rooting idiocy where it lurks. pinpointing the irregular in the regular. wtf is mens non corpus? see the first entry
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
lack of postings
no more light-hearted posts for a while. too pissed. check serious sam.
damn israel and their bitch
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
earning a degree online
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
trust
last night i had the worst bus ride of my life.
mind you, this is coming from someone who's been in bad buses, who traveled from raghadan to the university of jordan in shitty 10 piaster busses, who traveled from syria to jordan in a bus that can easily fit 70 passengers (yes, a smelly double-decker it was), but managed to rent it along with 5 other friends ALONE because no one else would ride it. so, when i say the worst bus ride of my life, it was really something awful.
the company that charters these buses is called trust. i had the misfortune of having to use one because some idiot bought us one-way JETT tickets to aqaba that morning. yes, we were going there and not sure when we were coming back. idiot. anyway, JETT's bus on the way to aqaba was really pleasant: AC, snacks, a rather comely stewardess who despite her jordanian accent made the ride a bit more bearable and the ride itself was smooth. all was well that morning.
on the way back that afternoon we bought a ticket on trust buses because JETT was fully booked (three buses, all full). It was a bit more expensive, but i was thinking "dammit, these guys MUST be better than JETT". i actually banged my hand aginst the counter in enthusiasm (the guy who sold the ticket eyed me weirdly). how gravely mistaken I was.
as soon as I got on the bus, the heat was shocking. apparently they had turned on the AC a few minutes before so it took a good 2 hours for the bus to cool down. but really, that wasn't the bad part. the bad (not worse) part was that there was something terribly wrong with the suspension. instead of gracefully gliding the bus over bumps and holes, this suspension actually magnified the bumps: if we had bothered with counting the times we were thrown out of our seats, we would've presented an extremely accurate estimate of the number of bumps between
but of course, that alone would not qualify the ride to be one of the worst. the bus driver, who seemed to have some urgent appointment he was late to in
thankfully, i had a light lunch before i got on the bus.
but that wasn't the worst part. around an hour before we got back to amman, the bus decided it had had enough and blew two hatches on the floor near the back (right next to my seat) and hot air started flowing into the bus (yes, both hatches were right above the engine). we whistled the driver to stop (miraculously, he did), lifted the carpet, and saw that two boards on the floor (which i believe are meant as engine access) had actually blown out of place. we replaced them, banged them in place (when i say we, i mean the passengers; the driver, in his haste to get to
eventually, the bus got to
guess what company i'll be using next time i go to aqaba. idiot.
Monday, July 10, 2006
who stole our street?
i followed the theft's trail all the way to my right, looking for its beginning (or end) and found both the perpetrator and the source of the noise that woke me up earlier that day. a number of workers were using a rather sharp (and extrenely loud) saw to cut the street (and everything else that comes in its way) and then promptly removing the cut-out sections of the street.
i walked over to them and waited (with them eyeing me suspiciously) until they turned the scary saw off (trust me, you can't hear yourself think with its whine in your ears). i asked them why they were stealing our street. they looked at me with blank eyes and told me engineer bla bla, who worked company bla bla bla, instructed them to do so. they weren't even sure WHY they were removing chunks from the street, just that they were told to do so.
i looked around for engineer bla bla but found no trace of him, headed back to my car, and near damn broke my axles crossing the new valley that replaced our street. you would think, in a country that has as much experience as Jordan in tearing up streets, that they would've learned to advertise the lack of street beforehand or (God forbid) actually plan the infrastructure BEFORE they lay in the street.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
shooting maniac
my question is: is this the best way to pose that question? would i, as a shooting maniac, advertise that i am one on radio? i don't know about you, but a shooting maniac brings to mind pictures of school shootings, wedding disasters and other contexts where being a shooting maniac leads to your arrest.
so no, i'm not a shooting maniac. i wonder if they were able to get any shooting maniacs to come to the place.