Flicken's Blog

Ich bin Flicken, ja! Traditional Islam, food, guns, camping, grammar, Canadianna, Arabic, stuff.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Wildlife Conservation

Recently, someone mentioned that farmers in the Jordan Valley (Ar. aghwar) call upon hunters to kill wild pigs that are destroying their land. The interesting thing is that virtually all Jordanian wildlife that is edible according to Islamic Law is either extinct or endangered. Wild pigs survived because the locals didn't hunt them into oblivion.

The strange thing is that resource management is mentioned in the Qur'an: the Prophet Yusuf explains to the King of Egypt they should conserve as much as possible during the seven years of plenty in preparation for the following seven harsh years. Yet, what one finds in many Muslim countries is that resources are often consumed mindlessly to termination.

The Masha' Allah Mystery Mechanic

As I mentioned in a previous post, my car wouldn't go above 3000 RPM (whether in gear or in neutral) and would start jerking. I asked around, and, as usual, people had a number of suggestions. When I described the problem over the phone to a mechanic, he said it's definitely mechanical. A car electrician concluded the same. The mechanic at my local gas station said he'd start by changing two parts and then proceed.

Finally, I asked my in-laws if they knew of a good mechanic. They said that one of their relatives is a very competent mechanic. The only problem, according to them, is that he won't work on your car until he's done with the cars that came in before it.

I went to the mechanic on Saturday and explained the problem to him. He was working on another car and asked me if the car has a contact breaker, to which I replied yes. He took his time finishing up what he was doing, barely talking or looking up. He told me to pop the hood and start the car. Next, he told me to give it some gas a few times. Each time, it would reach close to 3000 RPM and then drop. He said, "If I tell you to change a part, will you listen to me?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Go buy a contact breaker." I told him, "The guy who sold me the car said he just changed the contact breaker." He said, "Forget the guy who sold it to you. Go buy it from the guy down there", and pointed a couple shops down to a parts store. I bought the part for 2 JD and returned to him, at which point he promptly installed it. He told me to start it and give it gas. It hummed well past 4000 RPM. I took it for a test drive, came back, and asked him how much he wanted. He said, "Leave it on us." I told him, "Next time." He said, "2 JD", so I inserted the money into his pocket, thanked him, and took off.

The guy who sold me the car told me not to let anyone rip me off by telling me to change the spark plugs or contact breaker, as he had just changed them. Whenever I mentioned that the contact breaker was just recently changed to other mechanics, they started looking for other possible causes. The thing I like about this mechanic is that his knowledge was deep enough for him to be confident about his diagnosis.

Before he changed the contact breaker, he asked me if the car was standard or automatic, to which I replied, "Standard." He told me to put it into neutral, and when I confirmed that it was already in neutral, he reached down for something and did something that looked like he was tightening a nut. I'm not sure what he did or why he did it, but after taking it from him, I found that the clutch-gas balance had been altered, so I had to learn to adjust to it. The car even shut off on me once because I wasn't giving it enough gas while letting the clutch out. After a day of driving it, I've adjusted to the new setting. However, it remains a mystery why he did this.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Residency Renewed

Alhamdulillah, I received my renewed yearly residency yesterday. After the obligatory security clearance by the Jordanian intelligence, the obligatory blood test to ensure I'm free of infectious and contagious diseases, and the increased fees, there was yet another step this year: fingerprinting. Given how many steps there are in getting a yearly residency and how K-Town is known for being such a tough part of the 'hood, I decided to compose a gangsta rap couplet about getting residency:

One, two, three, four, five steps, another!
Stand back dude, I've got clearance, mother's brother!
(In Jordan, a polite way to refer to a man is khal, meaning, "mother's brother.")

The nice thing is that the Jordanian intelligence didn't actually call me in to their office. Ever since I applied for residency last year, they would call me in every time I'd re-enter the country. The last time I returned from Egypt late last summer, they said they'd no longer call me in to them, but rather, they'd meet me somewhere in Amman. Alhamdulillah, for the renewal of the yearly residency, they didn't meet me at all. At first, my background in shooting and guns bothered them. They wanted to make sure I wasn't Salafi, Shi'a, about to blow something up, and that I hadn't touched guns since I left Canada.

Yours,
Secret Agent Abu Fluffy

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Wild Blue Yonder

Alhamdulillah, I finally went out for a day trip after buying my car, which was one of the primary reasons I bought it.

We drove 108 km (67.5 miles) east from K-Town to the Azraq Wetlands Reserve. This marshy area was used by humans for the past 250 millennia and was almost destroyed to nothing within the past 30 years. All that remains is a walk through a bog that has mostly dried up where you can see some small fish and an occasional frog. There is also one good bird-sighting hut that overlooks a pool. We saw a bunch of ducks and something that looked like a heron or an egret, as well as a number of smaller birds. The site of the fish made me hungry. The best thing about walking through the wetlands reserve was that the smell of vegetation and water reminded me of my hometown of Richmond, BC, where I would go jogging around a bog when weather permitted.

After finishing up at the reserve, I asked the receptionist about other sites in Al-Azraq. She told me that the Shaumari Reserve was closed for maintenance but I could check out the Azraq Fort. At the fort, we bought tickets that allowed us to see three desert castles: Al-Azraq, `Amra, and Harrana. Al-Azraq Fort was built by the Romans and re-built by the Muslims during the Crusades. With all its corridors and rooms, the place would make an excellent site for a small paintball tournament. `Amra and Harrana are among a series of desert castles built by the Umayyads but scholars still aren't sure what their purpose was. The strangest thing about Qusayr `Amra (lit. "The little castle of `Amra") is the painting on the roof of one of its domes: people are very lightly dressed. This definitely does not seem characteristic of Islamic paintings, let alone Umayyad-era work. Outside the diminutive castle is a well. I dropped a rock in it and it took about 2.7 seconds to reach the bottom, meaning the well is probably around 35 metres deep. Scattered outside the castle are many smooth rocks with very clearly delineated layers. The Harrana castle was possibly used as an inn, and is definitely a great place for a game of hide and seek. My son came looking for me and when I grabbed him in the dark chamber, he had a delightfully terrified look on his face.

Trolling for Cressida

Alhamdulillah, I finally bought a car: a 1985 Toyota Cressida XL with the 21R model engine at 1972 cc's and four cylinders. The XL's are the lower-end Cressidas without power windows, sunroofs, automatic transmission, etc. In fact, I'm glad I don't have all these power options, as they require repeated maintenance in older cars.

It took a long time to choose the car. Basically, I didn't want a generic car without character. Also, I had to carefully consider what I would be able to resell here in Jordan so that I didn't end up with a bunch of money tied up in a car that will never sell. The problem is that the price for petrol is high and increasing in Jordan, so Jordanians don't want big engines. As a North American, I like big, powerful engines, so the 2.0 L range seemed like a reasonable comprise, though many Jordanians consider that a good engine size for an SUV.

Back in 1996, I bought a 1985 Toyota Cressida GL with all the luxury options. It had a 2.8 L engine with six inline cylinders. It was an absolute beast. I drove with it from Vancouver to Milwaukee, then down to Orlando, then back up to Waterloo, Canada, while carrying four people and pulling a trailer. Then, after moving to California and transporting it there, I drove it several times up and down I-5 between Silicon Valley and Vancouver. Once a Florida state trooper stopped me for speeding and when he looked at the registration, he quickly looked over at the car and said, "That's a 1985?" I made two major mistakes with the car: first, when it started knocking, I didn't examine the issue, so the engine failed. Second, when the engine did fail, I should have just borrowed a couple thousand dollars and had the engine replaced rather than writing it off and spilling my blood month-after-month on a zero-percent, zero-down financed Grand Caravan, which ended up sucking me dry and for which I didn't get much value back when I sold it. Someone smart probably replaced the engine in that old Cressida and it's probably still being driven around California today.

Regardless of how North Americans consider driving stick shift a manly thing, I never learned it in North America. I quickly realized that if I limited myself to automatic cars, I would not be able to purchase or drive 90% of cars in Jordan. I was always concerned that, in the case of an emergency, I might only have a stick shift at my disposable. Thus, I took two lessons in driving stick from an instructor. He then advised me to buy myself a car and he'd give me lessons on it. When I finally did buy my current stick shift Cressida, it was January 22 and there was snow on the ground. It was great fun driving home from the DMV in Marka in the slush and traffic with my wife next to me. There is a saying that saints (Ar. awliya) are those who cause you to remember Allah. I realized then that my driving was a saint, as my wife was praying the whole time I was driving. So what if the car stalled in the middle of an intersection, rolled back into other cars behind me when stopped on a hill, jerked and surged forward? I wasn't going to let some silly obstacles stop me from owning a good, cheap car. Once I got home, I called the driving instructor and asked him for some more lessons. He said he was far away from K-Town these days and would send me another instructor's phone number. He never did, so I just decided I'd teach myself. I learned some good techniques for dealing with hills, engine stalls, and gentle acceleration from the Internet. Alhamdulillah, I drive a lot better now.

The first day I bought the car, I was so excited that I wanted any reason to drive it, even though it was snowy and slushy. I offered to drive a co-worker home with her husband. Of course, now that I owned a car and didn't have to wait for taxis, I could go out in sandals in the snow. It was a short walk from my door to the car and I'd turn on the heat in the car as soon as I got in. During the drive, the car stalled. We tried to start it a couple times by pushing it and playing with the clutch and gas. It worked for a short time and then just failed. Of course, pushing the car in snow and slush while wearing sandals wasn't exactly easy. I finally got a neighbour to come by and jump start the car. I drove it home and he started to examine it one bit at a time. He finally found that the carbon brushes in the alternator needed replacing.

The next weekend, I took the car for a number of tune-ups. After a long day of driving the car, I had it detailed. I paid the detailer an extra JD to ensure he did a good job. It appears that detailing in his mind did not include emptying the ashtray from the former owners. After detailing, I drove the car and it stalled. I kept driving it short distances and it would repeatedly stall. After standing in the rain for a couple hours with my neighbour, he got it running again. It wasn't clear exactly what the problem was, though. Exactly one week later, the same problem occurred, but disappeared by morning and I drove the car to work. However, when it was time to drive the car home, it failed to start again. I called a friend to see if he knew any good car electricians. He came by, called the electrician, and explained the problem. The electrician told him to connect the positive terminal of the battery to the positive terminal of the coil. Upon attempting this, something started smoking, so he immediately removed the connection. "Maybe that's the negative", he said. He tried the other coil terminal. No smoke. So far, so good. I started the car smoothly. He removed the connection and the car stopped. He re-attached the connection, I started the car, and drove it to the car electrician. At the shop, the electrician told me that I had a security device in the form of some wires under the driver's floor mat that could be connected or disconnected so that the car would or wouldn't start at will. I told him to go ahead and remove the device. Alhamdulillah, that solved the problem.

Recently, Jordan outlawed leaded gasoline. There are now two grades of unleaded: 90 and 95 octane. I tried both, but my car feels a lot heavier with them. It still accelerates to the desired speed, but much more slowly than with leaded. Another problem that I had even when I was running on leaded is that the car starts to kick when it reaches around 3000 RPM. Ideally, I shouldn't drive it that high, but it is occasionally useful to rev up. It didn't have this problem when I first bought it.

Blogging Hiatus Over

I was busy shopping for a car followed by dealing with the problems of an old car followed by two back-to-back illnesses (nothing serious but enough to dampen my mood for blogging) followed by some inertia.