GAM Announces the first annual "كلاسيكي" Classical Music Festival

Omar Maani, Amman's mayor, announced today in a news conference the launch of a 3 day classical music festival in partnership with the National Music Conservatory. The festival will be held every summer in Amman's downtown at the Roman Amphitheater. For the upcoming festival, mayor Maani released a preliminary schedule of events and a code of conduct and rules to be followed by the audience. 

Schedule of events: 
Royal Night

• Also Sprach Zarathustra (not star wars!) by Strauss 
• Beethoven 9th Symphony                                    
• Piano Concerto No. 1 by Tchaikovsky                                  

Scary Night

• Orff's O Fortuna                                                       
• Bach's Toccata And Fugue                                                

knights' Night

• Light Cavalry Overture by Suppe                                                
• William Tell Overture by Rossini                                                            

Kids' Night

• Dance Of The Hours by Ponchielli                                 
• Strauss' Blue Danube                                          
• Rossini's Barber Of Seville Overture                                                      

Code of Conduct:

• [contained] kids allowed only on "kids' nigh"! Otherwise, no kids allowed
• No eating, drinking, or smoking
• No "humming" with the music
• A strict formal dress code will be enforced
• Only one "Shush" allowed. The second will be the act of throwing you out
• If you fall asleep during a musical session, you will be charged twice and banned from ever attending GAM events
• No "عظمة على عظمة على عظمة" will be tolerated! offenders will be confined to a room with the blasting music of فهد بلّان 

Mayor Maani biy3any. So, he is urging all to suggest more, enhanced code of conduct rules! 

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Techcrunch and the Jordanian connection!

I really don't know what to make of it. I frequent techcrunch's website and I just can't help noticing their "techcrunch on facebook" widget showing their friends/fans. the things is techcrunch has more than 46,000 of these friends/fans. However, there's a disproportional representation of Arabs shown in the widget. Out of the ten shown, five are Arabs. Not Just that. They're all Jordanian!

this post was brought to you by Y combinator's Middle East technopreneurs convention.

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نُص كيلو of my favorite chocolate!

My favorite chocolate of all time! dark with almonds....

best viewed in full size...

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Announcing the First Annual Dead Sea Festival

Jordanian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced earlier today the launch of the Dead Sea Festival. The festival's events will be May 20th-24th and held in their entirety at the Dead Sea and the surrounding areas. In it's press release, the ministry outlined the events as follows:
Thur. May 20th:

• official launch of the festival under the patronage of Her Excellency Ms. Maha Al Khatib.
• lighting the the festival's bonfire
• parade of regional delegations (Darak forces will be on hand. So, behave!)
• Candlelight vigil and a moment of silence in remembrance of Jerash festival

Fri. May 21st:

• the designation of a special area for the Muslim Brotherhood protest, where they will look away from the sea and recite anti-gay prayers.
• work on world's largest BBQ (هش و نش ) to begin by digging a large ditch, slaughter of sheep, goats, and camels, and "seekhing" tomatoes and onions.

Sat. May 22nd:

• The fear factor competition, where participants would be confined to a small, windowless room with fleets of flies, mosquitoes, and other bugs. The last remaining person, who is still alive, wins. (by Jansait)
• Iron Husband Competition. Each husband would carry his wife in shoulder deep water without goggles for 100 Meters. husbands with more than one wife are to carry them all. first to cross the finish line wins. (دفتر العيلة is required to participate.)

Sun. May 23rd:

• مسابقة خلل و إربح. participants are supplied with cucumbers, olives, and turnips and are tasked with pickling the veggies using the sea's water. the fastest to pickle their veggies (judged by the one and only Chef Ramzy) wins. All losers are to eat all the used veggies. (by Jansiat)

Mon. May 24th:

• closing ceremony commences with the premier of "Clean after yourself" comedic tragedy.
• mud fight
• fireworks
• و الفاتحة على روح المرحوم، بحر

Despite the sarcastic tone of my post, I sincerely wish the ministry would establish a festival celebrating the Dead Sea as a valuable touristic attraction. People from around the world flock to enjoy its medicinal properties and floating around in its waters, and we should promote it to the fullest. other countries bordering the Dead Sea gain Billions of Dollars from marketing mud, tours, and vacationing activities, while Jordan sits back and plays the "we are a poor country with no resources" song over and over...
Israel's Cosmetics exports are approaching $1 Billion, while their Chemical exports in general are in the $25 Billion range. During 2009, Israel was host to more than 5 million visitors and tourists. Jordan, on the other hand, received 7.2 million. however, 3.2 million of these 7.2 were one-day visitors most likely from Israel to visit Petra.
There is definitely no shortage of creative types in Jordan to come up with ideas and organize a successful festival. The dead Sea region, with its religious, medicinal, and leisure features and points of interest, holds a winning formula for a savvy, business minded government to come up with a winning theme for a worthy festival that could possibly reinforce, along with Petra, Jordan's position as a worldwide top destination.

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Living with Arabs

true story!
a while ago, I had an Arab roommate that I've known for a while before moving in. he is a Jordanian and about the same age as I am. one day he came home drunk and started throwing stuff at me that ended with his lit joint (حشيش يعني) hitting me. At that point, I was about to take the citizenship oath and was avoiding trouble like Ned Flanders. I picked up the phone and called the cops.
a few weeks later I hear from mutual friends of his complaints that:

"mab3oos has become Americanized"

this post was brought to you by NABISCO

makers of Fig Newtons: القطّين الامريكي

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Jordanian Citizenship for Dummies!

Will be available at Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Noble in May.

iPad ibooks version already submitted and should be approved by Apple في غضون إسبوع.

p.s. some Jordanian newspaper will pirate a soft copy and publish it in chapters on a weekly basis.

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Random Trivia (not copied!)

• each episode of friends has three concurrent sub-plots (stories)
• Joey is the only one on friends to have kissed (as on the lips) all other main characters. including males.
• Yahoo's homepage news differ greatly between times of the day. during the day, the news is American centric. At night, the news section tends to be more international even though there are localized versions of the site.
• Indians misspell the word "gmail" the most. according to Alexa, the site gamil.com receives it's most clicks from India.

I am sure to come up with many more. But, I didn't want to keep this post as a "draft" for ever and decided to enrich people minds with these invaluable tidbits of information!

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What annoys you?

• soap bubbles in your ear that you can't get to
• the noise made when two are kissing
• sitting on a really cold toilet
• cutting too much of a nail
• forgetting to cut one single fingernail
• the sneeze that never, or doesn't want to, happen
• noticing a misspelling a mere second after submitting/sending
•  
•  

What annoys you?

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What's your accent?

back in the day, when a friend missed a shot at the basket, I remember saying sarcastically:

يا حرام، قطّعت أحشائي

when I missed a shot, his sarcastic reply was a manly

قطّعت أحشاقي

I have always used the galo o golna accent. other's tend to use al o 'olna until they realize how sissy it sounds! :)

So, what's your accent?

• gal o golna
• al o olna
• kal o kolna
• ana ma fini jawib

View Results
Create a Blog Poll

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how to quickly get someone out of the shower

1. wait until they turn the water on
2. run to every water source in the house and turn the HOT water on

they will either come out running or they would run after you with the plunger!

p.s.

this prank is harmful to the environment, wasteful of water, and just plain assholishy!

exercise extreme caution and try to reuse the water (that came out of all the faucets you turned on!) for watering plants, washing your car, or general cleaning.

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