Wedding Rings!!!

Recently I have noticed something weird here in Greece where old men/women put their “Wedding Rings” in their right hand and young people wear it in their left hand, for me it was like all elderly people are engaged and all the young are married!!! Because in Jordan from where I came from, you will have it in your right hand when you get engaged, then after you move on & get married you move it to your left hand. I asked Greek people why you do it this way, they simply answered you are the one who do it the opposite way… Hahaha a very funny answer!!!

Since I didn’t get a proper answer I consulted my ally in the internet world, I simply started googling “The History of Engagement Ring”. I have found many web sites with too many stories, at the end it’s all about cultures where some place their engagement ring in the right hand another in the left and some never use it at all. But the most interesting thing I found, is that most stories have agreed on wearing engagement/wedding ring in the fourth finger of the left hand because it is said that ancient civilizations Egyptians/Romans/Greeks believed that from that finger is the beginning of a vein that directly goes up to the heart, so the Romans called it vena amoris ("vein of love")... interesting isn’t it.

The question now why the hell I was looking to their fingers & why do we have to show people that we are committed ;)

Sportsmanship, is it Alive!!!

This week end was a nice sporting one for me, I started my day by practicing few indoor exercises I found on the internet, later I went with some of the guys to play basketball in a park here in Peania next to the dorms, it was amazing we really had fun it was a mix of boys & girls playing while having fun but when the score was 8 scores to 7 and the game was about to end (who scores 10 first is the winner!!) tension started to rise, friends started to argue was it a foul or not, silly issues came up!!! Is it in the human structure the need to win!!!

I have been asking myself questions on my way back to the dorms do this “sportsmanship” still exists? Or it’s just a word used only by coaches & referees? Even on the professional levels you can see supporters arguing & almost fighting for a game played by others! They can almost loose a friend for a game played by different clubs only to show loyalty.

Back home football is the most popular sport in Jordan where Al Faysali F.C. with Al Wehdat F.C. are competing to lead the list, both club supporters are willing to spend tremendous time & efforts supporting their team building new friendship with people who supports the same team & probably letting a friend down just because his team won the game over his! Moreover when I came here to Greece I was amazed how Greeks are more into football than Jordanians, the head of IT support in AIT having in his office a picture of his lovely 1 year old daughter wearing Olympiakos red shirt - by the way she looked really nice GOD Bless her, in the metro you can see an Old guy and his son wearing Panathinaikos green sports wear!!! I had a discussion with my fellows Greeks & they couldn’t describe how bad it might go between the supporters of those two clubs.

I do have questions that I couldn’t answer myself because am really biased to the team I support so i am going to ask these questions loudly here in this Blog: Having aside the financial returns… why athletes enroll in clubs? Why clubs participates in tournaments? & the weirdest thing for me WHY supporters take it personally when you mention their team’s achievement “the loosing part ;)” ?!?!

Wikipedia as an E-Culture

As we have been asked to build this Blog in the E-Culture area for the E-Business course to be represented as a final project, am posting my first assignment where i have decided to write about a non-profit organization wikipedia.org.
Please feel free to download my report and send me your feedback.

CouchSurfing.com..for all..even for Jordanians and Greeks!!

As a part of a homework for our E-Business course, we were asked to study an e-business website that falls under the theme of our main project blog. I chose www.couchsurfing.com. You can download the full report from here.

Although it is a non-profit website, I think it is directly linked to the theme we are promoting. Interestingly I also found many people from Jordan and Greece on that website including myself.

From my findings, I came up with the following questions. I hope to know what you think:

Guardian.co.uk

guardian home

hello,as a part of our first homework to e-business course i have done an analysis of The Guardian newspaper,it is pretty interesting ; so please give yourself time to download and read the full report . have a look and answer the **Discussion** questions found below .

thankfully
mouner

Discussion :


* Do you think shopping category which is included in the guradian is useful more than or equal to other emarketplaces? which are only e-marketplaces not as public portal as well ?

*which one of the following blogs you found most effective:

1- Sports fan.

2- Business people

3- Stock exchange investors.

4- Environmental people who are concerned

5- Job seekers.

*have you ever heard about the guardian newspaper before? if yes please specify the way you had.

*do you rely on news you read from the Guardian? To which extent you depend on others point of view and experiences you read in the travel log blog?

Mouner Nijmeh

MBIT -2008

E-Business course - Miss Xenia Ziouvelou

My favorite greek singer!!

First weeks we arrived to Greece were the best. New country, new culture, everything..it was great. One of the places we went to was exactly on the sea shore in an area near Glyfada. It was Galeya Club if my spelling is correct.

We had a great time there. They plaid a variety of English and Greek songs that night. I particularly liked one of the songs. It had the following lyrics:"Dexero putha moun acora..fa ka ftasi..." bla bla bla. Something like that. I woke up the next day with a hanger over and with the song stuck in my head (people where singing it along like crazy). So I searched Youtube for greek songs hoping to find it...AND I DID :)

It was for Thanos Petrelis - An den eixa kai esena (Θάνος Πετρέλης - Αν δεν είχα καί εσένανε)! Great song..great singing and perfect voice! Afterwards I discovered the huge number of great voices that are found in Greece with international and local hits!

Unfortunately, in Jordan we don't have many beautiful voices, very few actually and they can't find sponsors to help them build their career.

One of the best voices I heard in Jordan, and in comparison to Thanos, is Diana Karazon. She won Superstar Idol TV program, like Thanos did in Fame Story.

Diana afterwards made a great album which I bought (Please note that when I buy an album this means it is an awesome one, because most of the time I only download pirated songs :P ).

But afterwards she was away from the spotlight, I don't know, and she did not release any albums.

Overall, I think Jordanian music artists should find proper funding and most importantly the encouragement from family and friends!

Does religion affect culture??

For religious countries, In my opinion, religion directly influences the country ‘s culture, people culture, somehow their style of living, where they go, what they were…etc.

I came across some interesting reports published by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the US Department of State. I was interested in the International Religious Freedom part.

I encourage you to read both reports of Jordan and Greece or the one of your country of origin.

The interesting thing I found is the following:

In Jordan you can build as many churches and mosques ANYWHERE you want (by the way…Jewish temples are not allowed), BUT you’re not allowed to convert from Islam to other religions.

In Greece you’re not allowed to build a worship mosque ANYWHERE you want (by the way…I was told that Jewish temples are allowed to be built anywhere), BUT you’re free to change to any religion you want.

I wonder if both countries will change their views about these topics in the near future?? I also wonder how someday our people and governments will look back at these issues??

From my observation, I think religious culture is changing very fast and people are accepting each other, whether they like it or not. At least this is what I think.

What about you? What do you think? Feel free to leave your comments.

Valentine's Day in Jordan.....

Happy Valentine's Day!! Yesterday was a great day in Jordan....specially for the flower shops!
As per local news agencies, roses wear being sold at 15JOD (Around 15Euro) a piece!!

Here in Greece, a friend of mine told me that he paid 3Euro per rose. Although I don't know if this is the highest price or not...but it seems that in Jordan people pay more for love! :D

But what can I say...at the end, love is priceless!!!

Taboon vs Pita bread .

Taboon bread Arabic: خبز طابون is a type of flatbread common in Jordanian villages. It is baked in an outdoor oven made of mud-brick and clay heated with wood and manure. The fuel is ignited under a metal plate, on which are placed smooth river bed rocks which when heated cook the whole-wheat bread.

Pita (also called and more commonly known as pitta or pita bread and pronounced "pitta" in Greek) is an often round, brown, wheat flatbread made with yeast.

Similar to other double-layered flat or pocket breads, pita is traditional in many Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines. It is prevalent from North Africa through the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula to India and Afghanistan, coinciding with the spread of the Hellenistic world. The original pita is cooked flat without any rising. This type, known as the Greek pita, is the most well known and universal type.

Pita and Taboon both types of bread are used a lot in jordanian and greek meals, for us as jordanian we liked Pita specially with souvlaki .

in our next post we will talk about the diff btw Souvlaki and Shwarma , catch u then

Mouner

AIT-MBIT 2008

kanafeh :Jordanian sweets YUMMY

Kanafeh(Arabic) , kadaifi (Greek κα(ν)ταΐφι), is a very fine vermicelli-like pastry used to make sweet pastries and desserts. It is sometimes known as shredded phyllo.
Another name for kanafeh is knafeh Nabulsiyye.

Kanafeh is made by drizzling a row of thin streams of flour-and-water batter onto a turning hot plate, so they dry into long threads resembling shredded wheat. The threads are then collected into skeins.^[2]

Another variant has a cheese filling and called knāfeh, kunāfah, or kunfeh (Arabic; كنافة, (Turkish;Künefe).

Knafeh dough comes in three types:

• khishneh (Arabic خشنة) "rough", consisting of kadaif pastry, which looks like long thin noodle threads.
• na'ama (Arabic ناعمة) "fine", consisting of small pieces of semolina clustered together.
• mhayara (ِِArabic محيرة): which is a mixture of both khishneh and naa'ama.

The pastry is heated with some butter, margarine or palm oil for a while and then spread with soft cheese (see Nabulsi cheese) and more pastry; or the khishneh kunafah is rolled around the cheese. A thick syrup, consisting of sugar, water and a couple of drops of lemon juice, is poured on the pastry during the final minutes of cooking.

Mansaf : national dish of Jordan

hello ,today we will talk about the most popular dish in jordan which is

Mansaf (Arabic,منسف ) is a national dish of Jordan, made of lamb cooked in a yogurt sauce and served with rice. The lamb is cooked in a broth made with a dried yogurt-like product called jameed, and served on a large platter with a layer of flatbread (markook) topped with rice and then meat, garnished with almonds and pine nuts, and the sauce poured over all.

Mansaf is served on special occasions such as weddings and births, or to honor a guest. It is traditionally eaten collectively from a large platter in the Bedouin style, using the right hand instead of utensils.

good bye 4 now , c u soon .

A little bit about the two countries!

I thought that a brief comparison between the two countries will help build a picture of the cultures in Jordan and Greece. CIA finds it useful, they even put together a website called CIA World Factbook. The website contains information about countries in the world. I took the liberty off choosing some categories about Jordan and Greece. I hope this will give an insight and build a picture of the two countries and current status of Jordanian and Greek people:

	Jordan	Greece
Geography
Area	total: 92,300 sq km (World Rank: No.119)	total: 131,940 sq km (World Rank: No.104)
Coastline (Sea)	26 km	13,676 km
People
Population	6,053,193 (July 2007 est.)	10,706,290 (July 2007 est.)
Population growth rate	2.412% (2007 est.)	0.163% (2007 est.)
Religion	Sunni Muslim 92%, Christian 6% (Majority Greek Orthodox), other 2% (several small Shi'a Muslim and Druze populations) (2001 est.)	Greek Orthodox 98%, Muslim 1.3%, other 0.7%
Languages	Arabic (official), English widely understood among upper and middle classes	Greek 99% (official), other 1% (includes English and French)
Government
Government type	constitutional monarchy	parliamentary republic
Independence	Independence Day, 25 May (1946)	1829 (from the Ottoman Empire)
Economy
GDP - per capita (PPP)	$4,700 (2007 est.)	$30,500 (2007 est.)
Unemployment rate	13.5% official rate; unofficial rate is approximately 30% (2007 est.)	8.4% (2007 est.)
Debt – external	$7.483 billion (31 December 2007 est.)	$371.5 billion (30 June 2007)
Currency	Jordanian Dinar (JOD = 0.709USD)	Euro (EUR)
Military
Manpower fit for military service	males age 17-49: 1,348,076 females age 17-49: 1,158,011 (2005 est.)	males age 18-49: 2,018,557 females age 18-49: 2,000,650 (2005 est.)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP	8.6% (2006)	4.3% (2005 est.)

First post

Hello all!

We are 3 Jordanian Masters students (Ayman, Ma'en, Mouner) currently studying in Greece.
This blog is part of a project for our E-business course.

In our posts we will discuss cultural issues in both countries Jordan and Greece. Your comments are also highly appreciated but will be moderated!! ;)

bye for now!
3 Jordanians in Greece!