I’m going to truly miss Jordan and the wonderful friends I’ve made here. This country and its people will always have a special place in my heart. My wish is to one day see Jordan reach its potential as the jewel of the Middle East. There are still many things that must be accomplished before that goal is reached, but it is obtainable and you (yes, you) can make difference.

I’ll be sure to keep in touch with my close friends, and I’ll still be reading all of my favorite Jordanian blogs in order to stay current with local news and cultural happenings. Until (and if) we meet again, I bid you Adieu.

Dave
(The person formally known as The American in Jordan)

Amman’s new branch is located in Swefiyeh across from Wakalat Street at the site of the old Burger King. I had a friend bring me a menu so I could have some pizza delivered to determine if Jordanian Papa John’s was, in fact, as good as the original stuff I was used to.

I called the number on the front of the menu (the one listed under the words “Home Delivery”), only to be informed by a very confused young woman on the other end of the line that they don’t offer delivery. I said, “Well, you’re advertising home delivery on the front of your menus.” She informed me that it’s just not available yet.

So I drove to Swefiyeh to order the pizza directly. I spoke to a very friendly manager who informed me that delivery would be available in one week…er…10 days. So I’m going to use my knowledge of the culture to interpret this statement and inform everyone that Papa John’s will begin their home delivery in one month.

But occasionally I find something different. And while none of it is too exciting, I did happen across an online article entitled Swiss Girl Meets Steven Spielberg, Spends Time on Indiana Jones 4 Set, where a different style photo of mine was used as the article illustration. Notice the photo of Indiana Jones getting his face punched in by a Nazi goon? Yeah, that’s mine.

Be sure to look back at previous favorites: Series 5, Series 4, Series 3, Series 2 and Series 1.

So you want to park for five minutes? One dinar. Fifty-five minutes? One dinar. One hour and five minutes? Cha-ching, two dinars.

As far as I can tell, none of the parking services have improved. There’s the same lackluster security monitoring ignoring the parking lots. And there’s still the overcrowding and the double parking. So in essence, it’s the same crappy experience, only now we get to pay triple the price for it.

Just not long ago, the Jordan Times was scoffing about a $300,000 campaign to raise public awareness about smoking laws that were already in place but lack enforcement.  And I made a comment about how I’ve seen people blatantly smoking in hospital waiting rooms and no one does anything about it.

Yesterday I was at Khalidi Hospital after not visiting for about 3 months.  They had made some renovations down in the emergency waiting room, but the biggest improvement was when doctors and security guards approached a young woman and demand that she stop smoking.  After putting up a valiant fight with some loud, boisterous arguing, the woman finally succumbed to the pressure and put out her cigarette.

Bravo to Khalidi Hospital for finally enforcing what should have been enforced long ago.  No matter how much they think they do, people don’t have the right to smoke in private facilities, especially ones that have “No Smoking” clearly marked.

You can read the article yourself, but I especially like the following bit:

“There’s a great deal of paranoia around but the police are on alert for anything that vaguely resembles terrorism. It’s difficult because the more professional a photographer, paradoxically, the more likely they are to be stopped or questioned.

“If people were using photos for terrorism purposes they would be using the smallest camera possible.”

Exactly!

• Delta and Northwest Airlines have agreed to merge, thus creating the world’s largest producer of waiting.
• McCain and Clinton are now both calling Obama “elitist.” Obama plans a retort, as soon as his manservant Godfrey can come up with one.
• The Western Wall in Israel was cleared of the many personal notes left by worshippers, and now no one in Israel knows when to pick up the kids from soccer practice or what to bring home for dinner.
• More than two-thirds of Generation X-ers think they’ll never be able to stop working . Boomers, on the other hand, think Gen X-ers will never be able to start working.

Canon was the first to issue a sub-$1,000, pro-sumer camera (the Canon 300D, a.k.a. the Digital Rebel) back in 2003. Nikon followed suite shortly thereafter, and it didn’t take long for competitors Sony and Olympus to jump into the fray.

This month, all four manufacturers have released the latest and greatest versions of their pro-sumer line: Canon’s EOS Digital Rebel XSi, Sony’s Alpha a350, Nikon’s D60 and Olympus’ E-420.

Obviously they all look decent at a precursory glance, so if you’re looking to take the plunge, be sure to check out Gizmodo’s un-official performance review first.

In the good ol’ days of development on the PC, one was forced to track down the latest development versions of Apache, MySQL, and PHP, and install them. It was no easy task and not for the faint of heart. For the casual web developer or HTML junkie, it just wasn’t worth it. (There may have been an easier way to do it, but I wasn’t aware of it.)

And then came the switch to Mac. It turns out that Macs already come pre-installed with Apache, MySQL, and PHP, so there is no download necessary. All that is required is the setup. And like the PC, the setup is still not for the faint of heart…unless you use MAMP, that is. MAMP stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP, and with just a few mouse-clicks, it does all the installation for you!

According to the MAMP website,

MAMP is installed in the typical Mac fashion: very easily. MAMP will not compromise any existing Apache installation already running with your OS X. You can install Apache, PHP and MySQL without starting a script or having to change any configuration files!

Furthermore, if MAMP is no longer needed, it is sufficient to delete the MAMP folder and everything returns to its original status (i.e. MAMP does not modify any of the “normal” OS X).

Aside from the extreme ease of installation (and it’s truly the simplest way that I’ve discovered), one of the nice features of MAMP is the Dashboard widget that allows you to stop and start your server with the click of a button (I used to have to create my own desktop shortcuts to accomplish the same thing on a PC).

For those of you who are using a Mac and would like to create and play with your own Wordpress blog on your local machine, I highly recommend the article, Installing Wordpress Locally Using MAMP by Michael Doig. It’s easy to follow and should have you up and running in about 15 minutes.