I cannot stop bitching about this, it is a major issue in all of Jordan, Quality of Service.  I’m going to present 3 cases which are personal experiences I faced here in Jordan.

Case 1:  Zain Internet

Company Info (Arabic):
http://www.ccd.gov.jo:7779/ccd/aims_q1a?c_id=35667
http://www.ccd.gov.jo:7779/ccd/aims_q1a?c_id=104890
Website: http://www.jo.zain.com/English/Pages/Home.aspx

I purchased a Zain e-go USB WiMax dongle from Zain in 15th-May-2009, with a 1 year subscription, I used it fairly but didn’t make a lot use of it, I never reached my download limit or even half of it.

A year and one month later (mid June 2010), I faced a situation which I needed internet badly because of something urgent that came up at work, and I wasn’t around any reliable internet connection, so I reached into my laptop bag and found the USB WiMax dongle, plugged it in, then used it for 5 minutes something.

The day after I went to Zain HQ, customer care teller window 13 which is responsible for Zain internet.  I explained to him, that my subscription should have expired by now, but it is still active and maybe they forgot to deactivate it or something went wrong in their billing system.  The customer care representative explained that, when the subscriptions expire/end, they auto-renew by themselves on monthly basis, and a recurring bill is issued against me, I argued, why in the heck you didn’t inform me about this, aren’t you a freaking big telecommunication company that can send me a small informative SMS to tell me about this, or that my subscription have expired?

Anyway, that was not just it!  We checked my usage, and it was as follows:
16-May-2010  to  15-June-2010:  ZERO NILL NOTHING out of 10 GB
16-June-2010 to  20-June-2010: 10 MB out of 10 GB  (that’s 0.09% of my download limit)

Accordingly I told the customer care representative: do I have to pay for these 2 months I didn’t know about and Zain didn’t inform me about?  Read the rest of this entry »

I woke up this morning, and I was looking at the box of a Mosquito Killer electric device which I bought and haven’t used yet.  You simply plug in this thing into an electric outlet and attach a liquid bottle to it which eventually evaporates and kills the mosquitoes.

But how would you know it’s going to work?  And moreover, if you want to think about it, how do they test it wherever it is manufactured?

If I am of the unbelieving/not-easily-convinced type of consumer, then I would love to see a booth in a mall where they show you mosquitoes being eliminated by this device, but the problem is how can they control mosquitoes? Read the rest of this entry »

1. The weather sucks nowadays in Amman (September 24th – 27th of 2010), dusty, hot, looks like winter/fall but feels like summer!
2. Starting a company in Jordan is not easy.
3. We picked a company name, now it is time to design and blah blah blah website emails kookoo…
4. I have a lot of ideas, yet I find myself in total blankness mode when I try to organize my thoughts.
5. I wanna work more on Hope Window create events, help the people in need, but I really don’t know where to start from.
6. I want a blueberry cupcake.
7. What else?

hamf…

هذه القصيدة من تأليفي. أول ثلاثة ابيات كتبتهم قبل سنتين أو أكثر، ثم اكملت الباقي خلال شهر آب 2010.  أتمنى أن تنال إعجابكم.

زنزانة وجداني

I have been testing some techniques on myself regarding this topic, working out in Ramadan.  I have managed to not only preserve my weight as is, I rather lost 2 Kilograms!

For more information about Ramadan and Islamic fasting please check this Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan

So, what have I been doing for the past 12 days of this holy month?

As we all know, Ramadan this year (2010) occurs in August, which means the daytime is long (in reference to my current location, which is Amman – Jordan).  We fast from Dawn till sunset, and that’s around 15 hours.   The main obstacle I am facing is how to preserve the metabolism rate which I worked on achieving in previous months, during this holy month we do not drink or eat for 15 hours!  (Note: in order to know what is the plan I was following for achieving the metabolism rate I just mentioned, please refer to my previous post “My Experimental Diet“).

Having 5 meals a day, which are 3 main meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner), and having 2 snacks, split in between the main meals, is the basic idea of my experimental diet, along with exercising 5 days a week.  This cannot be done during Ramadan since I am fasting!  The solution was to split 3 to 4 meals during the non fasting time, that’s from sunset till dawn.

Currently I am having 3 meals a day, and they are:

• “Iftar” the main meal, at sunset, when we break the fasting around 7:30 PM.  I am not going by the book regarding this meal, in regards to what do I eat in my usual diet, but I try to be moderate and not over eat in this meal (over eating is not even of the Islamic habits in Ramadan or any other day, it is a bad human nature “habit” which we Arabs have! At least in Jordan, i cannot generalize!)
• A snack at 12:00AM (midnight), this could be Salad or anything light.  During my weight lifting days, I have a protein shake after workout as snack to preserve lean muscle and make sure that fat is burned from other places other than killing my muscle tissues.
• Sohoor (Arabic: سحور) which is a blessed meal in Islamic religion, we have it right before dawn, and it empowers the body with some energy to be able to go through the day.  In this meal, I eat stuff similar to what you have in a normal breakfast.

For more information regarding what you can eat, you can check some examples from my previous post “My Experimental Diet“.

As for working out, the frequency of going to the gym, working out at home, or a jog in a park, is sometimes not easy to be scheduled, since we tend as a tradition to invite and get invited by close friends and family, for having the Iftar main “breakfast” meal.  Which means you can pretty much get stuck at someones place or at your place for long hours afterward, and thus not having the time for working out!  Read the rest of this entry »