It’s been almost a month since I last wrote here. I’ve been mainly microblogging on Twitter, but I found that Twitter lacks depth. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, but it’s also superficial. It’s like a cheap hooker when you want a passionate, loyal companion.

The title of the post says it all. Waiting has been the key feature of my days this past month. I have been increasingly busy starting March and the ball just kept rolling. Right now, I am typing this as I wait for my lecture to start. Earlier in the morning I interviewed someone for work, then had lunch with a friend, and now this. Today has been OK, not too busy compared to my typical days recently.

And the state of being busy excites me. It excites me because it makes time move quicker, but very soon this excitement turns into fear. Time moves too fast for me to understand it. I’ve always had this problem and I’ve said it over and over again in this blog: I don’t understand the passage of time. As I consume time doing things, I do not get the chance to fully absorb them or appreciate them, and then I find that they become part of the past. It’s this fleeting nature of things and time that makes me a skeptic. How can I know anything for sure when I do not fully grasp what I do, or what is done to me?

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Draft from March 29th:

I walked into the bookshop last night to prove a point. A couple of points actually. A-current fuel prices are making me the queen of mobility. B-I’m committed to buying the book I’m required to buy for class.

What do you mean it’s “censored?” You have The Lion of Jordan and you don’t have The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy?

I ended up buying The Lion of Jordan even though I am not a fan of reading about the ruling family. Figured my father might enjoy it, at any rate, it makes for a good addition to my small library. It’s way down on my reading list though, right at the bottom.

I forgot where I parked my car. I went to the wrong level and imagined that my Havana got stolen. Then it occurred to me, I should have washed her at least. I spent a solid five minutes running around in circles, panicking, imagining life without my car, before realizing that I parked somewhere else. I found her at last. Sweet reunion with my mechanical companion.

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Why is it that whenever I achieve something, my parents are quick to attribute it to god, and not to my abilities and hard work?  They recognize my efforts but assign them only 50% of their credit. The other 50% goes to a divine, invisible plotter.

And then, when things work out and I get ahead in my career, they congratulate me and follow with an “if only you prayed, if only you were more in touch with god, if only…” It is as if nothing I do is good enough unless I link it to the heavens.

This makes me wonder if there is a prerequisite for parental love. Do parents sit down and discuss the attributes they’d like their children to have as they plan to become pregnant? Perhaps they write these down in points, things like “attention to details,” or “moderate religiousness,”  or even “blind obedience.”

I am obviously not what my parents bargained for. And I think they are going through a severe spell of buyers’ regret. Thinking about this, it must suck to be a parent and get stuck with a child not quite as conforming as you’d like. You’re bound together until death do you part, literally.

She was supposed to give birth today so…

…we arranged to go out last night.

I was excited and planned to wear my favorite satin pencil skirt.

It was supposed to be her last pre-maternal hangout.

At around 6 PM, I got an SMS.

“I am in a lot of pain. I don’t think I can go out. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Woo hoo! I’m gonna be an aunt again! You’ll make a wonderful mom. Love you :* “

I then sat in my room wondering what will happen next.

At 1:20 AM I got another SMS.

“I did it! I gave birth to a baby boy at 9! His name is Laith and he is SO cute! It was OK!”

I stared into space.

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I really don’t need this right now.

Mosquitoes have acquired a lot of nerve recently. They now come in two varieties (traditional slim and extra petite), they attack in groups, and they target different body parts. Not only that, they also bite me while I am still awake. Have some decency, at least wait until I sleep.

As anybody who has grieved inconsolably over the death of a loved one can attest, extended mourning is, in part, a perverse kind of optimism. Surely this bottomless, unwavering sorrow will amount to something, goes the tape loop. Surely if I keep it up long enough I’ll accomplish my goal, and the person will stop being dead. Last week the Internet and European news outlets were flooded with poignant photographs of Gana, an 11-year-old gorilla at the Münster Zoo in Germany, holding up the body of her dead baby, Claudio, and pursing her lips toward his lifeless fingers.

Claudio died at the age of 3 months of an apparent heart defect, and for days Gana refused to surrender his corpse to zookeepers, a saga that provoked among her throngs of human onlookers admiration and compassion and murmurings that, you see? Gorillas, and probably a lot of other animals as well, have a grasp of their mortality and will grieve for the dead and are really just like us after all.

Nobody knows what emotions swept through Gana’s head and heart as she persisted in cradling and nuzzling the remains of her son. But primatologists do know this: Among nearly all species of apes and monkeys in the wild, a mother will react to the death of her infant as Gana did — by clutching the little decedent to her breast and treating it as though it were still alive. For days or even weeks afterward, she will take it with her everywhere and fight off anything that threatens to snatch it away.

Source

In line with other strange happenings in my life, I discovered last night that Jongar is not male. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Jongar is female and now I am confused as to how to refer to her/him. I must change her/his name into something feminine.

This revelation was unexpected because the pet shop said that both Hazza3 and Jongar are male, and they even said that they don’t ever sell female hamsters because they don’t want people to breed them. So you understand my astonishment in light of this discovery.

How did I find out, you ask. Let’s just say that determining the sex of a hamster is tricky business until they start doing things with their cage companions that make their sex a whole lot clearer to us humans with no experience whatsoever in rearing the baby hamsters which we expect to have within 16 days.

Initially traumatized by my doubts, I googled hamster mating and whatnot, and I even looked for videos on YouTube to compare the “events” and make certain it was not all a male fight over cage territory. Hours into my research, I realized that there is no information about male hamster fights which corresponds to what I was seeing, and I eventually gave in to the bitter truth. I even shot a video of the whole affair to document it and show it to my family, and also to upload it to YouTube. I won’t embed it here because my sister thinks that would be in poor taste, and quite frankly I don’t want a reputation as an animal porn producer. It’s true.

So there. Jongar is a girl, any suggestions for a new name? And are you a nice person who loves animals and would like to have a young hamster soon?

The following conversation took place yesterday when I was using the ATM:

Child seller/beggar: Ya khalto ya khalto ishtari menni… (Please please buy something from me)
Tololy: La shokran. (No thanks)
Child seller/beggar: Allah yjawwzek, ya rab tetjawwazi… (I pray that you get married!)
Tololy: Ma beddi atjawwaz. (I don’t want to get married)
Child seller/beggar disappears.
Woman passing by: ?!?

And two days ago when I was backing up with my car, a gypsy man jumped on my driver’s window, stretching his arm in front of my face with a small booklet the size of a matchbox:

Gypsy seller: Fi b 7ayatek zeyara la qabr el nabi, qareeban. (You will visit the prophet’s tomb soon)
Tololy: Huh?
Gypsy seller waving small booklet in my face: Zeyara la qabr el nabi, inshallah. (You will visit the prophet soon)
Tololy: Ma3lish tzee7 la2ini msakkreh el share3 o beddi aroo7? (Can you please move out of my way?)
Gypsy seller: Ana shayef zeyara lal nabi, bas fi 7asad. Fi 7ASAD o 3een! (I see a visit to the prophet but there is an evil eye set on you)
Tololy: Ah Mashi. Tb zee7. (Right. Now move away.)

Then I stepped on it with his arm still hanging inside my car and him trying to keep up, but he eventually disappeared as well. Amman is now full of street prophets, and this is how they spread their religions.

This is the most spectacular news I have read in a long, long time:

Study revives six degrees theory

A US study of instant messaging suggests the theory that it takes only six steps to link everyone may be right – though seven seems more accurate.

Microsoft researchers studied the addresses of 30bn instant messages sent during a single month in 2006.

Any two people on average are linked by seven or fewer acquaintances, they say.

The theory of six degrees of separation has long captured people’s imagination – notably inspiring a popular 1993 film – but had recently seemed discredited.

One of the researchers on the Microsoft Messenger project, Eric Horvitz, said he had been shocked by the results.

“What we’re seeing suggests there may be a social connectivity constant for humanity,” he was quoted as saying by the Washington Post newspaper.

“People have had this suspicion that we are really close. But we are showing on a very large scale that this idea goes beyond folklore.”

And it’s true. It is true because I have found out that I am way too close to people I did not want to be close to via a channel of random acquaintances. The world is really small because we’re only humans, and this idea disturbs me in general because I don’t like it when people who know people end up knowing me when I am eager to come across as fresh as possible. Cyberspace is a replica of the real world, that’s how you end up knowing bloggers you have never met.

And now, I would like to know which one of you knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Craig Ferguson. Please leave a comment stating your degree of separation from the late-night talk show host. Beam me up, Scotty.

Like all good things in life, my vacation has ended and tomorrow I will shuffle back to work to sit on my extremely uncomfortable chair and be glued to my monitor all day then take in wafts of second-hand smoke after 3 PM and consequently get a splitting headache and rush out of the door at 4:30 like my life depends on it.

Worst of all is what usually happens when I am away from the office: people take my stuff! I once went to work to find that someone stole my mouse and plugged in a dead one, and another time I found that someone took my chair and gave me an even crappier one, then there’s always the fight over the limited electric slots, which normally means that I go to the office after being away and find that my computer is completely unplugged and that there is not a single free electric slot to plug it back in.

Well. Whatever. It’s all time I am paid for, no? That notwithstanding, I’d like it if people respected my office space, but honestly I am not even half bothered to make an issue out of it. I’m so blah about it. The perks in the office where I work are as follows: the occasional verbal cat fight, the very kind receptionist, and the fact that there are some vague office politics going on which I still to this day do not understand and do not want to make an effort to explore. I have this massive lack of interest in what’s going on as long as my work gets done. I’m not anti-people per se though, only anti the people who don’t interest me, you see.

I need to look for a new job. Anyone hiring?

So I took the GRE a couple of days ago, and it is safe to say that that chapter of my life is a-over. I’ve been getting used to the idea of not having to study, and the irony of the fact that I scored better in quantitative section as compared to the verbal section although I guessed aggressively in the final section of math. Go figure.

Now I move on. Finally!

I am finally done with my mosaic class. The lion I made was unveiled today and it turned out to be a fine imitation of the original Byzantine model. I never expected the class would take me 20 days to complete, and I never guessed that I would be so utterly fed up by the end of it precisely because it took forever and I had other plans. I used to think I am a patient person, and I still do, but now I know my limitations. I am too practical for mosaic puzzles regardless of their artistic merit — at least that’s my immediate impression. I might consider doing another mosaic after I am done with the GRE, for now the stress is too heavy to enjoy artsy diversions.

And here he is, King of the Jungle, after being flipped over to reveal the level side:

From Mosaic Class …

All bow to majesty.

My summer is turning out to be so different from what I had planned it to be. Both plans A and B did not work, and now I find myself stuck in some plan X which I did not devise or even remotely consider as an option. Life threw it at me while I was literally making other plans. I don’t like it when my plans don’t work out.

I was looking forward to this summer as an enhanced version of last summer; I was supposed to go to New York City and spend at least a month there, where I would be able to explore all the exotic places I did not see last summer. I was also supposed to get my navel pierced again, which was really the most major reason behind my now defunct visit. Speaking of which, does anyone know where navel piercings are made in Amman by professional artists? Please let me know if you do.

Two things ruined my summer: finances and pride. It seems that these two flow together like twins in my life, and it’s funny but they complement each other. I am too proud and too broke, therefore, I am spending my summer here in Amman. Studying. During my vacation. Which I snatched from work. And not going to the pool. Or having my usual summer adventures.

Apologia: my summer isn’t that bad. At least I am not going to work! I’m also reading and relaxing and I am spending my time in Madaba where I am making the most handsome transgendered Byzantine lion mosaic, and I believe I am gaining weight. Oh, and I taught myself how to make cream sauce tortellini, pesto cream sauce pasta, and taco. I like to think of myself as Gordon Ramsay’s feminine counterpart, minus the constant cussing and the blond hair.

Just now it occurred to me that my vacation will end the day I sit for the GRE. Now that would be an unwelcome event, but it’s inevitable. Technically speaking, then, my vacation will have been spent studying. After my vacation I might start a second job. A month or so later, I will go back to regular school. Why am I doing this to myself, you ask? Because I know of nothing else to do, plus I have this obsessive fear of time which compels me to do as much as possible all at the same time so I can beat the clock. Not healthy. This is the last year I will spend doing a ton of things at the same time, I hope, and after this year is done, I will fling it to oblivion. I despise 2008.

Does anyone else feel that my latest posts have been about announcing things to the world? “I’m still alive,” “I can still write in English,” “I am taking a mosaic class,” etc. Now I ask myself, does anyone care about these trivial things except me? Uh, I didn’t think so either. Why people continue to follow this space is therefore all the more amusing.

So, to sum my absence up, all the above italicized announcements still hold true. I am physically and mentally alive, although if you consider my current occupation you could argue otherwise. I am currently studying for the GRE (Graduate Record Examination), and let me tell you, I only feel alive when I stop studying for it. Why anyone would devise an exam that literal and absolutely sneaky is beyond me. Actually, sadism is a very plausible explanation. Preparing for the exam is leaving me in a state of constant psychological agitation: I keep convincing myself that I can do it, that I will not be cowed by it, that I will crack it, that I will not be utterly devastated if I get a bad total, and so on. I have become my own shrink/coach/morale-booster/teacher/everything.

Evidently, I can still write in English. The English in the GRE is a whole different language altogether though. It’s basically all the words you have never seen or used and will never see or use in your normal daily life as an average citizen of the world whose native tongue is not GREish. I am currently resisting the temptation of using a few words that I particularly like, such as peccadillo and lachrymose and pulchritudinous, and it is a difficult task.

I’m never impressed with big exams. Back in my Tawjihi days, I used to stay up all night chatting after I was done studying, which normally took me a maximum of 5 hours per subject. I never locked myself up at home for the sake of an exam and I could never understand why/how other people do it, and by the end of my studying I usually got so fed up with the material that I went to the exam with such an indifferent attitude that allowed me not to panic, contrary to other students’ temperaments at the time.

The other major exam I took during my lifetime was the TOEFL, and I did not prepare for that one at all. Admittedly, it was more challenging than I thought it would be, but it went smoothly all the same. College finals also made a lot of sense to me and I enjoyed them most of the time. I suppose I was born an exam animal. I hope I behave similarly in the GRE and do well in it too.

In other news, my mosaic lion is done:

I think he looks a bit goofy with his boobs and all, but it’s not my fault that the original featured the same organs (I am but an imitator!). I felt so proud when I finished working on him because it took me exactly fourteen days to accomplish this painstaking artistic feat, and it was an experience that not only taught me how to cut stone to place in angles or circles, but also how to be patient and literally look at the big picture. The mosaic itself is not done yet, as I still have to work on the background, but it’s safe to say that the hardest parts are over.

In other other news, I have been reading super extra lately. That and studying have been keeping me away from The Box. I am also taking time off from work currently, so I can dedicate my time to studying and relaxing. I can’t believe it has been almost three years since I took time off from work. That translates to the fact that I have never taken more than a week off from work since I held my first job three years ago. That’s just insane. What’s more surprising is that it took quite a struggle for me to snatch my legal annual vacation from my boss. I’m not even that popular at work!

That is my news, not that you should bother with any of it, and I have just thrown it in cyberspace for all to enjoy. And now it’s time for my siesta.

I am obsessed with felines, big and small, and it so happens that I am a Leo myself. That’s why I have been toiling for five days to make myself a 42×35cm lion mosaic:

Compare with Day One here. And now, allow me to give myself a hug and try to forget about my mosaic-stiff neck and shoulders. Being an artist is not easy!

Change of plans. Again. No mental resort for me this summer, I’ll have to manage in Amman. In the meantime; progress is being made with the infamous lion:

And for the record, the lion is so popular a tourist has commissioned the workshop to make a duplicate of it for her collection. Also, I found out that the bastard has got a lot of curves. He’s also got boobs. These dirty dirty Byzantines. Tsk tsk tsk…

Lesson learned: Yes, I love blowing my own horn and I also love to notice little peculiarities. I got nothing else/better to do.

“A goal is a dream with a deadline.”
- Napoleon Hill

Even before my exam this evening, I had a strong craving for a vanilla frappuccino. It took a lot of self-restraint not to use the word in my answers. After the exam, I drove all the way across town to get my large, ice cold, rich frappuccino. While at the place, I noticed they had blueberry slush too. The choice was difficult, it was hot outside, I needed to celebrate my finishing that damned exam…so I figured, I’ll do both!

I was a sight in the parking lot. Now gulping French vanilla frappuccino, now blueberry slush, and with such enthusiasm that I got brain freeze for the first five minutes. I took it slow afterwards. Weird ‘Unpregnant yet Craving’ Parking Lot Lady is my new name.

Sitting down, I gather my limbs closer to my body and wonder “has it been that long already?”. A year has passed since that trip in my car towards Fuhais, 12 whole months passed carrying with them more change than I ever imagined possible, yet no change at all. The thought makes me nauseous. Is this how I will feel 10 years down the road? Probably. I always ask the same questions one way or the other, mainly because nobody ever answers me. The process is a futile cliché but I can’t escape it. I think I even love it.

The issue at hand is not the past, but the future. The past I leave to another mood, the future fills me with pessimism and anticipation at the same time. I want to know what happens, like when you watch a good movie and want to know how it ends. The trouble is that this is not a movie, the people are not fictional characters, and at the end of the drama I will cease to be. I will not be able to even record my own impressions of it or my evaluation of its artistic merit. Isn’t that sad? Entirely. It’s a pathetic anticlimax. You’re almost there…but not quite.

I am looking forward to a number of things this summer. One of them is the pool. The other is a mosaic class in no other than ancient Madaba. The third thing is a job interview which might lead me to something I have always imagined I would be good at (the truth of this speculation remains to be discovered.) And finally, a trip. A trip away from the hypocrisy of Amman, away from its dry and dusty summer heat, away from the people who stare and criticize. I will move away albeit temporarily, to a better world. Somewhere where I can relax and be myself without apprehension. I really shouldn’t have said “finally,” because there are other things awaiting me this summer; things I can’t disclose.

Books also await. Mostly fiction. I’ve become an ultra-avid reader this year, it seems frustration pushes me to seek refuge in the words of people I can’t converse with. I also have an exam at one point in the summer. And my birthday — that anniversary of the start of my life, relatively inconsequential and out of control as it is, the episodes that cast me as their lead character even when I choose not to. All of this, and more — I have no doubt about it, will happen this summer. Nothing according to plan though. Isn’t that ironic?

All bluffing aside, I am now a model for real. I know that it doesn’t make sense because I am petite and my bust-waist-hip measurements are not exactly Cocaine Kate (Kate Moss) material, but hey, this is 2008 and this is Tololy: ANYTHING can happen.

Seriously though, I posted pictures of my hands/nails on this blog at different points in the past. Some of these pictures were a documentation of my ‘good’ nail days, and others were a documentation of my ‘bad’ nail days. I admit I enjoy taking pictures of myself because I am a devoted narcissist as any of my friends and family will swear to you should you ask them, but that’s a topic for another day.

I was contacted by two sister websites: www.unghielunghe.com, and www.nailslong.com to be a hand model for them. Both sites are based in Italy and feature pictures of nails and hands and all things related to them, and it seems they found my nail pictures online and wanted me to join them. I said OK, so I expect my pictures to appear in these sites any day now. Pretty fetishistic and exciting, if you ask me — they’ve got some seriously long nails featured there.

I am, needless to say, flattered and very amused at this cosmic irony. Because right now, my hands look like they have just stepped out of a horror movie called Teeth. But the unexpected flattery of being asked to be a hand model (even if it doesn’t pay) got me thinking I should go easy on them.

Now I am off to pamper my hands by not eating them. People who want my autograph should contact me by email or by leaving comments on this post. Thank you.

What does he mean by this question?
Oh…what does ‘underlie’ and ‘overtone’ mean?
Hmmff.
Five minutes passed already?
What does he want exactly?
This is so confusing.
This is a trap test.
Why is everyone writing so excitedly?
What are they writing?
What do they know that I don’t?
I studied too!
Ok. Back to Q.1, what does he want me to say?
What does he expect?
I don’t remember what Said said about knowledge and power and hegemony.
Can I make it up?
Skip that question. Don’t waste time.
Hey, did my fall make me dumb? Like damage my brain?!
Blank.
Hmmm… The Sheik, I can do that.
Underlie? Assumptions? What?
Everyone is so into this exam. WHAT are they writing?
Maybe it’s just the smart American kids.
No, Arabs too.
Shit.
Ok, focus. The Sheik…Diana, Ahmed, World War I, projections, anti-feminist…
How do I start this?
Introduction.
Quick! Time!!!
I am not going to look at the time.
“Both the novel and the movie did more to portray contemporary transatlantic anxieties than…”
Blank.
What did I want to say?
What was my point?
None of what I wrote makes sense.
Think. Please. Think.
Jed is writing like a frog on steroids.
They’re nerds, this is a class of nerds.
Did I look like that when I was smarter?
I hate the smarter me. So nerdy.
Why am I not writing?
“…to depict an accurate image of Arabs at the time.”
Progress.
Q.3
Bernard Lewis. Ok, I know Lewis.
“What went wrong?” — relates to Arabs and non-Arabs.
What does that mean?
I am going to write whatever comes to my mind.
Arab victim mentality, unintrusive West, bla bla bla
Hmm. How do I finish this?
Did I really answer the question?
Arabs and non-Arabs? Readers? Politicians? What?
Idiot professor. WHAT does he want?
Why does he have to be so vague?
Why am I suffering to answer a question?
This has never happened before.
Blank.
How do I finish this?
Blank.
I can’t think of anything more to write.
Blank.
Maybe if I stretch my legs a little.
Blank.
He asked for two pages per question. Think!
Blank.
I’ll throw in a little philosophical spice and finish it.
Whatever.
It sucks to be dumb.

Painting? No, it’s Samara.

Puppy.

Scrabble. Over and over.

Lizard! No chameleons this time, sorry guys.

Every single bone, joint, and muscle in my body aches. I am too used to sitting all day staring at a monitor and frying my brains typing things on the keyboard. The great outdoors were once my thing, before I became a digital hermit. And now, badminton, mountain climbing, chasing after lizards, racing kids, throwing Frisbees, all mean one thing: PAIN.

We celebrated Egypt’s African Cup today at the office because we have an Egyptian colleague named Saeed. He’s such a sweet man and he was so very happy today that he even got us knafeh! He was like the king on the first day of Eid, receiving hearty congrats from everyone, in person or on the phone.

I just remembered that the Egyptian sports commentator who was talking during the whole of last night’s game really brought it to a new different level. He was so funny with his unintentional cute Egyptian humor that the game was twice as fun.

بص أبو تريكة ابتسامته عاملة إزاي
أبو تريكة رجله كلها حركة
الكورة دي مش عاوزة تيجي خلاص

That really brought the game to life. Gold!

Egypt has just won over Cameroon and is now the Champion of African Football. Woohoo! I really enjoyed this game and Egypt deserved to win the African Cup of Nations. Now onward to the FIFA World Cup qualifiers. I so can’t wait!

As a plus, those Cameroon players were so very entirely hot. I have a huuuge crush on Rigobert Song now. I wish he would join Faisali as a pro and then I promise I will not miss any of their games, I will even camp in King Abdullah stadium.

I also love Drogba from Ivory Coast, although he didn’t feature in this game obviously, but he’s fine .

Black. 6 pack. Long hair. What’s there not to love? Maybe the color of his outfit, but in my world, clothing is optional.

Ehem. Bas mabrook ya masr!

Tawjihi results came out earlier today, so my mother has been on the phone ever since asking about the results of a bunch of Tawjihi students in the family. From what I could hear, she was always disappointed at any grade less than 90 out of a 100. “Ah, ballah? 80? Mmm…yalla kwayyes kwayyes beshed 7eelo el fasl el jay.”

I gave her evil stares when she said that to the mothers of Tawjihi students. I don’t understand this need that many Jordanians have to butt in everyone’s business and evaluate their performance in school. I just don’t get it. If a person passes Tawjihi, they do so for their own good. If they don’t, it’s their bad. Why should everyone get involved and offer unnecessary advice to the mothers of these students?

House work is evil, it must be stopped.

If you want breakfast in bed, sleep in the kitchen.

I child-proofed my house but they still get in.

A clean house is a sign of a wasted life.

They lied. Hard work has killed lots of people.

Amen to all of that.

Domestically Challenged,

Tololy

P.S: You can buy the five-piece set from BlueQ.

Now that’s something I never thought I would say.

According to a new theory by cosmologists, published in the New York Times, me and you might just be the momentary spasms of some brains floating in space.

Freaky, I know. Read this:

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

If you are a creationist, you will hate this. If you are an evolutionist, you will equally hate this. The “calculations” leading to the theory have not yet been proven correct, but scientists are still working on them.

You have to read the article more than three times to understand it fully. I read it once and a half so far. But just imagine, the idea of us being “notions” of things that happened in the past, and not being real people with real lives — that is fascinating!

The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.

Whoa!

I called this operation shock and awe; exactly how my family feels right now.

I normally set the alarm on my cell phone to wake me up for work at 7:45 AM, two days a week. This morning, a certain someone sent me a morning message much earlier than that, I’d say at around 7 AM. Since I have a Motorola phone, it kept beeping every five minutes or so to let me know I had an unread message.

The phone was right next to my pillow, upon which my head was resting in a mass of crazy hair. I wished, time and again, for the phone to shut up and let me enjoy my final 45 minutes of peace, to no avail. My bed was so warm, thanks to my being in it for 12 straight hours, and I did not want to move my hand from under the covers to reach for my phone and hush it. Eventually, the alarm went off and I reached for my phone and silenced it.

Quickly, I recalled my hand to come back under the covers and enjoy the warmth. My room was freezing, as was most of Amman this morning. The weather has been cruel lately, very unforgiving, as fellow Jordanians have noticed as well. And seeing as I have the room that I have, extensive heating is necessary every hour of the day. I use everything from central heating to sobet gas. Lately, I have been demanding that my dad install a sobet bawari in my part of the Arctic (i.e my room). It’s that cold.

This got me thinking of the thousands of people who can’t afford to stay warm in their own beds and in their own homes. Jordan is undergoing a lot of changes, the most major of which is the liberalization of the market. I am all for open markets and the free moving of goods and labor, and for a minimum role of the state in shaping the economy, and all that. But our government has yet to play that minimum role. The powers to be want to liberalize our market to give us a competitive edge and to encourage investment, but they are not following through with their end of the deal.

If government is a social contract between the people and those who govern them, then our government is not keeping the interests of the majority of Jordanians in mind and thus is breaching the terms of this contract. My impression of our government’s role in our current situation, where prices have skyrocketed and will increase even more and where people’s incomes have not increased to match this inflation, my impression is that it should A-monitor prices, B-enhance people’s incomes both in the public AND the private sector by exerting reasonable pressure on employers, and C-create the infrastructure that will enable a country as small as Jordan, and a people as modest, to cope with the dramatic changes taking place.

I am not an economist, but I am a Jordanian citizen working in the private sector and struggling to get by and I do far better than many other people. This, if nothing else, should grant me credibility. I live by Woody Allen’s definition of economics: “Economics is about money and why it is good.” Problem is, like old women say, there is no “blessing” in our money, meaning that it gets spent on the bare necessities and then Poof! — it’s gone. That’s called inflation, and it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

But let’s put all of that on the side and get back to my story. After I woke up, I resisted getting out of bed for about ten minutes. The room, like I mentioned, was super cold and my bed was super warm and I had a very difficult time convincing my body to abandon ship, so to speak. After these tremulous minutes, I got out of bed and got ready for work.

To protect myself from the cutting cold, I put on my puffiest puffy jacket, the purple one, and went running outside to start my car so that when I am ready to leave to work I would find it as warm and inviting as my mother’s womb once was. I came back in, had my meager strawberry-yoghurt breakfast, and then left to work.

Just moments ago, a colleague of mine called me a Ninja Turtle because I would not take off my puffy purple jacket. That’s the title the cold and the government have earned me. To add more insanity to this magical day, I am being interviewed by a reporter at four. So there.

A couple of nights ago I was up at 3 AM chatting with a good friend of mine and listening to Relax Take It Easy by Mika. I was casually situated in my bed with the laptop on my, you guessed it, lap and with the reading light dimmed out. I was comfortable and carefree.

Then all of a sudden my laptop decided to crash. So it crashed and I could no longer continue my chatting or my listening to music. I was sleepy so I thought, as sleepy people think, that things will be alright in the morning.

But they weren’t. My laptop really meant it, it crashed and I felt unloved like I had been weaned by force. I went to work only to leave four hours later to be with my sick mate, and I tried to nurse it back to health to no avail. Eventually, I gave in, ignored my pride in my outdated computer fixing skills, and took it to the repair shop.

The fixer guy at the repair shop told me he could not retrieve any information saved on my C drive, and I didn’t mind. With a personal history of enduring cyber stalkers and multitudes of viruses and trojans and p2p catastrophes, I had grown computer skin so thick not even Google can penetrate.

But here’s the cosmic iroy. I never, ever, save anything on C. I’ve seen too many PCs crash and burn to trust the accursed drive with my precious digital belongings. The only thing I saved on C was a file I had been working on for three months now. I had placed it on the desktop to motivate myself to work on it by way of constant visual exposure (Yes, I turn tricks on myself and they work). I remember the omnious moment when I put it there, I was too lazy to create it somewhere else and only place a shortcut on the desktop. How could I have known what will happen?

Now that you know the background story, know the purpose of this post. I want to express my anger at the people who constantly ask “Why didn’t you back it up?“

Imagine this: I am so sad and shocked I almost have tears in my eyes, and I come to you to tell you what happened to my three-months’ worth of work. I tell you I can’t believe this has happened, I tell you I am devastated by the loss of time and effort, I tell you I never even saved anything on C but saved this file there in a moment of innocent laziness, I tell you I have to start over from scratch and I am uncertain if I will meet the deadline…

And what do you say?

“Why didn’t you back it up?“

I respond, I don’t know, it’s the only thing I didn’t back up. And you say “That’s stupid.” I start fantasizing about hurting you, to be honest, and I get creative at it too.

At around four AM the other night, I saw a gigantic tarantula hiding behind the bathroom door. I panicked, as is my natural reaction upon the sight or proximity of an enemy insect, and I escaped the scene.

I told you I am seeing strange things.

I ran to the kitchen with outrageous amounts of adrenaline pumping through my body. I stood behind the kitchen table, thinking of what I should do. I would normally scream someone’s name and they would come to deal with the intruder, but this time I was all alone and everyone was sleeping. I was, so to speak, the protagonist.

Almost losing control over my scared bladder, I figured I should do something about the ugly bastard lurking in the bathroom. Serving it “death by shoe” was simply out of the question because it would require me to deliver the fatal blow from a short range, and I was not about to risk another panic attack for the sake of heroism. Thus I became, at this point, the anti hero.

I searched in the kitchen cabinets for something that could function as a swift, long-range killing machine. I could only find spray starch — no slingshots, no Raid, nothing. I did not know what effect spray starch would have on the creature, and I wondered if it would blind it into going in frantic circles until its legs dropped off — at which point I would definitely have a panic attack and die on the spot while everyone dreamed of pink tigers and killer ducks.

I wasn’t entirely clear on what spray starch was, either. Therefore, I opted not to use it and to abort the whole task. I then went straight to my mother and I woke her up complaining that there was a big spider in the bathroom and I could not kill it. My mother is impressively smart and brave around insects. She treats them like they’re worthless shits and even goes so far as to killing them with her bare hands. This disgusts me slightly, but who am I to stand in the way of a swift, short-range killing machine?

My mother got up and went to kill the insect, and she would’ve if she could find it. Nobody else but me ever saw that tarantula and I wonder where something that big could hide in a closed space like a house. It is hairy, disgusting, and huge — not camouflage material at all.

My best guess is that the sneaky tarantula was a figment of my imagination, the child of my insomnia and loss of appetite. It’s either that or Spider Evil dances on everyone’s faces while they sleep every night, going in frantic circles until its legs drop off. Jetlagged and insane.

Take this account, for instance. I would never have thought that the story above is worthy of development, let alone publication, if I weren’t in a unique state of mind like I am now. I have given up on my biological clock that seems to have no shame or morals, and I started gobbling up cough medicine. The twist here is that, contrary to normal behavior, I specifically look for cough medicine with warnings like “Do not operate heavy machinery after taking this drug.” I want the otherwise unwanted side effects. Do not operate heavy machinery? My laptop weighs around 2.5kg.

There goes the tarantula…

Update: It seems as though no cough medicine will do the ungodly work of putting this hallucinating soul to sleep. Therefore, I opted to watch one of my favorite movies of all time: Dracula. The movie is a fraction of the novel, which is simply exquisite. Get to reading it as soon as possible. It is by Bram Stoker who, ironically, loved the same girl as Oscar Wilde. Two of the greatest creators could not be innovative enough to have dissimilar lusts — isn’t that the definition of absurd?

Onward to insane darkness!

“The emigrant’s destiny: The foreign country has not become home, but home has become foreign.”

–Alfred Polger (d. 1955), Der Emigrant und die Heimat

Via euroarabe

I am so jetlagged I could cry. I couldn’t even show up for work today because I didn’t sleep at all last night and my system shut down at 7:15 AM. The problem is that this has been going on for longer than it should. I have been sleeping during the day and functioning during the night for several days now and it’s irritating me to madness. I am seeing pink tigers and killer ducks.

I never knew how solemnly lonesome the relaxed nighttime/early morning is. Now I know, and I want to forget all about it.

“Send her to make keys.”

The chubby bald man obeyed. I remember that he wore the queerest glasses I have ever seen; they were exceptionally thick, very rectangular, and somewhat dimmed out by the black frame. His belly extended at least one and a half feet below his belt, but it didn’t look like jell-O. It looked firm in a strange way. Max himself looked like he has just popped out of a cartoon.

When I first set foot in that dungeon, Max introduced himself as “Maher, but everyone calls me Max.” He didn’t look like a Max to me, maybe a Boobah at best. I made sure my face did not reveal what I was thinking. To be honest, I was thinking “You looked so much better on the phone, Boobah!”

And he did. I had imagined him to be a tall, athletic, blond guy with a perfect smile and a taste in fine art, or at least nice hands. You see, he had a deep quality to his voice and it’s easy to drift away with that type of tone. Reality, on the other hand, was a totally different thing.

Max reached into his pocket and fished out some keys attached to a round key chain. He handed them to me and asked me to go make my own copies. An office virgin as I was, I didn’t mind. Besides, I thought I would get out of the dungeon and enjoy the sun outside. After all, the weather that day was great and the dungeon was full of strangers and suspicious cartoon characters.

I returned at around 10, triumphant. I felt proud that now I had keys to an important office, and on my first day, too! I figured they must have seen my potential, the sparkle of success in my eyes, my professionalism. They trusted me in a blink.

“We’re ordering breakfast now, want anything?”

I passed. Max ordered something and our German boss passed. Klaus had made his breakfast at home and brought it with him to the office. He gave me a task to do and sat to his desk reading e-mails from Berlin and mumbling under his breath what seemed like nasty curses in German. Then the unthinkable happened…

Klaus and I shared the same office. Not for lack of space mind you, but because our work was both crucial and intertwined and consequently we could not be separated physically. To add insult to injury, the window of our office was right next to Klaus’ desk so he was in complete control of it. At this point, it was closed shut.

I was absorbed in my task when I heard the sound of a plastic bag being pulled out from a cupboard. I looked at Klaus and there he was, extracting a tomato from a blue plastic bag. His bulldog cheeks were filling with saliva as his big wrinkly hands searched harder in the bag for something else. That something else was a boiled egg, and a salt shaker.

No way he is going to eat that in a closed space with a closed window with a newbie in the house? Think again! I watched as Klaus’ email reading was replaced with boiled egg biting, tomato consuming, and salt adding. Rinse and repeat, over, and over, and over again.

The room smelled horrible. The old man himself definitely came from a remote hole where they had no table manners or common courtesy. His food was not only offensively smelly, but it also sounded like ten little men and a pig were fighting over poop in a pigsty. Yeah, that twisted.

Chew. Chew. Drool. Add salt. Chew. Spit. Drool. Chew. Spill something. Chew.

I was not so sure about how I felt towards my new job anymore. The words “boiled eggs” and “professional” did not seem to go so well together. Said episode lasted for about ten minutes, but I was scarred for life.

TO BE CONTINUED…

I will finally get to visit New York! I have always wanted to go there and lose myself in the vibrant city. Now I can actually do that which is seriously great! I leave tomorrow morning and the plan is for me to spend the summer alla nordamericana.

After the Miserable Month of May, where I had so much to do and yet was chronically inspired and frequently tempted, not to mention shocked, I have earned a break away from everything and (almost) everyone.

May ended with straight A’s and a perfect accumulative GPA, true nerd-style. And since I am an American Studies major halfway towards earning an MA in that, it sort of makes sense to go to the states now to match the bookish intake with reality. I know I probably turned you off by connecting my trip with my schooling but hey, what sort of a nerd would I be if I didn’t do that?

Goodbye Miserable May– Hello the rest of the summer! Patience is indeed virtue. (Although we all know I am still going to eternal fire for some very good reasons, but whatever :)

Note: If you live in New York (or Canada) and want to meet up, email me and we’ll do something.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
ché la diritta via era smarrita.

That’s how Dante opened his Commedia, and those lines speak with such clarity and honesty about the miserable month of May that I have just survived. Dark, lonesome, stressful.

Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost.

It’s funny to think back of the days of Letteratura Italiana I. Back then, class ran from 2-3 and it was usually hot during that time of the day. The Italian Studies corner, aula cinquecento, had a single large window that looked on a remarkable view — a wall half naked, half covered with green leaves. I would sit in the front row because that way it was easier to escape once class is over, and on the final desk to the left.

I wasn’t too terribly interested in the volgare and its subsequent climb to power, nor was I the least bit impressed by the politics of Italian cities. The material being in an Italian much advanced beyond my knowledge did not help, and fittingly I discovered that I knew next to nothing about Catholicism and the Middle Ages. This glaring lack of knowledge and the contrasting vast, encyclopaedic knowledge of my professor made me feel profoundly ignorant, a feeling I abhor more than anything else. To add insult to injury, the professor once ridiculed my bracelets, which are sacred to me, and then class turned terminally intolerable.

Then came Dante’s Commedia and changed everything.

Granted it was difficult to understand the volgare, and I don’t think I tried that hard. But the depths of the work explained were too delicious to ignore, and too tempting to resist especially since at that time in my history, dark themes inherent in religion and mythology were very attractive to me. My professed ignorance paired with this enthusiasm turned Letteratura I into a class I anticipated, an experience of knowing, a special time of the day where I can think of Dante’s careful calculations and his images and characters and ponder on meanings underneath the surface, a time where I can stay after class for hours and ask questions and discuss ideas ranging from the determination of Jesus’ birth date to evolution.

La Commedia was the reason for this metamorphosis which paved the way for a more profound and radical change in my character, thought, and principles. My professor, by granting me what time I asked of him after class, and by accepting my opinions and sharing his, opened the door for me to change.

In the Commedia, Dante has Ulisse (Odysseus) tell his men when they propose to return home after venturing to the end of the world, in an attempt to urge them to carry out their adventure to its completion:

Fatti non foste a viver come bruti,
ma per seguir virtute e canoscenza

You have not been created to live like brutes,
But to seek virtues and knowledge.

Ulisse and his men continue the journey and they eventually drown, if you’re curious. Dante had obviously not owned a copy of the Odyssey and his Greek was not that strong, so he simply altered the story (talk about intellectual copy rights.)

Dante’s two lines here summarize why I bothered with surviving the miserable month of May. If the purpose of life is to use what resources we have and to exhaust them by doing so, then I was never more alive than during May. Dante, and my professor, are to thank for that. I have managed to walk out of the dark wood.

Just when I thought May 2007 could NOT get any crappier… 

At 8:30 this morning I was waiting for a traffic light in Shmesani to turn green. I was on my way to work and I could see the office from my spot. The radio was on Mazaj FM (my latest fav) and there was an old song playing, and I was singing along. My Havana Brown (my car, that’s her name) was the first at the traffic light in the right lane.

There was a police woman at that traffic light, she’s always there in the morning. She usually lets cars pass disregarding the color of the traffic light. I was singing and looking at the dashboard and I was very happy. Suddenly I noticed that she was motioning to us drivers to move. I was going to move, just… almost…moving then BOOM!

A beautiful, shiny, black Nissan Xtrail jammed into Havana’s left side (the driver’s -my- side) and I saw huge chips of white paint fly all over the place. The sound was horrible and the old song I was listening to faded out and I remember thinking, literally and in English: “This is not happening.”

I stopped, as I had not yet even started to move. It took the speeding Xtrail 20 meters to stop. The police woman came to me and I opened my window. She asked me to move because I was about to create some major traffic problem at that intersection. I asked if my moving would harm the “kroka” creating process (the procedure in which a police person creates a sketch of the accident, and determines accordingly whose fault it was), and she said no, but I have to move up the street to that tree over there where there is a police man.

The Xtrail and Havana Brown moved up the street a little. Then they stopped and a foreigner came out of the Xtrail. We talked, I asked him what he did, he asked me what I did. As it turned out, the man was Scottish and working in Amman. The Xtrail was hired and he had just dropped his wife at her new job. He opened the back door of his car and there was a two year old boy strapped in a car seat there.

Yeah. Even though I am a woman, I won’t be moved by a boy in a car that has just ruined Havana Brown’s face. Better luck next time. I talked to the kid a little, and then saw the police woman. It was a good thing that there was a witness that saw the whole thing, because the Scot claimed it was not his fault that he plunged into Havana’s left side.

We argued a little. He said it wasn’t his fault, I said it was. I indicated the harsh black rub-off on Havana and told him the angle of his turn was too narrow. We were very civil about it.

I was very surprised but extraordinarily composed. I don’t think I really understood or believed the whole thing. So, I called home and asked for backup. My father came shortly and a representative of the auto hire company came as well.

We called the police. It took them about 30 minutes to show up. The officer asked about the details of the accident and I filled him in. The Scot still insisted it wasn’t his fault, and the hire company rep naturally supported him. The rep said they were “doing this” for “my sake” because the Xtrail was a hire and totally insured (in Arabic ta7meel jmeeleh.) The officer then asked to go see the scene of the crime, and I told him that a police woman saw the whole thing.

We marched down the street. The sun was hellish and the noise of the car motors whizzing by was getting on my nerves. I was growing very impatient and just wanted to sit down.

The officer listened to what the police woman had to say. Her account of the story was exactly like mine, and the officer decided it was the Scot’s fault. The rep then changed his mind and while I talked to him about the accident said that yes I was right and that it’s the narrow street’s fault (in Arabic jallas.)

We then went to the police station where the “kroka” was drafted. I got my copy, paid zilch, was still upset, the Scot paid a 30JD fine, and I headed to Havana’s insurance company. I was supposed to go to the Xtrail’s insurance company, but I figured my company will fix Havana better and then settle accounts with the other company. At least I know where my company is, it just felt familiar at a time when I did not want to deal with strangers anymore.

In these situations, you really appreciate your comprehensive insurance plan. The people at the insurance company were extra nice and extra helpful. I stripped Havana bare of my personal belongings, laptop, bags, papers, tapes, leather gloves, makeup (don’t ask), gum… And I left her there and they said they will take care of her.

Do I hate Nissan Xtrails now?

No.

Do I hate Scots?

No.

Do I hate stupid Jordanian roads?

YES.

Oh right, and to make the affair a lot more interesting, the Scot works in the opposite building — right across the street from my office. But who cares, really? He dislocated Havana’s face and she’s gone now…And I just want to sit down.