I Have an Idea

So I have this idea and I’m getting sick of car manufacturers not being able to come up with it since 1672!

And being the *cough* awesome painter that I am, I made these “sketches” to demonstrate my genius idea (which I’m pretty sure many people thought of before me but no one was talented enough to turn it into exquisite pieces of art like I did). Anyway, if you come here regularly then you’ve read one (or 10) posts about how driving in Amman is awful and how the streets are (I don’t want to say poorly planned because they weren’t planned in the first place) not driving-friendly.

So without further ado, I present to you “The Sideways Wheel”! Your new solution to parallel parking and other problems. Here’s what I’m thinking: they place a couple of wheels under the car that are perpendicular to the original four wheels it already has, that way, the car can move sideways too!

The driver can make the wheels appear and disappear when s/he needs them to, I’ll leave the “how” to mechanical engineers because it’s not my job here.

Let me explain the benefits; if a normal car looks like this:

Then my new modified BackForthAndSideways car would look like this, see the wheel?

(If you're worried about balance or the other four wheels I'd be happy to explain further.)

Example:

Suppose the blue car and the green car are parked, you’re driving the red car and want to parallel park:

Instead of doing this:

You’ll just go like this:

And you don’t even need extra space in front of your car or behind it!

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Another case, the cars are stopped at the red light and the way is open for cars that want to go right BUT, the dude in the green car is blocking the exit so the dude in the black car goes nuts and starts honking non-stop, and so do all the ones behind him:

So green car dude moves a little bit to the side with the help of his super-cool sideways wheel, red and blue cars help him out a bit and shift to the left:

Black car dude is happy!

Yeah?

* don’t you dare mock my sketches. They took me forever to do.

** I heard that some guy in Egypt created something like that but no one gave him any credit, maybe he didn’t have a blog.

The Ugly Duckling is Happy

My friend Mayyasi (no, not the corn flavored peanuts) linked me today to this website, “Divan” is an online magazine that reviews Arabic blogs and promotes promising bloggers.

What’s awesome about this is that I found the Ugly Duckling sitting right there in the homepage!
Apparently I made their “LOL-List”:

It is called “The Blog of the Ugly Duckling”, and everybody knows that the ugly duckling always gets the last laugh! The blog is run by Rand, a girl from Amman, Jordan, who is –judging from her blog- is a very funny and creative person.
There’s fake news, rants, poetry, conversations, and lists, lists and more lists! These always get people excited. Some posts talk about life in Jordan; which are funny even if you don’t live over there, however, most of the topics she talks about are quite universal and relatable.

Hear that people? They love the lists!

Rand gets major points for giving us excellent spelling, grammar and punctuation while still making us laugh.

And they love grammar!

Reviews like this one always give me the motivation to keep going, whether it was a website or a single reader (ok married readers can say I’m awesome too), I’m just as excited now about a compliment as I was when I first started this around a year ago, and I couldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for all my lovely readers :) 

Thank you Nada Saber!

Winter: I'm Torn

People have been complaining a lot lately about how winter’s really late and how they want the weather to get colder already, as much as I do agree that we need rain, lots of rain to survive next summer (especially if it’s going to be as hot as this year’s) I have to say that I’m not exactly looking forward to colder days, here’s why: (yes it’s a list and I’m obsessed to the extent that I can’t write anything else)

a. I’m the type whose hands and feet have a freezing point of 17°C and a boiling point of 6000°C, they freeze, and never get warmer unless I set them on fire for a while, so when I’m not near fire, I’m unable to function properly, I can’t even type so expect less blogging/tweeting if I’m not warm enough. They get so cold that if you hit my hands hard enough you’ll get this:

b. Just the misery I go through every day when I want to get out of bed should be a good enough reason. I’m best friends with my pillow even in the summer so you can imagine the feeling when it’s cold outside and I have to get up and go to work while my bed is extra warm.

c. I’m really not keen on morons driving by and splashing water from puddles on pedestrians, and if you’re familiar with the streets of Amman, you already know they look like this when it rains: 

Source

d. The fact that cold tap water feels like it’s coming down in the form of ice cubes in the morning makes me cringe at the very idea of washing up or performing Wudu in the early hours. Although I have to admit it’s a very pleasant surprise when I’m expecting ice-cold and get really warm water instead!

e. Mud.

f. I find that the layers of clothes I need to wear in cold weather tend to impede my already-not-so-fast movement. Hey remember when those huge puffy jackets were in style? Thank God that’s over!

g. That feeling when you’re walking outside and you can see the red glow coming from your nose. Oh not to mention the teary eyes.

h. The fact that there’s really nothing to do in Amman in the summer but go outside makes winter a where-the-hell-do-you-think-you’re-going-in-this-weather season, unless you hang out at closed coffee places that get filled up with arguileh smoke that you can’t even see the people sitting across the table from you.

I think that’s enough whining. In the meantime, this is a post I wrote last winter when it was snowing, it was not so whiney so it should balance this one. What are your winter pet peeves? Favorite things?

Have a great season everyone! 

On Lameness...

I should probably start criticizing guys before my own gender turns against me, but lame girls are everywhere and they don't seem to be getting better. Here's a list of things that lame girls will never stop doing:

1. Fishing for compliments: there will always be lame girls who fish for compliments all the time, I think it’s okay to do it sometimes if your self confidence is falling apart, and by sometimes I mean maybe once every couple of months, but to continue doing it all the time is just pathetic. Take girls with ever-changing Facebook profile pictures for example, pictures that show nothing else but the girl, I mean come on! Who has 365 photos is her profile pictures album? We already know what you look like from every angle.

2. Gossiping about other girls behind their backs: ok not just lame girls, we all do it, we talk about each other, we even talk about girls that we actually like, but we don’t spend as much time talking about them as girls that we don’t like.

3. Falling for guys that treat them horribly: which is the reason some really nice guys pretend they’re badass (that’s lame too but you can’t really blame them). It’s becoming guys’ rule when approaching a girl.

4. Faking sadness: just to draw attention, and they probably have a certain person in mind whose attention needs to be drawn, that guy is usually following the rule in point 3. Just look at girls with :’( or :( on their status updates, if this girl ever replies to your “what’s wroooooooongggggg??” comment it’s either going to be a broken nail or the fact that she has to wake up early tomorrow morning so stop commenting you loser you’re only giving her what she wants and you’re probably the reason these girls still exist.

5. Realizing they like a guy only after someone else comes and takes him: they don’t actually like him, but they were hoping he liked them, and when he’s with someone else that either means he doesn’t anymore or that he never did in the first place. You’d think that one member less in their “imaginary fans” club (which has a hundred members by the way) wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Well it does.

6. Jealousy: it’s just the way things are; guys show off in front of each other, girls are jealous of each other, you can’t change that. Like those two girls in every company that are not even ashamed of being jealous of each other.

7. Faking affection: so much that you would think they’re best friends, they fake smiles, they fake hugs, they fake “sweeties”, “babes” and “honeys”, they even go out together, but they cannot stand each other. Take for example some distant relatives or cousins that pretend they’re really happy to see you at weddings and other social gatherings but start trashing you the minute you turn your back. (These usually come in groups).

8. Faking stupidity: because they think it’s “cool” to be clueless. Seriously? 

Any other girl lameness I missed?

Do You Know This Guy?

I call him the Random Arab Dude, in case you don’t know him let me give you a few facts about him:

a. There’s really nothing, and I mean nothing special about him, he’s just a guy and he exists.

b. He hasn’t been to the barbershop for a while now.

c. He’s not happy, nor is he sad, he’s just, well, he’s fine.

d. He doesn’t wear colorful clothes and prefers beige.

e. He’s not tall, not that short either, but he’s below average.

f. His clothes are one size larger than they should be.

g. He hasn’t bought a new pair of shoes since forever.

h. In general you can say he’s not that financially stable or at least he doesn’t seem like he is rich or wealthy.

i. He’s kinda ok with all that and you can consider him “at peace”.

So where do you find this guy? (I know you’re not really interested in finding him but I’m just saying), here’s where to look:

1. Go to the ATM with a friend or so, let them get some cash and stand a couple of meters away. That dude trying to figure out how much money your friend has in his/her account is a RAD. Is he squinting? There you go. Now he’s not some thief who wants to get the PIN in order to steal the card later, he just wants to know how much money people have, how much they need, how much they took and maybe if they want a receipt with that transaction.

2. If you’re standing in a queue, let’s say you want to pay bills and you have the invoice with you. Can you feel someone breathing down your neck? When you look over your shoulder do you see someone’s head? Another RAD. He’s harmless; he just wants to know how much you’re paying for electricity or whatever.

3. You find a parking spot that is exactly the size of your car so you’re trying to squeeze it in, and while you’re not that good at parallel parking you can do just fine when you don’t feel like someone is watching you, except RAD is right there watering the plants and paying attention to your every move, until you step out of the car.

4. You’re walking in the street and get your skirt (sorry guys) caught in some bushes so you trip and almost fall flat on your face, you pull your skirt, pick up what’s left of your dignity and pray that no one saw that flower you doodled on your leg when you were bored and forgot to wash, think again, RAD is right there, he even feels sorry for you.

5. Your friend bought something faulty and wants to get a refund and they’re having an argument with the salesman at the store while you’re standing there, the RAD is the audience, he will probably go home and tell his wife about this fight he saw today at that store and what was wrong with your friend’s item.

6. Now you have to watch Jordan TV’s 8 o’clock news cast to get this, the correspondent is reporting from a street in some Jordanian city about how, let’s say everyone is really happy that it snowed (classic JTV news cast where they show you clips of kids playing with snow from the 1991 season) who’s there to demonstrate those feelings of joy? Around 10 RADs standing behind and next to the reporter either waving at the camera (maybe with a victory sign or two), smiling goofily or being all cool and laid back staring at the camera with absolutely no expression on their faces whatsoever.

Please don’t tell me you still don’t recognize the guy! He’s particularly everywhere! (Either that or I'm going insane.)

Disclaimer: I'm not really talking about this particular guy in the picture! He just happens to look similar.

Driving Me Crazy

There are 10 types of drivers you are bound to encounter when you are driving in the streets of Amman, now when I say Amman it's because I’ve only ever driven here so these are probably everywhere, but I’m going to list them from my point of view:

1. The Bully: a guy driving an SUV, he chooses when you stop and when you move, especially if you are a type 2 (see below), he couldn’t care less about car accidents so move out of the way for your own sake.

2. The Bullied: a male or a female in a small car, or a female in any car but with a look of hesitation on her face, type 1 guys always bully this driver, you’ll know what I mean if you ever see a scared girl in a hatchback waiting for drivers on the main road to let her merge. But you know what happens when the bullied kids get some extra cash don’t you? (No, they don’t found a stratup) they, become, bullies.

3. The Multitasker: sorry guys but this will never be a male, you just cannot do it! It’s a mom, with a kid or more in the back seat, they’re playing with their toys, one kid wants her to open that bag of potato chips, the other is holding the huge balloon he just made her buy in her face, she’s also on the phone planning for dinner with her sister-in-law, now supermom wants to get out of the Burger King Drive Thru and make the u-turn right before the 6th circle, familiar? Thought so.

4. The Married-to-his-Car: this dude spends more on his car than anything else in his life, he washes it more than he washes his hands, don’t you dare come near it, he’d be parked somewhere and your car is parked next to his, you’re getting out and he’s anxiously watching you like you’re going to smash his baby without mercy. 

5. The “they told me the streets come free with my Mercedes-Benz”: well they didn’t tell him but he just assumed, he either spent a fortune on his car or has made a commitment to pay over half his paycheck for the next 75 years of his life for it, so either get out of the way, or go buy a more expensive car. 

6. The Rich Khalto: oh yeah, they’re here too, Khalto has a brand-new BMW X6 that hubby just got for her on her 50th birthday, it’s 10 a.m. and she wants to go meet the “girls” at Starbucks, not a single hair is out of place, nails are perfectly done and the lipgloss tube was just emptied on her lips, don’t you dare honk your horn at her when the light turns green, or the mascara wand will go right into her eye you imbecile. 

7. The Stole-the-Car: either a guy or a girl, daddy’s out of town and they took the car, one little scratch and dad will find out all about it, you’ll have a heart-attack if you drive behind them at 20 kmph.

8. The Sexist: once this guy realizes you’re a female driving in front of him he goes insane, suddenly every move you make becomes wrong and stupid, he starts honking and cursing the person who gave you your driving license and the day they let girls drive, he’ll get even angrier if you smile so do just that. 

9. The Daredevil: as the name implies, it’s usually a reckless dude or a girl that started driving recently and has already been in a dozen accidents so one more wouldn’t matter, and they’ll admit it too, “Rand, wear your seatbelt” says my friend, as we were waiting for the red light to turn green, “you’re gonna need your seatbelt”. 

10. The Obsessive Compulsive: parks the car, gets out of the car, gets back into the car, brings the car closer to the curb, gets out of the car, gets back into the car, moves the car closer to the car in front of it, gets out of the car… you get it. 

Any types I missed?

* I’m probably more than one type of the above, but I’m not going to say which one(s).
** I love my daredevil friend, she is awesome and very pretty and her hair looked really nice that night :* 
 

10 Facts You Probably Did not Know About Jordanians

Let me tell you some non-scientific, untrue, totally made-up, I'm-just-kidding, facts about the Jordanian people, courtesy of the Department of Statistics in the imagination of yours truly.

• 95% of Jordanians are Entrepreneurs; the other 5% are still learning how to pronounce that.

• 99% of Jordanian Muslims know more about religion than you do, no matter who you are.

• All Jordanians are environmentalists, they care so much about the environment inside their cars that they throw everything out the window to keep them clean.

• All Jordanian girls are being chased by at least 5 guys at once, 75% of those girls are “tired and feel so pressured”, the other 25% “got used to it with time”.

• 15% of Jordanian boys enjoy playing football, the other 85% don’t own a PlayStation.

• All Jordanians care about cancer awareness, they just don’t like to talk about it. (seriously I heard that last week, they think if they talk about it they will “catch it”!)

• 70% of Jordanians who have been involved in car accidents say it was the other driver’s fault, the other 30% were unconscious.

• 99% of Jordanians will tell you what’s wrong with you just by looking at you, the other 1% are blind.

• 1% of Jordanians are overweight, the other 99% just have “thick bones”.

• And finally 100% of Jordanians are experts in one area or another, but of course you knew this, you’re an expert after all.

Welcome to the country of the people that knows it all!

* As usual, before I start getting lectures about how I should love it or leave it and whatnot, my love/hate relationship with my country is none of your business. Thank you :) 

Urges

Psychologists help me out here, what is it with human beings and this urge to do the exact opposite of things they are told to do? I mean, it’s supposed to be easy “don’t go there” you just don’t. go. there! So why is it that hard? Examples?

1. “Caution! Wet paint, do NOT touch”, the first thing you, I, we, think of is “hey, let’s see if it’s really wet or they’re just fooling us, oh no sir I’m not falling for that lie, I refuse to believe that this paint is wet unless I see for myself”, then you just touch it with your stupid index finger and whaddya know! It is wet!

2. This: 

3. “Ladies dressing room”, “Ladies preparation/recovery room”, “Ladies only”. I saw this in the hospital, we were a couple of pale sick girls/women in hospital gowns waiting for our misery to end in the prep room, pale I tell you, ugly! And this man just kept peeping every time a nurse came in and opened the door, what the hell do you want to see? Plus it’s “ladies only” for a reason, a good reason, you don’t see us peeping through the keyhole of the men’s room door!

4. 

The food is too hot, it burned my tongue

[Hey! Let me see if my tongue can handle hot temperatures more than his, I bet I have a higher threshold for pain]
OUCH! I burned my tongue!

:-S

5. “Listen dude, do NOT open that email I sent you at work, it’s NSFW, be careful okay?”, that would be like the first email you check, because, well, you shouldn’t! Next thing the poor guy knows you’re on the phone telling him off for sending you that email because your boss saw it and now you’re in trouble.

6. This one’s my favorite and you have to admit you do it as well, someone smells something really bad, they go “ewww that is disgusting” you immediately go to inhale as much stink as you can, why? I don’t know, we like to torture ourselves I guess.

7. You cut yourself, it hurts, but you can’t help but mess with the cut! You have a zit, you shouldn’t touch it, you can’t help but to! It hurts like hell but you need to, you even pretend that you accidentally touched it but you know your hand was there on purpose! You have a toothache and you still press on your tooth with your tongue, and that’s not because it helps with the pain (because it usually makes it worse) you know why? Because you SHOULDN’T.

I can think of so many examples other than those, what I can’t figure out is why we tend to do that.

Hey don’t comment on the post and don’t share it, you shouldn’t ;)

How Rumors Start

Let me give you a real-life example of how rumors start, I saw it today.

First of all, let’s define the verb "rape" shall we? According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Rape: to seize and take away by force

And according to Dictionary.com, to rape is:

to force to have sexual intercourse.

to plunder (a place); despoil.

to seize, take, or carry off by force.

Obviously the first one is usually what comes to people’s minds first when they hear the word "اغتصاب" although a person is not the only thing that can be raped yeah? A land can be raped, for example.

Now what happened today is that news sites published an item that said one of the candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections in Jordan, is running his campaign from jail where he will stay for 15 days after his wife filed complaints accusing him of “raping her signature” to be literal.

From “Al-Ghad” newspaper,

اضطر أحد المرشحين للانتخابات النيابية المقبلة لإدارة حملته الانتخابية من مكان إقامته في مركز إصلاح وتأهيل قفقفا، بعد أن أصدر قاضي محكمة صلح جزاء لواء بني كنانة زيد الذيابات أمرا بتوقيفه لمدة 15 يوماً على خلفية شكوى من زوجته.

ووفق مصادر أمنية فإن زوجة المرشح قامت بتقديم شكويين بحق زوجها الأولى تتهمه فيها بالإيذاء والأخرى باغتصاب توقيع بالقوة، مشيرة إلى أن القاضي وافق على تكفيل المرشح من التهمة الأولى فيما رفض تكفيله من التهمة الأخرى المسندة إليه.

Now, “raping her signature” or the term in Arabic at least, would mean that he forced her to sign papers, can you picture this with me, wife doesn’t want to sign papers, husband forces her to do so, she does.

Raping her (or another woman), on the other hand would be *cough* slightly different wouldn’t it? What with the actual forced intercourse that would be taking place, all the physical and psychological harm that would be done and so on.

So fortunately I had read the news before seeing this status message of some girl that is “angry” with a country in which rapists can run as candidates (and become parliamentarians). Needless to say it was viral and now lots of people actually believe it.

Now I’m not going to explain my stance of the whole election thing, not going to say my opinion about the government and not going to tell anyone why they should (or shouldn’t) boycott the upcoming elections, mostly because it’s not our subject now and also for other reasons that, again, I don’t want to get into here. 

But, to read one word of a whole sentence, to take that one word, get it into another sentence, spread that sentence on some social media platform where others read, share and start cursing a country where criminals are parliamentarians is just… I don’t know. 

I know the girl must have misread the news, misunderstood maybe, and I know that what the candidate did is still wrong, but for the gazillionth time, can we please check before we spread? (That is if we have to spread). And I'm not just blaming her, people still believe everything they hear/read.

Let’s see the following sentence,

I was sitting with Flan Al Folani who is a doctor in [insert your favorite hospital, markez se77i here] and he told this hilarious joke that almost killed me, I was laughing so hard.

A dude who is just so mad at doctors in Jordan comes to this blog, (hi there dude) he leaves the whole post and reads a part of the previous sentence, dude angrily goes and updates his Facebook/Twitter/Linkdin/YouTube/Wordpress/Buzz/MySpace/WhateverSocialSiteYouWantHere status to:

Dr. Flan Al Folani almost kills a girl by giving her a heart-attack.

Then people are outraged, furious, angry, how could he? I mean he’s a doctor! What kind of country is this where doctors are murderers? Where the hell is the Ministry of health? We demand that the Minister resigns. 

Can we please not? I thought we would learn from the “Sarkozy Proposes a French Version of Ramadan” story. Obviously I was wrong.

Bon Appetit!

Skinny as I might be, I’m one of those people who really enjoy good food; I make up new recipes, alter old ones to my taste, I recommend restaurants and know exactly what a certain meal might need to make it better, at least from my point of view. 

 
Now what really annoys me is that type of people who always pretend they’re not enjoying a certain meal or snack, they would be hungry, eating and their taste buds would be having a party there but they go “I’m not really in the mood to eat”. YOU FINISHED THE WHOLE DAMN PLATE and you’re not in the mood?!

Then there’s the type that puts the smallest amounts of food in their plate (when there are people around) their meal would consist of one pea, 3 grains of rice and two cells of the poor chicken that sacrificed her life so that we can get our protein, and they would be eating like they are forced to eat, with that look that I’m sure you know on their face, I mean come on! Those layers of fat did not just appear there on your body while you were sleeping did they?

Ok how about those who try to justify being hungry? Ummm, not so sure here but I think all people get hungry? “I just need to eat because I’ll get dizzy, I don’t normally eat this” or “I’m only feeling hungry because I’m hormonal, I usually stay the whole day without having a meal”. Oh yeah I believe you, you also do not use the bathroom do you?

Now I know there are some days when people really don’t feel like eating, whether they’re sad, sick or any other reason that would make them lose their appetite, but to have that attitude the whole time? That is just sad! And we know it’s not true.

Let’s see who’s left, oh yeah the "أنا بشتري الأكل وبكبه" type (I buy food then throw it away), so you have money to buy food but you *cough* don’t eat, how about you give some to the poor? That is if you really are saying the truth.

If you can afford food, if you have food to buy, if you can eat food, chances are you’re luckier than most people on earth, so be grateful and for the love of God, just say you’re hungry and say that you like it, no one’s going to judge you! You’re making me lose my appetite.

*This post was brought to by the two impossible sandwiches from heaven I had yesterday, the grilled melted cheddar sandwich I had this morning and the piece of chocolate with bits of cherry inside that I was just randomly given. And now I leave you with the awesomeness that is random Foodporndaily.com pictures, enlarging is recommended.

10 Signs You're Spending Too Much Time on #Twitter!

1. #You #start #writing #like #this #all #the #time, #you #even #use #the #hashtag #with #words #like #and, #the #and #or.

2. You see a friend’s Facebook status that you like and start looking for the “retweet” button to share it.

 

3. You’re at the supermarket, you want to buy that big bag of Doritos but don’t know how much it costs, instead of asking someone there, you take out your phone, type “does anyone know how much a #big #bag of #Doritos costs in #Amman #JO?” and tweet!

4. You no longer settle for your real-life friends’ opinions when it comes to something you want to buy, instead, you take a photo of yourself wearing that and twitpic/yfrog/whatever it to show it to your online buddies.

5. Every sentence you write has to be 140 characters or shorter.

 

6. You check your Twitter before you check your email, first thing in the morning, you’ve tweeted something like “Good morning #JO, still can’t get out of bed” at least once or twice.

 

7. Every time you hear a nice song you rush to your Twitter to show everyone else what’s #NowPlaying before the song’s over.

8. You’re out with your friends and can’t watch that football game, instead of checking livescore.com or any other match update site you go “can you guys please keep me updated on the #ManUChelsea game? Kthxbai”

9. Your source for breaking news is @BBCWorld.

10. You know all the latest on Apple products even though you don’t care!