The bus station the following morning was hot, dusty, and on the east side of town, where I’d never been before. Silas and I shared a taxi over there, and he commented that it was a very different world compared to the west side of Amman, which is filled with western shops, commercialization, and most noticeably, uncovered women. “You won’t see a single uncovered woman in this conservative part of town. It just isn’t done,” Silas commented as the rattling, tiny bus pulled away from the station and roared into the sunrise.

We met Haytham outside his home in the quiet city of Zarqa. As it was a Friday morning, not many people seemed to be up yet, enjoying the day off. Silas and I relaxed in the front meeting room of his house, stretching out our sore muscles from being jammed into the tiny bus (probably broke both my kneecaps). We chatted with Haytham’s father, a cheerful older gentleman who spoke passable English and, coincidentally enough, was a veterinarian, like my mother. Haytham made the two of us some tasty sandwiches (there’s few things better than Arab hospitality) and drinks, and we passed an hour in the cozy little front room, waiting for the bus to Irbid to arrive.

We met up with Haytham’s mother and sister at the bus station, and the six of us took the last seats in the front of coach bus. Thankfully, it was much roomier than the preceding one, with dark velvet shades pulled over all the windows and the typical decorative hangings all over the ceiling. I’ve come to expect an interesting decor inside vehicles here in Jordan; everything from Majid’s little Honda to the massive garbage trucks I’ve rode in have tassels, prayer beads, and thick plush covering all over every surface.

Haytham looked at me with mild curiosity as I pulled out my ever-present camera and started snapping pictures of the wind-swept desert hills and valleys as the bus left Zarqa. “What’s the point of taking pictures of the desert?” he asked me. “It’s just different from what I’m used to, that’s all,” I replied. He gazed out the dirty window into the sands. “Ever since we are little, we are taught that green is good, and the desert is a bad place,” he mused. “Even though we are surrounded by it and it makes up our whole lives, and we cannot escape from it. I am happy when the rains come for a few weeks each year, and when the sky fills with clouds and no one can see the sun.” I told him that in America, we have the nursery rhyme, “Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day.” He laughed at that, shaking his head in disbelief that children could be so flippant about the life-giving liquid.

Although I had been planning on sleeping for the bus ride, Haytham and I ended up discussing Islam and Christianity for the entirety of the trip, comparing interpretations of the holy books and asking each other questions about what makes people good - is it the shame of religion, or a natural impetus for harmony? I played the devil’s advocate here (somewhat literally!) and questioned Haytham’s interpretation, that without religion and the fear of an angry God, the world would be overrun with chaos. I asked him what he would do if he found out tomorrow that there was no God. He considered this thoughtfully for a moment: “In this situation, I suppose, I would try to be a good man and carry on the tenants of Islam. But, as time went on, I would begin to be angry and do bad things because I would have no fear of the next life. This is why we need religion, to be good people.”

When our coach reached Irbid, we transferred to progressively smaller vehicles as we wound our way up into the mountains, until by the time we reached our destination and stopped by a little dukaan (convenience store) for a jug of Pepsi, I felt like we were either going to break through the dirty wisps of cloud, or fall off the side of the cliff we were perched on. Feeling my knees creaking from being jammed into the truck of our most recent transportation (a minivan) I got out and stretched. A few pickup trucks rattled by, packed with wide-eyed children who stared bug-eyed at me, mouths agape. “Yeah, you might as well get used to people staring at us while we’re here; this definitely isn’t Amman,” Silas muttered behind me.

After a few more minutes and another couple hundred meters up the mountain, we came to the site of the festivites. The minivan squeezed the six of us out with a tired gasp, and rumbled away down the road, as a crowd of people descended on Haytham’s family, leaving Silas and I awkwardly staring at the ground for a few minutes until one of the men, a muscular man who introduced himself to us in perfect English as Mohammad, and invited us down the short hill to his house where the party was taking place.

Almost ceremoniously, Silas and I were led through a crowd of forty people, all of whom rose to their feet when we approached and lined up to shake our hands. Smiling and nodding, they grasped my hand and spoke, “Ahlan,” “Asaalammu Alaykum,” “Ahlan wa Sahlan,” “Marhabah,” as I tried to fumble my way passably through returning the proper response to each different greeting (it’s like a confusing game!)

At the end of the line, we met the patriarch of the family, and learned that this wasn’t just a wedding, it was a double wedding. The Old Man (which is what I’ll refer to him respectfully, since I never did catch his name, and usually fathers, especially older fathers, are merely referred to as “Father of (son’s name)”) was marrying off the last of his sons, of which he had 10 others and two other daughters. “Alf Mabrook!” (A thousand blessings!) I stammered to him, awed by this prodigious progenitor who was now smiling up at me. Of all of the Arab men I’ve met so far here, he seemed to fit the wise-and-venerable-grandfather more than anyone else: he wore a long, flowing blue robe, traditional hatta (headdress) bound with thick leather cords around his forehead, and a short, neatly-trimmed white beard. His face was incredibly weathered and lined, but as he beamed at me and pumped my handed happily, I quickly saw that they were all smile lines. As we all sat together, drinking the hot spicy coffee that I had been first introduced to at the Sheik’s residence, the Old Man never stopped smiling congenially at the throng of well-wishers around him, laughing, and shaking the dozens of hands that were being continuously proferred to him in blessings.

Mohammad and the Old Man were neighbors, and the party was split between their two houses, with us men sitting outside in a long patio in front of Mohammad’s residence, and apparently, the women cloistered within the Old Man’s house (I could hear them occasionally, and less occasionally an ornately covered head would peep out the door to look up at us. As I listened to Mohammad explain to Silas and I, there had been hundreds more people earlier in the day for lunch, but now people had gone home to prepare for the festival in a few hours. Suddenly, he recalled that we hadn’t eaten yet, leapt up, and led us four latecoming men (Haytham’s mother and sister having instantly vanished to join the other women when we had arrived) down the hill to the Old Man’s welcoming room, where a huge plate of Mensaf was set in front of us, complete with the delicious sour cream sauce, thick fluffy yellow rice, roasted peanuts, and roasted chunks of lamb (bones and all). Mohammad sent another man down the hill with us, who silently seemed to have the sole purpose of slicing up the lamb into smaller chunks and pouring more cream sauce over the rice.

Moments after eating, the “parade” began! People started pouring over the hill to congregate in the road outside the Old Man’s driveway, surrounding two young men in pinstriped suits that I deduced were the two grooms. Shouting and cheering, the crowd began singing and chanting, and the two men were lifted onto the shoulders of their older brothers and were carried briskly down the street towards the south.

The kids totally covered the grooms before we reached our destination

Little children in t-shirts and sweatpants cavorted around our feet as Silas, Haytham and myself followed near the back. I quickly found out why as we started to enter the village’s commercial district - every time we passed a dukaan a man would come out with a box of candy and chocolates and rain them down onto our heads. The children seemed to be completely insane for these treats - flinging themselves under our feet, stomping on each others’ hands to reach them first, and shoving for them like they were little diamonds instead of 10-cent candy bars. A lot of kids had also brought little aerosol cans, which I was wondering about until they raced up to the grooms and sprayed long arcs of white foam that smelled vaguely of soap and jasmine directly into their paths. Suddenly, it seemed like the Jordan mountaintop was covered in snow as the light breeze blasted the light foam in all directions. Even in the back, I quickly found myself coated with foam like it was my high school graduation again, and I did my best to try to prevent it from landing on my camera lens. The adults laughed indulgently, and the grooms didn’t seem to mind much either about their jackets (although after about 10 minutes of repeated spraying one of them looked like he was profoundly wishing their mothers had kept the little ones at home).

Here’s a video of the “wedding party” heading towards the center of town, singing and in some cases, drumming. Haytham told me that they were basically singing to God to look favorably upon the marriages and that they would please Him, and to protect the new husbands and wives.

When we got into the main village square, we joined about fifty other men that were already there waiting. They had rolled out a booming sound system at ear-shattering volumes, which was playing Arab Techno (for lack of a better descriptor) that was repetitive, but catching and fast-paced. The “wedding party” was merged into this group, for a total of around 250 people in the square. The video above shows the traditional Arab dance, “Dapka” which looks easy, especially when they’re starting slowly like in this video, but is a lot tougher to do properly without stomping on people’s feet and looking like a total idiot. The younger men at the festival (numbering about 30-40) really took it to another level, with intricate coordinated stomps to the beat, raising their left feet together and bobbing forward out of the line for a heavy, rhythmic *thump* all at the same time. They would also practically flip each other, playing around. There was one guy in particular that I recall who was really incredible at this, dancing like a Russian: keeping his upper body perfectly still while his legs were doing this incredibly fast and flailing jig.

I don’t have more videos of Dapka because they hardly ever let me leave the line to go grab another Pepsi! It seems like wherever I turned, there was another guy guesturing me to join the line. Although Silas and Haytham participated a little bit in the dancing, they quickly found spots at the sidelines to watch the dance and the tall, bearded imam-types firing off fireworks above our heads. At one point my attention was grabbed when a man ran into the crowd and fired off a dozen pistol rounds into the air. “Those are just blanks, right?” said Silas to Haytham. “What do you think?” retorted Haytham with a grin. I decided to stay under an awning for a few minutes, recalling previous stories of people being killed by accidental gunfire at weddings.

It was an unusual feeling to be the center of everyone’s attention, including the two grooms and the Old Man, who were walking around talking to people, but always sought me out in the Dapka line to pat me on the back and greet me. The Old Man seemed particularly pleased to see at the festivities; he kept bringing other older men over to greet me, all the while exclaiming happily, “hoowah amreekee!” (he’s an American!) He would grin happily whenever he saw me, give me an enthusiastic thumbs up and say, “Good! Good! Good!” in his crackling old voice, clapping his hands with joy.

Whenever I wasn’t in the Dapka line, the children would follow me everywhere, staring at me with unhidden expressions of wonder, not even closing their mouths as they gaped at me. I asked Haytham why they seemed to be so enthralled by me in particular, when they barely paid Silas any attention (”I prefer it that way,” he told me later). “You have blonde hair, Silas does not,” Haytham informed me. “Probably, none of these children have ever seen anyone with blonde hair before.” After all, he continued, Westerners didn’t really have any reason to come to this village. He seemed a little embarrassed that everyone was crowding around me so much. “In my village, people are not this annoying,” he said, quickly.

It was a little embarrassing for me too, because the children continuously asked me questions, giggling as I tried to find words in my memory that would fill my limited vocabulary. The adults too, clustered around me, although not as close; it seemed almost like they were trying to protect me from the children, and whenever the kids and I started talking, the adults would hurry up to me, apologizing, and shoo them away. But the little boys always come drifting back within a few minutes, chewing their fingernails and whispering to each other. Several of them seemed to inch towards me, then pat my arm, then race back to consult with their peers. I hate to be guilty of such such suspicion, but I was worried they might be thinking of introducing themselves to my wallet and cell phone, and confided this in Haytham. He shrugged and told me that it was unlikely, that thanks to the Islamic tenant of Zakat Kareem (generous alms), the kids are given money freely by the members of the community when they need it, so petty crime like pickpocketing is essentially nonexistent.

The solemn-faced leader tries to organize his eager gang for photo taking, but Blue-shirt was a little enthusiastic

I felt even more guilty for that worry, when a group of children came towards me again, and then their leader, a solemn-looking little guy with curly hair and an orange shirt, presented me with a gift: a little black plastic bracelet covered with Jordanian flags. He put it on me himself, and then stepped back proudly as I held it up to the dimming evening light to see it better. I was very touched by this gesture, and asked the children if I could take a picture of them. I tried to offer the leader a half-dinar coin, but he shook his head solemnly and melted into the crowd, and his cohorts scattered, giggling, as the ceremony came to a close.

The two grooms were lifted up on a table about 6 feet in the air by six or seven others, and then as the techno Dapka music reached its climactic bridge (for the 80th/90th time) they were spun slowly around a few times as the crowd cheered. The two brothers embraced each other, waved to the assembled village, and smiled down at their beaming father. And just like that, the festival was over, and people began to drift back to their cars. The little boy in orange reappeared again; running up behind me and tugging at my shirt. I turned and kneeled down to be at eye level with him. “Hello Goodbye,” he intoned solemnly, shaking my hand and patting the wrist with the bracelet on it. Then he smiled, and ran back into the alley.

But the wedding wasn’t over yet! After another 20 minutes that pretty much involved me semi-passed out in a car, exhausted from two hours of dancing as people ran about, getting everyone lined up for the other part of the ceremony - the grooms and brides were finally brought together and put into a very cute “just married” car, which spent the next half an hour driving slowly around the rest of the village, as about 25 cars and vans followed behind, honking noisily as their passengers (and drivers!) leaned halfway out the windows cheering, waving Jordanian flags, shooting off more fireworks, and waving palm branches. It was an interesting, almost surreal procession - at one point, we were all held up for 5 minutes as a herd of sleepy-looking Nubian goats were herded across the road in front of us by an equally sleepy-looking farmer. For an American, accustomed to weddings with hymns, formal clothes, and a cake at the end, it was almost surrealistic.

This convoy wheeled all around the mountaintop as the night began to overtake the village. Silas, Haytham and myself were jammed once again into the back of a minivan, this time with 4 other men, including the Old Man in the front seat, who graciously allowed me to photograph him. Haytham and I finally found some relief for our crunched legs by climbing halfway out the van’s windows and sitting on the doorframes. “Be careful,” the boy in the video calls to me as I’m clubbed in the back by a kid energetically waving a palm frond (”ouch,” you can hear me mutter). Silas joked with me that the reason they probably have these huge galas of village interaction is to make sure that everyone knows that these young people are married now so that they’re not stoned to death when people see that they’re living together (of course, he was only semi-joking).

At long last, the festivities were over and the majority of the convoy wended off into the darkness, often with four or five children leaning out the windows as they faded in the distance, still cheering and waving their flags. The rest of us found ourselves where we had started; a dozen men and their children sleepily sitting around Mohammad’s porch. For the next few hours, I chatted with Mohammad, Haytham’s father, and one of Haytham’s best friends from home, who was coincidentally named Zakareeya. Later on the evening, the genders finally combined and the five remaining men went down to the Old Man’s house we had strong tea with the women.

Eventually at around 11:30 or so, Haytham, Silas, Mohammad and I adjourned to Mohammad’s house for the night. Mohammad gave me his own cushion (against my protests) and the four of us all slept in Mohammad’s bedroom in the traditional Arab style, on low, padded cushions on the floor with plush ostrich-feather pillows, while the rest of Haytham’s family slept in the next room over. It was remarkably comfortable, and made me feel like a little kid again, when I would take all the cushions off the couch at home and sleep on the floor on my own little nest. We watched a bit of hilariously bad Arab television, attempted to ward off the hummingbird-sized mosquitoes (called nahmous; I felt like we should have been armed with cricket bats) and eventually drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Silas and I ate breakfast with Haytham’s family and Mohammad, a delicious meal of the expected fuul and hummous, but also tuna and a simply amazing chicken and onion mix that Silas and I agreed was perhaps the most delicious thing we’d had in months. There was also a special tea called Zaerta that Mohammad said came from berries on the mountains, picked fresh. It was particularly nice because it had breath-freshening qualities and kind of fizzed on my teeth. At breakfast, neither Haytham’s mother nor sister wore their hijab (head coverings) like all the women at the party had yesterday. I assumed that it was because they felt comfortable and safe here among old friends, and felt honored that they felt comfortable enough around Silas and I to not wear them.

Before we left, I went out onto Mohammad’s roof balcony and looked out across the land - the mountains, rolling hills and valleys for miles and miles into a far-away misty fog that could have even bed the Dead Sea. “You can actually see Palestine from the roof on a sunny day like today,” said Mohammad proudly, and I didn’t doubt him. The mosque on the mountain across the way was particularly impressive, and everywhere was surprisingly green for what I thought would be a desert, covered in twisted and gnarled old fig trees and a type of cacti I couldn’t identify but was covered in plump red fruits that looked like they would be quite succulent and tasty; if they didn’t also have the capability to impale your mouth at the same time.

All too soon, Haytham, Silas and I were piled onto a little Haifeela (city bus) again and rumbling down the mountain, leaving Mohammad and the dear Old Man behind. Before we had left, Mohammad had given me his cell phone number, telling me to give him a call before I came to the Citadel so that he could be sure to give me the best tour. The Old Man embraced me, and patted my face, and Haytham translated that he was asking if I wanted to stay in the village, learn more Arabic, and become a Muslim. “He says he thinks you’d be an excellent Muslim,” Haytham said as the Old Man nodded eagerly. My two hosts had been so welcoming and kind to me over the past day that I was very sad to say farewell to them.

As we reached the bottom of the mountain and continued our journey back into Irbid to catch a bus directly to Amman and say goodbye to Haytham, I realized something about the beauty of the unspoiled desert, compared with the streets of Amman, which are overwhelmed with garbage trash everywhere you look. It often looks in Amman like someone actually took a bag of trash, wandered into the middle of an empty lot, and dumped it out there. Sadly, even here there was still trash by the sides of the road, in the mountain desert wilderness. But the difference was that here, the trash only extended for a foot on the side of the road, and then it was like looking at land that had never been touched. I took many more pictures as the bus wound up and down the cliffs (”I think you Americans have a word for it; when you go up and down like this in a vehicle?” Haytham said to me. “A roller coaster,” I replied. “Oh yes, that’s it,” agreed Haytham).

The Arabs on the bus stared at me as I took pictures of the hills, much the same way Haytham had done the previous way. I understood now why they were surprised; to them, their sandswept hills were not something to focus on and document…..but I disagreed. I hope that someday, everyone across the world is able to see the natural beauty of their land, be it green or sandy, regardless of where they happened to be born. And then, when they understand it, they’ll want to fight to keep it clean and awe-inspiring for generations to come, for everyone: their children, and visitors like me. “Al-Oordon jameel,” I said to them as I disembarked the bus at the Irbid station - Jordan is beautiful.

Taxis here don’t follow street signs here - if you want to get to someplace out of the way, you have two choices. Either give the driver the name of a nearby, larger landmark that everyone knows about, or if you know exactly where the place is that you’re going from your own experience or a helpful guiding piece of paper that a resident friend/employer has given you (kind of them, really) and give the driver turn-by-turn directions.

The problem in my case is that taxi drivers seem to know a sucker when they see one, and they see a big tall goofy sucker when I wander up to their door and tentatively ask for “Dawaar Sadis?” - “Sixth Circle?” I thought that it would only be at the beginning of my stay here that I’d get the “Tourist’s Scenic Tour” as my mother dryly called it when I explained it to her: I try to get to Shemeisani and I’m driven in a big loop around my destination before being dropped off as the driver chats with me happily, with a big grin on his face.

Last night, on my way back from the school at 1 AM after working on the new server for twelve straight hours, I had my first rather nasty run in with one of the Taxi Sharks that I fished up outside of the school. Although my guidebooks explicitly say that rates do not increase, regardless of the time of night, apparently my tiredness prevented me from noticing immediately that the Shark hadn’t turned on the meter. I guestured to it and said, “minfud’luc” (probably proving further that I was just a dumb American who couldn’t speak his language) but he spoke rapidly, pointing to the clock, and told me that after midnight, it was a flat rate of 5 dinars. I sat upright at this. 5 dinars? The trip had always taken 1 dinar before, I protested, but I actually just felt worse because I only had a dinar and a half on me anyway: I’m a good sap; if someone is going to try to cheat my money away from me, I want to make sure he gets as much as possible!

That story doesn’t even compared to what happened tonight, the impetus for this entry. I had just made a new friend a few days ago through Silas at the school, a young Jordanian medical student named Haytham that had lived with him last year. I had a stroke of luck in meeting him, because Haytham turned out to have a lot of interest in computer construction, and he knew where all the best deals were in town for parts. I needed to get a new sound card for the server anyway, so I called him up this afternoon, and he offered to meet up with me at Mecca Mall on the other side of town. Easy enough for a brainy young man such as myself, especially one who was completely savvy to the possible wiles of Sharks after the previous night…right?

Wrong. Today’s Shark snapped me up just outside Philip’s house, grinning happily as he weaved through traffic. I was focused on texting Haytham and didn’t notice for thirty seconds that he hadn’t turned on the meter. I tried to ask about it, but he waved it off cheerfully. “No problem, no problem!” he chanted, baring his teeth and patting me on the knee. He asked me about my family and friends, whether I had a wife and children. I answered his questions as best as I could in a combination of English and bad Arabic, feeling more and more uncomfortable at the sight of the darkened meter and the fact that he seemed to be taking me far beyond where I believed Mecca Mall was. I asked him several more times to please, turn on this meter, but he gently refused each time. I finally just lapsed into silence, staring out the window.

Things started to get really awkward when he started patting my leg more frequently and jovially asked if I liked massages. “I give them, you know - second job at the hammam!” he proclaimed proudly. “Do you like sex?” he continued, rubbing my left shoulder as he steered slowly through the traffic. I laughed uneasily and asked how close we were to Mecca Mall. It turned out we were only a minute away from it, and I tried to figure out what I should pay this strange man.

I offered him a 5 JD note at first (I didn’t have any bills smaller than that) and I didn’t want to converse with him any more than I needed to. At the sight of the bill in my  hand, his eyes got wide, and he said, “Well…it is more.” I raised an eyebrow, and dug through my wallet to find another dinar to give him. He patted me on the shoulder, and said, “That ten will be fine there.” He handed me the five back, and gave me two single dinar bills back. I furrowed my eyebrows and said, “8 dinar taxi ride? Ghalli Iktheer, very expensive, isn’t that?” He grinned broadly, shrugged his shoulders and said, “It is Eid now,” as if that answered all the questions. At a loss for anything else to say, I got out of the cab and that was it.

Don’t be a dumb foreigner like me - I wish I had had more taxi experience back in the States so I would know what was typical and what wasn’t. Over the next few hours, I consulted with Haytham, Philip, and Ahmad and figured out the best way to deal with sort of Shark-ish behavior and how to not get cheated by taxis in Amman.

1. Be direct and insistent, immediately: say “Sheggela Andad, hulla” if they try to give you the “no problem, no problem” bit. “Turn on the meter, now” is more authoritative than just waving at the meter and saying please. “Sheggela Andad, o benzael” is what Haytham told me to say, “Turn on the meter, or I get out”
2. The law is on your side: any driver who tries to charge a fixed rate, or who doesn’t turn on their meter immediately, is in violation of Jordanian law. Threaten to write down the cab’s name (each registered cab has its own “name” which is written on the side of it) and the driver’s too, if he left out his registration card which has all his personal information. Usually, just the sight of you getting out a piece of a paper and a pen when they know they’ve done something wrong is enough to have them hurriedly wave you out of the car. Oftentimes, Silas has told me, that if you do this they won’t even ask for any money, just beg that you won’t tell the police on them.
3. Don’t pay them: if all else fails, Philip told me, just don’t pay them if they cheat you. Have a piece of paper written out in Arabic that says, “You violated the law and tried to cheat me by not turning the meter on, even though I asked you a dozen times to do so. Therefore, I am giving you ____ much money instead of what you’re asking for.” There’s not much they can do about this, and I like this one the best.

Hopefully I’ll never have to use these, but that would assume that I’ll never run into another Shark, and unfortunately, the time will come when I will. This time though, I’ll be ready though and I’ll make sure that whoever tries to take advantage of my nationality doesn’t get away with it.

Well, I’m exhausted. Almost 3 in the morning, and I still haven’t been able to get the audio working on this server yet. Gotta keep trying though. Getting hard to type coherantly, hope that this post is legible when I read it tomorrow.

I mean, not as disgusting than the pointless loss of human life (both Coalition and Iraqi), the billions of dollars to fund this death and destruction and line the pockets of massive souless corporations, and the media system that brainwashes the citizens of so-called “civilized” countries like America into thinking that it’s all okay, we “need to do this”………….but still pretty disgusting.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you’ve probably heard of the protests against the conventions of the two major political parties - of course people would be protesting the Republicans, you think, but the Democrats too? Although far too many Democrats feel that voting for the right person is going to end this illegal occupation, not everyone feels the same way. In Denver, several days earlier for Obama’s convention, the Democrats saw their own share of protesters.

I guess it all comes down the people you have working, though. While the RNC protests saw their own share of illegal raids on peaceful young activists and even a ludicrous charge of “conspiracy” to silence them, it ended up being the Denver Police who made commemorative t-shirts through their Union to gleefully proclaim the fun they had getting their rocks off, beating up peaceful activists.

When I first saw this, I thought it was a sick joke. Even though I’m 6,500 miles away from home, I was following the work and planning that went into these peaceful, lawful protests through my email, and of course I would have been at my brave friends’ sides if I was still in the country, at both Denver for the DNC and Minneapolis for the RNC. To watch these domestic thugs laugh and joke about beating up my friends and colleagues, while getting paid a salary by the Executive branch, and having the gall to sell these shirts for $10 each through their Union - it makes my blood boil. I’m very proud of my brave friends, the ones who actually suffered in the hands of these brutal thugs, for staying rational and being able to discuss this. If it had been me getting beaten and tear gassed, I don’t think I would be able to restrain myself.

Where do they get off with this filth? When is violence ever a laughing matter? Why is a brutal, thuggish police state even something that the “civilized” country of America could laugh at? The photo of the ape-like police officer, grinning stupidly with his baton and riot gear, staring down at the fleeing crowds of what of course must be protesters, epitomizes everything distasteful of what America’s paramilitary has the potential to turn into.

Detective Nick Rogers, a member of the Police Protective Association board, said police often issue T-shirts to commemorate big events.

I’m rational. I know that a country needs a police force in order to keep order from people stealing, murdering, and just to make ordinary people feel safe. And I know that police have a risky job sometimes, especially during possible riots (although, ominously, undercover police agents working with the police are just as likely to start the riots themselves as an excuse to begin brutal “clean-up” actions).

But this is terrible road to start down. A good police force, working with a just and reasonable executive branch, be it state or federal, has to understand that although their job may involve them inflicting pain on people who may not be guilty of anything, this should not be something “pleasurable” unless you’re a sadist. A lot of trust rides on the police’s shoulders that they will not abuse this power. What sort of image does this send, when they show that they clearly enjoyed inflicting terrible pain on activists that were 97% peaceful? How will antiwar activists in Denver, who have to see these officers all the time, and probably more often when they do their demonstrations at their capitol building, feel as if the police will act in a safe, responsible, and neutral manner towards all parties? How will other police stations react to this? My hope is that this joke of a Union will be censored, other officers will be as disgusted as we are, and this tacky, sickening t-shirt will fade away like a bad memory.

“We get up early to beat the crowds.” How cute. What a play on words. Simply dizzying intellect, that.

Well then: we’ll just have to get up earlier, to shine the light of truth on police brutality. It’s not a joke. It’s a crime. And it’s not funny.

Original story: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/17563487/detail.html

Nothing like a shiny, brand-new server to make me feel like a kid again.

For me, the last week has mostly been spent at the school, writing proposals for web hosting services that won’t be cheating them like their current one is, and most importantly, working on their new server, an HP Proliant ML350. I need to get all of the school’s user accounts and files migrated between the two systems, all the while with as little downtime as possible. It’s a powerful box, but my options were rather limited in selecting it - unlike in America, which has fairly free shipment of goods in and out of it, everything in Jordan has to be brought in through specialized customs agents. What this means for the IT Admin is that you can’t just go HP or Dell’s website and place an order - you have to find a local business that has a license with the royal administration to import foreign goods, and then get it through them. As you can imagine, this results in prices far beyond their actual worth. For example, I was at the massive City Mall last week, and stopped by a Virgin Music store, which happened to be selling Apple products. I saw my own iPod there; an iPod Touch 16GB. It was selling for JD400, which translates into approximately $565.

Whoops - sorry about that, Winkie.

Last night, to celebrate Eid and Winkie’s imminent return, Philip and I made a little vino Chicken Marsala (perhaps a little too much vino, as Philip and I got a little liberal with our pouring and accidentally lit the table next to the stove on fire) and then I went out to a cafe with my friend Silas, a teacher at the school, and his Jordanian friend Haytham. Haytham and I hit it off right away; we talked politics and he even has dabbled in building his own computers before. At last, someone that knows what “cache” means and won’t think I’m talking about money! He confirmed this, shaking his head. “There is no one here that has any idea about how computers actually work; they just sell them and send them India when they break.” He seemed very skeptical of my lofty goals of teaching hardware skills to refugees, but wished me luck. The two of them are planning on going to Egypt in March of next year, and after Haytham and I had been talking tech for awhile as Silas stared into space with glazed eyes, Silas broke in and invited me along. Not only that, but Haytham’s mother had given him a bag of fresh-baked date cookies for Silas, which they shared with me. Moomtez!

In any case, I’m quite pleased that I’ve survived my first Ramadan - and wasn’t even fasting! I still can’t quite believe that my Muslim friends and colleagues do this every year, and in the relatively free country of Jordan, they do it by choice, not by government proclamation. It’s going to get worse over the next half a decade, too - the Muslim lunar calendar adjusts every Gregorian (Western) year, about 2 weeks forward. This means that next year, Ramadan will be from approximately mid-July to mid-August, and then the year after that, all of July. I can’t imagine not eating or drinking during the longest, hottest months of the year. Philip and Wajih have both already agreed they’re just going to take that entire month off of work, and it seems like the smart thing to do!

It was lucky that I wanted to go early, as it ended up taking no less than four separate visits to the 8th Circle Police Station (or whatever its official name may be) before I got that seal of approval from the authorities that would allow me to stay in the country legally. Each trip, taken from our office in Shemeisani, took about 45 minutes total and the first two were utterly useless.

I can’t even compare this lowly scenario to what Hispanic immigrants must go through to get into America, but after being told for the dozenth time to “go to the other building please” by bored-looking Arabs in bland uniforms, I was beginning to feel like a hassled, harried, and unwanted reject of the system. Thankfully, I always had either Kahlil or Tayseer, two other Entity Green employees with me when I went to act as translator and to drive me, and they were similarly astounded that it was this troublesome for a process they had assumed would be simple - for an American, at least. I felt really bad for Tayseer in particular - he’s a tiny, wizened older fellow whose health isn’t very good, and the two buildings of the police station were stupidly designed to not even be connected to each other. In order to get from one to the other, you have to walk through this field of rocks, swirling hot sand, and broken bottles. I tried to repeatedly tell him that he could just wait in the building closest to the car and I could take care of it, but he stubbornly assured me that it was no problem, no problem (mishmushkalay). I tried to help him over the boulder-like stones as best as I could. I really like Tayseer - with his gentle smile and quiet disposition, he reminds me of my grandfather.

The third time, which was last Thursday, we finally seemed to get somewhere. As Tayseer and I approached Building 2, the same young policeman that had questioned Kahlil and I the previous two times grinned broadly at me. He always struck me as a little odd - his face and scrawny body seemed more fit for a 13-year-old, but as he sat in the guard booth and patted the smooth-worn barrel of the AK-47 machine gun in his lap, I decided I wouldn’t be the one to tell him that. Inside, I followed my elderly friend into an office, occupied by a burly, stony-faced, uniformed man who looked uncomfortably like Tony Soprano. He barked something sharply in response to Tayseer’s tentative question, which was followed by 15 minutes of trudging back and forth across 50 feet of burning sand to different offices in the two buildings.

Eventually, through what was most likely a stroke of luck more than anything, we found a tiny office with an even tinier black table. A young woman in hijab sat behind a nearby desk, and what she said caused even the gentle and mild Tayseer to raise his voice. He turned back to me - “She says that the man who does the fingerprinting work just didn’t show up today, and he probably won’t be back until Sunday. No one else is allowed to fingerprint but him.” We were about to take our grudging leave of the place, but then the woman seemed to change her mind, and I was motioned to approach the little table, which I then realized wasn’t actually black, but just coated with layers of black ink. The woman put up rubber gloves and gingerly took my hand, rubbing it into the ink coating the table, and then pressing each one of my fingers to an official-looking piece of paper. I had to gently prevent her from taking my other hand and giving it the same awkward treatment; I figured I was perfectly capable of taking care of this under my own power.

However, the fun of residency wasn’t over yet! We still needed to come back 3 days later and get my passport stamped with some arabic dates and numbers (one of the few things I’m actually good at reading now is Arabic numbers) that would keep me from getting massive fines when I eventually leave the country. Tayseer and walked back into Tony Soprano’s office. “Anna Jeet!” I proclaimed proudly to the police chief, who cocked his head, raised his eyebrow, and looked at me like I was an idiot. However, the end of the torment was near (for both of us, me trying to speak Arabic to authority figures and them having to listen to me) and he quickly one-two, stamped my passport twice, and that was that. I was official, and officially done.

Of course, this is only a two month extension. At the end of November, my time in Jordan will run out, and I’ll need to either do an entirely new kind of run-around through embassies and Head Offices of the Royal Authority or something like that. Or I can just leave the country, travel to Egypt or Syria or something for a couple weeks, and then come back and start over again. At least this time I’ll know what I’m getting in to, and know exactly what to bring. The less “surprises” I have when I try to get official business done, the better.

NOTE: This evening, I told Philip about the surly Mafia-faced police chief, and saying “Anna Jeet” to him, which I thought meant “I’m back!” Philip laughed and said, “You didn’t really say that to the police chief, did you? “Jeet” means “came” and it’s slang here, too. If that’s all you said without any other words, you just told the guy you had an orgasm.”

The experience of learning Arabic is pretty exhilarating at times like these.

I think I need a cigarette and a cold shower.

The average Jordanian consumes 170 cubic meters of water a day; a stark contrast to the 1,000 cubic meters consumed by the average citizen of a water-rich nation.

When I wrote about working in the Sheraton a couple weeks ago and finding jugs of bottled, filtered water in the trash with only a few sips gone, it just blew my mind that in a country that is estimated to be completely dry within 30 years (at the current rate) people would do something as wasteful as that. Nasser and the author are quick to jump on the idea that I’ve also heard around Jordan in a few weeks here, that agriculture is the most wasteful. You can read the article to get more the statistics about it, but it’s pretty eye opening.

[Agriculture] consumes 65% of available water while its contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) has not exceeded 3%. In contrast, the industrial sector receives around 3% of available water and contributes at least 40% to Jordan’s GDP.

It’s articles like that which put me into a reflective mood about wasting energy. I just walked back home from church, from past the 6th circle all the way to the 3rd circle. It’s a trip that takes about 7 minutes to do by taxi (especially at the speeds they drive at) but took me an hour to walk. I didn’t mind; it’s a beautiful night out, I had my music, and I was filled with pizza after me and my school coworkers and I had a little get-together - I figured it would be good to walk off the calories. On the way back, taxi drivers honk insistently at you, trying to get your attention (and even louder if they see you’re wearing headphones, like I was), trying to goad you into getting into their vehicles. I’ve become adept at waving them off briskly as they slow down invitingly while driving past me. I think to myself, “Haven’t they ever seen anyone just want to WALK somewhere, instead of being ferried about?”

And then I realize - no, they might not have. As I walked home through the cool breeze, I was struck by how few people I saw. It was like walking the streets of my hometown of Brodhead, compared with my college of Madison - even though it is Ramadan, after Ifthar, on a perfect night - no one was walking outside, but the streets were packed with cars.

The mentioned about talks about subsidies on many public needs, water being the most obvious one. But also bread, too - I used to wonder how I could get away with buying 4 thick slices of khubiz (bread) every morning for 10 gersh (about 14 cents) - but then I learned that bread was subsidized by the government: for each slice that the breadmaker bakes, the King pays for about 2/3rds of it. Water is the same way.

What about public transportation? Should more money be put into the bus system here in Amman so less taxis will be needed? I always hated the bus system in Madison, but at least it was a viable option when you needed it. Here, the buses are slow, practically unmarked, and leave their docks “when they’re full” which in my mind kind of defeats the purpose of a metropolitan bus system.

See, I think about these things too much. I’ve only been in this country just over a month, and already I’m going into semi-political mode. I can’t even vote here; what the heck am I thinking? In any case, it will be interesting to see if any changes are made during the short time while I’m in the country. Although I think my protesting days are over while I’m a guest in King Abdullah’s country, that doesn’t mean that I won’t be cheering on progressive, conservation-minded action from the sidelines.

But no longer! Light has broken through the clouds and Pat descended from the sky to save the day, wielding a plumber’s wrench and a coil of electrical tape. As of today, we officially have hot water and a working pump for water pressure at Philip’s house, and I can regain a semblance of my former levels of personal hygiene with hot showers and doing laundry. Previously, my “laundry” involved pouring soap on clothes and then scrubbing them with a brush while running Philip’s portable laundry machine on them, which “washed” clothes by swirling them gently in the tank. Not the most effective method of cleaning things, and I’m sure its benefits were more psychological than anything else.

Philip's house seems a lot taller when you're about to be lowered down it from a rope

But Pat, who will eventually be heading up EGT’s electrical training courses, was on the job and things got wrapped up quickly. We already had all the parts we needed (the pump and water heater), they just needed to be hooked up. Something that Americans, and Wisconsinites in particular, should know is that in the Middle East people think nothing of running wires, cables, piping all over the sides of their houses very haphazardly. You simply couldn’t do that in America, because your pipes would freeze/explode and wires would crack as soon as the Midwest turned into the Arctic as it does each year. In this case, we drilled a hole through the side of Philip’s house so that we could run a thick wire from where his air conditioner will (eventually) be up the roof. However, the wire wouldn’t feed through the 2-foot thick walls, and Philip and Pat seriously considered lowering me down from the roof on a rope so that I could pull the wire through by hand. We had the rope set up and everything when I decided (somewhat desperately) to try again before subjecting myself to thin strands of nylon. Thankfully, we made it work that time (hamdilallah!) and the rope wasn’t required. However, my fun wasn’t finished yet - Pat went downstairs to keep knocking holes through the bathroom walls to connect the water heater, and I started to run the wire from the wall to the pump. Pat had neglected to mention, though, that he had turned on the breaker box to run his drill, and as I reached for the wire to pull it towards me, suddenly it “exploded,” showering my outstretched hand with hot sparks and causing me to spasm backwards (narrowly avoiding falling over the side of the roof). “Hey Pat,” I called out as I pulled myself to my feet again, “I think you should turn of the breaker for the roof, if you could.” I could hear him laughing somewhere in the bathroom. Thanks for the schadenfreude, Pat.

The eye of Pat sees all!

Eventually though, we got both the heater’s pipes and electrical line connected, and the pump was soon humming away happily on the roof. We opened up the pipe to the heater, and listened as the water poured into the huge tank. This morning, I’m not too ashamed to say that I indulged myself with a 20 minute shower, something I would never do under normal circumstances. But when you haven’t felt hot water on your hair in weeks, you tend to forget you’re a desert country.

Today, we found out some more good news - during the morning meeting with Philip, Majid, and Ahmad, Wajih called from the office and let us know right away - IRD has signed the contract! It’s what we’ve been waiting months for, and now we can start up construction work on Ayn Al Basha again and finish the classrooms! More news on this front is sure to follow soon, but we’ll spend the rest of Ramadan working on paperwork and organization, and then begin the labor work after the Eid festival at the end of the month.

Ayn Al Basha office building

I didn’t really know what to expect from the site. Philip had told me before I arrived that it wasn’t done yet, but that it was “really big.” However, when the truck pulled past the dusty gate, churning up boiling hot sand in all directions, I was impressed by the massive size of the compound. From the squat two story pale green near the road for the administrative offices, to the far corner where the alternative fuel vehicle lives (it’s powered by waste vegetable oil from the hotels which we can get for free, but we don’t have the special license required in order to drive it on the roads yet), it’s about 20 acres or so of land in total.

This will eventually be the 'Hands on Workshop' for the school. You can see the oil-powered vehicle at the back of the lot

Philip showed me all the different parts of the complex and told me of EGT’s vision for all of them. One part would be a complete recycling center, down to our own compactors, storage, and melting facilities. The part next to that would be the classrooms, the only other part of the facility that has been built at all besides the administrative building, which is almost completed. Another would be the “hands on workshop” area for all the vocational training classes like gardening and cooking, which was a sunken pit in the ground that you could have parked a 747 in it. On the far end next to our sad little unlicensed truck was the most ambitious goal - the site of a community housing project that would be self sustaining, with food-growing gardens and a small farm that would work in tandem with the school and recycling center. Right now, though, it was just a bare lot with weeds and a charmingly small pond. “It’ll take a long time to get to this point,” Philip admitted, “but it’s the eventual goal for EGT.”

Later that evening, after I had gotten back home and taken a shower to wash the recycling grime off (still no hot water yet; we didn’t get as far into knocking holes into Philip’s walls as hoped) I went to church with Wajih and his family, who had invited me to their monthly “cookie and coffee” social after the service as well. Although I’m not really used to the more “expressive” (i.e. guitars and clapping) church services after years of solemn Lutheran hymns and pipe organs, it was a lot of fun, especially since I got to see a lot of my fellow teachers at the school at the service. I don’t have a lot of opportunities to hang out with other Americans my age, but after the social they invited me out to a cafe with them, where we discussed God, the Universe, Creation, and Everything. They all know a whole lot more about Scripture than I do, but I just like to listen and give my different, somewhat more “liberal” opinion on things when they ask me what I think about something. I’m thankful that they accept me as my progressive liberal self and I don’t have to hide my beliefs on foreign policy, although many of the teachers here are quite conservative. We just relax, and don’t worry about the politics!

I need to get the Amman police station some time this week, hopefully tomorrow, and get my residency confirmed before I’ve been in the country a month. I’ve been told that I’ll be fingerprinted and everything for this, and it’s needed for me to continue working at the school as well. It’s hard to believe that I’ve already been in Jordan for almost four weeks; it feels like it’s just flown past. I’m getting so busy - when I’m not working at Entity Green’s office or out at recycling or doing tech work for the school, they’ve also coaxed me into working as a vocal instructor for the school’s musical, “A Fiddler On The Roof.” I think I’m a little under-qualified for that, but they don’t seem to mind. Wajih’s son is playing Tevye, so he’s completely happy with me getting involved with more activities outside of my usual EGT work. Another of the teachers has invited me to join a local weekly choir that practices only a couple blocks from my house at 2nd Circle, which I’ll start with on Wednesday, assuming that they let me in. Wajih’s children were in it in previous years, and I’ve been told that it’s often filled with wealthy, English-educated Jordanian singers - or at least, this is what I’ve been told!

I’m going to be so busy with extracurriculars that I’ll barely have time to be a tourist!

We’re a third of the way through Ramadan now, and I personally can’t wait for it to be over - not because I suffer, of course, but because everyone seems so tired, hungry, and mostly, just plain grumpy. All of the restaurants are closed throughout the day (I’m not sure if it’s a law or just proper custom) and even the chains like McDonald’s and Hardee’s are locked down too, although amusingly enough you can sneak around to the drive through’s and they’ll surreptiously let you buy things. Thankfully, grocery stores are still open at fairly regular hours, but woe betide any foreigner who absent mindedly pops a piece of gum into his or her mouth while wandering the streets - I have caught myself on several occasions, just in time. You will get quite the few insulted glares and angry grumbles cast your way, and depending how hot it gets, maybe worse. Usually you can count on the huge Jordanian police force/military to protect you (they wander about with submachine guns under their arms all over the place) but it’s hot enough and tempers are high enough that they just might beat you over the head a few times (or so I’m told).

The good thing is that Ifthar (the nightly breaking of the fast) is getting earlier each evening, because of course it’s based on the sunset. On the first night it was 7:05 or so, but tonight it was around 6:45. When the Call begins, cars start honking in the street, children cheer (and their parents do too sometimes; my neighbors) and oftentimes, fireworks are shot up all over the city. I was getting a taxi ride home once at around 6:30 or so - the streets were clearing out as everyone was heading home to be sure they were seated at the table and ready to go, and the driver was going at around 120 kilometers an hour and glancing at his watch. Going at 120 KM down an alleyway with cars parked on both sides of you is an interesting experience. He practically shoved me out of the door in his hurry to finish his duties, and I was all too eager to let myself out.

After the sounds of the Call dies away, Amman becomes like a ghost town. The main highway between the Circles is practically deserted and as you walk the side streets, all you can hear is the low murmur of conversation and the clink of silverware as a million people all start eating at the same time. Philip tells me it’s a great time for a bike ride then, because you practically have the streets to yourself. It makes for a great time for other foreigners and non-Muslims to randomly meet each other though; several times at Reem’s I’ve ran into Brits, Spaniards, and I think some Italians, all of us waiting in line for the delicious, zekki shwarma.

A few days ago, I went to the east side of town to the Roman Theater (you can see some of the pictures in my Flickr account) with Ahmad and Rami. I wish I could have had more time to explore it and the museums that are built into its shadowy corners, but we were running on Rami’s taxi and I didn’t want to make the guy wait. As you can tell from the pictures, the structure is positively massive, built into a hill as large as a New York office, and the stone stairs are dangerously steep. We went there in the late afternoon, so the sun was shining down directly into our eyes as we “mountain-climbed” our way up to the top, causing me to scrabble frantically at the rocks when I reached for the stair ahead of me that wasn’t quite there. At the top, we could look out to the north across the valley to the ruined Hercules Temple on the next hill over, which will more than likely be my next sight-seeing stop when I have a break, perhaps this weekend.

Ahmad is amazingly hospitable to me; he tries to pay for everything I do, and tells me “don’t worry, I take care of this.” Rami and their friend Fouad are the same; they were constantly pushing free cups of lemonade towards me at the bazaar last week. Every new Arab friend of mine is so exceedingly generous, I feel guilty for not having more talents to offer (although I did just fix Ahmad’s broken computer for him tonight, so I feel a little better). His wish to assist me with things borders on ridiculous: when I was buying my first postcards for people at the Roman Theater, I had to fight him off to prevent him from buying my cards for me!

In other news, it seems like I might be getting my first hot shower in three weeks very soon (in’shallah) - Philip’s electrician/plumber/all-around handyman friend Pat stopped by yesterday evening to give us a hand. I showed him the problems with the water heaters and wiring, and he wandered about calmly measuring things and tapping on the walls. When Philp arrived a half hour later, Pat already had it all laid out in his mind what parts of the walls he would need to knock holes into in order to fix the mistakes the Jordanian contractors made, and then we all went out to dinner for hoummus and fuul (beans) for my first Ifthar at nearby restaurant. I don’t want to get my hopes up yet, but I may have hot water by Saturday morning (I’m going to say in’shallah again here, for good measure).

Unfortunately, there’s been little news yet on the Iraqi refugee contract front yet, but Philip has a meeting with our sponsors tomorrow, which is definitely a good thing. I greatly enjoy my jobs at the Christian school and Entity Green’s office, but of course I can’t wait to actually work my main skill set with people who need it the most. As soon as I get more information, I’ll write about it!

I signed up at me.com the day after it was offered so I could get a nifty little “zth@me.com” account (who doesn’t love short domain names when you have to type email addresses?) with Apple’s free trial offer. Instantly, I was plagued with bugs in Firefox 3.0 like being unable to log on, pages not rendering properly, being locked out of my account, and emails not being received from my new zth@me.com account. Since I was just testing it out anyway, I just stopped using it, sorely glad that I hadn’t actually paid money for the hunk of junk. But this led me to another thought: who wants to pay for email anymore?

I mean - seriously? $99 a year for a unified way to do what Google and Flickr can already do? The file storage, which is the obvious turnover from Apple’s now-defunct “.Mac” service, used to be a paid-for option anyway in those days, along with your .Mac email address. Yippee Skippee, another email address. Anyone with any sense doesn’t use web-based email clients anymore anyway, as they all suck and they all do the same thing (Gmail being the notable exception, as it sucks somewhat less and they tried to do something new with the concept of email, converting them into “conversations” instead).

So here’s my proposition to Apple: Divide and conquer, same as you did with iTunes and the original iPod - give out the cheap and easy stuff for free (the software) so that they flock to your hardware (the iPod Touch and the iPhone). Make a MobileMe and a MobileMe Premium - the difference is that the Premium would have the only thing worth paying money for: the online file storage, and maybe the pictures. The “basic” MobileMe service could be provided for free thanks to a registration code inside the box with your iPod Touch or iPhone, or at a relatively cheap price if you just wanted to buy it separately. You could keep charging the $99 for offering what MobileMe just offers now, except rebranded as “Premium.”

It’s easy for me to say this, because I just really want a free way to easily sync my mobile devices with a big calendar system in the sky, and a concise me.com account name like mine would be an added, small bonus. I don’t need or want online photo hosting or file storage from Apple, but I’m sure some people will. Plus, this would be a good way for Apple to apologize to its loyalists for screwing them over with the poor quality of the original released service.

Here’s the other gripe that happened to be on my mind tonight as I wrestled with the slow Mail.app program on the iPod - why didn’t Apple write support into iTunes 7 for synchronizing Contacts, Bookmarks, and Email Accounts with Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird? On my PC, it only offers syncing with “Windows Address Book,” (who uses that??), Internet Explorer, and Outlook/Outlook Express. Why didn’t Apple use a product they knew would have massive sales to put another slap in the face of their biggest rival? I haven’t used a major Microsoft product besides Windows and Office for years, and it would be so nice to just let iTunes take care of setting up all of my accounts for me. As a open-source “sideliner” in the battle between Windows and Apple, the well-deserving Mozilla Foundation would benefit from millions of users saying “huh, I should give Firefox a try.” Of course, perhaps Apple was worried it backfire in their quest to get Safari on every computer, PC or Mac. Limiting choices is a stupid reason…but we are talking about a company whose mobile devices can’t even natively SSH…

Oh well. Maybe Apple will get that beef of mine corrected in the upcoming iTunes 8.0, which has rumors about it flying that it’ll be released in just a few short weeks.