Walk into an elevator. Okay. People who are unfamiliar inside. Look down to avoid eye contact. Dude, the shoes are ugly. Look up at the elevator’s ceiling to avoid that. Circles.

It always so uncomfortable to share a minute in a tiny space with random strangers.

At three weeks old, I thought a Panda cub would be much bigger.

More.

Dubai is always a constant in front-page news, and even more so in these tough financial times.

Here’s one of the wittiest articles I’ve read on Dubai, financial crisis or not. 

“Short of opening a Radio Shack in an Amish town, Dubai is the world’s worst business idea, and there isn’t even any oil. Imagine proposing to build Vegas in a place where sex and drugs and rock and roll are an anathema. This is effectively the proposition that created Dubai – it was a stupid idea before the crash, and now it is dangerous.

…

The opening shot of this clip shows 200 skyscrapers that were built in the last 5 years. It looks like Manhattan except that it isn’t the place that made Mingus or Van Allen or Kerouac or Wolf or Warhol or Reed or Bernstein or any one of the 1001 other cultural icons from Bob Dylan to Dylan Thomas that form the core spirit of what is needed, in the absence of extreme toleration of vice, to infuse such edifices with purpose and create a self-sustaining culture that will prevent them crumbling into the empty desert that surrounds them.

Philipp: We now have a nice categorized library at the office. Roba & Lina, you are now responsible for buying books for the office.

Me and Line: Yaaay, Prime field trip!

Lina: Dude, wait, what’s up with that? Are you bored? Don’t you have enough work?

Roba: Seriously, first it was The Mounting Table, then it was The Making Of, now it’s an organized library! What’s up with all the extra curricular additions you’re taking?

Philipp: If you improve the operating system, each and every program runs better.

Me and Line: HOW GERMAN.

Philipp: Yes, organizing stuff is my approach to dealing with excessive Arab flexibility.

We’ve been tooting and loving the blog world on the beautiful nooks and crannies of the the world wide web for over three years. Now, we’re taking it beyond the realm of fiber optics and wires, to a chamber with a roof and chairs.

Yes, dear bloggers and blog-followers, the toot team and the Canadian embassy of Amman are inviting you to attend a lecture, aptly called, “Blogging Arabia: From Obscurity to Community”, by Adel Iskandar.

The venue, suitably, is the City Council Chamber at the Greater Amman Municipality, and the timing, suitably we hope too, is Thursday, the 19th of Valentine’s month, at 6:00 PM.

Dr. Adel Iskandar is a lecturer at Georgetown University. He has several books and publications including: “Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Journalism” and “When Mice Roar: The Internet and Dissidence in the Arab World”.

See you there!
The toot Team :)

Especially baseball.

read it on this website)