Category: Family stuff
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Baby Sinan was born exactly a week ago..
On 27 September 2006, at 11:50 am baby Sinan said: “Hello World!” He’s baby 3.0 for our family. He joins Qais (8) and Eyas (3.5) to make our house even noisier Read these related posts on 360east: A new SYNTAX baby is born! Remembering Sofian Eid in Dubai with family and friends BOBS interview: Die…
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It’s official: the Smart is faster than a Ferrari!
..and if you don’t believe it, just check out this video. My kids will love this. I mean.. I drive a Smart, and they are crazy about Ferraris, Porches and Lamborghinis. I will show it to them this evening and see what they think.. [whisper]: Maybe I will not tell them that this Smart 4two…
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Amazing project: Greening the Jordanian Desert
I just read this post on Rami’s Wall. It’s about an amazing experiment in reviving a damaged land.. Rami’s Wall: Greening the Jordanian Desert: Geoff Lawton has found a way to green the Jordanian desert. Using the ‘principles of permaculture’, he helped Jordanian farmers ‘to salvage a heavily salted environment and turn it into a…
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In memory: Mohammad Ali Al-Kurdi, Pharmacist
To tell you how I got to know Mohammad Ali Al-Kurdi, I have to recount how I met his son, Samer, my best friend of my teenage days: Sometimes you have to write a message in a bottle or travel across the globe to find a friend in your city. In the mid 1980’s, a…
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Jordan’s alarming lack of ‘quality work’!
I have come to a conclusion, which I have voiced repeatedly to friends over the past few months. In Jordan, we can’t even get ‘wijeh el sa77ara’ right anymore! (‘Wijeh el sa77ar’ mean the ‘face of the fruit basket’ in Arabic, which refers to the the practice of putting a layer of nice looking fruit…
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Germany: champion of the world-cup of hearts!
“What’s a cup worth when you’ve won 80 million hearts?” (photo source Focus.de) That’s how Germany is celebrating it’s win of the 3rd place of the world cup. The wave of public euphoria just went on tonight. On German TV, a studio guest said “the 3rd place is being celebrated as if the first place…
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This world-cup was much more than football for Germany
Germany is out! Originally uploaded by fugo. Germany goes to bed very sad tonight. Today’s defeat in front of Italy put an end to the hopes that have been swelling up all over Germany for the past 3 weeks. But what many people may not understand is that this world-cup meant much more to Germany…
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Sufis, saxophone and the sheikh next door
Here is my definition of good art: Good Art Should Bend Your Mind. I got my mind bent in a good way yesterday. Along with a few hundred Ammanis I was at Darat al Funun for a Hadra. A performance of religious Nasheeds and prayers. As I arrived at the outdoor performance I glanced at…
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It’s toot season in Amman
Last week, my son and I went to one of Amman’s old neighborhoods to visit a the well known cultural/art center Darat al Funun. In the garden of that center are a number of toot/berry trees (of the red and white varieties). In Jordan, this is the only known kind of ‘berries’. The tree itself…
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Big Mercedes GOOOOOD. Small Scooter BAAAD (!!!???)
What does this cartoon from Today’s Al Ghad tell us? In 1976, our ‘proud grandfathers’ (proudly wearing their Hatta and Abaya, of course) used to own a Mercedes. In 1996, a decade ago, our father’s generation had to ‘contend themselves’ with owning a mini. Hatta and Abaya gone, of course (loss of pride?) And in…
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Do you qualify for a free phone adaptor and subscription from Olivoice?
If you live in the US and are thinking of getting a VoIP phone service for your home or business, then you might want to know that our friends at Olivoice, who have just launched their phone service, are giving away 10 phone adaptors (valued at 65$) and waiving the 19.9$ subscription fees for 10…
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Talk more with Olivoice
If you live in the US and Canada (Europe too?) and have family and friends in the good old Arab world (or the ‘Blaad’ as Arab Americans like to say ) or the wider world, then you have to check out Olivoice, a new kind of telecom which has just launched today! And that’s not…