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?