Some Brainiac Stuff

A few facts from my favorite show that I can only watch on the web, Brainiac.

- A human eye can be measured in megapixels - 254 mp to be exact.
- The best paper airplane you can make is from an A4 sheet of paper.
- You can make a rocket out of a water bottle tank and some air.
- Want to make the smelliest fart? Try sprouts.
- Eating some chili will make the funniest facial expression.
- You can fold a piece of paper, no mater the size, 9 times only.
- Packing helium balloons in your packaging can make it lighter.

And quite alot more, go to Youtube and search for Brainiac. I'm sure you'll be amazed.

First Week Of School

Now this was one long week, and I guess the reason was no other than because it was a school week.

A lot of new things happened this tenth year in school. My brother now comes with me to school, which is rather annoying, and we now go to school by car instead of by bus.

Quite a few of the old teachers had changed - well, we weren't really surprised. The Physics teacher was probably fired because everyone hated him, the Chemistry teacher was pregnant and had to stop teaching - how convenient. She was good and now they've got us someone worse.
The English teacher tried to get a raise but in this stubborn school, they disagreed and she left in search of a better school. About 10 students from grade nine had left and there was only 1 new student.

Last year a friend of mine was hit by an SUV and broke his thigh when he was leaving the school. The school had to fire the PE teacher, since he let him leave early - not that'd make a difference, but the school has to blame someone or else the parents (see: money) will start asking questions.

And thats that. This year is externals year for the IGCSE - something equivalent to the tawjihi. Thats great, just great. More pressure. :)

Anyway this weekend my family is off to THE AQABA, city of buildings made of gold and a woman blowing sand onto them. Hehe. I'll hopefully be blogging from there, so see you then.

City Fiesta & MBC Be The Star

Oh boy, we won both competitions. I swear to god.

The first was today, when we went to City Mall, me and my friend, to take part in a competition - something like a treasure hunt. We were given clues, in the form of logos, for a shop in the mall and were told to find those shops to get more clues.

All in all it was great fun, the hard part were the questions we had to solve, some really puzzling riddles, like the penny, nickel and quarter, but my brother was at home and looked on the Internet and got us the answer - you could ask for help from anyone, it was part of the game.

Judge time came, after five hours of writing and running, and me and my friend had got second place, thanks to god. The prize was a great 200JDs in vouchers to be spent in City Mall. So that means 100JDs each. :)

I still haven't spent anything from them yet, but I'm sure I'll find something to spend it on.

Anyway, as we were waiting outside of City Mall, waiting for our parents, he said that he wanted to tell me something. He reminded me of our film, which we did a few months ago, and I blogged about. Well, he turned out to have submitted it to Be The Star competition a month ago.

Little did he know that it had uploaded and gathered a whopping 1019 VIEWS!!! It was first place in all of the competition and we had won. Oh I jumped for joy so much, people started to look at me from their cars as if I was crazy.

I made him swear to god that what he was saying was true, and he did so many times he got angry. Anyway, he had got a call from Dubai saying we had one. We have to send them a CD of the movie and they will send us the prizes.

Oh I am happy. Happy, happy, happy. Alhamdullilah, of course. :D

Now, how did they jump over the moon? ...

'Kinzi' is a Brand

I saw this on some mysterious carpet while we were shopping in Safeway. I never knew it was a brand.

I also saw a cafe in Nu3man mall called Kinzi but I never could get the chance to take a picture since I was in the car.

The real Kinzi's blog is here.

Street Numbers Really Work!

It's true, a restaurant delivery reached out house with only our road name and number!

Today we decided to get a delivery from Tazaj, after its good reputation it got from our family in Saudi Arabia. We rang them up and ordered.

When we asked do you deliver to Sports City, he said yes, and asked us for our street address and the number. We gave it to him thinking he was joking and he'd ring back later to ask for directions.

Within half an hour, he had reached our house and we enjoyed the dinner. The amazing thing is that we didn't give him any directions.

Now I have no idea how on earth he knew where to go, maybe he opened up the imaginary A-Z of Amman and looked up our street.

Maybe he has some GPS system that tells him how to reach the street. Or his has some voodoo powers to hunt us down, I don't know.

Thing is, it worked - maybe we can start using this method publicly, to reach destinations, to get to houses and landmarks, maybe even in taxis.

What do you think?

Glow In The Dark Mountain Dew

Hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and 1/4 of a mountain dew bottle - it glows like a light bulb. No wonder I'm so hyper active!

The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Sixth Sense, a 1999 film which may sound quite old, but is rather interesting, is about a boy who has a sixth sense, maybe some might call it a gift. This gift enables him to see dead people.

While this may seem to some as 'cool', maybe even reminding you of Ghost Whisperer, this frightens the young boy as he keeps seeing people begging for mercy with cut off limbs or hanging from a rope.

This goes by the tag line of the movie, 'not every gift is a blessing', and his daily traumas make him more and more troubled with his life.

The boy seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist, Dr Malcom, who once was shot by one of his patients who had the same sixth sense, driving the patient into total madness and misery.

With the help of the doctor, after he realizes that what the boy is seeing is real, the boy begins to tackle his dilemmas with the help of the psychologist, by speaking to the dead people and seeing what they need.

This psychological horror film or maybe thriller, is a rather interesting one. This is one of the films that the plot is focused on more than the action, but without getting too unbalanced.

Probably the best and most thrilling part of the film is the twist ending, for which the director was very creative indeed. You will be surprised by the ending, I can assure that.

Be sure to watch this six Academy Award nomination film.

Days With My Father

This type of journal, rather interesting with pictures and text to go with, is rather touching.

It talks about a son with a father, who suffers from a disease similar to Alzheimers. He had no short term memory, and the son had only discovered this after his mother died suddenly.

When he and his father returned from the funeral, his father was puzzled where his wife was. After the son explained to him she had died, he soon discovered he had no short term memory.

Because he would be traumatized again and again when he would find out his wife was dead, the son changed the story so she was in Paris caring her sick brother.

The journal covers alot of his daily life, so see it if you can. The navigation is rather puzzling at first, but all you need to do to move your mouse below the picture and click to move forward.

Days With My Father

Tawjihi Results

Today I woke up at the sound of gunfire, fireworks and car horns.

Was it yet another stupid wedding? At 8 AM? No. Maybe it was it World War 3? Maybe it was some drunks/drug addicts in happy hour?

No. It was the celebrators of Tawjihi.

So, congratulations to all who got more than 50%. Farewell to all those who got less.

Have fun celebrating for continuous hours in the streets with your heads dangling out the car windows screaming your barbarian war cries.

Also have fun shooting with your machine guns and RPGs, and try not to break a window or some telephone pole (it happened once, I swear). And if you want to kill the boy, have some mercy.

Happy Tawjihi!