Lightness

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?”

- Milan Kundera, from “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”

This time last year, I took my last final exam of Electrical Engineering at the University of Jordan.

It has been one year. It feels like just that… not longer, not shorter.

Yesterday, I did what I’ve wanted to do ever since I was a kid but never had the guts; I had my hair cropped very short.

“It won’t look good on you, you will regret it…” they said.

“How will I know if I don’t try? And hair grows back you know.”

Or does it?

Imagine if every second of your life were to recur an infinite number of times!

“What happens only once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all.” Milan Kundera writes.

Is it really so?

A year ago, I wanted to write an Ode to four and a half years of Electrical Engineering. How different would that tribute look today? How different would it look ten years from now? Sometimes the clarity of hindsight borders on blindness.

I cannot sum up that phase of my life in a few meaningful paragraphs, but it somehow lies in Tyler Durden’s question:

How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight?

There is a part of who we are that exists irrespective of the fight, and that it helps us uncover. And then there is the part that is evolved, created, and transformed in the Battlefield.

I wonder; was studying EE as exhilarating at the time it took place as it feels in retrospect?

I guess this is the ‘lightness’ Kundera was talking about.

Rant: What’s up with the Jordan Times’ Website??

It’s 9:30 am. I was just taking my daily tour of newspapers online, and made a stop at the Jordan Times website. I’ve always found it unacceptable and annoying that they only archive for one week, and that there’s no hope of finding any of the older pieces online after that (unless it was re-published or blogged by someone). That aside, what I found today was way more shocking and disturbing…

Ninety percent of the headline links led to the wrong piece, something completely different, probably yesterday’s news or something!!

JTV seeks to boost viewership with diversified new lineup

Takes you to:

AT A GLANCE
Premier meets with Qweira, Rashidiyeh residents

Abbas in Damascus for crucial talks with Mishaal
Takes you to a piece titled:
Bush defends new Iraq strategy against strong opposition

I faced a similar situation last week, and discarded it as a minor error. But seeing today that I couldn’t follow the titles I wanted to read, the blogger in me awoke. What does it take to have a decent professional website set-up? What does it take to make it function properly? And what does it take to buy have enough web space for archiving purposes?

This is Jordan’s only English-language daily (if you don’t count Jordan’s news-agency-turned-online-newspaper; Petra Net). In this age of New Media, the state of JT’s website and its shortcomings cannot continue to be overlooked. It’s no longer good enough to merely have a website. Isn’t the Jordan Times part of the Jordan Press Foundation? I don’t think money is the issue, and they don’t have to do it themselves, they can hire a professional company. I think I’m going to send them an email.

If you would like to say something regarding the Jordan Times’ website, drop them a line: jotimes@jpf.com.jo

Have you been there?

“Have you voted for Petra?” my aunt asked me the other day.

And it suddenly hit me… I didn’t!!

So today, when I ran across the ad that I see every single morning, I actually looked closer, got the number, and voted! I’m so proud of Petra, but for some reason, I’m not as proud that I voted.

I think it would be awesome for Petra to be recognized for the majestic world wonder that it is. It makes me blissfully happy every time someone not from here tells me how much they loved Petra. But – yes there’s a “BUT” – there’s just something about text-message voting that turns me off. It’s just one of those dreadfully abused trends of our time, and in my opinion, a misinterpretation of “power of the people”. A unique historical site, an epitome of a past civilization’s greatness and genius, should not derive its value from the quantity of messages that a small country’s populations can muster! I don’t know… that’s just how I feel.

That said, Dave asked the right question in a recent post about the topic; “How many times have you been to Petra?” As an American living in Jordan, he notes, quite rightly, that most Jordanians he knows have never been to it. I remember in our school days, it wasn’t a favorite destination for the long-awaited annual trip because it was deemed “too exhausting”. It’s a shame! Although I did get the chance to go twice with my family years ago, I still feel I should go again and explore further, especially when I read what someone like Ruth writes on her Jordan Jubilee Website (which, by the way, is awesome, and has great tips for the hiking-trekking-camping lovers).

There was a campaign by the Ministry of Tourism last year to encourage locals to visit Petra, with transportation provided, alongside reduced rates on hotels. I wonder how effective it was and whether or not it achieved the desired outcomes. It seems to me that whenever there’s a holiday, people head to the Dead Sea or Aqaba rather than Petra, probably because, let’s face it, for the most part, challenging physical exercise is not quite people’s idea of a holiday.

So, back to voting for Petra; yes we do want it to have a higher and more proclaimed status as a world-destination, and to be a bigger source of national income. But I’d say that regardless of the final vote count, a good outcome of this fervent campaign would be for us Jordanians to realize that we just can’t keep taking this treasure for granted. It’s visiting Petra, rather than voting for it, that should be a national duty.

Amman Amman!

I want to live in the side of town with this view!!

By the way, for those who don’t know, the white stone buildings standing out in the middle are those of the Greater Amman Municipality, City Hall, and the Hussein Cultural Center.

On Teaching "General Culture"

I completely related to Jamil Nimri’s column in Al-Ghad on Monday when he talked about the pathetic state of the “General Culture” curriculum for the Tawjihi (12th grade – secondary school certificate). The curriculum underwent several changes in the past few years, but I’ve had three sisters take tawjihi after I did, and we were always complaining about the simplistic, one-sided, narrow, and rote approach it takes.

I would say the major problem in the curriculum is that it completely lacks scientific objectivity; fearing that exposure to different schools of thought in philosophy and the theory of knowledge might shake the students’ faith in the religious perspective of the world, the authors of the book take it upon themselves to subjectively criticize every theory and every philosopher whose thoughts did not stem from a faith in God. The problem, as Nimri eloquently points out, is that the authors present a lot of their opinions as facts… facts that the students are expected to memorize in order to answer the very static questions of the exam which lack any analytical and critical approach to philosophy and knowledge.

On a side note, I was checking Jordan Blogs yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised to find that Mr Nimri now has a blog, joining many of his fellow Jordanian columnists and writers who have started blogs… even it’s mostly to republish their newspaper columns.

It brings to my mind Al Jazeera’s New Year’s Eve broadcast, where they had an interesting live discussion on New Year’s Eve dedicated to blogging in the Arab world and where it’s taking us, tackling points like unrestricted freedom, its impact on social structure and the way it could challenge social norms and values, and the reasons blogging might have more to offer in this part of the world than elsewhere… More on that later, maybe.

Supporting Local Bands

I’ve always admired the role played by the French Cultural Center in supporting different activities related to music, arts, and culture. In 2007, they have an interesting new program in collaboration with Orange Red, to give young local bands the space to be seen and heard. For this purpose, 11 concerts will be organized in different hangouts around Amman, on the second Sunday of each month. Bands will be evaluated by an international jury, and the best will get a big concert in Amman, as well as a recording and distribution contract.

The first in the series will be RAZZ (Rock Arabian Jazz), the band of Aziz Maraka. The band plays around a piano, electric guitar, bass guitar, and oriental instruments (Oud, Nai, and violin). Aziz was born in Tunisia and lived there for ten years. He studied musicology and piano in the US, and has written various compositions for TV. This will be his first concert in Amman.

Concert will take place on the 14th of January, at the Courtyard (in the Howard Johnson Hotel) at 8:00 pm.

Let it rain

I was out driving my sister to her friend’s place yesterday afternoon, and the nonstop rain shower was AMAZING! So I extended my drive and snapped some shots around Amman.

I’d appreciate rain a lot more if we had better street structure and water pumping systems, (check out this article that ran in the Jordan Times last week about small businesses in the Hashemite square that suffered from flood water). Actually I wonder what percentage of such rain fall we actually benefit from as opposed to all that goes to waste or causes floods.

So here are some snippets…

Lesson learnt: your favorite sneakers are not the right thing to wear if you’re going to go out in the rain and accidentally step into a water stream.

Those are the bare bricks that normally hold those big pots of Arabic coffee being sold on the side of the road.

Speaking of rain and winter in Amman, I love the old heaters at Jafra café.

And speaking of Jafra, seems they had a New Year’s party over there.

I really like that place! I have a draft written about a really interesting concert I attended there over a month ago, but I can’t seem to figure out where on earth I downloaded the pictures!!

UnBlogged

Rummaging through my folders, reading unpublished drafts and unfinished journal entries, going through hundreds of pictures… I am still unable to bring the intense, rich, life-changing, eye-opening, exploratory, surprising, bizarre, and enthralling bits of what was my 2006 into a publishable post!

Instead, I picked random snippets from stuff I had wanted to blog at one point or another but didn’t. Each photo has some story or thought behind it… Perhaps I’ll share it sometime soon, perhaps not! Then of course there are the bits that were never meant for blogging, and that remain tucked away… for now at least! Who knows in what form they would manifest themselves one day – a novel, a movie, or just a scrapbook that a grand-daughter would find in an old attic lol… corny I know! But one is allowed to be corny once in a while, no? (Sorry Hal I couldn’t resist it )

And my favorite…