Passing Afternoon

One of the most beautiful songs ever written. The lyrics are amazing, so beautiful. I don't know what the song is about. Maybe it's about how life can end, about our "endless numbered days", the name of the album. Maybe it's about lost love.

Passing Afternoon - Iron and Wine

There are times that walk from you
Like some passing afternoon
Summer warmed the open window of her honeymoon
And she chose a yard to burn
But the ground remembers her
Wooden spoons, her children stir her Bougainvillea blooms
There are things that drift away
Like our endless numbered days
Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made
And she's chosen to believe
In the hymns her mother sings
Sunday pulls its children from their piles of fallen leaves
There are sailing ships that pass
All our bodies in the grass
Springtime calls her children until she lets them go at last
And she's chosen where to be
Though she's lost her wedding ring
Somewhere near her misplaced jar of Bougainvillea seeds
There are things we can't recall
Blind as night that finds us all
Winter tucks her children in, her fragile china dolls
But my hands remember hers
Rolling around the shaded ferns
Naked arms, her secrets still like songs I'd never learned
There are names across the sea
Only now I do believe
Sometimes, with the window closed, she'll sit and think of me
But she'll mend his tattered clothes
And they'll kiss as if they know
A baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone

Old Arabic Songs

I've become so addicted to some old Arabic songs lately, especially the ones in formal Arabic language (3arabi fasee7). Our language is really beautiful and I feel we don't appreciate it as we should.

Here are the videos of a couple of my latest addictions:


"Taloomoni al Donya- Lateefa" (words by Nizar Qabbani and composed by Kathem Saher




"Kon Sadeeki- Majida Roomi"




"khaleeni bil jaw- maya nasri" ok the video sucks big time but I love the song.




"7abibati man takoon - Nawal Zoghbi" One of my all-time faves. It's originally by Abd il 7aleem 7afiz but I think this cover is so much better.

I HATE IT

I don't think I've ever hated uni as much as I do this semester and it's driving me into a depression. And the thing is, I don't even know why I'm hating it so much.

Maybe it's my crappy schedule, there's traffic when I arrive and AWFUL traffic when I leave. I now understand why cab drivers are such assholes. Ba3dein to have Java at 3.30? 7aram 3aleikom.

Or maybe it's because I'm not liking the subjects I'm taking. I don't remember liking a subject so much, but I don't know, now I'm realizing that I don't wanna be doing, whatever it is the hell I'm studying, for the rest of my life.

Aaaaah kollo 3a ba3do garaf.

And I tried starting this week with a positive attitude, which lasted what 15 minutes?

I think I'm having some sort of quarter-life crisis.

Are you good at "Bullshit"?

The card game, that is. The point is to get rid of all your cards by placing one or more cards of a certain determined number. For example, player 1 has to put down an ace, player 2 a two, and so on. If you don't have the number you're supposed to play, or wish to pass more cards, you lie. Hence the name "Bullshit". If a player accuses you of lying he yells out "Bullshit", and upon opening the cards you either collect all the cards at the table if you were lying, or if you were in fact honest, the accuser gets the cards.

I personally suck at this game. If I win, it's only because I lucked out and had the numbers I was supposed to play. I think this game is a pretty good indicator of whether people have the ability to "bullshit" people or not.

I'm not talking about lying. I think I can lie. But I can't pretend to like someone if I really don't. It always shows up on my face. Other people have a rather impressive ability to make people think they like them, while secretly hating them. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, let's face it, bullshitting is an important skill.

Not for me though. I can't pretend to be another person.

I'd suck as a politician, no?

I just felt like blogging...

Don't have much to say but I felt like posting something..

So I'm on a break now till next Sunday, when my new semester starts. I'm not looking forward, because the schedule's not so great and all my courses are with the exact same people. Don't get me wrong, I like them, but a change would be nice, no? Plus I'm taking JAVA. I hate programming courses, I almost flunked the C course.

Students must finish 160 hours of training before leaving to Germany (which is next September for me) and I still have 80 hours to complete. I could've finished them this break but I didn't want to do anything, really.

I'm so lazy when it comes to getting stuff done. I don't know if I've always been like this, or if this whole attitude just developed since uni, but I'm always like "meh". I remember reading a post about knowing what you want to be and where you're going, and I realized I'm totally clueless. I have no idea what I want to be, I have no idea what I want to be doing, I'm basically just going with the flow. I mean I'm doing pretty good I think, my average is like 81 but what's the point if I don't know what to do with that? And what I'm supposed to have an epiphany if I don't know? And then you see people who studied one thing and are doing something completely irrelevant. I think I'm gonna end up like that. But whatever it is I end up doing, I want to be happy doing it. I'm just gonna keep quitting till I find something I like.

Moving on.

I started on this project with 7iber. They're receiving funding to hire 3 people to summarize posts from around the Jordanian blogosphere to be published in Alghad (yes, in Arabic). I'm loving it because it's really improving my Arabic language, I haven't written Arabic articles since God knows when. I also remembered how much I love translating. But so far, they haven't started publishing and yesterday we were told to stop writing till we get confirmation on when they'd start posting. Hope the whole thing will work out, because it'll be a serious bummer if it doesn't. I want a paycheck :(

Ok I'm done talking.

Bye bye.

Enjoy Yourself...

House is one of my all-time favorite shows, it just keeps getting better by the season, and the video below is one of my favorite moments in the show. It's from season 5 [SPOILER ALERT], where House realizes that his hallucination, Amber who died in season 4, has not disappeared. It's so creepy, watch it.