Medical Information on Wikipedia

Rubbish. Loads of crap. Some of it is true, but a lot of it is absolute trash. Do not trust everything you read on it. To know something it's better to check reliable resources, or do it the old-fashioned way; ask a doctor.

Bedko Nokteh ?

A doctor and a lawyer were talking at a party.

Their conversation was constantly interrupted by people describing their ailments and asking the doctor for free medical advice.
After an hour of this, the exasperated doctor asked the lawyer, "What do you do to stop people from asking you for legal advice when you're out of the office?"
"I give it to them," replied the lawyer, "and then I send them a bill."
The doctor was shocked, but agreed to give it a try.
The next day, still feeling slightly guilty, the doctor prepared the bills. When he went to place them in his mailbox, he found a bill from the lawyer.

Is Jordan Really Persecuting Christians?

So it sounds like some foreign Chrisitan organizations were extremely disappointed because some of its members were expelled from the country for their missionary roles inside the country.

In many parts of the previous report and this one, there is a suggestion that any citizen involved in evangelism was deported.

Regarding the role of Missionaries, I respect the intent of many of them to help the poor and to do their best in trying to spread the word. I even oppose a part of the Jordanian law that makes it impossible for anyone to convert to Chrisitianity. Having said that, if the Jordanian government did really expell some evangelical missionaries outside Jordan, I'm a 100% supporter of that.

There is more than one reason to question the motives and the roles of some of these missionaries. The ties of several evangelical organizations to Israel is a good enough reason for them not to stay in Jordan. Their blind support to the very arrogant, war-loving, right wing Republicans in the White House makes every Arab, including Arab Chrisitans, uncomfortable to say the least. There were several reports of missionaries in Iraq following the very unChrisitan invasion of Iraq, a war that resulted in the death of more than 100,000 soles. Do you expect Arabs to greet these missionaries with flowers or with the perception that they are part of the new occupation that everyone is opposing?

I get really annoyed when some Chrisitians assume superiority to other Chrisitians in other locations in the world just because we are part of the developing world, or because the majority of the population we live with is non-Chrisitan. I can smell that in many places I go to and in many sermons I listen to on TV or in real life. Has anyone forgotten that Christianity was born in the Middle East? That Aramic, the language of Jesus, is only spoken now in Syria and Iraq?

I'm a Jordanian, I'm a Chrisitan and I'm proud of both. There are thousands of Jordanian Muslims (and Chrisitians) who fought and died to protect me and ensure I live in a safe country. I practise my religion safely and I do not wish for anyone to protect me. We've existed long enough to know what endangers our religion. We live in an area and in a time when everybody is sensitive to anything and having individuals who are poorly-informed of the region and its history come in and assume they're living in a perfect world where everyone is free to do whatever s/he wants will not help.

Besides, Jesus himself was arrested, tortured and crucified and did not complain. Many of his disciples suffered while preaching his words, and they did not complain. Instead, they were grateful. They rejoiced their death. Why are these missionaries protesting when they haven't experienced even 1% of the persecution that Jesus and the disciples suffered from?

Hareega

1500000000

1.5 billion dinars will be spent on building new governmental offices in Southern Amman, according to Al-Rai.

I remember a few years back we were talking about an e government!
What happened folks?

The Sixth Things Tag

I was asked by LuLu about six things a guy should do before the age of 18.
Here they are. Listen to the word:

1- Pick up a kid in your class with low self-esteem and beat the shit out of him everyday. I did the mistake of respecting everyone in my class in order to be respected. I totally regret this now. There is no better feeling in the world than coming to school and kicking the very same ass every single morning without suffering any consequences. Get it out from your system when you're young before it starts growing with you. Don't worry about the kid; he'll get over it.

2- Have a lot of girlfriends but never fall in love. Nothing is worse than having a broken heart. Girls are bitches, all of them.
(P.S. to feminisits: Whatever is written in Hareega's blog does not necessarily reflect his opinion. To everyone else: Yes it does)

3- You should get drunk at least once, in order to know what are the true effects of alcohol and if you do, lucky you.. you little drunko.

4- Just being the captain of the football team doesn't mean you'll have a birght future. In about ten years you'll be begging for a job at a company owned by the unskilled kid you always kept as a substitute. The girlfriend you have now will be sleeping with him. So, be nice to your team mates.

5- Grab all your naked pictures when you were a kid and burn them unless, you know, there's something in the picture that can make you , uhm, proud... very very proud.

6- Learn to speak one language. Arabic or English is fine. But don't end up trying to speak both because you won't. I mean you can't, couldn't, you know... ma btegdar, abtegdarish... ma btegdarish.

Young boys, I hope you'll learn from my wisdom. Spread the word.
Hareega

Laundry in the Time of Cholera

I decided to do laundry.

I picked all the pieces of clothes from the floor and squeezed them into my very large laundry bag, put it in my car and took a journey to the laundry room, ten meters away from my apartment.

The room looked like the one above. I poured the soap then threw the clothes inside the laundry machines.

I noticed that the third machine wasn't as full with clothes as the first two, so I decided to transfer some clothes from the first machine to the third one, in order to maintain a balance

What's the most precious piece of cloth any man can have? Good guess, it's the Kalsoon. I decided to move a couple of Kalaseen from one machine to another.

Everytime I wash a kalsoon, it comes out from the machine with a different color. So I ended up having kalaseen with some of the most charming colors, colors you don't see except maybe when you're watching some exotic animals on National Geographic. I have Kalaseen with colors that, other than me, only transexuals and super-gays dare to wear.

I always hope for these colorful garments to distract the attention of the occasional reader in the library who usually screams whenever seeing my gigantic butt cleaveage popping out in his face as I sit down and try to enjoy a quiet read, but that hasn't worked well so far. The words "Shu hal teez ya ghaleez" still resonate in my head from several previous events that could never abandon my memory.

I grabbed those couple of Kalaseen and was about to throw them in the third machine, when I heard the door open and I saw Ryan, the apartment manager, enter the laundry room with a nice young couple. It looked like he was showing them around the complex trying to convince them to rent an apartment there, same thing that bastard did to me before I moved in.

I should have dropped the kalaseen immediately. Instead, I turned my head to Ryan's direction and, holding each kalsoon in my arm, smiled at the horrified couple saying,"Hi guuuuuys, welcome"

Ryan, the previously very pleasant guy, did not say anything. The couple remained quiet, but I cared less and dropped the kalaseen and turned on the machine, while thinking of the ways Ryan will make it harder for me to stay at his complex.

Only in Arizona

You know how in a small grocery shop you'll find small things to buy by the cashier, like gum or mint or pens.
Sometimes it's a little different

I was driving back from Vegas and stopped by Kingman, a small city in Arizona on my way back to Tucson. By the cashier I found these!!

Rattle snake eggs in small envelopes, $ 1.79 for each envelope.

.... and a scorpion

I now regret killing that lizard in my apartment last year. I could have made a fortune.

Red

Happy Valentine!

Guess the Couple

I'm posting this to all the ugly people out there, a message of encouragement:

No matter how ugly you look now, you may look better when you grow up. You may even become more famous and successful.

The Egyptian Zizou

Mohammad Zidane, or as I like to call him the Egyptian Zizou (so all rights reserved for Hareega-2008) lead Egypt to their 6th African Nations Cup Championship.

Look how the Egyptian Zizou was fighting like a lion for this ball with the Cameronians, took control of it and gave the golden pass to Abu Traikah who thundered Kameni's net with thi shot.

Really, like a lion. Look at him in the replay... a lion.
This moment of gold is for memory.

Bitchin'

I was on-call for the heart team one Saturday night, all by myself.

Our hospital is one of the top 20 hospitals in the US in heart disease, and they left me, someone who has very little interest in heart disease, to do calls by myself that night as well as 7 other night that month.

I didn't know whether it was a football game, or a crash in the stock market or another speech by Bush, but we had a lot of people coming in with heart attacks.

All patients did well, except for one who came in unconscious and we sent him to the ICU. He was on plenty of medications and it didn't look good for the old fellow.

I was there at 3 am when I asked his nurse to draw a blood test .

She came back with the result.

I wanted to ask about the pH. The pH is a reflection of how much acid there is in the blood, which is a bad sign.

I don't know if this happens to you, but whenver I am really really tired and stressed out, my accent suddenly thickens out and my English becomes a bit difficult to undertsand. I never had a problem with "P" and "B" , but I don't know what happened that night.

"What's the bicarb?" I asked
"12"
"Ah, 12! That's too low!"
then I wanted to ask what the P-H was. The P-H.
"How about a PH?"
I think the (previously) nice black nurse heard something else.

"What did you say?" she asked, and she looked furious.
I was thinking to myself what made her angry.

She looked at me really mad, and said, "I'm asking (aksing) you, what did you say?"

I couldn't answer and was wondering what the hell did I say, I only remember asking about the P-H.

She went ,"Did you just call me a Biaaatch?"
As I kept silent, she got became more furious, "You're calling me a biaaatch, ha?"

"No I said P-H"!
"you're saying it again, you're calling me a Biaatch!"
"No,No, No!"

The last thing a doctor should do is make a nurse angry. If you did, all the nurses in the hospital will hate you and make your life miserable. I was ready to kneel on my knees and kiss each of her feet separately.


Then another nurse, at the end of the hallway who was never even close to us came by and whispered in her ears that was well-heard, "honey I heard him, I think he called you a bitch".


The patient inside looked very critical so I had to go inside and try to keep him alive. I didn't hear from that nurse or anyone else since then and it's been more than 2 years now, the time limit during which she can complain for sexual harrasment has passed, yahoooo!

I just learned that when you think your night is not going well, it can get much worse. Also, you should work on your Ps and Bs you pastards.

The US Elections from Hareega's Persepctive

To those who were fortunate enough to miss what's been happening in the US elections so far, it's the semi-finals. There are two Republicans (Mitt Romney and John Mccain) and two Democrates (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) left who might become the next president of the United States. There are a few others left in the race (Ron Paul, Huckabee, Gravel) and possibly an independent (Bloomberg) but they have no reasonable chance of winning.

To start with, I'm not American, probably I'll never become one, but I enjoyed watching the race so far. It tells you much about this country and the people.

In 2004, my first year in the US, I used to spend 10-15 minutes each morning at work in October and November engaging myself in very loud and angry arguments with Nick, my good friend who was very liberal but decided to vote for Bush because he believed he was a "real cowboy" who can protect America. Later, I've realized that Americans don't like to talk much about politics at work for many good reasons, so thank God for internet. I started asking myself some questions and here I am thinking to myself about which presidential candidate has the best chance of winning the nomination of his/her party and who can win the presidential elections in November ?

1- Who will win among democrates, Obama or Hillary?
One thing democrates can be very proud of, never have a woman or an African American become so close to becoming a president and it's them who can the credit for that.
Obama has the momentum, but to win the nomination of the party you need to win the big states, and Hillary won Florida and has a very good chance of winning Michigan and California. She also has a better chance of winning more states than Obama in the next Super Tuesday on Feb 5th and she will probably emerge a winner.

Obama is black, and some people will be hesitant, to say the least, before voting for a black candidate. They're not the KKK, they might not even have a problem with African Americans or other minorities in general, but they might have a problem in having a black person becoming their president. Obama has won two states so far, Iowa and South Carolina. One might argue that Iowa is an all-white state, but in some all-white states like Iowa and New Hampshire, there is little racism directed against African Americans. Residents of these states have no black neighborhoods, no crimes committed by black people, no black gangs; basically African Americans have never caused problems so they have nothing against them.
Looking at South Carolina, Obama won very big, with 55% of votes vs. 27% for Hillary. However, Obama won only 22% of the white votes there, and the rest were votes from the black community or other minorities. That makes me think that he his chance is not as good as Hillary's next Tuesday were many states oting do not have many African Americans.

I have a feeling that even if Hillary did better on Tuesday, her victory will not be that remarkable, and given all the energy that Obama and his supporters have, he will not withdraw from the race and the decision on who will run from the party might be taken in a smoked-filled room shortly before the election.

2- Who will run for Republicans, Mccaine or Romeny?
Mccaine. He got endorsements from the people who matter. If Hucakbee the conservative withdraws from the race before Tuesday, Romney's chances will increase. Doesn't look like it's happening.

3- Who will become the next American President?

Like most elections people will not be very satisfied on the final two (maybe three) candidates. There is an outrageous rage among Reublicans that John Mccain might become the Republican nominee. He is too liberal for them, he doesn't want to kick all 12 million illegal immigrants outside the US, and he opposes torture (what a moron!), maybe because he is the only candidate who has been tortured in the past. Ann Coulter, a very devout and crazy conservative described by many liberals as a total bitch, said she would campaign for Hillary Clinton if the final race was between Clinton and Mccain. Despite his apology years later, many right-wing Chrisitians can never forget Mccain calling some of their religious leaders "evil" and that "there will be a special place in hell for them" after the very ugly campaign against him in South Carolina in the 2000 presidential race.

One thing is clear about both Mccain and Romney, none of them is a "uniter" and none of them can claim he is. After Bush claimed he was one, Americans stopped buying it, at least from Reoublicans. Obama is more believable and Hillary doesn't usually mention that she will be one.

Another thing that is also evident, more American hate Republicans than ever before and Republicans do not seem to know it. They're angry about Bush, about the economy, Katrina, and so much about the war. What can really bring Mccain down is saying, "We will stay in Iraq for a hundred years if we have to. We want to be victorious". Most Americans, including a large number of soldiers and their families, hate this war and do not want to stay there. The meaning of victory is not very clear to them anymore, and they're not sure if it's worth sacrificing anything to stay there.
There are more young voters heading towards voting booths, and the vast majority of them vote for democrates. Even Caroline Kennedy herself endorsed Obama, saying that he reminds her of her father, only after her children started talking to her about Oabama and his positions.

It doesn't look good for Republicans, and I think that's good for America, at least for now.

This afternoon Hillary will be giving a speech at our university. I'm pretty sure the hall will be packed, but it might be my only chance to ever see someone who might become the next American president.

Back to the Future

One day, I will be sitting with my kids, and will tell them, "I lived in a time when a gas cylinder would cost 1.5 JDs"

They will look at me in awe, and stop breathing for a second, then whisper to each other ,"Dad is too old".

The new price for a gas cylinder as of April1st..... ten fucking JD.