One More Year

Its my birthday today, so I'm officially fifteen today. Its been two years blogging and fifteen years stuck on planet earth.

And as its usual for October that it rains. For some reason it rains exactly when the last period finishes and rains on me and my backpack all the wait until my dad comes to pick me up.

So I guess the following days will be very enjoyable. Happy birthday to me, and the perfect song to be singing in the background:

" Kiber ja7shna wa saar i7maar... oink oink... "

Beaten To Death By His Teacher

And you thought it would never come.

Apparently, a boy in Alexandria, around eleven years old was beaten to death by his teacher. This was a punishment for not completing his homework.

The fool of a teacher beat the boy until he fainted, was then taken to the hospital where he suffered from heart failure and later died.

Although these cases are rather rare these days, they still do occur.

An Egyptian teacher at a primary school in Alexandria is alleged to have beaten an 11-year-old pupil to death.

The maths teacher, Haitham Nabeel Abdelhamid, who worked at Saad Othman school, was furious because Islam Amro had not finished his homework.

After using a ruler to punish him, the teacher is alleged to have taken the young boy outside the classroom and hit him violently in his stomach.

The young pupil fainted and later died in hospital of heart failure.

He was taken from the school to hospital but suffered a sharp drop in blood pressure and heart failure.

The teacher is reported by Egyptian newspaper Al Masry Alyoum to have told the prosecutor that he was only trying to "discipline the boy, not to kill him".

Mr Abdelhamid was remanded in custody on manslaughter charges.

Lurking Around My Pictures

You know how Microsoft originally made My Pictures so that users would put their photos, but in the end no one really did. Most people would just throw everything either on the desktop or somewhere else.

Anyway, I found some interesting pictures lying around in My Pictures, probably collected some virtual dust. I had always loved Photoshop and decided to learn more from online tutorials, ever since the switch from online gaming to programming.

* * *


Heroes from four popular console games


A text effect I learned from an amazing online tutorial


My first HDR photo I took from our balcony


A mix of many different abstract wallpapers


Somewhat a mosaic of many games I had in mind


Another space effect wallpaper from a tutorial

Studying Physics

I was bored while I was studying Physics the other day, so I decided to take a few pictures of my 'worktop'. This is were I study every single day - other than on the computer of course.

Daily Fixes

Just before I'm about to head off to school each morning, and after I put on my blue creased shirt and heave my heavy bones to the mess of a kitchen to eat something.

And that something is supposed to give the energy to turn on whats left of my brain cells in school. So, in theory, this daily fix is essential to getting a mark.



Tea is the most likely thing I'd drink in the morning. I enjoy everything sweet, so I put three to four spoons in my cup - my parents are wondering why I still haven't got diabetes.

I only take Lipton, sometimes add milk, and never prefer it cold. Except iced tea, but since when was that tea anyway. I even put some tea to drink in the car on the way to school, and thats how I usually end up with a messy uniform.



Hot chocolate was something I used to drink some time ago. Problem with it was that it needed a microwave, and that was always busy in the morning heating up bread or sandwiches.

It was good while it was still an addiction, and I'm sure I'll return to it someday. Until then, its only a drink in the afternoon when my stomach isn't overwhelmed by chocolate.



Cereal was never one of the options when we arrived to Jordan. The prices of the edible cereal here was way over the top and the only alternative was either oats or normal cornflakes - both were quite vile.

Oats, or shufaan, was one of the things I used to eat most of the time. Unfortunately, it would usually be piled with sugar to the point the healthy part of ceral didn't make sense anymore.



Eggs, along with the normal Jordanian breakfast is usually on the table these days. Humus, foul and some other food is piled on the table, along with bread of course.

As great as this breakfast may be the first time, eating the same thing over and over again not only results in a bad stomach but a really bad taste.



And sometimes the tables empty and I'll just eat anything in the fridge and then hurry off to school. The rest of my empty stomach would probably be continued in school - usually.

So what do your breakfasts contain?

Teachers At School

I was going to write this post a long time ago, but now that my first month certificate has come out - 94%, thanks to god - I thought it was a good idea to type this post up today.

Anyway, I won't include any names or pictures, for - err - safety reasons. I don't want to wake up tomorrow with a bounty on top of my head. No, not the chocolate.. anyway, lets start.

Maths Teacher - Super Teacher

I wrote a post about this guy some time ago, but I'd like to talk about him again, just in case you didn't read that post. Anyway, to make a long story short, this guy knows everything, but he keeps bragging to make the thing worse.

To give a few examples on his "godly powers", he knows every subject to ever be sent to earth - Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Arabic, and of course Math. He tells us of his great defeats of exams to challenge him, how he got 197/200 in Math Tawjihi, how he got 99% in Religion, and a few more.

Not only will he stop at that, but his miracles extend to reach gymnastics - splitting more than 180 degrees or standing on his head for a very long time, music - he once played us a song on a classmates guitar in front of us, and even his family - he claims his father was the principle of his school.

Biology Teacher - Hitler

You know when teachers come into a boys school for the first time, they either try to settle things down or get taken down really easily and lose control. And when the teacher is a woman, you'd expect nothing less than no control. But this was not the case.

This teacher would come into the class with a large frown on her face and a rather loud voice. Anyone who would dare open their mouth to interrupt the lesson would probably be shot dead and their body burnt. This was were the nickname Hitler came from.

She got everything going and her lessons still run smoothly now, maybe with not much of the fear of being randomly fired at compared to the beginning of the term. But some things didn't change, like the difficulty and quantity of her exams or her marks.

Chemistry Teacher - Ammonia

Fresh to school this year, this teacher really turns out to think we're still his college students he used to teach before coming to school. He explains everything, uses every term in the book and gives too much examples, that it all backfires and you end up looking like a stunned mullet in his class.

'With respect to' and 'beyond your scope' are just some of the rather peculiar phrases he uses, all along with a strange accent that is a mix between British, Jordanian, American, maybe a bit of Klingon as well. For some reason, he loves giving us big fat photocopied handouts, 30 pages or so, after we finish the subject, all in his very 'clear' handwriting.

All in all, I wish this guy luck. I doubt he'll make it past his first year here. No one does anyway.

And thats all I can manage for a post. It'd be too big anyway if I continued. I'll finish off the list of teachers in the next post, some other time. Hopefully...

Eid, Long Ago

I can still remember Eid long ago, when I was still in London and I was probably still an infant.

It was always the same routine but it appealed to me as much as any celebration. The night before we would all be very excited and start talking about what we would be doing tomorrow, who we would visit and who would come to us.

In the morning, I would get up excited, put on my new clothes folded neatly next to my bed the day before, then wake up my brother before going downstairs - we lived in a small two floor house at that time. The living room would be decorated with tinsel and colored lights, and we sit there waiting for our parents to come down.

A few minutes later our parents would come down, my dad holding a large bag full of 'surprise' presents, and my mum holding a video camera that would already be recording. We would start opening our presents and playing with them for a while, until it was time for the prayer.

We would get in the car with my dad and off we would go to the nearby mosque. After that it we would go and visit our uncle, maybe a few visits to some other relatives or friends, invite some to dinner, and that would be it.

It'd all be over in a day. But it was rather exciting, at that young age anyway. These days, at an age of almost fifteen - just a few more days to go tfo being a super grumpy caveman - you don't really find Eid anything more than a break from school and a money gainer. Nothing that exciting compared to maybe ten years ago.

So, how was Eid when you we're young?