Living well in today’s world practically means having super powers.
Supermoms, inspiring dads and great achievers: these people have gone an extra-mile to make great things come true.
We interviewed Gisele Khoury, a famous journalist in the Arab World, who is currently hosting her own political show on the BBC ARABIC TV station; Alain Aoun, a Member of the Lebanese Parliament; and Nada Abi Saleh, the Managing Director of Leo Burnett Beirut, one of the top advertising agencies in the region.
So are these successful individuals really different from all of us when it comes to morning routines and the secrets of having full energy all day long?
What is the first thing you do when you open your eyes in the morning?
Gisele Khoury: I simply drink water and prepare the coffee.
Nada Abi Saleh: When I open my eyes in the morning, the first thing I do is close them back!
Alain Aoun: Until two years ago, I used to go straight to the treadmill and run for one hour while reading the newspapers on my iPad.
Since my first kid was born, I lost this regular habit. Now I have two, a girl and a boy. I try to spend some quality time with them in the morning before starting my day. I try to catch up exercising but it is not as frequent and regular as before unfortunately.
Describe in few words your 24-hour day.
Gisele: While I am having my coffee in the morning, I read the news. Now I no longer have to go buy the paper, I can read it online and check twitter. Then I get on my treadmill for 30min in front of the TV station. Yes, to watch more news.
My morning boost of energy is taking a hot shower with “Baladi” soap. Than,I head to the BBC offices for work.
Then after work, I visit the Samir Kassir foundation to get updates on our activities.
The best part of my day is when I come back home and spend quality time with my mother and my kids if they are around. Some nights I try to feed my brain by watching plays or movies, or simply have a good laugh with my friends over drinks.
Nada: 24 hours? It actually feels like 48 hours.
Alain: My typical day always starts with a must: kids… Then I read the newspapers (my daily bread!) then parliament for political and legislative meetings (parliamentary committees, appointments, etc.). Lunch break in Beirut before moving back again to my district, Baabda, for constituency activities (local meetings, social duties, etc.).
The end of the day is again for my kids. My favorite part is reading a story to my boy or singing a lullaby to my girl to make them sleep. Final part is (finally!) for Sarah, my wife, but most of the time she has to share it with friends as our nights are pretty loaded (thankfully) with social commitments. We are grateful and blessed for having such an overwhelming life.
If you have one secret to keep your energy up and running all day, what would it be?
Gisele: Sports. For me physical health highly affects your mental ability and helps you keep up with the hectic life we are living.
Nada: PASSION. PASSION. AND PASSION.
Alain: My wife Sarah always asks me how come I keep rolling non-stop day and night and I always answer her: “It is all in the mind!”. I am definitely not an exception and my body cannot easily sustain my life rhythm, but the secret and the key is in the mind! If you like what you do, you keep setting challenges and motivation, you love to be surrounded by people and friends, this can change your whole spirit and mood, and hence your body follows.
HOMEland Magazine
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to