angry

jordanians are kind, hospitable, considerate, passionate, but the one adjective i think suits them best is angry.

i can hear many people screaming in utter denial (especially reda) but that's because they don't want to see it for what it is.

take, for example, the sun in jordan. let me tell you, dear readers, that we have the angriest rays of the magestic celestial body. the weather in jordan is overall pleasant. we get a few cold winter days and a few hot summer ones, but overall, it's nice and pleasant. except the sun. we must have some of the hottest rays in the world. not hot as in hip, but as in damn cancer-inducing. how would i know? i just compare it to really hot places. for example, dubai and texas.

i went to texas in the summer of 01. my uncle has (had, not sure) a black chevy blazer with a thermometer inside. he was shocked one day when he came into the car after it was parked in the sun to find the temp inside to be 120 deg f (around 50 c) while the temp outside was 100 f (around 40 c). in jordan it's a pleasant 30 c outside but friggin 50c inside the car. that's a whole 10 degrees extra. angry sun.

in dubai i "tanned" from 11 to 2 in the afternoon. everyone will tell you that's the most dangerous time to tan because the sun is at its hottest and most cancerous. i have tanned in quotation marks because i did NOT tan. in fact, the temperature was in the 40s and all i did was sweat like mad and go home. in the dead sea i spent around the same amount of time in the sun (idiot). i burned so bad my skin blistered and i couldn't wear anything for 3 days. after that my skin peeled. my shoulders peeled twice after which i developed freckles. i didn't have freckles before. angry, angry sun.

easy on the cops

i have to live the unfortunate reality of passing by the little ex-circle (dawwar) in rabyeh near the jtc building. those in jordan know what i'm talking about. those who don't (or those who are but are as pissed off as me) read on..

i drive through there at least three times a week to go to a kickboxing class i go to, so i've witnessed its evolution (evolution here is used in the sense of slow change, not slow change towards the better) on a fairly constant basis. on my way i drive from medina street to rabyeh, and along the way there is the circle near the jtc building (sometimes called dawwar eletisalat). now there's usually some traffic there, and at times it reaches levels that simply clog up the circle, in which case the police are brought in to guide the traffic, but those are so rare i've witnessed them but once or twice. and even then, you never spent more than a minute waiting.

i guess since the police are too busy writing people tickets for illegal parking and speeding to work at a circle for a couple of hours a day, they decided to add traffic lights to the circle. now they added very poor lights that made the circle look like a poor syrian contraption loosely aimed at guiding traffic, with its cables dangling from above and its bases built into small concrete barrels rather than into the ground. after they turned them on, a horrific jam started forming at the circle. you would have to wait at least 5 minutes (2 light changes) before you could move out. the queue of cars extended all the way to the other weird intersection they have between medina street and the circle.

BUT, on the up-side, there was no needs for cops there anymore. thank God.

in their never-ending quest for helping the citizens, those in charge (i'm assuming amman's municipality) decided to remove the circle altogether and convert the intersection into a normal one with lights. it would, at least, ease some of the jam that took place. during their removal they used to place a metal railings to keep the cars away. one day the lights were not working, there was NO jam and the railings served as the circle. heavenly.

finally, the railings were removed and it was a full fledged intersection. until one day i was driving by and the lights suddenly all went yellow. what did we do with that? it was evolution: kill or be killed. i squeezed my way through (thank God that i wasn't taking a left) and wondered what idiot programmed the lights like that. well, i guess it was the same idiot who decided that the time of thousands of drivers is less important than the time police are supposed to be doing their job.

since that incident, the lights were working fine. until 3 days ago that is, when they went back to their yellow insanity. is anyone wondering what they did to solve THAT problem?

they had a policeman guide the traffic.

towards a cleaner jordan

when i started out with this blog, i was afraid that i'll run out of things to write. turns out i underestimated the human capacity for idiocy. it appears there are plenty of idiots out there to keep this blog interesting.

the other day i got home from work, parked the car and started walking towards the door when something caught my eye in one of the patches of our garden. it was a flyer or brochure, it seemed, with a nice design (nice brown background with more subtle shared of it and words written in a chic beige). upon closer inspection the flyer read "towards a cleaner jordan" and some other mumbo jumbo about that. good God in heaven have mercy, the idiots running the campaign towards a cleaner jordan are actually littering by doing so! who gives these people the license to start these things in the first place? shouldn't they (either group of idiots, licensers or licensees, if such a word exists) make sure that such a campaign actually, well, led towards a cleaner jordan? isn't throwing flyers around acting in direct contradiction to that? i am sure the intentions were well, but COME ON, there should be no excuse for idiocy! (thank God for it nonetheless, it would've put bread on the table if this blog had been used to make money through the reader who actually bothers with typing in the url)

GBOB

i ask you, dear constant reader (when i say reader, i mean exactly that, as in one reader), i ask you, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the acronym gbob? personally, it kinda reminded me of a song a one-hit wonder gay band came up with a while back. but if someone not scarred with the burn of that memory heard gbob, i think they would think of something like lolipops? a bubble-gum brand? a new perfume?

gbob, ladies and gentlemen, is none of the above. in fact, it's short for Global Battle Of the Bands. not sissy bands but rock bands. people who are working on gbob: choose a better acronym! gbob? it's like some sort of generic person who is very talented in bed. or a fizzy drink that's trying to compete with all the energy drinks out there! gbob?! do the people working on this even look a little at their work?

man with perceptive ears: "hey heavy rocker with black clothes, spiky hair and 2 kilos of earrings, where are you going?"

heavy rocker with slightly doped look and clothes to match: "to, uh, gbob"

man: "wtf is gbob? is it some gay soap-bubble convention?"

rocker: "no dude, it's a heavy-metal BATTLE"

man: "battle you say? gbob speaks of 5-year-old girls playing with playdoh"

note to all you PR people out there, when choosing names, try to choose inspiring ones, something along the lines of "the battle" or "g-battle" (if you must use the g) or any other non-gay name.

lack of postings

dear non-existent constant reader,

no more light-hearted posts for a while. too pissed. check serious sam.

damn israel and their bitch

i had a feeling it was something bad

even mothers need to know what marijuana looks like:

click here for the weird article

earning a degree online

or rather, earning an degree online. when i read the ad that said earning an degree will take only 13 months, i immmediately jump on the oportunity!

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 amman and aqaba. not a single person was able to sleep, sit, read (i literally could not keep my eyes on the same line to complete it) or do anything one might think of doing on a bus. some suicidal individuals actually asked for nescafe. one of them shared the cup with his pants after a particularly exciting bump that nearly collided my head with the roof of the bus.

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 amman, pushed to ailing bus to its too-near limits. you could see other buses, trucks and cars zip by on our right; the driver overtaking them like a brave warrior. i believe he even honked a speeding s class out of our way (look at that wus, doing only 120 kmh!). but what troubled me most was the sense of lateral acceleration we were getting, like we were on a large constant bend to one side or the other. i looked to the front of the bus, and lo and behold! the damn thing was swaying across the width of street. not only was the bus shaking like we were preparing butter (i believe some ladies breast-feeding actually did develop butter), nor only was the driver in a race against his old record of getting to amman in less than 2 hours, but the bus did not drive straight: the driver had to fight to keep it straight.

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 amman, would not waste a minute to come and see what the problem was) and said our prayers so that we can arrive safely. after the driver took off, i started feeling hot air against my ankles again. i looked down and the hatch, under the carpet, had lifted a bit again (it felt alive). so i put my foot down on it. my foot stayed there till we got to amman. the other hatch (which was next to seat behind me) was secured in place by a bag one of the passengers had with her.

eventually, the bus got to amman in one piece. us passengers got there in one piece that was badly bruised. the driver, all grin, got down and started chatting to other drivers, probably comparing records on how fast he got us to amman on the sick bus (the steward, male, smelly, said that "this bus should not have been used today because it needs maintenance." no shit).

guess what company i'll be using next time i go to aqaba. idiot.

who stole our street?

this morning on my way to work i noticed something rather odd. the way on which i drive every day, used to having a more or less continuous stretch of street, was missing a chunk. along the width of the street (and extending well into the pavement on both sides) a good half a meter was abruptly amputated (creating a void around 7 centimeters deep). i parked a few meters before the gap and stepped out of the car. i stood there, staring at it like an idiot, wondering who stole our street (which was just recently renewed, mind you).

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.

shooting maniac

i was listening to the radio the other day. there is a shooting club in jordan, called "action target" and as they're riding the world cup wave like everyone else, they were advertising for people to come over to watch games there (yes, watching the games at a shooting range sounds supehb!, kinda like having Ramadan nights at the waterwaves place, whatever its name is). however, they didn't use a sensible slogan like "10 huge screens" or "32 teams competing (really, i thought there were 19 teams!)". no, to stand out, their tag line for the ad was "are you a 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.