عقدان من الزمان على تجربة البرلمان

الكثير من الأردنيين يتسائلون إذا كان من المفيد الانتخاب بالانتخابات القادمة بعد أن أثبت المجلس الحالي فشله الذريع

المجلس الحالي عبارة عن مجموعة كبيرة من خيبات الأمل ولو كانوا تلاميذاً في مدرسة للديموقراطية لما تعدوا الصف الأول

على الرغم من ذلك فما زلت أؤمن أنه من مصلحة الأردن وجود مجلس للنواب وانتخابات حتى لو شملها الكثير من النفاق والتزوير وشراء أصوات المواطنين أو بالأحرى شرائهم ببعض الدنانير

لولا مجلس النواب هذا لما علمت أن امرأة أردنية واحدة يمكن أن تملك جرأة عشرة رجال وتتحمل عواقب ما تتفوه به تحت القبة، ولما علمت أن الحكومة يمكن فعلاً أن تلاحقها وتمنعها من الترشح ضارباً بالدستور عرض الحائط

لولا مجالس النواب لما علمت أن العشائرية تحكم البلد وأن الاردنيين لا يحكمون على الشخص إلا بعد التأكد من اسمه الأخير

لولا مجالس النواب لما علمت أن الاخوان المسلمين ليسوا منزلين من عند الله وليسوا معصومين من الخطأ وأنهم لن يترددوا في استعمال الديموقراطية لشطب حريات يشكون هم من غيابها

لولا مجالس النواب الموقرة لما علمت أن ممثلي الشعب لا يترددون في استعمال أموال الشعب لشم الهوا خارج البلاد والحصول على أحدث السيارات دون دفع قرش واحد

لولا مجالس النواب لما علمت أن نسبة حضور ممثلي الشعب للجلسات أسوأ بكثير من نسبة حضور طلاب الجامعة في أي جامعة أردنية لمحاضراتهم باستثناء الجلسات المتعلقة برفع رواتبهم

.
لولا محلس لما تعرفت على الحقيقة المذهلة بأن عبد الهادي المجالي رئيس مجلس الديمقراطية والحرية طالب يشدة بمعاقبة أي صحفي ينتقد أداء المجلس

لولا المجلس لما علمت أن الكنائس الأردنية التي أعتز بانتمائي لها ممكن أن تدعم مرشحاً مسيحياً على آخر اعتماداً على انتمائه الطائفي وكأن مصلحة الأردنيين المسيحيين تكمن في وصول مرشح من طائفة معينة وليست الأخرى بدلاً من الافتراض أن مصلحتهم تكمن في وصول مرشح مسيحي اختاره الأردنيون-مسلمين ومسيحيين- بسبب مؤهلاته

قد يكون وجود المجلس عبئاً ثقيلا على الوطن وميزانيته لكن العملية الانتخابية واصوات المواطنين ومتابعة جلسات النواب بخاطاباتهم الغبية ربما تفتح أعيننا أن المشكلة ربما لا تكمن فيهم بل فيمن أرسلهم مباشرة إلى تحت القبة ولعل وعسى الأعراس الديمقراطية التي عشناها ونعيشها تكون كاشفة لعيوب كبيرة عانينها لعقود من الزمان

يونس شلبي

عاش ليضحكنا

وعندما مرض نسيه العالم

ومات اليوم فقيراً معدماً منسياً

Rumble in the Jungle!

You gotta love it when leaders start yelling at each other, it's just a reminder to nations that they're human and not gods.

Here's the latest from yesterday, where Hugo Chavez of Venezuela heavily criticized ex-Spanish prime minister Aznar calling him a fascist. The current Spanish prime minister wanted to respond in defence of Aznar but Chavez wasn't listening, until a man in the middle sitting on the table yelled at Chavez, "Por que no te callas" , which translates to "Why don't you shut up?"
That man in the middle was Spain's king Carlos.

Here's the clip



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Can't forget the "Yel3an Abu Sharbak" argument between Izzat Al Douri and Kuwait's prince before the 2003 war started.


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Abdullah of KSA and Qadhafi fighting

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Jordan is not much better, wish there were some "Klashins" in there!!


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This Jordanian cat fight is nothing close to what might happen in India's Parliament!

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IF you were going to boycott the elections, you might have changed your mind by now. If you think whoever will be elected will be politically corrupt, you might wanna vote for who can come up with the best "action".

Pablo Francisco.... Great Comedy

A toilet question

I was walking in the hallway, a cardiologist (heart doctor) stopped me.

"Can I get HIV just by sitting on a toilet seat?"
"NO", I answered
"Even if an HIV positive person was sitting on it before me?"
"You still won't get it"
"Even if the seat was not cleaned?"
"No, you still won't get it, you won't"

He looked at me unconvinced.
I told him, "Well if you weren't going to get convinced you shouldn't have asked me!"
"Well I don't know....", he said.
I started to get pissed. Those cardiologists think they know everything.
I looked again at him and said, "You won't get HIV unless you sit on the seat before that person gets up."

He turned away and kept walking. I'm pretty sure he was now convinced.

Champions of Arabia

For the first time in 22 years, we are the Arab champions in basketball after defeating Egypt 80-69 in Alexandria.

The last time we won, we had Murad Barakat, his brother Hilal, Samir Morqos, Yousef Zaghlol, Yanal Qannash and a few others (feel free to drop their names if you remember).

Just like most sport teams, I liked the old team more. They were a bunch of hard working players who have played together for more than a decade, with a fantastic teamwork. Yet they were very simple and they played only for the game. I don't think any of them made a single ta3reefeh from playing basketball.

But now we have a great team , good job!

Time magazine talks about King's Academy in Madaba

In Time's November 5th edition, Andrew Lee Butters writes his one-page "Postcard" from Madaba. His topic : King's Academy.

Here's the article:
---------------------------------------------------------
Postcard from Madaba

King Abdullah II has opened an ambitious new academy modeled on the New England boarding school he attended.



Can Arab Preppies Save the Middle East?


In 1977 an unlikely new 10th-grader arrived on the campus of Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts. He was Abdullah ibn Hussein, direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and scion of the Hashemite dynasty, the onetime princes of Mecca and currently the ruling family of the kingdom of Jordan. Now known as His Majesty King Abdullah II, he points to the years spent as a member of the academy's class of 1980 as the most formative of his life. Deerfield introduced Abdullah to a much broader range of friends than is normally available to young Arab princes, and the character-building crucible of dormitory life taught him Yankee egalitarianism, self-reliance and how to clear dishes from the dinner table.

After he ascended to the throne in 1999, the King wanted to bring these values to Jordan. His plan: create the Arab world's first coed boarding school. In 2006 he brought in Deerfield's headmaster, Eric Widmer, and several other Deerfield teachers to kick-start King's Academy, which opened this fall with about 100 students.



But what can preppies bring to the semidesert kingdom? Some of the evidence is already on display at the campus, near Madaba, a farming town about 30 miles (48 km) south of Amman, Jordan's capital. Yes, there are boarding-school staples like family-style meals at round tables, school-wide meetings, blue blazers and khaki pants. There's also the rather revolutionary belief that the classroom should be an intimate place that fosters discussion and critical thinking rather than rote memorization, which is the default teaching method in much of the region. But more important is the school's effort to create an environment where learning takes place outside the classroom — through athletics, community service, honor codes and an expectation that students become leaders in everyday life. The school also plans to bring a new diversity to campus. The current class members come from countries across the Middle East, but although there are no Westerners now, the school hopes to eventually attract students from the U.S. — or even Israel — and about one-third of the student body will receive financial aid. This is a far cry from most élite high schools in Jordan today, which are more like an Arab Beverly Hills 90210 — wealthy kids leading insular lives.

Not that the academy is keen to be just a carbon copy of a New England prep school. The campus's Levantine-style white stone buildings — and the tight security at its main gate — remind visitors that they're not in Massachusetts anymore. Arabic-language classes are mandatory, and humanities courses, though though taught in English, draw on the canonical works of many civilizations.

Anticipating the difficulty of persuading parents in this conservative society to send their children away to school, the academy sets strict rules governing relations between boys and girls: no kissing, no holding hands and no visiting one another's dorms.

But perhaps the biggest challenge facing the academy is beyond the control of even the most committed faculty member or enlighted royal pattern: the ever turbulent Middle East. As King Abdullah likes to say, Jordan is a country caught between "Iraq and a hard place"-i.e. Israel and the occupied Palestinian terrirtories. As much as the King would like to reform education using his flagship academy, there are more pressing problems, like the flood of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees pouring into Jordan. In such a heated environment, can an American model school thrive? Safwan Masri, the Jordanian chairman of the academy's board of trustees and a professor at Columbia Business School, is optimistic. "The one thing that almost everyone in the Middle East respects is American education," he says. "The fact that is a troubled region makes the case for this kind of school even stronger."

If you don't appreciate medicine, read this!

In 2001 mass graves was discovered in Vilnius, Lithuania. Records indicated that the graves contained French troops from Napoleon's Grand Army while they were retreating from Moscow.

Right after this discovery , a French doctor, Didier Raoult, along with his coworkers analyzed the earth and the military uniforms around these bodies and found some body parts of different lice (bugs) around these bodies. They also analyzed the teeth of many of the dead soldiers by advanced techniques examining the genetic material of the bacteria and discovered two types of bacteria, responsible for the disease epidemic typhus and Trench fever. They concluded that these disease have killed at least one third of these troops.

Whenever a study is conducted, the results should be compared with a comparison group called the control group. This control group consists of patients with very similar characteristics to the study group. Because the "patients" here were all dead, they compared the findings of the dead soldiers in Lithuania to bodies excavated from a grave in Briançon, France. The bodies in France did not carry any of the infections that the bodies in Lithuania did.

It's always been thought that typhus and fever were responsible for the death of Napoleon's soldiers but there was no clear evidence of that. This study by these physicians in the Université de la Méditerranée was able to prove that about 200 years after the death of these soldiers.

It was fascinating to make a diagnosis of an infection two centuries after it occurred. I heard Raoult speak in an international conference in Chicago last September and was honored to meet him and learn about his great achievments in different fields in infectious diseases. It was like meeting Diego Maradona or Jiries Tadros.

Ihis study was just another reminder how medicine can solve many misteries of the past, the very very past.

(P.S. Click here for a link to the full text of the study)

من الذاكرة

ألست وعدتني يا قلبُ ......إذا ما تُبتُ عن ليلى تتوبُ؟

فها أنا تائبٌ عن حب ليلى..... فما لك كلما ذ ُكـرَت تذوبُ؟

Crazy in white

We have a psychiatry unit inside our hospital.
It's always locked to prevent patients from leaving. Whenver a doctor is done seeing a patient the employee at the front desk unlocks the door for him.

I have a patient there whom I'm seeing because he's HIV positive. Whenever I'm done seeing him and I'm about to leave, the employee at the front desk asks me for my ID to make sure I'm not a patient attempting to run away. He doesn't ask other doctors for their IDs.

I thought that employee had a problem with me. However, today they had a new one at he fron desk and he did ask me for my ID before I left the unit to make sure I'm not a patient.
Other doctors leave without being IDs.

It feels great when you realize that your co-workers believe that you're really crazy.

Broken

Outside her apartment she stood with her baby girl, she looked at the view of the desert outside and smiled.
Erica was my new neighbor. She moved to the apartment next to mine a few months ago with her husband. They looked like a beautiful couple.
I couldn't get to know them better. I was busy and they were busy, but I recently noticed that they were fighting.

Now I'm sitting in my apartment, it's one in the morning, ready to go to bed. I started hearing the screams again.
This time it is getting more intense, they've been screaming for about 20 minutes now. This fight has taken too long, and ooops!! I can hear the sound of something hitting the ground really hard.

Bumm, now it's hitting the wall.
The impact was so strong I felt that I was hit.

The man was screaming, but the voice of Erica has disappeared.
I really thought he killed her.

But wait, here is her voice again, she's screaming again. She's crying , a lot. I wonder if their kid is still asleep, not sure. She's screaming again, and here we go again, he's screaming too, maybe he's crying also. But the poor lady! I've never heard anyone cry that loud.

In my old apartment I once heard such voices, and it then turned out the neighbors were just screaming in excitement for a football game. But now it's 1 in the morning, and the sounds of punching and slapping are unmistakable.

Erica was silenced again, but here she is screaming and crying again.
I'm so surprised how she knows she's gonna beaten again but she can't stay quiet, she wants to let it out.
I feel sorry for the woman, I feel sorry for the child.
I feel sorry for any woman who thinks she has no option but to live with a monster who treats her like an enemy.

Just an advice from a man with a very poor experience in relationships: Never live one more second with an abusive partner. I can bet with my life that Erica just had one of the worse nights in her life.
Abusers are ill-minded. They have plenty of psychological issues and unless they seek professional help, nothing will change.
Things WILL NOT GET BETTER just by waiting.

Here's some selected words for the battered:

Once upon a time I was falling in love
But now I'm only falling apart
There's nothing I can do
A total eclipse of the heart

Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart

Monsters... Are they creeping inside Jordan?

Because of Halloween, most people in my hospital are dressed up in something. I decided to just be myself because that might be scary enough.

I saw one employee (hopefully not a nurse) dressed up in balloons that looked like a bacteria cluster and a big sign on one of them (MRSA Monster).

MRSA stands for Methcillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, a bacteria that was the talk of the media recently as a "super bug" because it is resistant to the majority of the available antibiotics. It has been around for more than 20 years.

Despite the media's focus, there are many other bacteria that are behind some horror stories in many hospitals. These bacteria cause invasive infections in any place in the body. Not a single organ is an exception.

The sad fact is that health care employees mainly physicians and nurses are behind the evolution and spread of these deadly bugs. There are two major ways how this happened.

1- They forget to wash their hands after seeing patients. MRSA would not even be a problem today if all doctors and nurses have done that!

2- Doctors tend to use antibiotics when they do not need to. For some reason doctors and patients feel much better if an antibiotics is used to treat an illness. The results are disastrous. Bacteria have the ability to quickly, sometimes incredibly quickly, develop resistance to the most powerful antibiotics in the market.

Why do I think it's a major problem in Jordan?

1- Doctors rarely ever wash their hands after or wear gloves during patient examinations. One of these powerful bugs can be transmitted from one patient to another through the doctor's or nurse's hands.

2- Nonexistent or very poor infection control programs in almost all Jordanian hospitals, where you find a patient with very poor immunity from various illnesses being placed in the same room with someone who has a significant illness. Hospitals are not taking the measures needed to prevent the evolution and spread of fatal bacteria inside hospitals.

3- Doctors tend to overuse antibiotics. Even when an antibiotic is used physicians tend to use the most powerful one. Bacteria develop resistance to these antibiotics and quickly become resistant to all antibiotics.

4- Antibiotics are sold without a prescription in Jordan and people use them for the most trivial reasons from a runny nose to food poisoning. When the time comes for this person to get a serious infection the bacteria s/he has would be resistant to all antibiotics.

5- There are almost no infectious disease specialists in Jordan to guide other physicians and hospitals in the use of the right antibiotic to the right person at the right time and for the necessary duration. As far as I know there are only 7 specialists in the whole country, all of them working in Amman.

I have worked for a few months in King Hussein Cancer Center (Al-Amal) and I have seen some bacteria there that I have never seen In the US. In one day over there we had three patient die of an infection with the same bacteria (MDR Pseudomonas). They had to shut down the whole Intensive Care Unit to get cleaned out. Unfortunately that did not work and patients still got infections with these nasty bugs.

Like many health problems, infection is a major health problem in Jordan that is being neglected. Health care workers are the major attributers to this problem and they are not realizing this. The behavior of physicians and nurses in many hospitals is hazardous to patient care and needs to be controlled.

To dance with you

I will not dance to this song
I will not dance with you
I will not dance for you
Your lyrics are bullets of death
preying on the breath
of my kids, and your hymn
is not mine
I will not dance to your shrine
your conscience is hard to define
your cruelty, sublime

***

When we're six feet under
people will remember
who danced to the trumpets
celebrating the Iraqi Auschwitz
and who stood with defiance
in respect
of the sound of silence
of people which
you've erased, you son of a bitch
their souls in heavens will wander
and your soul, no wonder,
will forever rot with you
six feet under
Hareega

هل تحممت بعطر...وتنشفت بنور؟

Blogs I read

For someone who's extremely technologically-challenged like me, it took me an absurdly long time to create the Link list to the left side of my blog.

Why did I do so? Because I knew every one of them had, at least on several occasions, talked about something worth talking about and realized that it wouldn't be a waste of time if you checked them out.

Here's a random list of blogs I read.

1- Kuzzin, that is my cousin Iyas. He's older than me in blogging and in reality. His humor is a reflection of a pissed-off state, and he is a lot smarter than what he appears to be. If he wasn't living in Utah I'd think he was drunk while writing every single post of his.

2- Laundry (Pick-ups), that is malaget ghassel. The Internet version of Sharihan, she is very active and creative. Comes up with interesting ideas and interacts wonderfully with all of her readers.

3- Empty Speech, "Haki Fadi" , one thing for sure when you're reading her blog: it's not haki fadi. Casual, open-minded, and welcoming, occasionally tackling serious issues. I sometimes wonder if she's Makadi Nahhas in disguise, her voice is great!

4- The Future Scorsese, that is Jordanian film director Amin Matalqa. Other than him being from Madaba, there are several reasons to like this guy. He is almost done directing the first Jordanian movie in a few decades. He talks about his career with great passion that can make you interested in reading even if you didn't give a shit about movies. He might be better than our national football team in putting Jordan on the world map.

5- Kinzi. An American Jordanian who knows Jordan better than a lot of Jordanians. One thing for sure is that she knows what she's talking about. She talks about women in her environment, about God, about her children and she does care about people with her big heart.
She also knows Arabic pretty well although when she writes it down it's as funny as hell :)

6- Red Shoes. That's Roba's "And Far Away". Arguably the most readable Jordanian blog. A lady who loves life, Amman and family, pretty much like 5% of the Jordanian population. Young but mature, daring but polite, and a geek but has a great taste. Don't insult her red shoes, it's family.

7- Gowaider, that's Qwaider and his planet. It appears that this guy has double the time anyone of us has. He's a hard worker but he writes almost daily and talks about everything and frequently he hits the nail with his entries. He allows people to write in his blog and that's cool.


8- Al Koza7iyyeh al Sawdaa2, that is the Arabic translation of the Black Iris of Nasim Tarawneh. Analytical, knowledgable, fair and cares about his country. Takes people seriously, and so he does with blogging. It's amazing how he's able to come up with interesting subjects to talk about. In the rare occasion when he doesn't, he leaves a poem for Hafiz.

9- Mokh, that is Khalidah's MIND. Her blog is rich, and she discusses the social life in Jordan on different levels. Will wait for her to return to write.


10- Loves Amman, that is Firas' "I heart Amman". Politically incorrect but sharp, doesn't hesitate to say what runs in his mind. You definitely don't have to read between the lines to read him. I would like to see him blog more.


11- Beace, that is Salam's Reflections. A good observer and a brilliant writer when she has time to write.

12- Dandara in the head, that is Natasha Twal Tynes, probably the most professional among all Jordanian bloggers who write in English. Mental Mayhem talks about freedom of the press, women's rights, and Virginia. The discussions that take place in her blog are the best in sphere.

13- Observes stuff, that is Fadi, the Observer. A very liberal blogger who might get physically hurt if he takes his opinions to the street. He has made a small nice world for himself and he easily takes you to it with his emotional writings.

14- Batir Wardam, another professional writer who doesn't usually go with the stream. He gets heavy criticism for a lot of his opinions but that only keeps him writing more and more. Very passionate about his opinions and often very convincing.

15- Sabbah, a blogger who dedicates his time to his people, and a constant reminder that Palestinians are victims. I wish we had more of him.

16- Jordan, I will be back. A very Jordanian blog. Tackles issues related to Jordanians and their lives. Has not blogged in a while though!

17- Hussein, who-sane, proved me and a few others wrong, when the story of the awful treatment his sick father received in a Jordanian hospital got to the press and resulted in sacking of an important official. I was starting to feel that blogging in Jordan was totally useless until this happened. His entries prior to that were also very interesting. He had also met Diego Maradona!

18- Tarmaweel, Lina's Turmoil. She takes you to different spots not only in Jordan but also in other areas of the world. She understands the cultural aspects of a city like Amman more than anyone else. She's vivid in her descriptions and the photos she posts are precious.

19- Tinker, recently added, a blogger who lives in the US and posts interesting stuff.

20- Lubna, her posts can be a very interesting read, especially the long ones!

Finally, I don't have one favorite blogger, and I don't think I ever will. It's like comparing apples and oranges and watermelons. I find in Jordanian blogs a lot of things that I don't find in Jordanian press: Honesty, political incorrectness and grammatical mistakes.
Overall, I think we have a wonderful bunch of blogs. Keeb it ub, Jordan.

Ministry of Health: A little too late

The German company (Boehringer Ingelheim) that manifactures the drug Silomat® , a cough syrup, decided to withdraw the drug from the market because it predisposes to a potentially fatal side-effect called long QT syndrome, which can cause a cardiac arrest and subsequently, death.

Here's a link to their website with the announcement:

http://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/corporate/asp/news/ndetail.asp?ID=4854

Our ministry of health, in turn, decided yesterday to withdraw the drug from the market, because they care for our lives.

The only problem, is that it happened eight weeks late. The warning about long QT syndrome came out on August 31st and we responded eight weeks after that.

Imagine a drug that had to be taken off the shelves of European pharamacies being sold for 2 months in our country without anyone in our ministry interferring to do anything about it.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were too busy closing up shawerma places to notice the news that pharamcy students around the world were aware of.

Tough Times

I went inside the room of my patient to talk to him. I saw he was awake but he was covering his head with the blanket.

"Good morning Mr. Garcia"

He kept his head covered with the blanket and pretended he couldn't hear me.

"Good morning Mr. Garcia" I said again.

Now he started snoring, pretending he was asleep.

My patient, Mr. Garcia, was not a 5-year old kid. He is 72. What he was doing was a defence mechanism that many sick people have when they get sick, it's called regression.

A lot of people, even the smart intellectual ones, do the same when they become sick. They start behaving like kids, or regressing.

I am no exception.

Towards the end of my medical school, I underwent a surgery for which I stayed for 4 days in the hospital. I was a pain in the ass. All nurses and doctors hated me. I kept asking for certain kinds of food they didn't have. I screamed and moaned and was a total bitch to everyone including my roommate who was an old man a hundred times sicker than me.

A story that I'll never forget was that of Zahra, 25-year old girl from the West Bank who was being treated in King Hussein Cancer Center. She had a rare cancer that was really eating her bones and flesh. Her mother came with her in her trip to Amman and was staying with her all the time. One day I was called because the young lady was refusing to take her medications.

I went to talk to her mother, a relatively old lady who you can tell from the look on her face that she's been through a lot.

She told me, "Zahra is not taking her medications, and she is angry at me"

"Why is she angry"

"She wants Manakeesh bi Za3tar , where can I find these manakeesh?? I looked in the cafeteria they don't have them. I went up the Jordan University Hospital cafeteria and didn't find any. Ma fee manakeesh!"

It was 10 pm. I went and talked to Zahra who was crying a lot. I was trying to talk her into taking the pills, but Zahra wasn't talking at all. She was crying and crying and it was clear that it wasn't all about the manakeesh, but perhaps her devastation about her illness. Her helplessness and feelings of defeat were transformed into rage on her beloved mother, and she started behaving like a little kid who won't do anything unless she eats these manakeesh.

I took her pills from the nurse and gave it to her, and to my surprise she did take them. A week later she developed a nasty infection in her blood and was transferred to the ICU. Her cancer was fairly advanced and the infection was untreatable. She died the next day and her mother returned alone to the West Bank.

Between Zahra's ocean of tears and Garcia's acting in the bed, I realized that the little child in you is the real thing. He's the one who cries for you, the one who screams the hysterical laughs out of your mouth, the one who senses the dangers and the one who lives with you all the way.
He's with you because he is you.

Avec Saddam

This is an interesting video from the eraly 1980s showing a group of French Parliament members including Nicolas Sarkozy (with the black tie) in Iraq meeting with Saddam Hussein!






And here's the famous clip of Saddam and Rumsfeld

Say a "K", Say a "Y", Say an "R", Say a "G",Say a "Y", Say a "z", Say an "S", Say a "T", Say an "A", Say an "N"

And what do you get?

Kyrgyzstan

Our first step to South Africa 2010

Good Luck Shabaaaab

Update: we lost 2-0. We have to win 3-0 on 10/28 to qualify!

Match summary

Date: Last Saturday
Place: Alfonso's house.
Occasion: The football match between Paraguay and Peru.
People watching the game in the house: Nine Paraguayans and one Jordanian.
Temper before the game : Everyone is angry, very angry.
Reason for being angry: unknown.
Youngest person in the house: Alfnonso, 25 years old.
Oldest: His grandmother, sixty-something
Every other word used during the game: puta
Player cursed the most: Cabañas from Paraguay for missing three golden chances
Person who cussed the most: the grandmother
Person cussed the most: Hareega for being a known Argentinian fan.
Referee of the game: some Brazilian, also referred to as a "un puto grande brasilieno" 23 times
Cuss words learned during the game: none, only puta was used.
End result: 0-0
but felt like: Paraguay lost 10-0
People blamed for not winning: Paraguay's 11 players, the coach, the assistant coach, the president of Paraguay, the ex-president of Paraguay and Hareega for bringing in the evil spirit of Argentina to the house.
Number of times Hareega mentioned he's not Argentinian just a supporter of the team: 9
Number of people who believed him: zero
Paraguay's next match: tomorrow
Paraguayans who want to see Hareega during the game: zero
Paraguayans who want to see Hareega ever: zero
The population of Paraguay: six million
The population of Jordan: six million
Most popular sport in Paraguay: football
Most popular sport in Jordan: football
Average IQ (according to Richard Lynn) of Paraguayans: 85
Average IQ of Jordanians: 87
Average IQ of Paraguayans during a football game: zero
Average IQ of Jordanians during a football game: zero.

Marrying a Green Card

"Faris, I might have to spend the next week in your place, is that OK?"

"The whole week! Why?"

"My wife is visiting from Detroit and she's gonna stay the whole week in the house"

Meet my Jordanian friend "Hasaballah". A smart young guy who got a college degree in accounting, has a good job, but a few years back decided to become an American citizen. Hasaballah got married to this lady who has a lot of psychiatric problems. She spends most of the year in Detroit but visits him very occasionally and when she does, she gets paranoid and sometime threatens to kill him.

She once pulled a gun at him in the middle of a fight, and Hasaballah had to run semi-naked in the streets.
I was horrifed at the story, not because Hasaballah almost got killed but because some people in town had to see him semi-naked in the streets.

I used to think it was only an Arab thing to get married to an American to become a ctitizen, until a Latino friend of mince told me about "the marriage plans" he saw in Miami.

He told me that if he married a Mexican lady, he would have to pay her about 8000 dollars total to accept and he'd eventually get the citizinship through her, but if it was a Cuban woman it would cost him about 15,000 dollars because Cuban women would get the citizinship and give it to their husbands much faster. He even encouraged me to get married to one.

I know quite a few Arabs here. Many of them got married to American women for the purpose of becoming citizens. Not a single one of them is happy. They think it's easy and straight forward thing, they sometimes have agreements with the woman to pay her monthly until they get the green card, but a zillion problems arise after they sign the marriage papers. I can go on and on with the unthinkable obstacles they went through that got some of them almost deported or even jailed.

It's not worth it.

Flying Without Wings

Even if you've never read any medical journal, I invite you to read this medical article, at least its title, published in the British Medical Journal, a very prestigeous medical journal.

I still can't believe this was published. Sheehan would have turned this down!

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials

The authors were investigating if any trials were done to see if parachutes really did save lives of people jumping from very high altitudes! They didn't find any and they recommended doing trials to prove that.

Published in their December 20th, 2003 issue , Volume 327(7429).

Searching for a testicle

Today I had a craving for testicles. The "baid ghanam" or goat testicles that are extremely delicious and sold everywhere in Jordan. I haven't had them in more than three years and I decided to start searching.

I went to Albertson's and saw the guy at the meat section. I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to ask about goat's testicles for sale. I decided to ask if they had beef's testicles because that sounds more "manly".

"Hello there"

"Good morning sir, how can I help you?"

"Um, do you sell beef testicles?"

"What?"
"Beef testicles ?"

"Is it for Halloween?"

My face turned red, and I started sweating like crazy. "No, it's to eat"

"Um I don't think so sir, I didn't know there are people who eat this stuff"

I pretended to be innocent, "my friend had them in Mexico and he told me they tasted good, never mind, bye!"

I decided to go to a different store (Walmart). They had a huge meat selection.

The person selling meat was a lady. I waited a little bit to see if a guy would come over, but she was the only one selling meat that time.

I decided to be casual in my question, as if I was asking about any other item in the store.

I came close so nobody can hear me and asked, "Hey do you have testicles?"

"What?"

"Testicles, do you have testicles?"

"I don't understand your question" and she really really looked confused.

I started sweating again, this time I was drenched in sweat, and my heart was beating. I asked "do you sell beef testicles here?"

"No!", she answered.

"Any kind of testicles? sheep or goat?"

"No we sure don't"

"Ok thank you".

Although I really needed to buy other things but I felt very embaressed that I ran away from the store as if someone was chasing me.

I called a Jordanian friend in town. "Dude, they don't sell testicles in Tucson!"

"Yes, pretty much everywhere in America they don't sell this stuff, unless you go to an Arabic store and order it in advance, you might get it a week later"

"That sucks"

"Don't worry, I got some tongues from Phoenix"

"Oh that's awesome, will you cook them?"

"Yes, tonight, will see you then"

I guess if you can't get what you want, be thankful with what you've got.

ملاقط مشتعلة

Thank you Malaget for hosting me in this very rare interview.

It's very rare because it's the only interview I had.

Too fast to be true

That's when she became World Champion and the fastest woman on earth



and that's how she ended up, today, in tears and shame....




Reminds me of Ben Johnson when he won his gold in 1988 and broke the world records, but it turned out he was cheating and was stripped of his gold medal and his dignity

Phagocytosis

Have you noticed that we, Jordanians, tend to throw a lot of food in the trash?

We fill our dishes with plenty of food that ends up thrown away?

Most of the manasef served in traditional weddings gets thrown away.

This was just a quick observation.... in a nation where more people are getting hungry.

Sahtain!

Jordanian Facebook-ers, Listen to the Word

Ten things you should and shouldn't do on facebook

1- No more bikini pictures please! Your french bikini might match your thick lebanese accent but the hair under your armpit is enough to cover the heads of ten bald men.

Next time a picture of you with little clothes covering you up will be in the morgue after your distant cousin chops your head off.

2- Stop making groups saying, "If a thousand people joined this group, my insecure ugly cracked up friend will come visit us in Jordan this year"

Excuse me, but is he the new Messiah coming to Jordan to save the world? And if these groups do work I'll make a one, "If one thousand people joing this group we'll cut his head off and make this head his new profile picture"

3- When updating your status, write something useful or shut the hell up.

Don't write "I'm at work". We know it's a surprise that you got off your ass and started working, but why are you announcing that?

And those annoying losers who never stop counting.... from day 30, "30 days to go, 29 days to go, 28 days to go..."
I feel they wake up every morning to log in and change the number.
If I give a shit about what you're counting down for, I would have called on day "30 to go" to ask. If I care about you I would have known what are you counting down for without checking facebook.

4- For some relatives, I'm sorry if I didn't add you as a "super-relative" or "super-friend" on facebook. I didn't know you ever existed before facebook came out.

5- For those idiots who post their birthdate and address and email on facebook, are you crazy? Don't you morons hear about identity theft? Don't you know that 70% of identity thefts are done by people who know you? May you also leave your credit card number and three of your contacts in case I needed them? If you're such an idiot then you deserve it.

6- Stop joining all these "I'm Christan/Muslim and very proud" groups. I'm not God but I can assure you the angels are not dancing in heaven when someone joins these group. The last time you were religious was when you prayed to not be caught kissing in the car.

7- You can't start a group for charity purposes and not donate anything. You can't support Darfur when you can't locate it on the map. You can't join a group to help poor kids when the members in the group are more than the money you've ever donated to anyone, including the beggars you cuss when they knock on your car's window.

8- I know you have a multiple personality disorder, but you don't have to prove that by placing more than one person in your profile picture.

9- You don't get to be my friend if you haven't called me in five years. My drunk neighbor knows about me more than you do and I don't even call her a friend, at least not when she gets arrested.

10- Having 700 friends doesn't mean you're popular. Having pictures of you hanging near the swimming pool edge doesn't mean you're a good swimmer, and all kids under the age of 3 months are very ugly. They look like zombies with their bald heads and protruded eyes so stop taking pictures of them. Besides, it's really hard to capture the rare moment when they're not screaming, peeing on the floor or shitting in your face.

Respect to the world,
Hareega

Let's Talk Science: Is AIDS going to threaten Jordanians?

Few hundreds, just a few hundred Jordanians carry HIV. It's always been around that number.
Am I concerned?

The Ministry of Health has warned in 2006 that not enough measures are being taken to prevent the spread of AIDS in Jordan.

Let's look at numbers:

We have some of the lowest percentages of HIV positivity in the world (0.01-0.1%), but what's worrisome is having plenty of undiagnosed cases. One might carry the virus for years before being diagnosed with it. In Jordan, people may die without being diagnosed with the illness.

Here's a scary fact: In the US, there are nearly one million reported cases of HIV. However there's another quarter million who do not know that they carry the virus.

There are 334 reported cases in Jordan. If you extrapolate the data above to Jordan, we can assume we've got 400 or more cases of HIV in Jordan.

But it's never that simple.

In the US, HIV is always looked after. It's always being tested, in emergency rooms and the smallest community clinics, among the straight and the gays, among the young and the old.

In Jordan that's not the case, and most patients with HIV present with the full-blown picture of AIDS with all of its complications because none of the many doctors who have previously seen these patients thought about the disease.
Doctors almost never ask their patients about sexual practises, and if they do patients almost never say they're having an extramarital affair, let alone being homosexual.

The UNAIDS estimates that the number of HIV-infected Jordanians is greater than a thousand.
Now here's another fact: AIDS in Jordan is not a disease of homosexuals. Most infected individuals acquired it by heterosexual sex.

The following makes me concerned:

1- Young people are having more unprotected sex. There's an assumption that only vaginal sex can transmit the disease, not knowing that anal intercourse poses a more serious risk for the transmission of the virus. Many Jordanians especially men are having unprotected sex outside Jordan and plenty of them acquire sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs) before coming back home. They get treated for most STDs but and HIV test is usually not performed. With antibiotics being sold over-the-counter in Jordan, the incidence of STDs might be much higher than recorded.

A good example is the Jordanian peace-keeping force in Croatia in the early 1990s where ten soldiers acquired HIV during a short period of time. They were detected because of a close health surveillance performed by the military hospitals for soldiers in peace-keeping forces. They might have been easily missed if they didn't have the opportunity (or rather the option) to be tested for HIV.

2- Homosexuality, though present for a long time, is becoming more public in Jordan and homosexual activities are on the rise, yet sexual awareness is almost non-existent among Jordanians including many highly-educated citizens.

3- Ignorance and unjustified fear. I've taken only one 50-minutes lecture about HIV during my whole six years of study in a medical school in Jordan. We had an HIV-positive patient in the University of Jordan Hospital and the DOCTORS there refused to take care of him because they were afraid of transmission. A Jordanian physician here describes how a hospital in Amman in 1998 refused to treat an HIV-positive patient because they were afraid of transmission of the illness.

Almost all Jordanians don't know that HIV is different from AIDS, and that people carrying the virus nowadays can live more than 25 years even have a normal life span if they get treated.

Most people don't know that HIV is treatable while hepatitis B and C infections are much more difficult to treat and have killed and are killing thousands of Jordanians. Most people think that AIDS is an illness of only the gays and drug users.

AIDS is not a major problem in Jordan. I believe all the numbers the Ministry of Health releases about its prevlance in the country. What makes me nervous is the future, perhaps the very near future, and I have some good reasons to be worried.

A real black September

قتلناكَ.. يا آخرَ الأنبياءْ
قتلناكَ..
ليسَ جديداً علينا
اغتيالُ الصحابةِ والأولياءْ
فكم من رسولٍ قتلنا..
وكم من إمامٍ..
ذبحناهُ وهوَ يصلّي صلاةَ العشاءْ
فتاريخُنا كلّهُ محنةٌ
وأيامُنا كلُّها كربلاءْ

نزار..

Of mice and rabbits and dogs and men

We've had a few problems with animal right activists. They frequently broke into our labs and "freed" mice and rabbits that we've been experimenting on.

We changed the lab doors into well-locked ones and no more animals were freed anymore.

We are currently in the process of developing a new drug for valley fever (coccidiodmycosis) which is an infection very common in Southwest USA. This time we got some sponsorship from animal lovers because valley fever affects dogs as well as humans!

I'm not sure they know that, but lots and lots of rabbits and mice will be sacrificed (killed) during this research.
They probably consider dogs more important than mice and rabbits.
I consider humans more important than all of these animals!

The departed

He believed in peace but did not see it coming so he stepped aside.

It's sad to see how patriotic and intelligent Palestenians were put aside and gang members are reigning with their guns.

It appeared to me as if Haydar Abdil Shafi died a decade ago and not just yesterday.

Dear our Censorship Hero Mr. Nabil Al-Momani

Thank you for visiting my blog today. You've promised to be a permanent reader and I hope you'll keep your promise.

I'm really surprised about the announcement that you will start watching blogs and everything they contain. I thought you've always done that, but as they say "late better than never."

We need you here. Our Jordanian blogsphere is polluted with cracked, uneducated, totally rude, unpatriotic, anti-freedom ignorant Jordan haters.

I need you here. I need you to teach me to love my country, to watch my words before I regurgitate them in public and hurt my people, and most important of all, I need you to teach me freedom.

I wish you a great day navigating our blogs. I hope to meet you soon and who knows, I'm going to have lunch now so maybe I'll find you in my food and water and then we can have a long chat.

Sincerly yours,
Ignorant Hareega

(And dude, if you're still at work can you please ask someone to arrange all my articles into categories, I never knew how to do that, would really appreciate it)

هل يتحمل الأردن وجود شعبين على أرضه؟

يبدو أن الاردن بدأ تدريجياً ينقسم إلى جزئين، ويبدو أن الشعب الواحد بدأ يتحول إلى شعبين

.
كل شعب له أرضه وأهدافه و طموحاته وحتى لغته الخاصة

أنا لا أتحدث عن الأردني والفلسطيني
ولا أتحدث عن الاردنيين والعراقيين

أنا أتحدث عن شعب نسبته في الأردن قليلة لكنه يملكه كله بشوارعه وأنفاقه وأراضيه وبناياته وقريباً جدا سيملك أبنائه وبناته

وشعب آخر كان في يوم من الأيام سعيداً بحياته المتواضعة فخوراً بانتمائه لوطنه وراضياً بما كتب عليه الزمن لكنه بدأ يفيق على نفسه ووجد أن القليل جداً من أبناء وطنهم قد طاروا إلى المقدمة وتركوهم يلهثون في الخلف

ورغم أن الهوة بين الغني والفقير يدأت بالاتساع والطبقة المتوسطة بدأت تنصهر بتسارع رهيب إلا أن هذا لا يمثل المشكلة الرئيسة المشكلة أن الغني بدأ ينسى أو يتناسى أن الفقير إنسان حي بدأ ينسى أنه أردني مثله وأن عليه حقاً عليه كمواطن بدعمه

أيام زمان كان من الصعب أن تعرف الغني من الفقير فكلاهما يلبس نفس الملابس وكلاهما يتحدث نفس اللغة وكلاهما يأكل من طبق واحد وحتى إذا ما عُرف الغني فنادراً ما كنت ترى حاقداً أو حاسداً لأن الغني كان يستحق نقوده

المشكلة في الأردن ليست وجود الغني والفقير بل المشكلة أن الاردني الغني نسي أن هناك أردني فقير

نسي أن معظم الأردنيين يعيشون خارج عمان وفقد كل أحساس بالمسؤولية تجاههم هناك منازل في الاردن لا تصلها المياه والكهرباء إلا بواسطة وهناك مدارس لا يوجد فيها معلمي توجيهي وهناك آلاف من الطلاب لا يملكون ما يكفيهم شراء حقيبة جديدة أو كتاب أو حتى قلم

مش عم بتخوت

هناك طلاب في الاردن لا يملكون ما يكفي شراء قلم

هناك طلاب في الجامعة يتحسبون من رفع أجرة السرفيس أو الباص قرشاً واحد

هناك الكثير من المبدعين الذين رغم كل تلك الظروف تفوقوا على أنفسهم وأبدعوا في التوجيهي لكنهم عادوا إلى حلب الأبقار لأنهم لا يملكون ما يكفي سد أقساط فصل واحد من الجامعة في ظل غياب شيه تام عن رعاية الطلاب المتفوقين

الأردني الغني أصبح له عالمه وأرقامه وأناسه وأصبحت كل رحلة له خارج دولته الزمردية مغامرة محفوفة بالمخاطر يلاقى فيها شعباً أردنياً مختلفاً عنه متخلفاً فوضوياً بتعريفه مُجرد من الحضارة العمانية الصارخة التي يتفاخر بها أصدقائه النرجسيين

الفقيرليس أعمى فهو براقب كل هذا بحسرة لكن حسرته تتحول إلى غضب والأردني الفقير غضب كثيراً في الماضي ومن كنا نعتبرهم أكثر الناس إخلاصاً للوطن ثاروا قبل ذلك لأن التاريخ علمنا أن حتى أكثر الناس وطنية غالبا ما يفضلون مصلحتهم الشخصية على مصلحة الوطن رغم الشعارات الرنانة بعكس ذلك

الكثير من الامبراطوريات العملاقة خنعت عل ركبيتها والكثير من الحضارات العظيمة والدول الجبارة انهارت واختفت من على الخارطة والأردن دولة صغيرة بسيطة لا يتحمل وجود شعبين يتلك المشاعر المتعادية وأتمنى أن نتعلم ونتصرف قبل أن نندم

Of dogs and men

Michael Vick....

This football player was arrested and charged in arranging fights between dogs, where the loser dog in the fight is killed in front of cheering people.

News channels never stopped talking about him and describing how horrible this behavior was.

He apologized and asked for forgiveness, and discouraged everybody from doing the same. He will probably serve some time in jail.

I just remembered something I posted more than a year ago,
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."

It's sad to realize that humans sometimes worth less than bitches.

Thank you for not killing me

Accompanied by my brother and father, I was flying from Tucson to Vegas.
Airlines: Southwest.

We took off from Tucson for this one-hour flight. About 15 minutes into the flight, we heard a weird noise, probably coming from under the plane.

A few moments later the pilot made an announcements, "Folks I think we have a technical problem in the landing gear, we have to return and go back to Tucson."

Then he added, "but don't worry, everything is OK."

I was wondering if the landing gear is not functioning, why are we returning to Tucson rather than continuing to Vegas. It would not matter if we crash in Tucson or Vegas.

It didn't feel great as the plane was taking more curves and returning to Tucson. I was thinking how many passengers in the hijacked 9/11 planes did not know they were being hijacked in the beginning. "What if the one talking to us was not the pilot but some crazy hijacker?", I thought.

I also remembered the jetblue flight last year that almost went into flames because of its landing gear malfunction. Ironically the jetblue passengers were watching their own landing live on the TV screens inside the plane!
Here's a video of the jetblue incident on live TV:



The plane landed peacefully in the end. I got a letter from Southwest 2 weeks later, "....shortly after takeoff, the Pilots received an indication that the landing gear wouldn't retract. As such, the Captain made the decision to return to TUS (Tucson) to have the problem inspected. Our Maintenance Department reports that the mechanism that helps lift the gear and holds it in place wasn't working properly."

They also sent each of us a 100-dollar voucher!

I did some Internet search that showed that Southwest had a terrible landing gear problem just TWO MONTHS before my flight and they hand to land emergently in Oakland. Now I'm not so happy!
I guess that when you pay 49 dollars for a flight, that's what you will get.

Rules of Hesitation

Last week, my Jordanian friend here in town called to invite me to iftaar.

I was glad to be invited, but I was wondering how many times should I refuse before finally accepting to come.

"Hey Faris come to iftaar Friday"

"Thanks for the invitation but no thanks"

"No you have to come......"

"But then your wife has to cook.... ma beddi aghallebha"

"No please come we're cooking anyway"

"No thanks I'll be OK"

"No please come "

"No thanks"

"please come"

"No thanks"

"please come"

"No thanks"

"Please please please"

"Ok I will, what time?"

"6.30"

"OK thanks man, you know there's no need for that"

"No you have to come"

"No I'm OK ma fee da3i"

"No you have to come"

"No balash balash"

"No please please"

"No thanks"

"no please please please"

After a serious thought that he might think I don't want to come, I finally accepted and had a great mansaf.
-------------------------------------------------------


Americans on the other hand take yes as a yes, and no as a no.


On my first Christmas eve alone in the US, I was on-call at night in the hospital with my senior resident.

My senior resident then asked me, "What are you doing tomorrow (Christmas)?"

"Nothing"

"Ok my sister is making a dinner for the family. You can join us if you want"

I thought it would be nice for me to go, but of course, subconsciously, I answered, "No thanks"

He seemed a little bit dissatisfied with my answer, but didn't say anything.


Next moring he told me again, "you know I won't feel offended if you don't come".

Now I was between a rock and a hard place. I don't want to make him upset but at the same time he's not insisting, he's not pulling his hair and didn't point finger on my nose, didn't threaten to never speak to me again or never talk to anyone in my family for the rest of his life. Where's the swearing? Where's the fighting and grabbing? Where are all these oaths to divorce his wife if I didn't show up?

I said accepted. I sometimes find it hard to tell this story because I didn't want to be looked at as that dirsty cheap man without honor who accepted an invitation only from the second time.

God please forgive me.

Heart and Mind

Just got back form a lecture about dyslipidemia (high cholesterol) and heart disease.

The talk was great, the speaker is an international expert on this topic. Other doctors and I were invited by a drug company to attend the lecture that took in place in a restaurant in town.

We were served bread with some very good butter, steaks with mashed potatoes and gravey, and had a great dessert with ice-cream and cheesecake.

Feeling of guilt? A little bit. I should have eaten ALL of the ice-cream, it was so good.

Maybe our next lecture about lung disease will be sponsored by Marlboro

Worse than shit

A week ago, I started sensing a bad smell, a smell worse than shit, coming from my kitchen. I cleaned it, but the smell worse than shit persisted. I cleaned the 3 dishes and 2 glasses I have very well, the smell worse than shit was still there!

I cleaned my fridge and threw everything out, and the smell worse than shit was getting worse.
I cleaned the kitchen closets, the kitchen floor, the kitchen drawers, but the smell worse than shit never went away.

I started having doubts that my neighbors above were killed and that the smell worse than shit was their bodies', but seeing them smoking something suspicious on the balcony proved to me otherwise.

I started thinking it might have been the lizard we killed last week because I didn't throw all of her body out, but I remember the remainder of the body was left in the sitting room and the smell worse than shit was coming only from the kitchen.

Finally I thought to myself I gotta buy a new soap with a powerful scent and clean the whole kitchen the get rid of this smell that is worse than shit.

I threw my old soap in the trash outside. A day later the smell worse than shit started coming from the trash. I picked up the soap and smelled it. It smelled worse than shit.
Morale of the story: never clean your kitchen.

9/12

Just like all calenders skip February 30th , I was hoping it would start skipping 9/11.

On that day things larger than planes were hijacked and values more precious than the Twin Towers collapsed.

Under no circumstance was that attack justified and under no circumstance it should be justified in the future.

I stole this tribute for the victims from youtube:

Add this number

202-456-1111

Call this number in the US NOW!

Express yourself, speak up. Don't be silent. Your voice might be heard, can't guarantee that though, but you should try.

You won't lose anything, you won't be punished in any way just for the call. You should be free to speak up. SPEAK UP for God's sake. Nobody will know how you feel unless you talk.

I already called. It's your turn. Whether you're in the US or Jordan or anywhere in the world, you should call this number above.

مخلفهم و ناسيهم

قبل أكمن يوم جبت سيرة البنت الحديثة الولادة اللي لقوها بالحاوية بعد ما أهلها زتوها

اليوم جريدة الرأي ذكرت اكتشاف طفلين لقيطين

واحد منهم عند الجامعة الأردنية والثاني دخلت أمه فيه على أحد الجوامع وتركته بعدين هربت

رد فعلي الأول إنه هؤلاء الآباء والامهات ما عندهم انسانية ولا ضمير

لأنه الجرائم مثل هيك ما كانت تصير أبدا بالاردن ولا حتى أيام الطفر

لكن هناك احتمال ولو صغير إنه الأم اللي تركت ابنها بالجامع كانت إنسانة طبيعية

لم تكن إنسانة خالية من العواطف والحنان بل كانت تفكر بابنا وما زات تفكر به وربما ن تسامح نفسها على ما فعلت
وربما حن عليها قلبها ترمي ولدها بالحاوية قالت برميه بالجامع بلكي لقطه ابن حلال دار باله عالولد

حتى الأم -وممكن يكون الاب- اللي رموا بنتهم بالحاوية قالوا يمكن الحاوية أحسنلها من العيشة اللي راح تعيشها

كثير شغلات عم تصير بالاردن بتخلي الانسان يحس إنه قيمته كإنسان عم تتدهور و سعره عم يرخص مع إنه كل إشي

حواليه عم يغلي

Bin Ladin in Australia

As Bush was visiting Australia (not Austria as Bush misspelled it yesterday), an Australian comedian dressed like Bin Ladin and sneaked to where Bush was staying. Security saw the man and jumped on him and got him arrested.

Bill Maher was joking about it, "they immediately knew he wasn't Bin Ladin, because they were able to catch him"

And this is how we say "Welcome to Tucson"

The Mrs. America contest was held yesterday here in Tucson, Arizona.

A few days before that, one of the contestants, Mrs. Tennessee, was walking outside her hotel when she saw a big spider coming her way.

Scared to death, she moved out of his way but a snake nearby jumped on her foot and bit her.

Mrs. Tennessee was rushed to the hospital where she spent the night in the ICU.

Three days later she was discharged from the hospital and was able to compete, and guess what? She came second after Mrs. Wyoming.

Here's her photo after she left the hospital.

Oh Pavarotti

I was never an opera fan, but was really hoping that one day I can go to one of his concerts.

Looks like that will never happen!

R.I.P.

From the trash, back to the trash.....

The baby the moment she was found

If you live in Jabal Amman, watch it before you throw your trash in any of their trash boxes. Yesterday they found a newborn in one of their trash boxes.

The baby was seconds away from being smashed and killed if it wasn't for the man who picked her up.

It's very possible that other newborns were thrown away and killed by their parents.

Was the baby lucky she was saved? Maybe not! When she grows up she'll probably go back to the trash to pick up empty soda bottles to sell them for piasters...
You decide.......

A Jordanian Battle in Vegas

Location: The Treasure Island hotel in Las Vegas.

Time: Last week

People:

1- Hareega with brother and father

2- Cousin (of my father's age) and his wife.

Cousin, "What do you wanna do now?"

As usual, I suggest eating.

Hareega: "Wanna eat in their buffet?"

Cousin, "Yes, I'll wait for my wife to come back from the restroom"

Hareega, "Ok I'll go get the tickets for tonight's show then I'll see you at the buffet, join us when your wife comes back"

I got the tickets then headed toward the buffet. You have to pay first, so I stepped forward to one of the cashiers and handled her my credit card.

"Five people please"

As she took my credit card, I saw my cousin from a distance. Our eyes met. He saw me handling the credit card to the cashier lady and he knew it: he realized I was about to pay for him and his wife.

In the blinking of an eye, he started running to the cashier. My 60-year old cousin was running faster than Sa3eed Owaitah. He pushed aside a couple of people waiting on the line and threw his credit card on the lady's desk.

He looked at me straight in the face, "Shame on you, shame on you", he screamed.

I screamed back, "No way you're gonna pay, no way", then I looked back at the cashier lady and lowered my voice but spoke seriously, "I gave you my card first, you gotta use my card, OK?"

The little lady took my card and was about to process it, but my cousin's voice escalated, "No, take my card ...."

The little Asian lady sitting was confused. "I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!"

I told her, "Just take my card"...

My cousin looked back, "I swear by the life of Badee3a that I'll pay"

Badee3a is a close relative but I'm not sure what exactly is her relationship to me. There's also more than one Badee3a in the family, all of them are born before 1920. They are frequently sworn by the Masannats. To be the person sworn by is a great privilege in any Jordanian family.

I was confused now, thinking to myself, "I still have to pay, but he's just sworn by Badee3a"

I still had to show resistance.

"I'll pay this time, you pay next time"

My cousin was furious, "No, I swear by the souls of Fatha (his late mother) and Metri (my late grandfather) that I will pay. Put your card back in your pocket. Khallisni"

I realized that I just lost the battle. Nobody dares to resist swearing by the lives and souls of Badee3a, Fatha and Metri. Without uttering a word, I placed my card back in my wallet.

I was really surprised security did now show up to the scene.

Observing the sorrow in my eyes, once nice couple offered to help, with the man saying, "Hey man it's OK you can pay for us if you want".

I didn't answer and stepped forward towards the restaurant, drowned with my defeat and silenced by my shame. Although that had saved me more than a 100 dollars, it left my dignity with an open wound that time will not heal. The delicious food could not overcome the bitter taste of defeat. Since that day I started reconsidering my tactics for next battle.

# 40

I started listening to Classicals recently, I loved Mozart's symphony 40,
here's one version of it


and here's another version , with glass!



Great music, but I can't forgive that moron Mozart for stealing it all from Fairuz.

Another one

Antonio Puerta

(1984-2007)

A cardiac arrest on the field, another in the locker room, and today he lost the battle....

Before him, was Feher (switzerland) in 2004:

and Foe (Cameroon) in 2003:

Update: Cause of death of these SEEMINGLY healthy atheletes is related to arrhythmias, which is an irregular heart beat, some sort of abnormal electricity in the heart, or due to an enlarged heart problem called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (not dilated cardiomyopathy-thanks abu el-Qaqish for your alarming message) which predisposes to these abnormal heart conductions.

My 2 cents:

1- These abnormal heart beats are usually missed by the general physcial exam a doctor perfoems in his clinic, even several EKGs (takhteet qalb) can be totally normal.

2- There are currently only TWO specialists in Jordan in abnonral hear conductions (arrhythmias). Many Jordanian cardiologists claim they are specilaists in these but they're lying. Having said that, some basic and common heart irregularities (like atrial fibrillation) can be treated by an internist or a cardiologist, but the more complicated ones like the ones causing death in the players above need a specilaist. Again, two in Jordan for more than six million. Cheeeeerz!