Has anyone noticed how many twins palm trees do we have in our roads?

You know, we always drive without really noticing some small details around us. Most of us do notice the general view of things like the palm trees scattered around the roads, but maybe very few have really notice some difference among those trees.

I thought it was funny when I first noticed that two trees seem to share the same root as in the picture. I didn’t know what to think, is it a mistake by the people who implanted it? because I know that they bought those trees as complete tress not as seeds and implant it to grow. So have they just implanted two togather? or implant a seed that resulted in twins? And what it they did implant a seed, why don’t they remove one of those trees now? It is just funny how they look.

And it isn’t only in one place. I noticed this phenomena in different roads in Amman!

This picture has been taken near The Safeway of Shemisani.

Has anyone else noticed any? Where?

I guess that no matter how you try to escape from thinking of death, it can just pops up suddenly and shock you of a very sad reality in life especially when it comes unexpectedly and take a young friend of yours.

We unconsciously anticipate the death of people around us when they grow older. Nature does prepare us and to face our old people death along with preparing them as well to face it. At some point our bodies became so worn out that it can’t handle to stay alive, but it comes in steps, in years of preparation where we learn to accept our destinies.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t go naturally everytime. Sometimes, a young person dies. Just like this, suddenly, and before any previous alarm. No preparation at all. No signs of weakness, no sickness, nothing. Just some hopes, and dreams for a better future. To live happily for a long time to come.

All has been stripped away off my friend Mishal Awwad. His family had to loose their son at a young age of 29 for a deadly stroke. Without any alarm. He is gone. Rest in peace somewhere away from the people who love him.

Eventhought I haven’t been so close to Mishal, maybe we can say I have been an acquintance of him more than a friend, but it shocked me. It is hard to believe that someone can just leave this life suddenly especially when you know the person. I am sure it is even harder to believe on his parents and siblings. May God help them in this crisis.

Btw, why the hell do we bury each other under the ground?!! It sounds like a reality check to me, that who died would never come back….

At AdBlogArabia they posted a picture of Zidane holding a Kronenbourg Beer in his hand. I guess it is an advertisement for the beer.

What stopped me to comment on the post is what has been written below the ad picture:

To begin with, I typically never blog about alcohol advertising.
Our blog is, after all, called Ad Blog Arabia.

I wrote down:

You said it yourself, it is Ad Blog Arabia, not Ad Blog Islam!

It isn just that you can find people following other religion than Islam while being Arabs, but you can also find many Arabic Muslims who are not really religious and would find some interests in Alcohol ads.

Someone named Khaled replied

well a Muslim who drinks is not really a Muslim. i never considered zidane so long ago. i have no prob with Christians drinking orJewss drinking, its normal for them. but shame for a Muslim who drinks. anyway hope Allah open their eyes and guide them to real Islamm.

a Muslim that drinks is such a shamefull figure. Sorry to see that.

I am wondering how can people so easily judge each other? Why a Muslim who drinks is considered not to be a real Muslim while other who lies can still be a real one?

Isn’t both lying and drinking forbidden in Islam?

I have a Muslim friend who used to drink but had a good faith in his religion. He knew that he would pay for his drinking habit when he dies, but he kept his faith. Ironically he used to refuse eating pork!

Another Muslim friend of mine. He never tasted Alcohol, and would never do so, but he didn’t have a problem to have some sex (not complete) with women when he had the chance. Does that make him any more real Muslim than my other friend who used to drink? or does it make them both unreal Muslims?

A third friend of mine. A Muslim lady who doesn’t wear a veil, which is sinful in Islam. She used to go out with us (male friends) and sometime wearing some tight clothes and a bit of revealing ones (nothing drastic than what normal women wears these days in Amman). She used to refuse even touch the glass of beer I drink. Does not wearing a veil make her unreal Muslim? and not drinking make her a real one? Is she a better Muslim than my friend who drinks?

People seem to be hypocrite in nature. We tend to accept sins that are convenient for us while condemning other people for doing other mistakes that we don’t do just because we can just not make them!

‘El 7al Be Eidak’ is one of the best Arabic TV shows that is broadcast on New TV (A leading Lebanese TV station). Rania Baroud the hostess, is beautiful, well educated, knows how to manage her guests, and shows much intellectuality and intelligence. I would vote for her to be my favourites TV host.

Yesterday they had an amazing episode. They brought 7 lebanese kids, all around the age of 10 years old only, and are so much interested in Politics!

The aim was to gather kids belonging to different sectors of the Lebanese spectrum. One belonging to the Future sector of Saed AL Hariri, another young lady with a veil belongs to the Sheia sector backing Hassan Nasrallah Hezbollah Leader, a Christian kids, 2 independent kids, and another one calling for peace! What amazed me is how much those kids know of their leaders and politics, and how much solid their believes and views are.

While talking, they sounded like grown ups, they know much information about the situation in their countries, and they are aware of their differences, and what each of them represents.

At first, Rania allowed them to argue their views and differences. They shouted, screamed on each other, and was about to fight but Rania being the brillian hostes she is, was smart enough to remind them of argueing civilizely! She treated them like grown ups, and asked them question as if they are. What was surprisengly pleasing that they learnt easily when to listen and when to talk, even better than those grown ups we watch on Al Jazeera TV!

At the end of the episode, Rania asked them to say what each other think can be a shared platform to start their negotiations in order to live peacefully with each other. All of them agreed that they share common ground of loving Lebanon and wanting the best for it. They all admired this quality in each other.

Finally one of the kids requested from them all to stand up holding each others hands and singing their national song.

While Rania asked the Lebanese in their homes to encourage and teach their kids the culture of accepting the other.

I came across this blog which describes how bad our authorities on the border treats the Iraqi citizens who are coming to Jordan. It is really sad and unacceptable, check the video shot by some Iraqi’s on this blog: Iraq Observer

Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.

Aristotle

I have been observing my relationships with my friends, and their relationship with each other, along with other people friendship relations for sometime now.

It seems that every kind of relationship has it ups and downs, and it is common to see two close friends seperated and even at times becoming enemies after years of good relation.

Usually there are two sides of the story, what we here the most is that the other party turned out not to be a ‘Real’ friend!

So what is the definition of a ‘Real’ friend? Is there really a ‘Real’ friend and ‘Unreal’ one? Shall we expect perfectness of those human beings who happened to be our friends? Why would we cut someone off just for a small mistakes he/she does?

I know that it is disappointing, especially when you have much faith in the person you believe is your friend, and do expect certain kind of behaviour in return, but we are humans. We do mistakes. We ought to learn how to forgive our friends the same way they do forgive us. We have to respect their duties towards themselves as much as we respect our own duties. And yes, why not accept some shortages? No one is perfect.

Let us move beyond examining our friends if they can be ‘Real’ ones, and actually trust them enough to make them a real friends for a lifetime.

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.

Mark Twain

I have been thinking of how much I get attached to things after a while, and how my perception of things change over time from not being comfortable with the thing to getting attached to it. I even came up with the term of the built-in washing machine we all have by nature. It is the power of familiarity that makes us contempt of what we have.

Maybe that is why we don’t understand the behaviour of other people. They get familiar to things that are not familiar to us. Even suffering becomes familiar to some where it provides them with contempt where they get stuck in it fearing to go out of their circle of familiarity to feel comfort which isn’t familiar to them.

Mark Twain in this quote seems to relate the power of familiarity to lying. It gives us a better understanment of why this world is full of lies. We are more familiar with deception than with truth. Maybe it is our nature, a way we invented to survive.

It also explains why some people lie more than others. They are just unfamiliar with the truth. Maybe a good solution would be to inject more truth in their life to get familiar to it.

Can’t we live in peace like the rest of the universe?

I wish I took a picture of the sign those 2 men where holding while I was ordering some shawerma for lunch in Jabal El Hussen.

They had this white board aka those signs where a person writes his name and place it at the entrance of his house. On the board is written some text in black saying that they are collecting donations for building the Mosk of xxx (a name of a certain man).

They were two adult men, one wearing white dress and the other black dress while both have long beard as of showing to be religious people.

I wonder if this kind of collecting money for charity is allowed here in Jordan? and how much credibility those two men have? Would the money people pay in the streets go to building the Mosk? or those guys are just thieves who want to make money for themselves by playing on other people’s religious believes?

Whether they are honest with their attempt or not, does it make it right for people to collect money to build a Mosk that holds their names? Can my friend collect money from the streets to build a Mosk for his father? It reminds me the way I have seen in Churches of Amman selling their walls and placing people’s names.

It is bad to use religion in order to make money. Can’t we have laws against that?

This whole so called US war on terror, or as some want to consider it as war against Islam boggles me.

Being an Arab does place me in the side of Muslims as the Arab world is the heart of Islam, most of those terrorist who claims to be Muslims come from Arabic countries, and while the US claims that its war is not against Muslims or Arabs but against radical Muslims, you can see their military actions causing much trouble in the Arab world and affecting our lives.

My friend believes that the religion tie is the strongest tie which would bring people togather. I believe that humanity tie can do a better job. But it seems that a lot people root to my friend’s idea. Most moderate muslims are annoyed of what those terrorist do to Islam, but a lot of them in the Arab world feel rage against the US administration for her backing of Israel and taking over Iraq. They have their own delimma here, most consider the US and Israel their enemies. When someone fight those states, he gets their sympathy.

If this is a war between the US and radical Muslims, then coming from a christian family, or even being not so much of a believer make me root to the US, but when it comes to affect Arabs as of perceiving the war between the US and Arabs then my patriotic feeling wins and I root to my nation.

It is all connected togather and complicated, and when you watch the different TV satellite news stations you get all missed up. For example, in the last American war on Iraq, what should my stand be? Support Saddam’s terror regime even against the will of the people he rules just because he is an Arab? or Cheering the US for getting rid of an awful regime? But then the situation on the ground in Iraq is even worse than before by having people killing each other. Is it resistance as Arabic media calls it? or terror as it sounds to be?

My life style isn’t any different than any other normal Arabic citizen, it isn’t much different than any other normal American citizen but it does contradict big time with some radical religious people way of living.

I drink Pepsi and Coca cola. I so often eat in Burger king, Mc Donald, or KFC. I like my coffe from Starbucks. I work on HP PC runned by Microsoft windows. I have Yahoo, MSN and Google email addresses, I use the MSN messenger, and blog on blogger.com. I watch MBC4 and ONE TV, I love American series, and TV shows. Watch OPRAH, DR. PHIl, The Insider, and the ABC morning news. I go to cinema to watch Hollywood movies. I read American novels and books. I long for democracy, more social freedom, and human rights. I wear a jeans and a t-shirt. I don’t have my beard long, or wear a long white dress. I don’t want to cover my women or see women being covered. I don’t want seperation between sexes as in Saudi Arabia, or Iran. I don’t want to root for someone who considers a woman showing her shoulders as nudity, make-up as sluttiness, and music as immoral.

Who is the real threat to my life style? To many Arabs way of living that doesn’t differ from the rest of the world way of living now in this globalization era?