… Ponders the great TRC titan. TRC stands for the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission who, as I noted previously, were deliberating blocking Skype in Jordan. Fortunately, many people took this fascist intention seriously and talked about it. As I have read, the TRC went ahead and blocked Skype (partially) then magically changed their minds about the “threat” Skype poses and unblocked it.

Great going TRC. Really wise at the beginning, then really professional, and then really consistent.

I have noticed a growing trend in my latest posts; a tendency towards posting entries that lean toward being personal to some degree. If anyone should know how dangerous that is, it should be me. I had resolved not to turn the Box into a place where I narrate what goes on in my life and where I have an anonymous audience enjoying my story and thinking “Ah, but you should have done this instead of that”.

My resolution still stands, I think. I reflect on matters and post what I make of them in my Box, that makes it all personal, no? Yes. The truth of the matter still stands though, some things are more personal than other things.

Beyond the usual I-have-been-busy-lately cliché’s, much maturity was dug up and acquired by yours truly over the past weeks. Someone said during those strange times: “If you are lower class, the only way you can socially advance is by getting an education. But how far can you go with your education? You can reach lower middle class, maybe if you’re very lucky you’ll get to upper middle class, but you’ll never be upper class”, and I thought it was so sad.

Then during another discussion, a person said that communist China was true to its original principles and it still is. I asked if there were no exceptions in China but I didn’t hear the person’s answer.

I think of a revolution as a means by which the majority of people achieve something. The smart rich get richer when they channel the inferior classes’ anger and passion towards the revolution. The educated middle class and the idealists get to chase their ideas with more enthusiasm, and often fall to the belief that they have materialized. The poor get to vent at first then they retire to misery.

Perhaps my pessimism is taking shape these days. Perhaps it is affecting my views in politics and culture, making me regard things as trivial, unworthy, and fake. A very interesting transformation. I wonder, is it part of maturity?

Have you ever noticed how so many technie people, particularly males, are socially under-developed? If you have not been paying attention to this universal fact, let me announce to you that by reading this entry your situation of ignorance shall be remedied.

(Most) Techie males: a species resembling regular human beings distinctive for their social incompetence, and often for perverse fantasies under a cloak of inhibition.

That, in a nutshell, is your 101 on (most) techie males. I said most, in severe cases of benevolence I will replace that with the word “many”. This is not such a case.

Since we’re on tech talk, I read over at 360°east that Skype is getting blocked in Jordan. How very fascist! It’s funny when I remember how sincere and eager to “improve services” a TRC (Telecommunications Regulatory Commission) representative came across during a certain meeting.

I feel totally Orwellian at the moment.

“Really now, let’s block Skype so we can milk the Jordanian tech-savvy and/or cosmopolitan to the last drop. Then we can block Blogger and Word Press to force the growing number of blog-addicts to buy our biased newspapers and read our old news. After we do that, we can dig a canal around Jordan and turn it into an island, and isolate it from the rest of the modern world that screams “FREE” all too often.”

I say viva Skype. No to Fascism.

On a final note, I ruined my “The Visuals” section while trying to fix it, which just proves how very un-techie I am. You can either check my flickr for recent pictures, or fix my Visuals.

I try my best to keep my personal meetings with bloggers on the discrete side. Not only because I fancy the hush-hush workings of minds, but also because I regard these encounters with as much respect and privacy as my personal space. Consequently, do not expect a list containing the names of bloggers I have personally run into to appear any time soon.

Today was an apex in awkwardness on my behalf, I think my brain waves either carried the wrong messages or were damaged because of the heavy thinking I have engaged myself in for the past two weeks. At times, I honestly wonder what demons possessed me to do certain things.

I was at a certain location today, casually walking and thinking, feeling utterly lost after a blow of intellectual clash with reality, and I spotted someone I thought I had seen somewhere. I walked on for a short while, now focusing my entire effort on remembering who that person resembles, and then I went back. I knew the person, it was a blogger!

That person was heavily in thought, or boredom, or both - it seemed, and I was somehow floating in my ideas (actually, I was trying to stay afloat) and I thought it would be nice if I came up to the person and surprised them. It was a moment of vague reflection, I do not know what prompted it.

And so I did. I walked up to the person in question and I said hello, they looked up at me with puzzled eyes, but shortly afterwards we started a good conversation and there wasn’t an idle moment of awkwardness. Why lie? There was one moment of awkwardness at the beginning of the encounter, when I had mistakenly shaken the hand of that person, forgetting they do not appreciate that.

I truly regret that, person. I hope you read this and forgive me (I am bluffing, of course).

The awkwardness did not stop at that. In the evening there was a function organized by my employers and, marvel of all marvels, I thought I heard a familiar name introduced to the crowds. It seems I was on an awkward-self-introduction-frenzy this entire day, because I went up to that person and went right ahead and introduced myself after asking about their blog.

You have to understand the reason why all of this is alien to me. I am not the type that introduces one’s self without an occasion or a purpose, or an interest to that matter. I reckon my purpose today was to create some intelligent conversation (and I had missed that lately), because I knew those people were capable of delivering just that. Still, I cannot come to terms with the fact that I intentionally picked out complete strangers from massive crowds and talked to them, just like that - impulsive behavior.

My approach to social life is much more calculated, selective, and sometimes plain bizarre. I joke about attracting the weird folk like flies but it is a fact of life, but to imply that my own actions have gone a bit too off-beat is really original. Here is another originality: I am publishing this.