The Amman - NY Air Link

I can't help it. Call it a bias and I don't care, but I just love to draw on links between both cities. In this year's news (before its almost over): Royal Jordanian celebrates 30 years of nonstop flights between Amman and NY, establishing that intimate link with the dear Middle East.

Ok, so I was one of RJ's victims of the recent flights that got messed up... I had my flight change three times, I barely made it to JFK, but, such a mess was worth it at the end; like meeting someone you think highly of.
A whole page ad in today's paper presented an apology and detailed explanation for the mess, quite an interesting way to communicate to the passengers...which brings up a random thought; I wonder if RJ will be hit by the wave of neoliberalism and consecutively undergoes privatisation. Come on, why should it be, it's royal after all!

The Ivy Dilemma

So they got the City Council's approval.

Dear Columbia:
This is New York City, just why can't that urban context get punched in to the numbers of space per student ratio of yours?

Brooklyn: Home of Unconventional Friendships

Between Jews and Muslims, or so the mainstream notion views the friendship as so (unconventional), before ARRANGED comes to attack it gently, accepting that they both have lives to lead and not wars to live. And the streets and homes of Brooklyn are so. From Williamsburg to Bay Ridge, the city presents spots where world peace can actually happen.

ARRANGED is a story of marriages in a city where the conventional of so is secular. Where the religious narrative actually is a story of success. You just have to love low budgets (especially those shot in 17 days!)

The Weather Channel & The Idea of "Light Rain"

3:00 A.M.
Outside the snow a few inches think, maybe 5?
The Channel reported rain.

12:00 P.M.
Rain showers and Windy

And the white on my window sill is?
Product of a natural slush-generative window designed to function as so through the idea of creating a local microclimate.

Slowing Down on Cortlandt St.

Using the local to go to Manhattan from Brooklyn (& vice versa) is definitely not habitual. In the very few times I did so, I noticed something worth mentioning. As the R line passes through the Cortlandt street station, it slows down. If your not familiar, this station is the one that used to serve the WTC towers and adjacent areas. When the train passes by, you get to see the interior of destruction (or construction, but realistically rather than pessimistically, I see it as the former). It's a sad moment. I find it remarkable that the train slows down, it's a strong statement for NYC to make: as quick as the trains have to go, they slow down in respect and reflection of what had happened at that site. I prefer to think of it as that, though maybe the reason is to not affect the construction on ground zero (a less likely possibility since the trains speed up as soon as they are away from the edge of the station).

Apparently, the MTA was planning to reopen the station this year, but delays happened.

Broadway meets 5th Ave

in a rather abstract manner...


Brookfield Properties model for the Hudson Yards
Development...modeling outside of the box of the
Yards...

The NYC cab dresses flowers for the fall

Public art challenges the bland yellow surfaces of the city's cabs in what I personally think is a bold attempt to use a symbol that operates on the rapport of juvenile and feminine representation. Standing on the curb and observing it pass by, it's not really the way I think of it then and there.

NYC's initiative of Garden in Transit is promoted as a
community-based project.

two-extra notions:
- the colors are bold and beautiful
- the male-cab drivers, and the suit-jacketed business men: do they have some sort of sexual (as in gender) consciousness to this?

A 10$ digital camera produces this sort of an image

Bloomberg maybe the gentleman sitting beside you

on the train. As far as this newsweek's article is concerned. Seems like he uses one of the 42nd street stations (as far as the picture reveals): Times Square's or Bryant Park's. So what line is it gonna be? (hint: he uses it to go to work)

On differences between NY and, and

Amman. Issue of the homeless.

In Amman: a social taboo.
In NY: Dean MacCannell says it well:
"That the poor, the insane or the criminal could simply be turned onto the streets, that the 'legitimate' members of society could retreat into gated and guarded communities, that the poorest of the poor could simply be excluded from 'society' and asked to 'keep moving along', these exclusionary societal 'solutions' were (and continue to be - even as they emerge as historical reality) theoretically unthinkable. The victory of capitalism over other economic forms has been accompanied by a new attitude, a casual indifference toward the socially excluded. Now that capitalism no longer has an audience, the homeless do not necessarily constitute an embarrassment."

Why? Simple: because Amman is still a newcomer to capitalism when compared to the older receptors, and incubators of it.

Capitalism is old news. And according to academic circles, news of primitive ideological times.

Dia: Beacon

Look at this pic well, because this is all what your camera can get to capture at the Dia: Beacon museum. It is more of a shrine-of-a-museum dedicated to Minimalist art housing fantastic works of Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt.

And sadly, they watch visitors over there so hard you don't get a chance to snap any pics. However, and saying this with a tone, you can sneak some down at Richards Serra's Torqued Ellipse. So if your approach to pondering upon art is informed by the way you photograph it, this may not be your cup of coffee.

Jordanian women and Facebook

Or shall I say Ammani women?... since that has been the object of personal familiarization. Anyways, you can say that the condition is pretty much typical so a generalization could be excused. No excuse? Buzz off...why are you reading this blog anyhow?

So, on facebook, there's the profile picture that stands as the visual representation of ourselves. The thing with most of these [us] women on facebook is posting a picture from their weddings. Putting aside all the social constructs that are entailed to reaching to such a level of presentation, don't you think its doing these women's special wedding moments a form of degradation by using them as a virtual identifier of who they are to the public? A moment in your life doesn't represent who you are (basing on a premise here that the profile pic is a representation of who you are). Or, in the case of Jordanian women, it does.

Fashion crime

I admit to committing this weekend: Walking into Prada's SoHo store with a Jansport backpack and well-worn Nike sneakers on. And having the nerve to hop into that seated elevator. Wondering what that hunk at the front door was thinking…

Open House New York

NY unlocks some of its otherwise limited access places one weekend each year; the OHNY event. A design and architecture event, you get to mingle with some top-notch architects in their offices or at project locations, to access particular interiors such as the Chrysler lobby, or to access rough, not-ready-for-public places such as Ellis Island's abandoned building.

Columbia hosts Iranian President

and the city goes crazy. Papers have been generous about communicating their madness and denial on the invitation Columbia University addressed to the Iranian President, Ahmadinejad, who is visiting the city. Scheduled for today, the places were booked since last week so
we couldn't get to attend it LIVE.

However, we went today to see the anticipated commotion in the vicinity of the university. Flashing our CCNY ID's we managed to get through the first security barrier but not the 2nd at the gates :(NYPD were all over place, t.v. stations, camera men, etc. Broadway was so crammed with New Yorkers going out of their way to express a point-of-view. An interesting moment…

Yes, back to blogging

So, the so-dreaded and delayed decision has been made; and here I am, blogging. Now I have to clarify that I went into this mess before. For two months. And then what happened? I was co-blogging at mensnoncorpus.blogspot.com (I dunno if it’s still open though) and then my minimal privileges were withdrawn, due to indecisiveness reasons. Back now and inspired by NY, here are notions inspired by the city I relocated too.