Yesterday three of my cousins and I spent a yet another day at my cousin’s farm. Going there to prepare dozing amounts of “mashawi” has become a tradition that we’ve been following for a while now. The Farm is not far away from Amman, it is in a place called “Zeinat el-Rboo3” and the view there is wonderful!

Apart from our main mission, which is to prepare and eat mashawi, we enjoy a lot of chatting and hallucinating about a wide range of subjects, basically everything. There were times when we were like 15 guys there, and it was a lot of fun!

Later at night we do other things that vary every time. Sometimes we settle down discussing scientific issues, other times we tell horror stories. Few times did we split into teams and start wondering nearby lands and frightening each other. Yesterday one of my cousins brought a CD full of funny commercial ads and we spent the night watching and laughing.

I also caught a little something before sunset, something I spent the whole evening playing with :P …

This was my first time seeing a live chameleon, and was a rare opportunity to test the animal’s so-called colour changing ability. I placed it between a number of leaves and observed carefully, the thing must have been young and inexperienced because it turned to dark brown and was very stupidly visible! I also placed it on a shiny silver plate and laughed at its attempts to turn silver. That evening, I taught it a life-time lesson: not everything around is green or brown :D

I also put the animal through a number of tests that I’d like to tell you about but I’ll just skip it this time because I don’t want to this blog to turn into National Geographic.

Also, those of you who have been following my latest posts, must have noticed that animal rights associations already have plenty of accusations against me ;)

My cousin Naser wasn’t really happy for the fact that I was experimenting with this thing, and warned me of touching it because some of these produce toxic substances on their skin when they feel endangered. Therefore I “forgot” to tell him that at some time it escaped the container I placed it in, and went climbing the melon that we were eating :F

I liked that animal a lot, so bad I couldn’t take it home with me! I let it go in peace before we left :(

That was one good evening at the farm! For more pictures check my Picture Gallery section, I’ll be posting if anything freaky happens there next times :P

One of my friends picked it crossing the street at night, I haven’t seen one in years … a hedgehog!

Of course the first thing that we thought of upon catching this fellow is to try to unroll it. Brute force didn’t work, so we had to think of more “creative” ways to see what’s inside the spines. One method that we tried was to ignite it with car keys (bil 3arabi: ne6ga3o self) … but it didn’t work “to our surprise” ;)

At some point we lost hope of unpacking this thing, so we thought of more interesting ways to have fun with it the way it is ... see below :P

Later, and after a comprehensive study of the animal’s behavior, I came out with a brilliant way to unroll it, a way that I should be nominated Noble prize for: we’ll leave it alone for sometime, and it will unroll by itself. What a genius have I been :D

I stood motionless with my mobile ready for shot. Some minutes later, the spines unrolled and the thing started to move. It was like watching a cartoon, the hedgehog started to move next to the wall really fast, more like it’s “sneaking”!

I wish we had more time that evening, but we had to leave. We left the hedgehog in my friend’s garden, maybe next time we catch it we’ll experiment more :P

Hedgehogs are fascinating, below are some interesting facts I collected from the Internet about hedgehogs …

I’ve just finished watching episode 19 of season 9 of The X-Files. This episode entitled The Truth is the last episode of the last season of the show, and by watching it I’ve completed watching all nine seasons of The X-Files!

I am a big fan of this show, I started downloading and watching The X-Files as early as I got my ADSL plugged, that would be about a year and half ago. I enjoyed it a lot, sometimes I used to watch like 3 or 4 episodes in a row when I had time :P

Am sure almost all of you know what The X-Files is about, for those who don’t: The X-Files, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, is a series of investigations of two FBI agents: Fox Mulder and Dana Scully into the world of paranormal and unexplained phenomena. The focus of these investigations went on UFOs, extra-terrestrials, mutants, myths, unseen worlds, government conspiracies and else.

What I loved about this show, apart from the thrilling plots, is the scientific analysis that characters used to derive upon observing an explained phenomenon. This role was mainly played by Agent Scully, a medical doctor and a scientist who was assigned to the X-Files department of the FBI to assist Agent Mulder in providing scientific insights about what was marked unexplained.

Although the main themes of the show were thriller, mystery and horror, it didn’t lack a sense of drama and humor at some points. One episode in season 3 entitled From Outer Space really cracked me up …

It started with a couple driving alone at night back home when their car suddenly stopped working (classic electromagnetic pulse). Immediately, a UFO appeared, and two aliens went down to abduct the couple. The women in the car asked the man “What are those?”, the man replied “How the hell should I know?”, then both went hypnotized.

The aliens started dragging the couple to their UFO, but they were intercepted by the landing of another UFO. A “different” alien came down from the new UFO and approached the aliens who where dragging the couple. One of the former aliens said to his friend “Jack, who is that?”, his friend replied “How the hell should I know?” :D

… and the new alien abducted all four :D

That was one episode I hardly can forget. Man, I wish they make more of this show. Now that it’s over I don’t know what to watch, I already started to miss it. It left a big gap somewhere :(

Yesterday I spent an hour or so in the afternoon fixing a part of my car’s interior. Some screws weren’t tightly fixed in place so part of the dashboard was loose and occasionally felt down on the pedals. This was very irritating while driving, but I didn’t have time to fix it in the past month because I had loads of university exams. Now that I have a break before my last final exam I decided to do it. I simply can’t stand any imperfection in my car :P

Well, I don’t know for you, but this is not the first time I see a cat interested in some human activity, specifically a car-related one. Months ago I was helping my cousin replacing his car tire with a spare, and a cat stood nearby and watched the whole process carefully. Maybe it was curious, or just bored, or maybe some neurons in its little brain were short-circuited leading to this weird behavior :P

Cats act really insanely sometimes, but the thing that kills the most is their stupid look when you burst laughing at them :D

Minutes later, this little fellow came near and started stretching its body and moving between my legs as if it’s begging me to let it in, into whatever thing I was doing, and I didn’t mind. I like cats a lot; they were and still are my favorite pets. I never got bored of watching them around, but I needed to finish before sunset, I couldn’t drive at night like this!

The cat, seeing that I apparently didn’t mind, climbed my jeans and stood in front of the pedals! By then I started to think that it must be REALLY curious to jump over a human and step into his car just to take a look around?!

I had been working close to the pedals and the cat was standing in my way so I tried to move it out, but instead it jumped and took seat next to me :S

I ignored it for a while and continued joining the falling part of the dashboard, it stood there still and watching as I moved the tools and drove the screws.

Some time later, a huge truck was coming down the street, and the loud sound of its engine freaked the cat! When it passed right next to us, the cat has freaked out enough that it decided to leave whatever thing it thought it was doing and jump out of the car.

It looked through the glass, the shiny clean transparency that appeared to be a way out, then jumped confidently, and … just like in the cartoons … BOM :D

I burst into laughing, while it escaped out the door it initially came in through. They say “Curiosity killed the cat”, only this time it caused it a headache :D