Christmas in Damascus

merry christmas dear reader . . .

1. I went to a big 'tree lighting' thing in the neighborhood of Kassa (drop the "K" and you can pronounce it correctly). The picture is from that night. They 'lit' the tree and it was fairly unimpressive but the Syrians had their mobile camera phones pointed at the sky to capture it. I also saw several veiled muslim women milling around and trying to get into the holiday spirit.

2. A quick story I heard from a friend: These guys have been lining the streets selling superlame blinking Santa hats. Evidently, a group of kids were making fun of this guy for selling Christmas stuff and being Muslim by greeting him with the normal 'salam alaikum' . . . this time drenched in irony. His reply, however, is better . . . saying (in english) "F**k You" . . . . . ah the holidays warm my heart.

3. I'm going to a Christmas Party tonight and after that Midnight Mass - which most likely starts on Arab time . . . 1 AM.

4. Finally, I want to wish you all a very merry christmas from Syria . . . . more posts to come.

Bluejacking in Syria . . . .

Warning: The following post contains references to lewd and sexual material; however, I am merely reporting the facts as I see them . . . from a distance.

For those of you - like me - who had no idea that technology had opened up another useless valve for pornography and entertainment and occasional business/educational productivity . . . well, let me give you a brief explanation:

bluejacking pp. Temporarily hijacking another person's cell phone by sending it an anonymous text message using the Bluetooth wireless networking system.
—bluejack v.
—bluejacker n.

another bit on bluejacking from wikipedia is nice and to the point.

Anyway, the point is a person can sit in a cafe, give their phone an ID, and then proceed to send and receive anonymous text messages or even better yet full-on video clips from strangers. I stumbled upon this a few days ago while I was hanging out with some Syrian friends in a cafe. My friend got this message (obviously in Arabic) making some kind of sexual 'hey you' pass at him. This opened up a whole discussion and I discovered that Syrians, armed to the hilt with $250 Nokia mobile phones, are doing crazy things with them. Aside from using them to flirt and plot sexual trysts, meet new friends, and play tricks on old friends . . . . they are also sending a great deal of wonderfully offensive material to each other. Case(s) in point: another Syrian friend of mine - after I asked him about this whole bluejacking thing - showed me a series of videos he's been randomly sent by strangers in cafes/university classes. Evidently, (some) young Syrians are using these phones to take video (porn) and then send it to each other randomly. One short clip allegedly featured a well-known Syrian soap actress in a (cough) series of comprising positions that were similar to but better picture quality than the Paris Hilton video that was widely circulated on the internet. Several other clips seemed to be random: along the lines of "Syrian Girls Gone Wild and Digital. (Sorry Syrians, not all of the 'cultural films' come from Lebanon) Another clip involved a man falling down some stairs. Still another clip, entitled Abu Ghraib, was a bit of a satire, showing a woman kicking a naked and chained-up man in the genitals - think America's Funniest Home Videos on crack. Again, I'm comforted that young men everywhere love the same stupid nonsense.

Trip to Palmyra

I was lucky enough have a good friend visit me in Damascus this past week. After spending a few days in Damascus eating as much as possible, we took two days and went to Palmyra. The trip itself was wonderfully uneventful; however, the pre-departure was a nightmare. After spending the whole morning trying to get a decent bus to Palmyra and getting the ‘run-around’ from most every person we met, we finally decided to embrace our comparative wealth (compared to the natives) and rent a car. Most of my foreign friends thought we were totally out of our minds for willingly driving in Syria. Yet, I did not think driving was all that bad here . . . a trip across a mountain pass in the middle of winter is much worse than the traffic here. The major difference is people don’t seem to follow any traffic rules: blind-lane changes with a honk are the norm.

Sadly, I can’t do justice to the historical and archeological ruins of Palmyra. Thankfully, my friend is a MA student in architecture and thus had tons of insight concerning historical site. I have a final Arabic exam looming around the corner so I’m going to rely upon pictures for this post.

UPDATE: I spent 45 mins waiting at an internet cafe for my pictures to upload on to blogger. It was a huge pain. the cafe just switched back from DSL to dial-up for mysterious reasons. Anyway, expect more pictures (and large ones as well) to come. Sorry for the temporary lameness . . . text is much easier to put up on the net.

Sorry . . . a real post to come. . .

Sorry faithful reader(s). I've been doing some traveling and lots and lots of arabic as of late. . .
I have a motherload of new pictures and some thoughts that I will be posting (hopefully) within the next few days. Sorry for the delay!!!!

In the meantime . . . a British friend of mine told me a few of the faux pas made by "Prince Philip" . . . I laughed so hard (with horror) that I decided to list a few here for your entertainment. (stolen from wikiquote.org) Expect a 'proper posting' soon.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
From Wikiquote

Prince Philip (born 10 June 1921) Consort of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
"Where did you get that hat?" (1953)

To his wife the Queen, immediately after her coronation
"British women can't cook." (1966)

"The bastards murdered half my family.." (1967)
When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union

"What do you gargle with - pebbles?" (1969)
Notes: Said to Tom Jones after the The Royal Variety Performance.

"Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." (1981)
Notes: Said during the 1981 recession.

"You must be out of your minds.." (1982)
To Solomon Islanders, on being told that their population growth was 5% a year.

"You are a woman, aren't you?" (1984)
Notes: Said in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift.

"If you stay here much longer you'll all get slitty eyed." (1986)
Notes: Said to British students in China.

"If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine the Cantonese will eat it." (1986)

Notes: Said at a World Wildlife Fund meeting.
"Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world." (1991)
Notes: Said in Thailand, after accepting a conservation award.

"You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly." (1993)
Notes: Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary.

"Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (1994)
Notes: Said to an islander in the Cayman Islands.

"How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?" (1995)
Notes: Said to a driving instructor in Scotland.

"If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" (1996)
Notes: Said amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting.

"Bloody silly fool!" (1997)
Notes: Was referring to a Cambridge University car park attendant who failed to recognise him.

"You managed not to get eaten, then?" (1998)
Notes: Said to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea.

"It looks like it was put in by Indians." (1999)
Notes: Said after he saw a poorly constructed fusebox.

"Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf." (1999)
Notes: Said to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school's steel band.

"Do you still throw spears at each other?" (2002)
Notes: To an Aboriginal man on Australia's Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park.

"You were playing your instruments, weren't you? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?" (2002)
Notes: Said to a children's band in Australia.

"Do you know they have eating dogs for the anorexic now?" (2002)
Notes: Said to a blind woman with a guide dog.

"If you travel as much as we do you appreciate how much more comfortable aircraft have become. Unless you travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.." (2002)
Commenting during the Jubilee tour).

"The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop tourism we could stop the congestion.." (2002)
Commenting on the London traffic debate, after mayor Ken Livingstone forced through his plan to charge motorists £5 to enter the city.

"French cooking's all very well, but they can't do a decent English breakfast.." (2002)
Aboard the floating restaurant 'Il Punto' on the river Orwell in Ipswich, after thoroughly enjoying an excellent full English breakfast (Il Punto is owned by Frenchman Regis Crepy).

"It is surprising the way things have changed since I first became chancellor of a university 50 years ago." (2003) Source: Opening a new reseach centre at the University of York.
Notes: The statement was widely misrepresented as referring to the University of York itself, rather than the University of Edinburgh, of which Prince Philip is Chancellor. (The York Chancellor at the time was Janet Baker, and the university was celebrating its fortieth anniversary.)

"It doesn't look like much work goes on at this University" (2005)
Notes: Overheard at Bristol University's BLADE (Bristol Laboratory for Advanced Dynamic Engineering) facility, which had been closed in order that he and the Queen could officially open it

"You look like you're ready for bed!"
Said to the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional robes.