Saba Imtiaz: Everyday is a winding road..

When carrying a laptop in fancy HP shoulder bag, there are chances it will bump into your leg while you walk on the street. A lot. There are also chances you will develop a huge black and blue bruise which will shock you at discovering it/make you wonder how you have managed to bruise yourself/try and blame teammate for hitting you secretly in your sleep. Retrace your laptop carrying steps.

Always have credit on your cell phone. Chances are it will run out while you're trying to figure out the location to the company 10 minutes before the meeting is supposed to start there.

Say yes to offers of tea and coffee. Do not care that its 40 degrees outside and if you have another cup of tea it might burn a hole in your stomach.

Walking in 3 and a half inch heels, wearing a suit, carrying a laptop and trying to cross a very busy street requires one thing: 'a no-nonsense, I don't care if I might fall down and break 3 bones attitude and get run over'. Practice it at home first.

When upset at inbox full of emails that do not make sense/contain company telling you politely they will not give you tons of money, go to a restaurant and eat food from your native country.

Cafes that give you free refills of coffee and let you occupy an entire sofa for your bags, chargers and phone are your savior. Thank them in your prayers.

Taxi drivers, as annoying as they can be, are your friends. They are also heavily wired from their steady diet of nicotine and caffeine. Do not mess with that.

If in Amman, hangout at 2nd Circle with my awesome teammates, have nonsensical conversations and stare at the sights and sounds of the city.

Labels: jordan journal, photos

Thursday: Fraught with long discussions, the sinking realization that my brain was slowly melting and my schedule had gone completely out of whack, tired looks from across the desk as Oks and I ended up at Graphic Club slowly eating potato wedges, and then I decided to join Jan (our Dutch CEED), Rachel and Oksana to go see a classical music concert at the Roman Amphitheatre..

So the very exhausted Oks and I had a random evening walking downtown where we first bought fruit juice cocktails, sweets and then settled outside the theatre drinking tea and eating the sweets, talking about life and listening to strains of music as we decided we couldn't afford to spend 5 JD each on tickets..

And - to our surprise - the event organizers saw us sitting outside and offered us free invitation cards, and we spent the rest of the concert inside enthralled at the music and listening to some of the most well known pieces live...the best end to a very exhausting week!

Friday: Rachel, Jan, Natalie, Oks and I head to Mafraq to catch a bus to Umm al Jimal. A rather crazy episode continued - as there are no direct buses there, so our Mafraq bus drivers got us into a bus headed somewhere else, directed them to take us to Umm al Jimal, got an entire family off the bus to make space for us..

..and after an afternoon of climbing Roman ruins, eating falafel sandwiches and long jokes..


...we tried to make our way back to Mafraq. We hitchiked a ride with a family whose kids instantly fell in love with Jan, tried feeding him his Nokia phone as the father told Jan he was looking for his next wife and asked him if he would consider taking the kids back to Holland with him.

And now its Saturday - and I'm in the office, freezing, blogging, working, chatting with my very hilarious family and drinking tea :)

Labels: jordan journal, photos

- The house looks like a refugee camp. A rather cool one though - with 6 nationalities at last count this morning and lots of people who make tea (with milk!!), share random stories, fix the water cooler, make you miss home with their stories of takeaway biryani and quorma, and help you clean up!

- In the past 2 weeks, I have been to enough meetings to lose track of my own self, and drunk enough tea to burn a hole in my stomach. FYI: drinking VERY hot tea on a VERY hot summer day wearing a suit is not the ideal combination. Its ironic that I really love tea and my job :)

- I met a taxi driver today who was from Basra, Iraq and came to Jordan four years ago, has not seen his family since then and asked me if I knew Princess Sarvath (who is Pakistani and Prince Hassan's wife) If only I knew royalty..

- I paid salaries and now I feel like a grumpy old accountant, the likes of which you'd rather stay away from when you're a kid

- I went to the King Hussein Club and met someone who visited Pakistan during the Zia, Bhutto and Musharraf years, as he worked with King Hussein & Queen Noor. I also stayed wide eyed and open mouthed for the first 5 minutes I was there because the place is SO classy (and apparently looks like a palace, but for the un-palace initiated, this is the next best thing)

- I am thinking about my life and what I want to do here this year and how I slowly feel like a new person with some of the old-me labels still stuck on...

Labels: jordan journal, random musings

Starting off a brand new day - today..

Labels: future, jordan journal, photos