The internet seems to be doing weird things to me where the ways I usually do things no longer work. Like trying to get to where I can log into this blog. This is probably my third time in a week trying and I just got in. Anyway, my tech savvy aside:

I spent today at the British Embassy with a friend of mine, who happens to also live with Renee. It was a May Day celebration and since the embassy is huge and has a "football pitch" and a swimming pool there were lots and lots of ex-pat and international kids running around. It was a lot like my elementary school Carnival actually which usually happens this time of year. I was invited along to get in touch with my cultural roots, which apparently is by drinking large quantities of beer that are bought in rounds. Hey, I can deal. It was really nice though. I talked to a lot of people that I usually wouldn't and played with lots of small kids which isn't something that happens often, summer camp seems to have killed my paternal instinct.

Last night was also a drinking night. I somehow decided that it would be a good idea to go see Spiderman 3. If you haven't seen it, don't. If you have, I'm not sure I need to tell you this but it's a good idea to wash your eyes with some sort of sterilizing solution. I'm not sure which was my favorite part. The fact that the whole thing was sickly sweet. That the kids in back of us wouldn't shut up and kneed our seats (actually this was a distraction from how bad the movie was so it was ok) That it held enough camp and bad tear-jerking scenes to fill several series of super-kids movies. That it featured Toby McGuire with bad hair pelvic thrusting. That bad advice is really passed off as good. That there was a 'superteam' or that in the definitive moment, Spiderman runs past a large waving American flag. Also, there was a death and a sunrise in the wrong direction for anyone familiar with NYC geography.
Anyway after this incident I felt the need to drink and play ping-pong. Both wishes came true at Kempinskis which is a hotel with a bar and a bowling alley and more other bar sports than you can shake a stick at.
Eventually we were the only people left and had a good long talk about religion, politics, no-fly lists. COINTELPRO. Oh man, it was great.

I don't want to leave my faithful readers with the impression that all my nights are spent in debauchery and bad movies. I actually got up at 6:30 Thursday to track down what turned out to be a fruitful interview which leads me to the actual cultural segment of this post:

More Taxi Stories:
The driver who took me from my house to the interview place in East Amman, which by the way i didn't know the directions to, I called the engineer and she told the driver, was a really friendly guy who discussed with me, in Arabic, the effect of a beard on the apparent age of a subject, the necessity of patience when it comes to children, and the difficulty of finding change for a 50 (about $75) in an area where nothing costs above 1. However, we found some change to pay him and he traded numbers with me. The interview was less fruitful as more was resting on it and the language barrier faced more serious challenges when it came to urban infrastructure. However I did figure out the process of building a road though I never did find out why Amman has so many departments all over the city.

The driver who drove us from Spiderman to the bar was silent most of the way because we were yapping in the back, towards the end he wanted to know where the hotel was and was very good in his English so I said something that has often been said to me by drivers 'b'theki arabi koyes' 'you speak arabic well' only of course I used engleezi. He said "yea I'm from Chicago I've only been in this country 5 months." Fortunately I was saved from a very awkward situation by the fact that I was born in Chicago and can therefore pretend that I'm from there as well. Turns out he lived on the west side of Chicago. Who'da thunk?

Anyway. Back to work. 8 pages into 30 with a week and a half to go. Not bad but I need to finish the first draft soon so I can send it around to be revised.