Entries this day: Browsing_in_Nablus Withdraw_money_in_Nablus allah balata long-jokes zz_AJAX

Browsing in Nablus

1:20pm IST Sunday 16 October 2005

The market in Nablus has all variety of carts and vehicles and stores and tables used to display all types of goods. For example, one car had jeans on the hood and roof, shirts hanging from the slightly unrolled windows, and belts hanging from a wire around the entire perimeter of the car.

Withdraw money in Nablus

12:45pm IST Sunday 16 October 2005

I'm in Nablus for the second day; right now importing video from the Bil'in demonstration on Friday. The video is pretty wobbly, since I was walking slash using my other camera slash etc, but I hope to find a few useful clips. If that guy (not Jon) emails me looking for the video of that interview, I may be able to give it to him.

This morning I walked with Valeria from the Project Hope apartment to the city center, where she continued to the office and I wandered around with a basic plan of finding a bank at which I could withdraw money. The first three I tried each told me they could only take Visa, but sent me to the next bank, which also only accepted Visa until I got to the fourth bank which actually would let me get money on MasterCard.

Jalal was my very patient teller, who quoted me $140 for 600 NIS. That price seemed high, so I asked for his calculator and tried to compare that to $85 for 400 NIS (the price I got in the airport bank) but taking into consideration today's exchange rates (which Jalal of course was doing) and not really knowing if I should use the BUY number or the SELL number, but figuring it out cause of course the bank should make money on the transactions.

In the end, I signed a thing to give me 100 Jordanian Dinars, but don't know how many USD it cost. (I wonder if I can look it up online now (and not get too sidetracked on the internet.) Dammit; I'm still locked out from viewing it online. I gotta figure out how to call them collect from here.)

I went to the booth with a man named Armstrong (or something in reference to his size / strength) and he gave me 100 Jordanian Dinars. I was like, "¤¢¤ì?" and asked if he could change them to NIS, which he did: 651 NIS.

While sitting at Jalal's counter, I met a man named Bin Laden ("do you know what it means?" "I know of the man, but I don't know what it means." "It's just a name; it doesn't mean anything.") who joined me in line at Armstrong's counter. Bin Laden was like, "wait me," and I confirmed he meant "wait for me," and was like, aight and waited for him, cause I didn't have anything better to do. I wondered if his intentions were pure, or if he wanted to bring me to his shop or otherwise extract money from me, but I figured I could handle anything he presented.

I made eye contact with another teller and Jalal introduced me to him - a man named Munther (if I remember correctly). He was quite friendly with good English, and I met his customer and another man named Osama Labrake and we joked about having Bin Laden and Osama in the same room, but not the same person.

I met the woman next to Munther, (but never learned her name) and she scoped the flashcards after Munther flipped through them, and we chatted for a bit and generally everyone had a great time.

Bin Laden came up to me, "are you ready to go?"

"Where are we going?"

"Where do you want to go?"

"I want to buy a belt." (my jeans have been practically falling off my butt cause I've been eating less in Japan)

But I was still fully engaged with my new bank friends, "you are not alone; stay here; we are your friends," and having a great time.

Bin Laden bade me adeiu and I stayed a bit longer and gave out three copies of my yellow adventure cards when I left.

allah

2:24pm IST Sunday 16 October 2005

Whew. My brain is a bit tired.

A man whose beard appears to have grown from orange to white told me about Islam and how the Koran is the final book and Mohammed was the final prophet and now we are waiting for the return of Christ who will kill the anti-Christ (for whom, btw, the Jews are now waiting to come as their savior) on a certain spot in a city he named near Tel Aviv, I think.

I was as patient as I could muster for the long soliloquy, but in the end, when he invited me to his village (thank you very much) and went for the final closing: "so what time can I expect you to come?" I answered, "when Allah sends me, I will come."

I basically shut down all further requests, though I did let him write down his number, which I read carefully once and then folded neatly and placed in the waste bin beside this desk. If Allah wishes me to remember the number, then I will remember it and call the guy and set up that time.

Until then, namaste.

balata

3:41pm IST Sunday 16 October 2005

Just went to Balata refugee camp with Masada. It's the largest refugee camp in the West Bank; she said it extends some 10 kilometers in one dimension and is "big" in the other dimension.

When I think of "camp," I imagine tents, but this area has been a refugee camp since 1948, when the original Israeli occupation began. It started out as tents, but is now cinder block buildings all crammed together with narrow litter-filled alleys with water leaking downhill from goodness knows where. Its main streets are narrow, with vending carts on the sides.

Little kids who had been playing in the streets would stop to stare curiously at me; I can only wonder what questions were in their minds.

Masada and I walked through about 5 alleys before finding our way out again. We saw only a tiny fraction of the camp.

We walked across the street to Balata village, for which Balata refugee camp is named. The streets were normal sized; houses were normal size and normal spacing; there was actually room to move around.

Masada told me some wack stories from a few years ago, at the beginning of the second intifada; she couldn't even travel from Nablus to Balata (about 10 minute walk).

long jokes

##02:52 Sunday 16 October 2005

These are the long jokes I know. They are more like stories with silly punchlines. I wrote the one about the kid who loves to do dishes.

1. How to catch a pink elephant

1. Moe and Joe

1. Kid who loved green golf balls

1. Kid who loved clowns

1. Magician and the captain's parrot

1. Kid who loved to do dishes

1. Ten little piggies

1. Man in the black hat, white gloves, red cape, who killed my mom, my dad, seven brothers and seven sisters

1. The perfect koosh

1. Shaggy dog

1. Woman who had a recurring dream

zz AJAX

late 16 October 2005

Tonight I started messing with the concept popularized recently as AJAX.

I have made a tool to help me include photos on my website; it basically shows thumbnails and HTML including sppecific URLs needed to include hose pics in my journal.

With this tool I have been including images in my journal pages.

But I can make it even easier to use. Once I have copied the HTML for a specific picture, I don't need to see that picture in the list anymore.

I snagged code from wikipedia that hides and shows the table of contents for larger entries (the one for AJAX, actually) and have culled it down to a test thing that shows or hides a single picture.

By the way it's written, though, it will only work easily for one HTML tag entity. I need to extend it to work for multiple images on one page.

It was at tht point that I got stuck last night. I could make on picture vanish on command, but when I tried to extend it to two, nothing.

I actually made two sets of changes to the code. One by adding HTML and function calls for a second picture, and the other by adding a numeric parameter to the function calls so it would know which HTML image to hide.

I think I will remove the second image from the HTML side and see if I can get one picture to hide using the parmeter with function call.