A small proposal

I haven't really written anything here in anger before, I might have written once or twice in boredom but never in anger. Now that changes. It takes a lot to make me really angry but today it happend and the topic is, of course, wine, or rather the lack off. As you might, or might not, know Syria pretends to produce something it likes to call wine (from now on referred to as "wine"). No one else in the world would ever label it that but they do. The quality of it is so bad that it's not even fitting to use it for carpet miscoloring. So it might come as a bit of a shock that they didn't start producing "wine" yeterday but that it has actually been going on for a while. Myself I'm of the opinion that if you've been doing something in a REALLY bad way for a long time you should probably change something. A first step for the local "wine"-producer could be to get someone to sample it before it's distributed but since they no longer carry out death penalties in this country I don't think that will happen.

I was discussing this matter with a Syrian today and he told me that the company is governmentally owned and that of course gave me lots of great ideas on how to improve things. The first thing to come to mind is that they should just sell the entire thing to someone who actually knows something about wineproduction or at the least to someone that has actually had a glass of wine in his/her life. Considering that other countries in the region produce quite nice wines I don't think the abyssmal quality of Syrian "wine" is because of raw materials so there should be someone out there that would be interested. The government makes a nice buck selling it all and let's someone else make all the new investments and then they can tax exports and local distribution to make another buck or two. This idea was appreciated but called unrealistic.

So I had another one: Bring someone over here to improve the production but keep the ownership with the government. You don't need to bring some expensive French guy, just ask someone that had a setting of fruit wine in their bathroom to take a look at production, it couldn't do any harm. Somethings you don't even need professional help for, like: getting some new barrels instead of using ones that earlier were used to store toxic waste and just because they added kerosene to the wine in Simpsons doesn't mean that you have to do it too. And if the point of selling this "wine" is to provide people with candlesticks then you might just want to stop making them have to pour out the "wine" first and just make some nice candlesticks instead. This way the government has to pay for investments but they can keep all the profit. I don't understand why this hasn't already been taken care of since I do believe that Syria could compete with Lebanese wine and make a rather nice profit from exports.

If I ever come back to making small proposals I'll do one on Syrian Tourism marketing, or lack off. That's almost as upsetting as the "wine" thing, not quite though as nothing ever upsets me more than a bad wine.

I will never ever ever even mention the thing they call "beer" here, just put it like this; they most probably use the water from the river whose name it goes by to make it...

Shop till you drop

Looking back at my trip to Amman it might seem a bit odd. I didn't really do anything even close to what tourists usually do in Jordan. That being looking at old rocks in different forms and shapes then. Instead I just did things that I can't do here in Damascus. Like going to Burger King and eating a Double Whopper, and yes it tasted just as bland as major franchise burgers always do. Jenni was lucky enough to be able to get a vegetarian burger, minus the burger of course. There doesn't seem to be any market for vegetarian food in the Arab world. We also passed by a real supermarket. Since I didn't feel like carrying the entire store back to Damascus I settled for a bottle of Heinz Ketchup, you can't get good ketchup in Syria. They simply put too much sugar in it here.

After shopping we did our best to find a cinema, another thing we don't really have in Syria. Unless you count the one at Cham Palace that show quite old movies, or the smaller ones that show either Arab movies or seem to show movies that you just don't want to watch... In Amman there's no problem to find a cinema though. Our biggest problem was the directions we got or the cab drivers we rode with. In the end we found one in a super-western mall. They had both a Versace store and a food-court . Amazing I say. I didn't dare to try the buns at "Cinnabuns" or whatever the place was called. They looked kind of nice but I didn't feel like having a heart-attack. At least we managed to get tickets to this movie called "When a stranger calls". It was more or less the first five minutes of "Scream" turned in to an entire movie. I kind of liked it anyway, despite it being a bit to scary for me.

Then I had to go back to the Cliff since they lock the door at some random time between twelve and one. i can understand that Samer wants to get some sleep though. One of the evenings at the Cliff I asked a Maltese guy how useful Maltese is around here. Apparently I was the first to ever ask him that but he said it actually was quite useful. Not that much of a surprise maybe but it was cool to hear it from someone that actually had some experience of it.

The trip back to Damascus was much quicker than the one to Amman. Despite me being the only westerner in the Car. On the other hand we weren't going in to Jordan this time. So no thumbprints or photos were taken of us and the car wasn't checked three times. But going in to Syria they actually sprayed the car down with something to get rid of the bird flu. Good thing I live in a country that hasn't had any cases of it, much safer than those dangerous countries in Northern Europe... The trip took about three hours, maybe a little less. The company might have been nicer going to Amman but this time around no one in the car spoke any other language than Arabic, which is something to always be appreciated. Ok, the Algerians spoke French but that doesn't really count does it?

I spent most of today studying at Inhouse, so it's nice to be back in Damascus. Drinking Amman-priced coffee and discussing Swedish Deathmetal with the usual suspects. Like I knew anything about that, at least I know how to pronounce "Yngwe Malmsteen" which gives me lots of kudos. I know it might not sound like it but i did spend like five hours studying as well.

Back at the Cliff

Jordan, I'm finally here. I actually thought I might never end up going at all. I decided that I had to come here about a week ago and that I'd try to get a taxi from Damascus to Amman.

So two days ago I was going to Beit Jebri to say goodbye to my German flatmate Sven and as I was entering the place some people was leaving and they we're speaking Swedish. Since I never speak Swedish anymore I just shouted: Hey Sweden to them. Then I ended up speaking with these three Swedes for about twenty minutes and since they were also going to Amman the next day we deceided to share a cab. So yesterday I met up with them, One woman and a her daughter and also the mother's collegue from work, to go to Amman. All in all it was a quite easy trip, despite the Jordanian border being very slow.

I got to the Cliff at about half past seven and still ended up having to wait a bit for Jenni. It was ok since I had the time to say hi to Samer and taking a shower before she showed up. As it is it is always nice to meet someone from the old crew and when ever I do we end up talking for hours about the strangest things. I guess someplaces do that to you.

We ended up going to books@cafe which is a bookstore/restaurant in Downtown Amman. I was very shocked at the amount of books they sold and in English too. Amazing I had almost forgotten that there existed books in English.

We were supposed to go to Karak today and check out the castle but since the busdriver wouldn't get going until the bus was full and we were about five people on it we decided against it. So I'll just spend the rest of the day shopping at the supermarket and the bookstores. Maybe I'll even drop by Burger King for a burger or something. A little taste of the West, or whatever you call it.

Breaking Circles

So from complaining about my mundane existance to complaining about it changing. I guess I'm just the kind of guy that's never satisfied about anything...

It just struck me that more or less all of the people I've been hanging out with lately either already left or will leave in the next two weeks. Of course there'll be new people coming but I don't think it'll be the same.

At least I came up with a new way of adding to my study time since it's been kind of hard to find the time to increase it. Flashcards might be good for busrides but they get boring every now and then so I went out and bought some books that are published in both English and Arabic. That's really good for bed and trips since I don't need any dictionary to read them.

Other than that I'm just hoping for rain since the city is still very dusty from the sand rain. It makes it seem even more like a ghost town. Because in so many ways Damascus really looks like one. It's not that dirty, by comparison to other third world cities it's not dirty at all and there's always all these people out cleaning the streets so it looks rather ok. But all other kinds of maintainance have been left completely neglected so the houses look really really old despite being sometimes just twenty years old. A lot of them would benefit from some paint and others from someone just stopping the water leaks... Still, I really like this city, but I'll go for a road trip next weekend. That will give me something to write about...

Today was also Independance day. Sixty years of independance. I thought about going to Quneitra and check the festivities but I went to Inhouse and studied instead. Always, the party animal. So I missed the entire party. Then again, I got to see everyone celebraiting Easter yesterday so I don't have to see another celebration again in my life. The last couple of weeks have been nothing but days of from school because of the Prophet's birthday, Easter and Independance. Next week is another Easter and there are even rumors that there was some kind of Easter last weekend. I take some pride in not caring about anything else than my studies though...

Going in a circle

Now I'm more than ever at home in Syria. Life has become so based on routines that I don't really now what to write here anymore. Not that I'd like to say that it's only for the worse. Actually it's quite alright.

I'll spend most days waking up a little late for school, usually ending up taking a cab there. Spending for hours in class is kind of ok. Then I'll go to the gym three times a week and spend afternoons and early evenings either at Inhouse or at a random library studying and doing homework. Some evenings I meet up with some friends and smoke waterpipe and drink tea, except for on weekends when we go clubbing.

My exam actually went quite ok despite me making some really stupid misstakes in the grammar part of it.

The weather is completely amazing at the moment; sunny and really, really warm. I'm not one to complain about sun so I'm happy.

Also a small warning: Foreign women shouldn't go to Aleppo, at least not without a male escort. Apparently the men there are not like people in most other cities of the world...

Things I've learnt
We had our kind of midterm exam today. I don't know if you really can call it midterm since every course is just four weeks long but I'll do it anyway.
Usually I don't learn that much from exams but today I learnt something really important; in Syria two hundred is more than two hundred thousand. The thing goes like this. It was during the listening part of the exam and the guy on the tape said that there has lived people in Damascus for more than two hundred thousand years... On our question paper there was then a statement that there lived people in Damascus for more than two hundred years. I of course marked that as correct, thinking that two hundred thousand years are probably more than two hundred. WRONG!!! Stupid me.

So I thought I should mention some other things I've learnt here:

There's a "musical" genre called Swedish melodic Death-metal.
There are Syrians that like that kind of "music"
It's always better to change lanes, especially in rush traffic.
About 500-1000 new Arabic words (I'm making amazing progress, not that it makes any difference)
There are no queues, then again who doesn't love chaos?
Americans are crazy
Americans have a funny vocabulary
Kent are big in the Pakistani community of Austin, Texas
Damascus has some nice nightclubs
"Son of a taxidriver" is a valid insult
You can find anything you need in Syria. Everything from Authorized Apple Resellers to Temporary fillings is to be found. Sometimes it just takes a bit of time. (If you think it was hard for me to find earplugs you should really try to find some temporary fillings (for cavities that is))
People are crazy, did I ever tell you that?
There's a Swedish company that exports wooden LCD-Screens to Syria
Mozart was German (Nope not Austrian)
"Power Hour" is a bad idea
"Olympic Games" are even worse
Americans are really, really crazy
They will even rather use the Term "An Afro-American from Britan" rather than "A Black British guy"
Swedish is a useful language here, unless you run into Swedes that don't speak a word of it
Hanging out with Brits make me use a lot of bad words
Hanging out with Brits makes me learn a lot of bad words
Hanging out with non-drinking Brits (almost an oxymoron?) can make you very drunk
Brits are cool

Keeping busy

I'd like to say that my new course is very hard, but that would be I lie. Then again our new teacher gives us so much homework that you wouldn't believe me if I told you how much. There are some positive things about that though since it forces me to review the material of the course rather than just spending my days with newspapers and bad books.

At this point my studies take up about six to ten hours of an ordinary day but I think i'll have to up that to ten to twelve hours a day. I'm just not making enough of a progress as it is. When I do the math in my head that i'll just learn three times of what I've learnt so far during this trip I tend to get a bit anxious. I'll just never learn this language.

Taking my time to study doesn't really stop me from hanging out as well. Usually for a couple of hours each night or going to strange clubs or parties in the weekends. You must be allowed to relax every now and then.

I'm going to try to get some pictures of Damascus here in a couple of days. I'll try to find some "alternative" ones.

The day of yellow rain

First the most important thing: Me myself and I. My health is now very fine indeed. I might still not have much of an appetite, but then again that's most probably just for the better.

Day before yesterday was kind of strange since we got hit by the sandy rain. It's not the best thing to ever happen, especially not to my bedcover that was still drying. But the sky got really yellow and so did all the cars... This thing apparently doesn't happen every year in Damascus so I feel very special, or at least a bit yellow.

Being sick made me fail to mention that a new course has started. We're eleven students this time around and only three are new so it's mostly the same old people. But since they're all so nice I'm not one to complain.

There were a lot of people from other classes that left the uni though. mostly because it's almost the same price to have a private tutor as to study there. That made a whole bunch of people think both once and twice about staying. Private teacher isn't really an option for me though so I stayed and I'll stay through out the summer.

New courses usually means new people as well. This time around there aren't as many Italians around though. Almost all of the new students actually seem to be German. Not that I'm one to have any negative ideas about Germans, and them being here means that maybe there will be some moose signs left in Sweden at the end of the summer...