Traffic

There is an essential difference among countries, and I am not talking here about geography, history, language, culture, politics, or any of your usual factors! I am talking about differences in traffic in particular.

After driving, and being driven around, in a few dozen countries, I can almost categorise peoples by their driving habits. And despite your scowl about using stereotypes, I will try to argue this from a cultural point of view. Climate, history, and beliefs affect how peoples dress and interact; they surely affect how people drive.

I lived in Geneva for four years now, I have been as Switzernised as a Middle Eastern can be; Now, I am tight on rules, punctual to the millisecond, clean my desk to obsession, and hold votes with Rania on dinners. My Syrian side still lives in me though; the hotheaded, passionate, argumentative, slightly chaotic persona is ready to get out at the first call. Reconciling the two has been a hard job.

Les Genevois drive their cars with the same manners they live their lives, they signal on every turn even inside an empty parking lot, never exceed 50 kilometres an hour, and always stop for a pedestrian to cross even if they would miss their save-the-world-economy-and-get-even-richer meeting in their private bank.

Syrians will drive even faster if they weren’t in a hurry, try to kill a daring pedestrian who didn’t respect cars’ ultimate priority, never signal even if their lives depended on it, and break traffic rules as a national hobby. But why?

I have looked at driving in countries I have visited in my quest to answer this very question. I have found that Italians will park in unassigned places, French will drive fast if they know they wouldn’t be caught, Germans will drive even faster even if their cars cannot handle it, Indonesians will never look the other direction before they take a turn on their motorcycles, and Nigerians will use their mobile phones while driving even if they didn’t have much to say.

Without much quantitative evidence, it seems that the worse the socio-economic status of a country, the worse people drive its cars. Proving this might have to wait until Professor Rosling adds a driving quality indicator to his GapMinder. But this doesn’t account, I believe, for all the variations. This is a call for further research and opinions!

Syria has introduced much stricter traffic code recently, with higher fines and clearer rules. This, to my pleasure, has made traffic much slower on Damascus streets. So we conclude that fear of punishment improves driving quality. But then, the scene today on the streets of Damascus is still the same one that used to prevail a couple of years ago but in slow motion.

It might be that punishment, police, and fines are not enough. Things might need to be extended beyond that, into creating a culture of respecting rules and abiding by a social code. This will take a generation, maybe two, and will cost us much of our rebellious heritage, but it might be worth it.

I will struggle my way back home through the busy streets of Damascus, and imagine the day when a taxi driver will not try kill me when I do not clear his way really fast.

And here are your 500 words for today.

Packing

My father hated travelling. He used to have anxiety attacks every time he had to travel. His domesticated nature, coupled with inability to use the internet to research his destination, transportation, or hotels made it a tough experience for him to go through. But he was a different person when he came back from one of his rare trips, he would spend hours telling stories about places he went to and people he met.

I am happy I didn’t take after my father in his travel anxieties. My job takes me to many places and every trip is a pleasure. The parts of travelling people hate like airports, unknown places, and different food and languages I find fascinating. I am right at home in airport lounges and thoroughly enjoy foreign food.

Many people I know have problems sleeping in new beds, this they find most difficult about travelling. Hotel beds are comfortable but not friendly, they might be the loneliest place you can be. I manage that with a strict routine of always unpacking even if I am in a hotel for one night, calculated messiness, watching BBC news several times over, and a little telephone conversation with Rania before I go to sleep if time zones allow. That, and the fact that I am a fast sleeper make hotel beds tolerable.

The one aspect of travelling I still dread every time is packing. The many trips taught me to pack light and take only essentials but I still find myself delaying the packing until the last possible minute. I have always wanted to make a checklist of things I have to take on a trip but never actually got into writing the damn thing on paper so I still use my mental list.

Here are some packing principles I find useful, although they are still short of an actual list:

• A suitcase will always have a place for one more item, trust me.
• Shirts are meant to make you look more elegant, that will not happen if they are wrinkled. Take extra care folding button down shirts.
• No one needs seven pairs of shoes for a week’s trip.
• Calculate the number of days you are travelling including the actual flying days then:
• Take as many tops as you have days with 20% extra for spelled sauces and rainy days changes.
• Take only 30% pairs of trousers as you have days (9 days = 3 pairs).
• There is no such thing as too many underwear or socks.
• Check the weather in your destination and take your clothes according to the weather there; never assume you know how it is going to be. I have frozen my ass off in Addis Ababa on a 12 hour stop because I assumed Africa is always hot.
• Take a tie, there is always a chance you will meet someone important.
• Take some snacks in your hand luggage, I starved while looking at restaurants in Amsterdam airport because I didn’t have any cash and my credit cards didn’t work because they only accepted cards with 4 digit passwords.
• Hence, always take cash, Dollars and Euros will do almost anywhere.
• Cables are your lifeline, finding a Nokia charger might be easy, but one for a Blackberry is much harder to find.
• This is from Rania’s book, always dress elegantly for your trip. Check-in people are much more likely to upgrade you to business class if you are well dressed. When it happens, it is worth it.
• If you cannot sleep on a plane never forget your iPod, book, magazine, good memories, and sense of humour.

Go travel, enjoy it, and know that whatever trip you think is hard used to take days or weeks on a horse, ship, or walking.

And here are your (more than) 500 words for today.

Getting stuffed

I will be home in Damascus in 72 hours and I cannot wait. Like many Syrians in foreign lands, going home every year is a tradition when many interesting things happen; we meet the family, hang out with friends, do needed paperwork, and most importantly, get stuffed with mothers’ food.

My mother starts listing meals she will cook for me weeks before my arrival. She calls, suggests recipes, argue about how to cook them, listen to my requests, and then ignore them and do whatever she pleases. If one thing is certain, it is that I will have to go back to my pre-diet trousers and relax my belt a notch.

For us, Levantine food lovers blessed with mothers and mothers-in-law who make heavenly dishes, this will fulfil the urge for the week we spend with them, maybe for a few weeks later when we can still taste the spices in our mouths. But what about the other 50 weeks of the year?

Do not despair, there are solutions!

Cooking might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and cooking some Syrian recipes is particularly complicated, just think of attempting to make Kibbeh balls in perfect identical shape and stuff it and you will know what I mean. However, it is not that hard to make some of the most delicious and famous Syrian recipes. A beautiful dish of Hummus will only take basic ingredients, a food blender, and 20 minutes, and Voila!

Many other dishes can be made easily, those will cure craving and make great snacks and meals for your non-Middle Eastern friends. This is particularly easy with Middle Eastern ingredients available around the world in specialised grocery stores and big supermarkets.

One of the best places to find Syrian recipes, and I acknowledge being biased here, is a wonderful blog written by my oldest friend. On his blog, he calls himself Kano which is good for anonymity and a nice reminder of our childhood when we used to play Mortal Combat on his Nintendo. Kano was the name of the character he always played.

Kano wakes up every morning in London and goes to a hospital where he performs surgeries. Unlike me, he continued his clinical career, wears a tie, and looks as doctors should. But in the evenings, in his kitchen/lair, he sheds the doctors skin and unleashes the chef. He cooks, experiments, creates, takes pictures, and writes recipes hundreds of people wait to read about and try.

Everyone has a talent, Kano’s talent is food. He can know taste of recipes that are still an idea in his head, and he can make food that reminds me of my childhood and help me show people that the Middle East is not about wars, bombs, and protests; but about culture, food, art, and history.

Among the millions of blogs flying in the ether, a few are worth reading, some are even worth going back to, and even less blogs keep you on your toes waiting for the next posting. This is what the Syrian Foodie does.

For the other 50 weeks of the year, thank you Kano!


And here are your 500 words for today.

The Shining

What makes a good movie? Why would anyone pay a good 20 Swiss francs for a blu-ray copy of a 30 years old film?

That is what I did today, and I have a good reason. Rania has not seen “the Shining”, and I decided that 20 francs is a small price to pay to save the universe from that serious flaw. It is not for me, it is for the survival of future generations

People who come to our apartment share the same comment, “wow, you have many movies”, and I do have. I watch much less movies now than I did a few years back, but I still keep my DVDs displayed on shelves with pride. How can I not?

I always say that I have a good taste in books and an indiscriminate taste in movies. A book, I think, is a huge investment in time and emotions while a movie is much less so. A book a solitary act of commitment to the ideas and craftsmanship of a writer, the willingness to spend hours arguing with them on subjects that are in many cases central to our lives; a book is like a mini-marriage. That is why I spend a long time reading reviews, looking at covers, learning about authors, and hardly ever buy from an airport bookshop, marriages hard without the precautions you know.

A movie, on the other hand, is more like a quickie. I want an instant, fulfilling surge of adrenaline/emotions/fear/love/interest (scratch off as appropriate) that can take me through an uneventful day. I am not trying to undermine motion pictures by the metaphor, after all, one-night-stands can be great!

While my willingness to see any movie is unlimited – if we agree that musicals are not movies, of course – there is a lasting impression only some movies leave you with. It is not about story, lines, camerawork, or the beauty of the female character; it is that vague quality where I can see myself in the words or actions of a character so remote and impossible it is even more true.

Think of it, what man cannot find consolation in the words of Master Yoda: “Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by size, do you?” or understand the words of Eddie Temple: “You're born, you take shit. You get out in the world, you take more shit. You climb a little higher, you take less shit. Till one day you're up in the rarefied atmosphere and you've forgotten what shit even looks like. Welcome to the layer cake son.” Eddie, I trust you, and I will be up there where there’s no shit one day.

But tonight I will watch the Shining and get distracted because Rania will be on the other side of the couch curled in fear. I will hold her and remind her its just a movie, then pray that the piles of work tomorrow will not drive me into a Jack Torrance style frenzy in the office.

And here are your 500 words for today.

One daughter please.

In many Arab countries, today, the 21^st of March, is Mother’s day. The start of spring is when millions of people salute their mothers, thanks them, and cherish them. For the Arab diaspora it is the morning where the reminder on phones and computers goes off and we pick the phone to call mothers.

Rania and I called my mom first, while she was visiting her mom, and then we called Rania’s mother who’s line was busy. When we finally managed to get hold of her, she told us she was talking to her aunt Nihaya. We both laughed, what an unusual name!

We later learned that the name is not a coincidence, Nihaya, which means ‘the end’ in Arabic was a message from her father telling God that he’s had enough girls and that it was time to give him a son. Little he knew that almost 70 years after his message was heard, the daughter would still be living with such a fatalistic name.

This reminded me of The Economist’s March 6^th issue where the cover read “Gendercide” above an empty pair of little pink ballerina shoes. They say that a vicious circle of ancient preference for sons, modern desire for smaller families, and ultrasound are making it easier to abort and neglect female babies resulting in a catastrophic skew in female/male ratios in many countries around the world, most significantly in China and India.

It also reminded me that Amin Maalouf, a Lebanese author who writes in French, has predicted this 16 years ago in “the First Century After Beatrice”, except that his vivid and accurate prophecy of what is happening today was caused by a bean sold on market stalls that guarantees a son and took humanity close to its end.

I look at my society, and see how technology evolved faster than our biology and sociology. In the Middle East, we loved very sweet tea, because it used to give cheap energy to farmers for a long day’s work. Not many are farmers, the tea is as sweet as ever.

We liked boys for generations, they grew up to defend the family, work in fields, hide loosing their virginity, and carry the family’s name. None of this matters any more, and we still hear the disturbing, yet familiar “may God give you a male”.

Whenever Rania and I talk about kids, I say, “I am having a little daughter” she invariably answers, “You mean you’d prefer a daughter” only for me to shoot back, “NO, I AM having a daughter”. I am not going to take any beans to guarantee that, I am only going to hope for a little girl; a father loving, tender, caring, not-much-into-fistfights, little girl.

If I get the daughter I want; and if I can get her to reach the world an educated, sensitive, intelligent, young lady; showing my people what their daughters can be, then I would have had a good life.

And here are your 500 words for today.

Rats and snitches

One of the advantages of having a Gold frequent flier card is access to the Business Lounge, specifically in Charles de Gaulle airport where, in the Lounge, the French are slightly more polite and one can get free coffee; one of the disadvantages is that to fit in the crowd, one has to look ‘businessy’.

I look nothing business-like, I travel in an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt and carry a backpack, which means that the lounge guards look twice at my boarding pass.

Another business feature is reading newspapers, which I actually love since I cannot afford to buy them at the exorbitant price you pay for English papers in Geneva. So today, I passed the guard with an indifferent quasi-smile and I pick up the weekend Guardian.

Sifting through the European fiscal trouble and the US congressional ones, I actually came across a piece of interesting news. The Beijing reporter informs us that “Police and education officials have ordered teachers to appoint pupils as little security informants in south-western Chinese city”.

The Chinese education officials are rearing a generation of rats and snitches, how interesting. Not because it is a new idea, after all, no one described the metamorphosis of innocence into destruction better than Orwell taking about his junior spies. It is more interesting because it gave me vivid flashbacks of my middle-school years in a Syrian public school. Then, we were wild, hardly innocent, and capable of atrocities that would give you nightmares.

Our principal, a man who’s career he new will never go further and who took everything we did personally, tried all he can to stop us. He punished us, called our parents, and even gone physical at times. He never succeeded.

Every time a problem happened, he would gather the usual suspects outside his office, call us in one at a time, and seat us between him and the cross-eyed administrator who’s head looked like a radish. Nothing ever came out of those interrogation sessions, none of us would ever snitch.

Despite the threats, lies, and sometimes begging; despite the bribes and shouting; despite the good cop, bad cop, and stupid cop; none would utter a word except “I don’t know!”

This wasn’t only blind loyalty of public school kids who new their friends will have their back; nor is it just the incontrollable urge see the principal go into rage fits; it was our yet uncorrupted survival instinct.

If no one talked, no one could be punished.

How beautifully simple is that! We understood it, he didn’t, and he kept offering rewards to those who snitch. The Chinese ‘education officials’ do not understand it either, it seems the concept is fundamentally not understandable by adults. The Chinese kids will, I sincerely hope, understand it.

Maybe, instead of corrupting children’s sense of loyalty and ability to survive, adults should try to get some of that back. But then, who would translate that to Chinese?

And here are your 500 words for today.

Space tweets

It took me quite sometime to be convinced that Twitter is worth my time, but then, here I am tweeting my head off. I opened my account because it was becoming big, and because as a self-proclaimed techie, I couldn't not have one of those, but as my consistency in following up stuff is limited, I ended up posting very little. I just didn’t see the point of telling the world that I am having a coffee at this specific point of time.

Several ‘incidents’ lead me to change my position. The first was Paul going to Haiti for the earthquake operation, he tweeted his way through his mission and got a huge following including an article about him in the Irish Times. That got me jealous.

The second was the Guardian books on Twitter, a great way to follow their Twitter account to know about the literary world. This technology can actually be useful!

So I tweet away, a feat that gave me a very humble following of 85 people who decided that I am worth clicking the ‘follow’ button. I went on to write 140 digit messages about my own mission to Haiti and what I have seen and done, and that actually got me some complements.

Two nights ago, in a camp in Port-au-Prince, I had a long, semi-drunken argument with an Aussie who made fun of my Facebook, twitter, iPad, the world-is-connected-and-we-can’t-avoid it monologue. I argued passionately that we can not afford not to use new technologies while he gave me the all too familiar I love the smell of book pages and letter are personal. We ended up having another beer and reaching no conclusion, of course.

The reason I decided to write about Twitter today is because while looking at my account this morning, I noticed a photo from a member called Astro_Soichi who posted an image from space of the Bahamas. It took me a minute, and a fast visit to Wikipedia, to realise that Soichi Nouchi is actually tweeting from the International Space Station!

Soichi, as it turns out, is a Japanese aeronautics engineer who is “currently in space as part of the Soyuz TMA-17 crew and Expedition 22 to the International Space Station” and who apparently has a camera and internets access, exactly as you’d expect from a true Japanese. Soichi is tweeting little events and photos from his journey, and more than 140,000 people are following him.

I guess what makes things like Twitter interesting is the untargeted communications. You are sending a message to no one in specific, a message that total strangers can decide to pick or ignore, and it doesn’t matter if they do either. This reminds me a little bit of art where someone paints for no specific audience, random strangers will choose to appreciate or hate the painting, but it doesn’t matter, it fulfils the artists desire send a message.

Soichi, good luck up there, I hope your tweets won’t include “Twitter, we have a problem!”

And here are your 500 words for today.

Why on earth?

Coming to think about it, I have several qualities, not all are good, but my Thing has always been giving myself impossible tasks and tight deadlines only to expectedly fail at achieving them.

I have decided to keep a diary when I was nine, mother still has the whole three pages I filled. I decided to learn drawing two years ago, I haven’t got a single decent drawing to show for it. I didn't even stick to being a doctor after 10 years of studies.

All things I stuck to, on the other hand, were those I was lucky enough to have without a decision, or a deadline. I work in humanitarian aid because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I am happily married because I decided to go back home on Easter holiday almost five years ago and re-met the woman of my dreams.

Back to my thing, not sticking to stuff I decide to stick to, that is!

I tried to understand it, why am I undisciplined? Is it because I should have been educated in an English boarding school instead of a Syrian public one? Or is it because my father debated me instead of beating me with a stick? Is it genetic, not my fault in other words? I am not sure either is the cause, I might just be bloody lazy.

The other Thing I had forever is me thinking that there is a writer in me. I have always loved books (not that I finish all of them, see above, and ask my wife) and 'knew' that I will end up writing them. I buy books because I love them first, and then because I want to read them. This me-being-a-writer conviction has dominated much of my being. I have put outlines for great novels, many of which are suspiciously similar to ones I have just read.

Today I was reading tweets from Cory Doctorow, a writer I followed since I have read his book 'Little Brother' over two nights in a small hotel room in Beijing. He says he has written and average of 1000 words a day over the past year for his books, articles, and blogs.

I thought this would be an idea to try to beat one of my Things with the other. I am starting to write five hundred words a day blog post. I will exclude travel days (of which I have quite a few) and holidays (which I actually only have a few of). I will write about any subject that comes to my mind.

Will the writer in me beat anarchy, or will it beat him? Let’s see, I’m not going to say, in a year!

And here are your 500 words for today.