Archive for November, 2007

Last night I had the pleasure of travelling on what can best be called “performance art”. In reality, picture a large shipping truck, and instead of cargo in the container, you have 3 rows of theater seating. Instead of a cold container metallic wall, there are white screens that play a documentary, and every now […]



“How do you expect us to report on the credibility of elections when civil groups are not permitted to observe vote casting and ballot counting?” - Samih Sunukrut, secretary general of the Arab Organisation for Human Rights. The Jordanian Coalition for Civil Society Organisations announced on Tuesday it would drop a plan to monitor parliamentary […]



The topic this week was surprisingly about prices and energy. I say surprisingly because the Jordan Business team has just finished a major cover story on inflation in the country, which essentially questions the government’s statements on the topic, and the measures they’ve taken (or lack thereof) to curb it. I have to admit that […]



I’m Trying

06Nov07

…I really am.
(most of the time)
(kinda)

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Intellectual property: it may be one of the most unsexy topics in economics, but the strange market that is Jordan always makes even the most boring of topics, quite interesting. In these past 5 years, two entwining phenomena have arisen. The first being Jordan’s discovery that in order to enhance an investor environment as well […]



I.
I learned to whistle our bloody history through my teeth
Painted our folklore on the harsh canvas walls of caves
To remember the biographies of a continent
That screamed to the colonialist
This is the way we dance
These are our truths
Yes, every winter we ate clementines
And in the fall we picked the olives
Pressed the oil beneath our nails for […]



Knowing my love for political discussions and political sittings, my boss let me tag along to a “salon seyasi” at the World Affairs Council. I don’t believe “salon seyasi” has an actual English translation but it is basically an informal get together, meet-up, or forum, where people sit around the perimeter of an open room […]



A few weeks after the Ramadan visit to the Baqaa (Bag3a) Palestinian refugee camp, the Action Committee returned to help out a family in need. The father is of Syrian decent and operates a ka3k trolley, which essentially means he walks around all day making cheap sandwiches. His wife is Jordanian and is deaf. Together […]



Yes. Other than our love for the environment, Al Gore and I also share messy desks in common. Some of you might recall Roba running a competition on her blog about a year ago, for the messiest desk. I didn’t win the messiest category, but I did get recognition for having the “most livable” desk. […]



Look, I’m not a parent, so this isn’t one of those preachy I-know-best posts. At least it’s not intended that way. I’m positive that parenting is the hardest job in the world so I’m not going to pretend to endow my wisdom upon the masses. But I am a critic. And this is a country […]