#just gotta wait 1-3 years till i can watch it on streaming services

[aspiring-prototype]

finally watched rotb.

[ahmeddocuments-blog]

Day 1, (Cairo/Amman/Paris), 25-9-2019

Written by Ahmed Hassan, edited and corrected by Aya Ashraf

Well, this is finally it. The moment I've always procrastinated to do. I'm finally documenting my biggest trip to Europe to date!

The trip started from September, 2019 from France passing by Italy, Vatican, Austria, Prague and ending in Germany. The trip raised my travel achievements from 5 cities, 4 countries to 15 cities, 8 countries in a total of 13 months, with a total number of 33 traveling days.

When I'm documenting my trip, I'm documenting personal experience, personal observations and opinions. it also might reflect my passion for Architecture, Art and beauty of how I see things, and how it reflects from my perspective. And to be honest, I've thought a lot about ideas of how I can show my trip well, and blogging somehow was a winner. Blogging sounds like a classic idea of how things should be documented, and I'm someone who's always nostalgic and feels classic about the present and the future.

Well, Where do I start. it's 9:00 PM on a Tuesday, On 24th of September 2019. i just had a haircut and heading home after one of the strangest days of my life. it's the day i had an emotional roller coaster; I'm getting ready to travel a the biggest planned trip ever, just a few hours after knowing I've took a hit in my career. Or at least that’s what i thought at the time. but after a few hours of Anxiety, I've decided to let all of such thoughts stop, I'm going to travel! I'm literally a few hours away from doing my most favorite thing in the whole world! I started double checking my belongings; Passport and tickets, Cash money, devices and luggage.

My plane takes off at 6:45 AM. I made sure i had arrived earlier for documentation. I finished everything around 3 hours before the flight and I'm sitting there at the airport bored and bored waiting for the time to pass, still having glimpses of anxiety from time to time.

The moment has come, I hear the call for my flight. Unlike the past year, that wasn't a direct gate to the plane, but it's a shuttle bus taking us directly to the plane near the runway. It’s my first time on Royal Jordanian airlines, I gotta say the plane looks decently vintage from outside, I liked the color pattern of the fleet because you don’t see darker planes every day. as below, the plane appeared mostly black with mixed colors of blood red and gold yellow.

i picked royal Jordanian because of two factors; their cheap economy tickets (Cairo/Amman/Paris and Berlin/Amman/Cairo for 6900 L.E), their luggage policy  (two 23 Kg pieces + the carry on). But I gotta say, you get what you pay for. As someone who’s been on Air France's Joon last year, all I could do is compare the seats’ quality, friendliness level of the staff and the quality of food. The three weren’t that bad at all on the RJ planes, but yeah, that was something to mention.

So the plane is prepared to take off, flight attendants are giving us instructions about safety and emergency, then we’re taxiing the runway. When people usually describe their point of life when they feel absolutely free of any restrictions, I always think about the moment when the plane is on the runway accelerating, leaving anything behind -even if temporary- and rising above the clouds, above anything that previously caused any kind of insecurity. It’s me feeling superior and feeling good about myself.

That was my first time passing over Sinai by plane, I’ve seen a lot of beautiful scenery, like the gulf of Suez and the Suez canal and its ships lining up one after the other.

Also scenes of Sinai mountains, that looks small but great from above as well

I’m now entering the airspace of Jordan. And I got to see the river of Jordan and glimpses of the dead sea.

Just a few minutes after capturing the above picture, we were approaching Queen Aliaa International Airport in Amman for my transit. The plane was landing, and that was my first time to set foot in another Arab country. My transit was almost two hours long so it wasn’t that big of a deal, the airport was extremely clean with very fast free WiFi service, I didn’t feel bothered at all by the waiting time cause I kept exploring the airport. I wanted to buy a snack or a small meal but it was weird because of my zero understanding about the Jordanian currency in terms of what's reasonable and what's expensive. Minutes passed fast and I boarded the plane for a longer flight to Paris.

Passing over the occupied lands of Palestine gave me a special scene I won't forget, a glimpse of the dome rock mosque and the Aqsa mosque. It’s that glowing gold item in the middle of the below picture.

The flight to Paris lasted about 6 hours, passing over the Mediterranean, central Europe and then finally entering the French air field. It was a matter of time before hearing the announcement that we’re reaching Charles de Gaulle Airport, I’m landing again in my favorite city in the world, one year after saying goodbye back in 2018. Took my luggage and stayed in the airport for a few hours till Islem, the Algerian friend I’m staying with, finishes his work at 6 PM, so that left me in the airport for about 4 full hours.

First things first, I had to top up my French mobile line package so that I can communicate during my trip, then had a McDonalds sandwich at the airport. Also had time for a drink till I received a call from Islem to move to Aulnay-sous-Bois. Meeting Islem became one of Paris’s landmarks for me now, he’s a very nice Algerian, 2 years younger and shows a great hospitality each time I request to stay over. After my arrival at the platform, I found him right there. He guided me to the house, which was like 1 minute walking distance from the station which is a GREAT plus for a tourist. The neighborhood was actually built around the 1940s, and it's all about classic villas and buildings. My building is a great example of how the neighborhood looked.

I was actually staying on the fifth - and last - floor. Anyway it was almost 7.30 and I put my stuff at Islem’s, we're going to have an outing together. Islem suggested I should have like a metro pass to all the 5 Paris districts, which came in really handy for my whole stay, and it included Versailles and Disney which were planned items.

We decided to go over the downtown and launched that plan from Châtelet, stepped out of the station to Rue de Rivoli, passed by Tour Saint Jaques.

Then we passed by Paris's official city center, Hôtel de Ville. The place looked amazing as that was my first time to see it at night all lit

Also had my first look at the seine by crossing Pomt d'Arcole and its beautiful scenery over the river.

I also wanted to check on Notre Dame, as I was really devastated when the fire took place in April 2019, but it looked better than expected. But still it's a great loss to France and Europe.

For those who don't know, Notre Dame was my favorite place to visit in Paris, and it was the place that I've seen first in Paris during my first visit in 2018. I will never forget that feeling of seeing this building in person. Now it is in a really bad condition, only hoping for it to restore its previous glory soon.

I made sure to check the building as much as possible, passed by it from almost all sides. A very important funny part though: it was raining before my arrival and I didn’t notice a small water puddle behind Notre Dame, which resulted my socks and shoes all soaked with water, making me walk like i’m walking on hot rocks for a while till it started to dry out. We later reached Saint Michelle Fountain.

Had the opportunity to see one of the best seine river scenes in Paris, with Notre Dame looking so fine like it was untouched.

We Also passed by Pont Neuf, Paris’s oldest bridge with a construction date back to 1578. The term “Pont Neuf” means the new bridge, because of all the modernity that it embodied in the Middle Ages back then. The building, which spans the Seine at Ile de la Cité, was built during the reign of Henry III but was inaugurated in the early 17th century.  At that time, it was the very first stone bridge in Paris and also the first in the capital to have sidewalks to protect pedestrians from the mud projected by horses and carts.

After crossing Pont Neuf to the other bank of the seine, we’re right in front of the back side of the Louvre museum. Islem thankfully made me enter the Louvre from the back entrance, allowing me to see the famous modern pyramid centering the 18th century old Château from a new angle.

And now with the main stream angle, which I really love by the way because there’s no enough of how beautiful this place looks! I was actually surprised to see that much of people still hanging out there, later i realized the place is open till 9:45 PM on Wednesdays, and it was just 9:15 PM the moment I took the picture.

We were really starving afterwards, and we couldn’t pick a place to have our dinner. So we decided to eat in the first affordable thing we see in our way. We walked down Avenue de l'Opéra heading to the Palais Garnier (Paris’s grand opera house). and as much as it always looked fantastic with its golden statues, it never looked as beautiful as I saw it that night.

We were right in front of the opera when Islem suggested we go for pizza hut since it’s just around the corner, there was no space for me to say no as the last meal I had was almost 8-9 hours earlier. We went inside and we picked a chicken pizza that we shared with a drink and appetizers. and I gotta say there was no much of a difference comparing to the pizza hut we have in Egypt, only cleaner place and more expensive lol.

We were finally full and we decided that I should welcome Paris in the best cliché way possible: watching the Eiffel tower at night. We moved via metro from  Opéra to Trocadéro. For those of you who don’t know, Trocadéro is the best place in Paris where you can actually view the landmark and remain absolutely speechless till you realize you spent a lot of time there and should leave.

It was the most crowded place I visited that night. Needless to say how worthy it was, I’ll just let the below pictures speak for themselves.

After spending some time there, we decided to go home and rest, as Islem is working the next day, and I have to visit Chateau Versailles which I’m really excited about. Using both Metro and RER, we reached home and I was getting ready to sleep before it started raining outside.

I was sleeping right under a roof window which allowed me to see the sky and the rain hitting that window and I instantly started thinking about how lucky I am that:

- It started raining right after I’m back home and right before I arrived, I really felt welcomed :)

- I’m visiting the city I love the most twice in one year! Spending so much time there while having a very good trip planned ahead.

To the next day tomorrow, I’m visiting Chateau Versailles ,La Defance and Arc de Triumph. can’t wait to start going into details about that.

Bonne nuit!

[wholeworldbroken]

PART 1)  Net Neutrality, Hypernormalization, The Dinosaur Who Swindled Natural Selection & Prospered... AND... The Healthy Benefits Of Paranoid Delusional Psychosis.

TV is a dinosaur sinking into the tar. All those once giant networks are scrambling to survive just a little longer in this technological age that left them behind before they noticed. That Netflix model is alot bigger deal than it's given credit for. It's what reshaped HULU until it went legitimate. It's why there's an HBOGO, STARZ, SHOWTIME, etc. app that all outperform their parent networks.

The power of ON-DEMAND blew Amazon up from a more Wal-Marty version of eBay to the titan it is now. Disney is gearing up to yank all Star Wars, Marvel, Indiana Jones, etc. properties from Netflix to add to their own upcoming streaming channel. Even the underdogs that only Netflix could make into giant hits: Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, The Defenders and The Punisher (not so much IronFist) are being carted over to the new Disney service without so much as a "thank you for making this possible" to Netflix.

CBS launched theirs earlier this year with the added ammo of the most expensive Star Trek series to date, Discovery, being only available through their site. We'll probably see about 10 new changeovers this coming year. Comcast, Verizon and Slime-Warner know that we'll pay $8 here, $10 there for the convenience of catching all that exclusive content completely at our lesiure, always waiting as soon as we feel like tapping that PLAY button.

So, the dinosaur is slowly inching across the quicksand, dragging its rip-off cable model over to the internet, embracing the technology of the future while still thriving off the scams of the past. Even Youtube, which was kind of a revolution in independent, DIY content creators and previously muted voices now given a somewhat worldwide platform, finding an audience without having to bow to the old media gatekeepers

(the Merv Griffins, Johnny Carsons, Entertainment Tonights, Morning Shows, blah, blah, blah, who were able to get rich off the young, hopefuls kissing the asses of whoever would help them be seen, LONG before any of the actual talent was consistently turning a profit. Completely self -regenerating. You can burn up the lump of coal till it's all disintegrated, but the machine ALWAYS got fresh coal being shoveled in the fire, baby)

... is now flooded with Jimmy Kimmel, SNL, Paramount, Disney studios, which seems like normal that those sketches, clips, movie trailers would end up archived on youtube...

until you consider that youtubers are paid through Google Adsense, and receive a monetary amount per video play featuring ads that are part of the program. The success and general public hunger for these independent creators has multiplied the number of young, self-made millionaires over the last 10 years. So, in come the dinosaurs, dragging that dirty-old-bag of crooked-old-ways with them.

Now you got NBC, uploading individual sketches from SNL, a television show that makes its revenue from tv ads & endorsements, each video cashing in on adsense profits seperately, rivaling the numbers from the original airing of the whole episode. Jimmy Fallon, Dr. Phil... practically EVERYbody is clawing & scratching for that youtube money all the kids were syphoning away from them. Whatever.

Big, ugly business, but still business. Dog eat dog & all that.

But what about commercials? Who the fuck clicks on the new TIDE ad showing up in their youtube feed? SOMEbody, cause it's got, like, a bajillion clicks. Are companies drafting interns to generate views and cash in on adsense? Hey, I'm paranoid, but if stupid old ME thought of it...

So, you seen the new Star Wars trailer? Shit, EACH newer version, starting with the teaser? How many did you see on youtube? ...and when you click that movie COMMERCIAL, like magic, you gotta sit through a goddamn COMMERCIAL before you can watch the COMMERCIAL you voluntarily chose to endure. Shit. I'll be DAMNED if, half the time, the ad that comes up isn't another trailer for another movie, usually from a whole other studio. Think Disney/StarWars minds you got a sneak taste of GrownUps 3 while you were waiting to drool all over a 30-second montage of disjointed scenes arranged to grease the dollar bills out of your wallet come Christmas time? `</pre> They just got paid by Adam Sandler's scam of a company for you to wait out the 5 seconds to click away from his bullshit and get up in them Star Wars guts... several million times... by an unrelated company willing to pay the opponent team for the luxury of dropping a commercial on the front of their commercial... leading to Disney (only an example. This is some across the board shit) making millions off a commercial designed to set up an installment in a franchise that will bring them automatic billions. <pre>` It's Terry Gilliam level absurdity that we've indoctrinated ourselves, as a species, to accept as "successful business practices", as we dream of one day carving our very own little chunk of the abstract money scheme balogna. I don't pretend to have a better, more functional answer than: try to resist as much of the barrage as you can, of huckster salesmen who have studied the best psychological methods of Stockholming your oblivious ass into not only continuing to prop up their pyramid scheme and perpetuating their boss's greedy manipulation of the entire world by way of its set-up-to-fail economic machinations `</pre> but ALSO, to constantly strengthen your faith in the infallible logic of those same machinations with a passion that is prepared to DESTROY any anomalous dissenters, selfish enough to be randomly fertilized and born into their designated gangsign annotated factions dividing up larger, further established, gangsign brandishing nation-states, yet still possessing the ingratious self-serving personality defect of introspection, empathy & existential contemplation. ** incoming** __VOICE__OF__GREAT__MACHINATION__LEADER,__STIFFY__O'FOOFYSKINS______ <pre>` "The enemy is all around and they hate your way of life. They whisper corruption into the ears of our unsuspecting younger generations. They bombard you with an agenda of moral codes & ideals in direct conflict to the ones you were taught. If you love the random patch of land you literally had more of a chance to be born outside of than in `</pre> and you're not some kind of infidel, basking in the luxuries provided by your assigned locale while remaining unwilling to offer up your mortal life to assure its continuation, then you already know that the RIGHT thing to do, the divine purpose you feel pumping through your heart, is stand tall & be ready to hoist your team's flag should it fall. The enemy wants to see you fail so that it can pillage its way to the holy finish line which was divinely entitled to YOU and the rest of the good guys. It preaches demoralizing propaganda designed to weaken your resolve & raise doubt toward your righteous goals. It knows ways to steal the food from your family's table... even steal your established identity and celebrate its wicked victories by splurging on the fruit sewed by YOUR noble labors. This is your preconceived understanding of the truth. There are higher levels of truth that only pertain to you as part of a bigger picture, but you need not concern yourself with such perplexing pokings & proddings into the corners of your manufactured reality. Take comfort in the ebb & flow of a pristine, global bureaucracy that, on the surface, appears to malfunction as a chaotic dumpster fire of social upheaval, random acts of blatantly hateful terrorism and increasingly violent natural disasters reminding each & every one of us that we are vulnerable and the only shelter comes from the sinister embrace of the leaders we ourselves chose to govern us, simply because that is the way the world has worked for much longer than our insignificant participation would justify constructing a new means of stability. Best not to stress over such uncontrollable details. GREEN has always meant GO. RED has always signified a mandatory STOP. ...And that proverbial cheese at the end of the maze, ever taunting the entire roster of teams? It's laced with the affectionate tongue-kiss of cyanide, the ultimate reward for any group that is able to pull ahead of the hordes and slamdunk their Nerf football into the victory bonfire. IT'S MILLER TIME... Because being on the winning team isn't what's important: WHAT COUNTS IS THAT YOUR TEAM DESTROYED AS MUCH OF THE OPPOSITION'S LIFE & LIVELIHOOD AS WAS POSSIBLE." <pre>` Over moral posturings? Over indignant evildoings? In a race to prove to the creator that your team is comprised of his chosen people and is ready to accept the role as His Holy Assassins? Over the truth behind 9/11? Over the ongoing argument concerning the actual SHAPE of the planet & the legitimacy of the very science we thought we understood, but very well may have been meticulously devised to support our indoctrinated "understanding" of a globe-shaped world, hurling through space in a cosmic dance with the star, SOL, spinning on an axis that brings it around 360° every 24 hours and marking the outlines of our 24 hour day... 7 day week... our 12 month year... An indoctrination so effective, most of us never once stop to entertain the notion that, at its essence, the concept of time in this manner, the 7 day work week (uncannily similar to the 7 days required to create the world), the weather defining 12 months adhered to by the Gregorian calendar could very logically, and historically likely, be an immeasurable, blanket imprisonment of individual human perceptions, compressing the infinite possibilities of each reality into a much more predictable & controllable number. Wrangling in those erratic, chaos-prone, possible realities that could ultimately crash the entire capitalist cabal so dependent on limiting the imaginations & therefore, the entire concept of the fabric of reality & the universe across an entire planet's population. Outrageous, right? Borderline psychotic levels of paranoia, layered with simple, obnoxious denial and a shot or 2 of worst-case-scenario gullibility, YEARS worth of nonsensical research into the ravings of like-minded lunatics whose infectious delusions have consistently contributed to the disenfranchisement and downfall of multiple promising, yet dangerously curious intellects dating all the way back to the first significant population booms & those resultant social structures that merely sought to stifle the all too common, human urge to casually rape & kill each other on the slightest of whims. When viewed in THAT light, maybe that original intent wasn't so awful. Maybe somebody just had to think of something, like, QUICK.

WE INTERRUPT THIS LITERATAL ILLUSTRATION OF AN IMPLODING BRAIN'S LAST, DESPERATE GRASP AT UNDERSTANDING TO BRING YOU THIS TEMPORARILY DEBILITATING ANXIETY ATTACK...