March wasn’t much of a month as life was on halt, temporarily. Strike by strike, April passed, and the world went on, but rebirth was still on pause.

Then came May, which I knew was going to be one of the most important months in my life, on several levels. I stopped striking away at the calendar sometime in mid May. The first half of it was painfully slow, but I had no idea how the rest of
it managed to come to an end. But it did… and there we were at June. May changed everything; I graduated from university and Musa came back to Jordan. Life was finally back on track.

Next came June, and I still could not grasp that the wait had been done for a while and that May has come and gone. It tickled my heart to see the future standing open, and the pages all unlocked. Alas, there was finally more space to write, live, and dream. June was one of the best times in my life; satisfying, comforting, and “yayeah”, but regardless of all the chocolate bar makers’ attempts at marketing their chocolates with those three essential ingredients for happiness, they have yet to discover the secret that makes a moment turn perfect.

I had discovered mine a while back; a lot of red Sharpies :)

July was… determinative. To say the least. It had a lot of hardrooted changes; I started working at Syntax and that was a huge change from college life. I was amused at how quickly it passed. Ghamed 3ein… fate7 3ein…  … and along the way, people got mad because I did not yet know how to fit everyone into this different, unfamiliar routine while keeping everyone happy. I think some of my friends are still mad, and that’s why August was sort of weird.

Now September has come to an end, and it had some of the most amazing times ever. Life at this point might as well be perfect, with the previous 7 months accumulating to give way to what will hopefully be a wonderful October. For now though, here’s September:

Related:

On March
On April
On May
On June
On July
On August

Okht Irjal ;)

Although I am personally not sure what such a service would add as a lot of the resources on Jordan come from tourists and expats, but there’s now a Jordanian search engine called  “Search 4 Jordan”, and it actually enables the users to search for any word or “sentence” within jordanian page (articles, news, texts).

Also, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation has announced its annual Ibn Khaldoun essay contest about freedom in the Islamic Societies. This year’s theme addresses the relationship between free-market economic policies and freedom in the Islamic societies. The contest is open to university graduates, or students: undergraduate and graduate levels, who are or below 30 years
of age.

Does this mean that we will start seeing Jordanian bloggers getting jailed? Or that blogs will start getting blocked right and left? Or what?

Wow.

Just as September began, the town started to twinkle with little lights shaped as stars and moons that were hanging from windows, balconies, trees and rooftops. On and off they flicker, in different colors and different shapes. By the first week of Ramadan, it became almost impossible to find a street devoid of the flashing moons and stars. Everyone in town, it seems, is making sure that their houses celebrate the onset of the holy month of Ramadan. A lot of people in town, it seems, are on a competition to have the most celebrative house.

Although the moon and the star have long been the leading man and lady of Ramadan, the mass commercialization of the image of the month is quite a new phenomenon. The first Ramadan I spent in Amman was as recent as 2003, when the mall hung a few modestly-made cardboard moons and stars from the ceilings and when just a few houses sported very small green or red moons. As the years passed, the Ramadan decorations kept increasing in amount and diversity until they reached the hideous stage they’re at today.

For a society that still hasn’t developed a finer taste for established things such as advertising, it would take a very long while for it to develop any sort of taste for lights and decorations. I guess that means that we will have to put up with several more years of flickering blue lights.

This September, “And Far Away” reaches the three-years-running milestone.

In blog years, three is a big number. Three takes you back to when we would actually discuss options for the term “blogging” in Arabic, long before “Dawen” came to be. It takes to you to when Flickr was a new born baby, and when YouTube was not yet conceived. It takes you to the start of the Jordan blogging community, when Jordan Planet, the first Jordanian blog aggregator, housed less than a dozen blogs, made up of mostly tech geeks and journalists. In blog years, a lot changes in three years.

I started this blog because I needed a space to “thought dump”. I’ve always been a very expressive person, and having had just moved to Jordan and started my university education exactly a year before, I had a lot to say. I was amused by everything I saw around me, by the culture of a city I was starting to love so much, and by an increasing fascination with design and digital technology.

At that point, it felt like I was lighting the wick of some new, unexplored types of fireworks and standing back to see what happens. It took me forever to make the first post, because typically, it was an image, and at that time, image insertion wasn’t as compatible with Blogger’s editor. I spent the entire night Googling how to insert it, as I had no idea what HTML was in the first place, or how to insert an image using its url. But I figured out, and I pressed publish, not really expecting anything to come beyond that first post.

But well, all things started rolling.

Somehow, Eman found my blog. She commented on a photo of Amman, citing that she was really to see some photographs of Amman as she really misses it. I felt like I did someone good, and so I blogged some more. Then Isam added me to Jordan Planet, and I discovered the community-feel of blogging. Then Haitham introduced me to Firefox and gave me many blogging tips, which made it all so much easier. Then Natasha organized the first Jordanian blogger meet-up, which took blogging offline. Then blogging came popular, and Jordan Planet became bigger. Then I became a part of Toot, the first Arab blog aggregator. Then blogging became too popular, and Jordan Planet shut down. Then Khaled started Jordan Blogs, and then Mazen bought Jordan Blogs. Now we’re all wondering what the heck is Jordan Pulse, and it keeps going on and on; a never ending cycle of fast-pace change on the blogosphere.

In human years, and when you’re barely 22, a lot changes in your life too in three years.

I can easily say that blogging was the best damn thing that ever happened to me. It has affected my life in every single possible aspect; from the big things such as my career and the man I want to spend the rest of my life with, to the little things like how to use Photoshop and where to go tomorrow morning. It introduced me to so many people who literally changed the course of my life, both wonderful and not so wonderful, some of who have become my closest friends, and others who have taught me a lot. It gave me many amazing experiences, and taught me about things I would have never learned about otherwise.

So this is to a space that has become an essential part of my life during the past three years, a space I have come to love with all my heart and my soul. This is to a place that has taught me about life, been there for me when I was in need, and gave me so many opportunities that I would have never dreamt of having.

Uncharacteristically corny, I know, but you see, And Far Away has long ago stopped being just a blog, and became a living, breathing entity that I have to thank on our three year anniversary.

…

Anniversary Number 1
Anniversary Number 2