Nice pictures

Bodrum the city


with Laith

Side view from our room balcony

Half Olympic swimming pool


From inside DolmaBahce

Ininity pool

Some Castle in Istanbul

Scenes from the room

Swiming with the kids

The beach

First day after vacation

Simply Ugly!
There has to be something called post vacation depression in medical literature! Otherwise i have found a new syndrome

ammar sajdi

On this Day

People get born and people die every day. But on this day (Aug the 17th) more than 30,000 people died when a 7.5 earthquake hit Izmit Turkey. On this day also, God gave life to a bunch of other people, probably to balance out the devestation of this day and more than offset the melancholy with a smile on faces :) (i m sure you also agree that i am too humble)

The list includes

-me
-Robert De Niro

Weatherwise

Hurrican Camille made landfall in the US in 1969 with a pressure of 909 mbar (hPa), estimated sustained winds of 305 km/h, and a peak storm surge of 7.3 m ; by maximum sustained wind speeds, Camille was the strongest landfalling tropical cyclone recorded worldwide, and one of only four tropical cyclones worldwide ever to achieve wind speeds of 190 mph. The hurricane flattened nearly everything along the coast of the U.S. state of Mississippi. In total, Camille killed 259 people and caused $1.42 billion (1969 USD, $9.14 billion 2005 USD) in damages.

Polictically

In a political-sex scandal Clinton admitted in taped grand jury testimony on August 17, 1998, that he had had an "improper physical relationship" with Lewinsky. That evening he gave a nationally televised statement admitting his relationship with Lewinsky which was "not appropriate".


Technologically - MD5 is no good

In cryptography, MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5) is a widely used Hash Functionwith a 128- bit hash value.MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications,. An MD5 hash is typically expressed as a 32-character Hex number.

MD5CRK was a project started with the aim of demonstrating that MD5 is practically insecure by finding a collision using a birthday attack. MD5CRK ended shortly after 17 August 2004, when collision for the full MD5 were announced by Xiaoyun Wang, Dengguo Feng, Xuejia Lai, and Hongbo Yu Their analytical attack was reported to take only one hour on an IBM 690p cluster.
Note: a collision occurs when two distinct strings produce the same hash output.

Ammar
17/08/2007

Again from Turkey

Turkbuku, a pretty, traditional fishing village set on a peninsula hillside, Turkbuku is a fashionable destination for Turkish celebrities, and fashionable society.
The pricesses Hotel is around 5 minutes away from the center of Turkbuku, a nice resort with plenty of swimming pools and dazzling sceneries overlooking the Aegean sea. Even though the princess hotel is a five star hotel, but when it comes to rooms, amenities, service it stands no chance when compared to Ritz. Anyway, the food is very good, the landscape is excellent. The airconditioning systm poor.
We went to near by villege and had a good dinner in a restaurent called Sait. The waiter spoke Arabic as he was born in the Iskenderon provice (disputed land between turkey and Syria).
We had good seafood.

Tonight we are leaving back to Amman on Turkish airline, we shall be arriving in Amman at 2:00 AM, really ugly timing.

Ammar

Lavishly exquisite ... in Istanbul

a Lavishly exquisite Hotel in Istanbul. Yes, it is the Ritz Carlton. Over looking the Bosphorus and right opposite to the phenomenal Dolmabahce palace at the European side of Istanbul. No wonder why the Ritz Carlton group was rated a Strong First "Most Prestigious Luxury Hotel Brand" among 15 rated luxury brand beating the Four Seasons (which came second). This however, comes with a staggering price tag. eg, the lentil soup costs 13 JD (19 USD), Turkish Coffee 11 JD and snickers chocolate costs you something like 12 JD (The bar only not the entire pack). The service is amazingly superb and the staff are astonishingly friend (compared to Turks), but you feel that they were taught lessons. Once you have an eye contact with any of them , you feel that, some where in the system, a push button action is invoked and SMILE event executed. I tried to observe this performance over a period of time; it is so robotically crafted and this seemingly unconditional loop keeps iterating over and over without reporting a single bug in its logic. I guess the EXIT statement takes place when they leave the hotel to get a chance to immensely indulge themselves frenzy Istanbulian lifestyle caused by a spaghetti styled coded system.

The first language in Turky is obviously Turkish
The Second Language in Turky is strangely Turkish
The Third Language in Turkey is (unbelievably) Turksih
The fourth Lauguage in Tureky is sadly Turkish
The fifth language is normally a mix (some German, some Arabic and some English ..)

I wanted to ask what people learn as a second language at schools, but could not pose this question in any of the most popular 4 languages in Turkey!

What was most interesting for me was the fact that I went to Friday prayers at the DolmaBahce mosque (By the way i don’t know the root of the name, i know Dolma is stuffed vegetables Ya3ni Ma7ashi in Arabic). Same rituals as in any other friday prayer, but most intriguing was the fact that Salah is preceded by Quran read quite nicely in 90% near perfect pronunciation. Then the speech started with "Alsalat 3la Alnabi" Also in Arabic and many Du3a in Arabic by a Turksih Imam. Then the speach is Turkish {very short , just a few minutes, but i understood exactly what he was saying since, he was introducing some Quranic verses every now and then} The speech was about Isra and Miraj. Then the Salah took place in less than 2 minutes, (Al-fatiha and a small verses afterwards, i mean really really small) Looks like this Friday Prayer is well suited for tourist. A good offer (Iqama, speech and salat in less than 7 minutes,, we beat any other offer!!)

To treat yourself well foodwise, Balikçi Sabahattin is a fish restuarant that serves really good food. This is a place i would come back to. That was not only my opinion , but the entire group unanamously agreed (Price is about 50 USD / person -no Alcohol)

The most religious belief that the Turks observe seem to be Halal meat (kosher). It is kind of fun to notice how Infuriate they could become when you ask them if the meat is Halah (The answer is predictably Al-Hamdulila), immediatly then, they ask you if you care for a beer!

Anyway, the question that is still unanswered:

Are they proud of being Muslims???

So far, i could not mingle with the right people to get answers

Finally, it could possible be appropriate for me to mention at this stsage that my grandfather is half turkish!

We left Istabul two days back, we are now in an area called Turkbuku in Bodrum province. Our hotel is very big, it more like Spa. Some Russian Tourists but surprisingly, mostly Turks are staying in the hotel. Very little from the eastern med. We ran across two jordanian families that we know from Amman! and could over hear and Eyptian family and that is about it. More about Pricess hotel and Turkbuku later

Ammar

Untitled

maybe it is LIS (Lack of Interest Syndrome) or my every-once-in-a-while mood swing cycle. Not been in the mood.
As a remedial, i am taking a break, Yeh, i am traveling ! What is unique this time is the fact that I shall be traveling on vacation with family and relatives. The initial plan was to Spain (i declined then since it was going to be hectic), but joined in, when the destination was changed to a near by country. Two days at Istanbul, then some place called Bodrum. I have been to Istanbul some 10 years back and I thought it was a great City, I am keen to see it again, and feel any change. Also would like to sense Turks perception (especially those who are living in major cities) about the ruling party. Bodrun??? Really have no idea! hope it is better than Antalya. Only time will tell

Turkey, i must be getting something wrong

I meet people of Turkish descent on frequent occasions, who still pledge allegence to Mustapha Kamal Ataturk, ,who properly cry his memory as we speak, who pay attribute to his grave and offer flowers, who never visited Mecca and probably is not on their agenda, who never spilled a tear for prophet mohamad or any other prophet for that matter. A few month back, huge masses organized public demonstration calling for a wildly secular Turkey. I cannot but be forced to believe that separation between State and Religion is so explicit over there. Today I find out that Turkey's ruling AKP won 48.1 percent of the vote in a landslide national election victory after two thirds of votes had been counted. The AKP has presented itself consistently and credibly as a new type of Islamic-oriented party. Who voted for AKP then?

Ammar Sajdi

Starting Salaries, how much should you be making

Average Starting Salaries in the USA witnessed 3-6% increase this year.
Compared to starting salaries in Jordan, the figures shown below are obviously sky high. However, it is worth mentioning that the taxing system in the US is also equally unforgiving
Engineering, by far is the best paying job




Source: Yahoo finance

Zade Dirani returns to Jordan! musical performance

Accompanied by a 30 piece orchestra, Zade returns to Jordan for his first public performance in more than six years. Anybody can suggest if this worth attending


ammar

Mish Tabee3i

Where else could you possibly witness such a scene?
pciture taken by Ayaa Almusa

Similar Minds

http://similarminds.com/

most of us have some personality issues; compare your personality to the norms

http://similarminds.com/personality_disorder.html

ammar