I was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1977 and had a very childish childhood. Like many children my age, I was captivated by drawing and music, or "making noise" as my mother used to describe it. I made my first audio recording when I was eight years old, on an old Hitachi radio-cassette recorder. It was mostly swear words, cursing, profanity, and blasphemies.

However, I have no idea what happened to that tape, who took it or whether anyone ever heard it. And I really don't want to talk about it.

After graduating high school, I joined Damascus University to study math and physics, while also building my first PC using 4 megabytes of RAM! I used it to add graphics to wedding videos by exporting cheesy animated shapes made with Paintbrush before later moving on to CorelDraw and Crystal Flying Fonts, transferring them onto VHS tape using a Videonics mixer.

My first workflows were limited to 360×288 resolution at 25 fps  - on my luckiest days -  as many frames were dropping.

Like my frames, I also dropped out of college to dedicate myself full-time to doing the coolest thing ever: making computer motion graphics. Once I saw a PowerPC running 3D animation software at a local digital media exhibition, I knew right away what I wanted to do for a living.

So, there I was, standing behind a 3D artist, when the guy who owned the company approached me. I immediately tried to show my “expertise” and mentioned Adobe Premiere. He asked me, “Do you know the software?” I answered, “Sure, I am a video editor,” so he offered to test me on the software in order to get a job teaching Adobe Premiere to his clients... and I said YES.

I knew nothing about Adobe Premiere.

So, with no internet and no books, I was lucky to have a friend who had the software. I copied the help documents and read all of them in one night. 

The next day, Not only was I a digital video editor, but I had also landed my first job training new digital video editors on Adobe Premiere.. And I was so good at it.

I fastly fell in love with powerful editing computers, component video and XLR connectors and breakout boxes. So I joined a computer animation school and learned motion graphics and non-linear video editing. 

I used and mastered many programs for that purpose: Media 100, Speed Razor, Session 8 and a bunch of Macromedia's interactive applications. I learned how to digitize analog video without losing a single precious pixel or frame, and how to manipulate video images, build cool 3D graphics, and composite them using Adobe After Effects (it wasn't Adobe's btw).

I learned Photoshop on Power PC Macs and learned to use 3D Studio Max before the first Windows release. Used Bryce and Z-Form too for creative 3D modeling. PhotoMorph for morphing? Absolutely. Michael Jackson's Black or White was the trend.

During the same time I also managed to learn tap-to-tape analog linear editing that nobody is using today (nor yesterday) I mastered professional BetacamSP video tape recorders, and industrial VHS and S-VHS machines, video routers, character generators and signal converters. Beside that, I did an extensive training on ENG cameras, video waveform and calibrating, running CCUs (camera control units) as well as professional video switchers and AV consoles. Speaking of which, I also was adapted to digital Audio workflows in its early days, recording, digitizing, mixing and mastering audio using early DAWs.