nothing about web design nor graphics design, I learned everything through searching.
The 1st graphic I ever created was the moon's animation with Latifa's picture in the middle of it, Later it's became the land mark of the site and it's was never changed until the day my site was shut down by yahoo! Geocities.


I used to change the site's index whenever a new music video release or new photo session of Latifa is out...Here are some snaps of the old indexes:



Note. The one on the bottom/left was the last index before going offline.I started promoting the site through search engines and exchanging banners with other sites and later i had many hits and visitors who started to request more content and that how this site became the largest site about Latifa online until then!

The site contained many sections such as:


Electronic magazine (latest news about Latifa)

Video section

Audio Section

Lyrics section (plus English translations)
Wallpaper section, Concerts section, Icons Section, Internet Explorer skins and many more!

My site and the Media:
 

In the years 2000 there was live interview with Latifa on Nile Variety channel and they show my site on T.V. few days later they broadcasted the inteview again on NILE TV and that's when I came back from (summer school) Final exam of Math or Physics I can't recall it :D
Since then I had more visitors then ever; the TV show didn't publish the address!
 
The site was the first site dedicated to Latifa on the internet, even Latifa her self admit it.
In the photo below "Khaled Abol Naja" (Arabic script: خالد أبو النجا) browsing my site on TV.

Few weeks later, I had a phone call and guess who was it?
LOL
Yeah it was her, Latifa :D
She called me at home and my mother answered her, when I talked to her I was shocked and speechless...She thanked me for the site, talked with me more...Asked about some more informations about me; gave me her number, email and her sister's (Mounira) email who I talked to later.
That was the first interaction (I knew about) between my site and the Media.

My site was published in Internet Guide Magazine (Arabic script: مجلة دليل الانترنت) on 14th of May 2001

"Laha" magazine (Arabics script: مجلة لها) issue 51 / 12th of September 2001

Kuwaiti newspaper "Al Ra'i Al Aam" (Arabic script: الرأي العام) issue 12687 / 16th of March 2002 (Note. That guy with Latifa is not me)


"Al Osrah Al Asreyah" (Arabic script: الاسرة العصرية) magazine issue 1138 / 4-11 February 2003
Plus other magazines such as "Kalam Al Nas" (Arabic script: كلام الناس)

On many TV channels such as LBC (On TV show Carla La La), Future TV (On the show Rola AlHawa), Abu Dhabi TV, New TV and others.
In the T.V. show "Sa'ah Beqorb Al Habeeb" hosted by Tony Khaleefah on LBC channel which was broadcasted on 2nd of January 2003 Latifa sent me her regards and that was the first time she menstions my name on TV
Also in the show "Khaleek Bel Bait" which it's hosted by Zahi Wahbi on Future T.V. Latifa sent me her regards and that's was on 3rd of April 2003 (When Iraqi Ba'ath were shoting missiles on Kuwait during the American invasion of Iraq)
And on 31st of October 2003 and during the radio show "VIP" on Middile east "Al Sharq Al Awsat" radio station which broadcastting from Cairo - Egypt.Also on 1st of January 2004 during the radio show "Hamzat Wasl" on BBC radio station wich broadcasting from London, The inteview was recorded on 30th of December 2003 to be broadcasted on the first day of the year 2004.

She also mentioned my name in many TV and Radio shows including Marina FM and Kuwait TV.

I have many video files and audio files about my site, they might be added later.

Latifa's 1st fans club online was founded by me on 6th of April 2001, It's was a part of my site. It's includes many fans of Latifa around the globe, they are sharing everything about Latifa, Pictures, news, discussing everything related to Latifa and more. The fans club's name was changed to "Latifa Fans Family" and later it's became a part of Latifa's official website and then it was moved to facebook.

On Sunday 29th of June 2003 for the 1st time the site's visitors counter hit 200000 visitors since the site became online!On 14th of February 2004 my site was merged with Latifa's official site; and I became a webmaster of her site, my site was online until Yahoo! Geocities deleted it on January 2006.

Latifa's official site domain name is written on her music videos credits (aka outro) :Pp~


In the Mid 2000s, I registered the user name Latifa on YouTube for Latifa's official channel YouTube.com/Latifa
But the channel wasn't active untl few years later because YouTube wasn't as good as it is at the moment...Then I added most of the content you can find there at the moment.

I finally got to meet Latifa in real life on my trip to Tunisia 2008 where I attended few concerts and taken plenty of amazing photos of her on stage.


Notice the flying kiss to me in the end of the video *blush*
And later in that visit, I was a guest on a Tunisian radio station with her (photo can be seen below)
We also met in Kuwait on June 2009 when she came specifically to record a song and I was there during the 5 days trip, below a photo slide show of that day (by me of course).


She mentioned my name on Kuwait TV and Marina FM


Before and after having my brain surgery she called me and told me some positive things such as "only geniuses suffer from this kind of diseases" trying to lift my spirit, she made me laugh although I wasn't really in a fun place to be, and during the surgery she talked to my father and he told her: "Bashar loves you so much, why don't you marry him?" LOLI also found a very touching article on her official website written about me with many sweet comments of people from all over the world.

And again we met in January 2010

And April 2010, when she came back to Kuwait.

In March 2010 I was a guest on a TV show starred by Latifa on MBC channel, It was one of the scariest experiences in my life


 
In 2011, I covered the event of launching the song Bokra / Tomorrow in Dubai with Latifa

When my father passed away in 2016 she was more supportive than most of my blood relatives

In 2017, she asked me to create lyric videos for the songs of her at the time upcoming album "Fresh" because she saw my graphics motion when I made one for the song "Ana Min Nah Winta Min Nah" few months earlier.

I started with the song "Fresh" and it got more than 1.8 million views in two weeks (you can see my logo and credits in the end).

The upcoming songs will be credited to my e-store (Animated by), which I made to promote Arabic as a language trying to end linking it to terrorism and fighting stereotyping Arabs and Muslims.