Olek

Today I was invited to participate in a radio program for Amman FM.

The studio was outside Amman, and thanks to crappy directions from the radio workers, we got lost, so instead of 20 minutes, we drove almost one hour, were escorted by the police for a while, and Abeer's car got damaged from a kerb. We arrived at the studio at 11:02 and the program started at 11:00, so we went directly on air.

Together with Lana, Akos and Abeer we were talking about management and leadership and how we develop it through AIESEC. It was a one hour live show, hosted by a lovely presenter Layla. Most of it was in Arabic, but our answers were translated from English. Altogether I spoke maybe 5 times, but anyway it was a really funny experience, especially seeing a radio show prepared from the inside. We also visited a TV studio (it's a TV/radio centre). They gave us the recording on CD, so maybe some AIESECer will put it online.

We were also invited for a TV interview, but only in two weeks, so unfortunatelly I will not be able to come. But the hostess liked us so much, that she wants to join AIESEC now .

I admit, I wasn't writing for a very long time. Since 12th of September, the beginning of my holidays, I really didn't have too much time to do it, and then more and more events were pending to be described, which made writing more and more difficult. But now finally, when my internship is coming to an end, I got myself together and wrote this post.

I didn't feel like writing a full story, because it would be just too much, so let me simply spit out chaotically, what's on my mind.

When Anula came on Friday, we went out with my friends. Next day, we rented the smallest and cheapest available car - Hyundai Atos 2005 (15 JD/day). It was really primitive (similar to Fiat Cinquecento), but it was exactly what we needed and it definitely exceeded all my expectations for the car. Before, I was in two minds about this whole rent-a-car idea, but everything worked out really smooth. I was afraid of local crazy driving habits, driving at night, losing my way somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and actually we made altogether 1200 kilometers, drove at night on the highway and some small desert roads, took the long, small and difficult country road instead of the highway to get to know real Jordan, and all this time, the car was acting flawlessly.



On Saturday, we went to Jerash (Roman city ruins) and Ajloun (crusader knights castle). Next day, we went to an absolutely amazing place called Wadi Mujib, where we were walking up a stream in a canyon (wet to the top of our heads) to reach a hidden waterfall. Then, we spent the sunset at the Dead Sea.


Jerash


Ajloun


Wadi Mujib

On Monday, we went to Dana Reserve - a beautiful mountain reserve with a great lonely camp. Straight from there, we went to Wadi Rum to spend the night at the desert. We were lucky to stay in a camp with an organised tour, so we whitnessed a 'show' prepared by the beduins - demonstration of preparing food under the ground, playing instruments, etc. And thanks to my command of Arabic, we got a discount .


Dana


Wadi Rum

Next day in the morning, we went to Petra, where we spent almost the whole day, and in the evening, we took off back to Amman. We did the short version of the trip, because we decided to go to Syria for the second part of the holidays.


Petra

Next day, we took a luxurious and cheap bus to Damascus. Crossing the border was quite a hassle, and an expense too, but hey, that's holidays, right?

We found a really cool hotel in Damascus, close to the centre. The guy at the reception knew suprisingly many Polish words, and we've learnt that this used to be a Polish hotel back in the 70's - employees from LOT or some other companies used to stay there. What a small world.

The Damascus old city is a truly magical place - it's a jungle of street shops and tiny streets, muslim mosques, christian churches, with millions of colours, scents and flavours. We stayed in Damascus for one night and came back to Amman on the second day.







In Amman, we just went for delicious iceream and Anula left the next day in the morning. I still can't believe, how fast time flew.



I came back to work for a few days and started anticipating the arrival of my brother and sister. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures, because we were using Mike's camera, so just see this small selection of photos.

They came on Thursday at night and slept for half a day, while I was at work. In the evening, we were invited to an iftaar (Ramadan breakfast/dinner) gathering at my friend Bashar's place. We spontaneously prepared potato pies/pancakes, but they weren't really popular .

The same evening, we rented a car - this time it was a couple of days before big holidays called Iid (end of Ramadan), so all the cars were out, and all the prices were up. We took the cheapest available car - a 2008 Nissan Sunny. Oh my, what a comfort! It cost 43 JD/day, but we had air-conditioning, automatic gear and limo dimensions.

Our trip was similar to mine with Anula, only even shorter. We went to Baptism Site (where Jesus was baptised by John), Wadi Mujib, Dead Sea, Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba (a Red Sea resort). In Aqaba, Mike and I took a ridiculously expensive and short introductory sea diving course, but the coral reef was so incredible! The creatures were like from another planet! All three of us also snorkled a lot, which was at least as fun as diving .

All this crazy tempo was because we wanted to go to Syria and Lebanon as well. Thus, the next morning, we went to Syria, stayed in Damascus for one day and one night (in a hotel that looked like a gingerbread house), and next morning we went to Lebanon, where we stayed two days in Beirut. What an amazing city! It's at the Mediterranean Sea (so we swam in 3 seas in 5 days), it's full of expensive cars, but in the same time, it's keeping some of the buildings destroyed by war (like the infamous Holiday Inn) - supposedly, to serve as a reminder for the Lebanese.

The city centre has been renovated by an organisation called Solidere - one of the most ingenious enterprises I've ever heard about. It's a public/private/non-government organisation founded to rebuild Beirut. The most interesting fact is that it's funded by...the citizens. But not through public taxes, oh noooo - people can buy shares and stocks of this company, so they can participate in profit! This way, all religious militia will think twice before destroying Beirut again - since now all religions have stocks of the company managing Beirut city centre. Can you hear heaven signing? It's the sound of a great idea .

After coming back from Lebanon, my brother and sister left and I've slowly started preparing to return home (it was only two weeks).

Random news corner:
- Anula's brand new camera broke down in Wadi Mujib
- my camera broke down in Amman (2 weeks later)
- I'm moving out of the huge appartment tomorrow - it's too big for 2 people, Internet sucks and it's expensive, which is not true for my appartment to-be
- I've been invited to a bye-bye dinner by my company on the 15th of October
- I've been asked to a radio interview for Amman FM as a representative of AIESEC this Saturday
- yesterday I had my hair cut - one the most intensive cultural experiences
- I've been used as promotion material for the AIESEC Poland recruitment campaign, check out the clip and the poster

I'm coming back next Sunday. Any ideas, what to do for 5 hours on Istanbul airport?

I wasn't writing for a long time, mostly because I didn't have any breaking news, and I was really busy with my work.

I'm currently working my ass off, to compensate for almost 3 weeks of holidays in September. Generally, I turned minimal mode on - I eat the cheapest food, barely go out anywhere and focus on working. But don't worry, for sure I'm not bored and my excitement is still huge, I'm just charging my internal batteries and my wallet for September .

At work I've pushed almost all innovations that I've learned in Ragnarson (like Subversion, Trac, agile development, etc.), so I feel really confident now about my change management skills .

This weekend we ran out of water again, and didn't have light in the bathroom for a while, so it was quite funny to wash in a plastic bowl, like back to the stone age. But of course it's just temporary, not more than 2 days, so everything's fine now.

In the mean time, I've seen "Meet Dave" (ridiculous, but hilarious), "Hancock" (not bad) and "Mummy 3" (2 hours of crap...).

Two days ago, we went out with friends, in the evenings the weather is perfect, there is a huge crowd in the city, and we have a lot of fun. We're going out tonight as well.

Currently it's the exodus period for AIESEC Jordan - most interns and other international guests have come for 2 holiday months only, and they are leaving in next two weeks. So we have several bye-bye parties each week, which is a good thing, but in September I will be almost the only intern in Amman. Good thing my relatives are coming, so everything fits perfectly.

My girlfriend is coming between 12-21.09. I've already planned our holidays, I just need to make some calls to confirm bus lines, hotels, prices, etc.

Then, between 23.09 - 3.10 my brother and sister are coming. I haven't received a confirmation from my manager that I will get days off then as well (since it would sum up to almost 1/4 of my internship period), but for sure I'll have a part of it free, so maybe I'll just send you to Petra and Wadi Rum by yourselves, Mike and Ola, so that I don't have to visit it for the 3rd time , and maybe we could go to Syria together? We'll see.

Some news from Łódź: my band won the bid for a room, so finally we have our own place! It's very close to my university, it's huuuuge - over 100 square meters. And I've heard my band-mates have already pimped it, so it's just waiting for me to move in with my drum set. Yeaaah! That's one of the biggest magnets for me to come back to Poland .

Even more news from Łódź: my company has moved to a place right next to my university as well, so now I have a very convenient location for most of my life activities .

One-more-than-the-day-before exercise update: yesterday was sponsored by number 37, so I made this amount of push-ups, squats, crunches and three types of stretches. Every day ends with a thrill - will I make it today, or will I fail?

A couple of days ago, Marzena, brand manager for AIESEC Poland (whom, by the way, I recruited in 2005 ) called me and asked if I agreed to participate in the 'I am an AIESECer' promotion campaign for coutry-wide recruitment in October. Of course I said yes, I wrote a short story about my AIESEC experience (wow, that was a challenge - to describe all these 4 years in not more than one page, make it understandable for a lay-man, and not to lose the unique value of the story). Today I will also put together a short video for the purposes of the campaign.

It's so funny to see myself on a poster, to which similar I've been distributing at my university a while ago. I will show it to you, when I receive the official version, currently it's only a draft.

I'm going back to work now, I'll write more next week.

It's been a week since I came back from Distant Heat, but only now do I have the time to describe the event.

The whole trip was really great, although I was expecting something more spectacular from the party itself.

We went in 10 people: Jelle, Sirik, Ibrahim, me, Eyad, Martin, Esther, Lieske, Isabel and Laura. I was sitting in a bus with Eyad, with whom I had a very interesting conversation. He is originally from Palestine, and he told me a lot about the history of Izrael, wars with muslim countries and his own war experiences.

Imagine, that in the 19th century China occupies Central Europe. After a while they start to flood Silesia with their people, and after several years they claimed that this is originally their land, and they would call Silesian Poles fighting for independence terrorists. Hmmm...

We arrived at Wadi Rum around 10 p.m., almost exactly in the same place where we were a week before, right before dinner. We were one of the first people, only after around 1 hour it started to be crowded. I was expecting more people, but only around 2000 showed up. The atmosphere was really great, so that even I was dancing .





Human flamethrower



We also went up one of the hills to see the party from above. Wow! You should really see the sky - if I'd known it's so full of stars, I would've studied for an astronomer.

Around 5 a.m. the sun was slowly rising, so together with Jelle and Martin we went on the top hill above our camp. The way up took us around 20 minuts (really amazing climing!), the sunrise itself was incredible as well, only the way down was quite of a problem. First of all, Jelle and Martin were wearing slippers (!), and we took a different route down, so most of the time we were literally hanging down. It took us more than an hour to get down, and at times it was really dangerous. We made it back to the camp at 7:45 and the bus was leaving at 8, so we didn't even go to sleep.










The bus took us to Aqaba - a city at the Jordanian part of the Red Sea. We spent 1 hour looking for a hotel (if it hadn't been for Eyad, we would have spent 5 times that time and 10 times that money). We were extremely tired and hot, so frustration started sneaking in our group - some wanted to go directly to the beach, some wanted to do shopping, some wanted to eat, sleep, take a shower, and we needed to buy bus tickets for the next day, so it took us quite a while to finally make it to the beach, where we landed up around 3 p.m.


Red Sea from our hotel balcony

Mountains from our hotel balcony

The party was at one of the beach resorts (Tala Bay), with bars, swimming pools, and of course, the beach. It was incredibly hot, so swimming in the Red Sea was a huge pleasure, just as using the pools or suntanning on the beach seats. But after going for several swimming rounds and chilling out on the beach, I was slowly getting bored, plus the bar and restaurant was really expensive. Luckily, I wasn't the only one with such impressions, so we all decided to come back to Aqaba for dinner. Around 8 p.m. we came back to Aqaba, to relax without the omnipresent beat of house and techno.









I forgot to mention, that when we arrived in the morning, Eyad took a contact number of one taxi driver - an authentic religious Arab, very honest and helpful. So we called him, but when he came, other taxi drivers started to argue with him that he's stealing their clients. One of the drivers took our car keys, so it was quite serious. But eventually we managed to leave Tala Bay. The driver had so much integrity, that he refused to take money from us (amazing, huh?). He also invited us to his home, and told us he's from the secret police and he stopped 90% of Aqaba drug dealers, so it started to sound too weird for us to continue this adventure. He then called us several times in the evening and next morning. All in all, he had clean intensions, only he was trying too hard.

In Aqaba we went to eat, and then to the roof of our hotel, with an open-air bar, where I bought a quite expensive, but DELICIOUS COLD BEER. Mmmmmm! Everyone was so wasted that most of us were sleeping in the seats, so we decided to go beds immediately.



Next day our bus was leaving at 2:30 p.m., we were sleeping until 11 a.m. and then went for a breakfast - really cool - the local bread (thin pies) with a big variety of sauses like hummus, foule, etc. Really cheap, delicious and conventient - I payed for mine around half euro.

Afterwards, we went shopping, and I bought really crappy sunglasses (for 1 euro ), and a camera case (I've lost my previous one in the desert) - 5 euros.

We made it right on time for the bus, all except...Eyad and Ibrahim, who had a shisha and were 15 seconds late. In a country with a strong belief in "inshallah" (local version of the Spanish manana), the driver had to be German or something, because he just couldn't wait. So the guys took a taxi and reached the customs check point before us.

The next days I was fighting my loss of focus at work. We also had a birthday party for two friends, and I've been to the "Dark Knight" in cinema - what an AWESOME film!!! It immediately landed high on my favourite movies list. The plot, the action, the drama, acting, it has it all! If you haven't seen it yet, today evening is the perfect time.

Right now I'm relaxing during the weekend, working for my Polish project, and sleeping enough. We're out of water (again...), so I'm trying to limit my activities to the required minimum (no cooking, shower or toilet). Of course this is not a serious, unsolvable issue, so don't panic.

I haven't been writing for a while, because there's not really much going on recently. This Friday I'm going with friends to Petra, to which I'm really looking forward, so hopefully some more interesting stories are coming in.

On Saturday we went bowling, which was really expensive (5 dinars per person per game), and although it was my second game ever, I won . Then we went to a cafe, and I had huuuge delicious chocolate ice-cream (finally!).

I feel that living in Jordan is becoming closer and closer to me. I already have my favourite secret food places, shops, I know how not to get cheated by taxi drivers, etc.

I spend most of my time (from 9 to 20 Sunday to Thursday, Saturdays half a day working at home) at work in Imex, while still working part-part-time on projects for my Polish job, Ragnarson. Work here is really interesting and challenging, mostly because I have full responsibility and control over the project, that I'm working on. I treat my manager as my customer with specific business requirements, which my job is to fulfill. I'm really exercising my professional skills in software design, and although the project is quite big and serious, I feel I know how to put all the pieces together, and I make all the design decisions with high awareness, mostly thanks to lessons learnt during my Ragnarson work. In the same time, since Imex doesn't actually use any project management practices, I can make use of my AIESEC management and leadership skills. Even if I am working with only one teammate, it is still challenging to facilitate our cooperation, considering all the cultural, language and organisational gaps.

In the evenings I practice drums (I have my sticks, metronome and pad with me), watch DVDs (only 1 JD!), or use the Internet. Yesterday, I started doing exercises, which I plan to continue every day . It's also my cleaning week, so I'm making our house look and smell great .

Stay tuned for more info about Petra. And next weekend I think I'll go to Distant Heat - a two-day party at the desert and at the sea-side - something similar to European Ibiza parties. Sounds excellent!