Parking In Jordan

We are known for double and triple parking here in Amman, but sometimes it just gets even worse, usually around prayers. This mosque, known by the people in the area as Masjid Abu Eid, is a nightmare before and after prayers. People will come and literally park their cars in the middle of the road - as in the middle of road.

To make it worse people come and begin to fill in the gaps between cars and you end up with the entire road next to the mosque blocked. Some people will even defy the purpose of pavements and park their cars on them, so pedestrians must start walking on the streets and get run over.

The imam of the mosque addresses the people many times about the subject, but he could save his breath because no one really listens and they make special excuses for themselves and do the opposite of what people tell them. Its like when they asked people to avoid kissing in Eid and everyone made sure they kissed everyone they could find.

Download Limitation

I have a 2 Mb/s connection, from Orange, which supposedly has a 12 GB monthly limitation. Strangely enough, as you can see in the picture from JDownloader, I've downloaded over 23 GB this month and my connection speed is still soaring. Its rather peculiar because service from Orange used to be very bad, until once my father called them and complained about everything to a supervisor. Now even the livebox connection always works, although the internet stops working about once a week, which is normal from Orange. Can anyone explain why I have unlimited download limitation?

Eid Mubarak

This will not be your normal, everyday mandatory post about Eid. In fact, this post will more or less talk about some strange things we do in Eid. It is rather sad to see that, apart from a few people, we do the same routines every year. Take Eid for example, we usually go to the exact same houses in just about the same order every year, and this makes it rather boring.

Every eid visit will usually go like the following, knock on someones door after arriving without invitation, then when it opens we go in and start kissing and hugging each other while joking about swine flu and how the minister told us not to kiss or hug during his speech.

One thing you must not get wrong is remembering which females are related to you and which ones arent, and the proper Jordanian way to kiss, which goes left, right, right, and usually one more right to be more annoying. You could also grow a extra spiky beard so young children who kiss you get red cheeks.

Everyone will sit down on very uncomfortable chairs or sofas - why they make chairs with wooden backs, I will never know. The topics that come up are rather strange, of course I am never part of them but I always catch a phrase or two while I am between awake and asleep.

Our family meeting that usually takes place in someones house on Eid is quite a joke. Up to twenty people are in the room at the same time and you cannot hear a thing because they are all shouting in loud voices and arguing. There isnt anywhere to sit so I usually get cramped next to a very old person who smells, or I stay standing for a quarter of an hour.

Back to topic, the ma3moul they serve is not only unhealthy but also not anywhere near edible. It usually comes coated with powdered sugar that gets on my new shirt, or tastes very bland and is extremely large. Also, the chocolates - unless from Galaxy or Quality Street or something similar, usually end up in my pocket.

At the end of my day, my pockets will be bulging and I empty them on my desk. All the chocolates will go to my younger brother, who happily eats them with their wrapper still on them. By the way, all my family - mother, brothers and sister - went to Nablus to celebrate Eid. I refused to go their and babysit a dozen children, so I stayed behind with my father.

Minesweeper The Movie

If the minesweeper game on Windows was made real, this would be its movie trailer. This is a rather funny comedy trailer by College Humour. And while we are on the subject, check out this other video of a parody of Halo 3 online multiplayer.

Ramadan Feast Guide

How to know if your Ramadan feast is an absolute disaster:

• If your guests come an hour late know that they were warned of your food and ate at home without telling you.
• If you place the food on the table and they volunteer to give it out know that they don't find it appetizing to start with.
• If your guests forget about your food and start eating and complementing your dates, know that your food was horrible.
• If you taste your food and it doesn't taste too good, know that it really is a disaster, because food tastes better when you're hungry.
• If your guests don't finish your food, know that they didn't like it. If they finish the food, know you didn't make enough.

Helping Myself

In my household iftaar isn't always very good, it is usually what is leftover from yestarday, and I find it bland and unsatisfying. Either that, or it would be bamyeh or fasoolyeh. I always tell my dear mother to be creative when making dinner, she sometimes is and sometimes she isn't.

So sometimes I decide to go and help myself. The local corner shop is a few blocks away and I usually go there to buy a ton of stuff to feed myself. Its sort of like cavemen go to hunt for prey but in the twenty first century - although many still think of me as a caveman.

Back to the point, today was one of those days, so I went to the shop and bought myself a whole ton of food. All extremely nutritional of course, no doubt in that. I ended up spending around three or four dinars, of course my mother told me it will all go in the toliet in the end.

As seen in the photo I took, starting from left - two apple juice cartons, an Indomie packet, wafers from Eisberg, chewing gum, my favourite Kiwi and Lime juice, Galaxy chocolates, a bottle of water to avoid constipation, four ice cream bars, more fruit juices, M&Ms of course, two cheap Jordanian chocolates, and Dance biscuits.

And for those of you who think I'm fat or something, think again. All my old relatives tell me I have to get fatter for some reason and I am too weak. According to this BMI calculator I programmed myself, my Body Mass Index is 18. And if you're into that sort of stuff, I programmed it for this event.

New Computer

A few months ago my aging computer from eMachines, which is no longer called that these days anyway, finally moved on to another life when a power surge fried the entire machine, even though there was no lightning and we have a circuit breaker.

A week ago I decided it was time for a new computer. I needed a high performance computer for my daily use, from programming to modeling and slight gaming. My father promised me a computer of my choice when my results came out so I decided to see Stallion Computers, a computer store in Swefieh.

I only knew about the store from a few newspaper ads and from Hani Obaid - whom I have no idea were he went - but the store is great and the offer I took was rather good. I modified its specifications a bit from the default they were offering and I haggled the price down a bit.

Anyway the computer is here now, I must say the service I got from the store was very good, the staff are very friendly and understand what they are doing. The computer I got has the following specifications:

> Core 2 Quad 2.66 Ghz
> 3GB DDR2 Ram
> XFX Nvidia 250 GTS 1GB
> 400 Watt Power supply
> 320 GB Hard Drive
> 4 Speakers with Subwoofer
> 19 Inch Samsung Monitor

The transition to my first custom built computer is a very unique and satisfying one. I am usually the multitasking, having rather heavy programs open such as Photoshop, After effects and Dev c++, along with Firefox and other similar programs.

In addition to being able to do all of this, I can now play games that demand alot of power rather easily and at maximum settings. For example, my current build can play Crysis at 1440x900 with all on Very High with elegance. Most other computers fail to do this.

The following are a few pictures from my current setup. Those of you who saw my previous post about my workspace will notice its much more elegant, so to say. Anyway, more posts about this subject will come soon, for now some photos.