It’s funny when you open your eyes and find the world around you completely white. Yesterday, a huge storm struck Philadelphia whitening every colorful spot! It was still 9 a.m. when I went out joyfully to enjoy the heavy snow! I haven’t seen that much snow before. It’s been snowing interruptedly every now and then but it did not stick like now.Covered from head to toe, except the face, I went to the University Information Technology office to fix my computer. I expected the answer. They don’t fix computers bought from outside the university! Then I took it to an outside computer store which was occupied by three men. None of them has a word “smile” in their dictionary! They were grumpy and they were as if someone told them “you are going to die tonight”. It appeared to me that most of those who work in supermarkets or stores in Philadelphia are the same. None of them smile to a customer. Seriously! How could you convince me to come and buy from you if you don’t at least smile?! I am not going to ask you out! I just want someone to show me his/her goods in a nice way. I explained to one of them the problem and then left. I wasn’t very much annoyed since I am almost used to it now. I just want to get what I need and the hell with them if they smile or not. It’s just that they’ll lose a customer! I would search for another store next time I want to buy or fix something.
The same thing happened when I bought my new cell phone. After I suffered with Version, the worst cell phone company ever, I switched to Cingular in which now I have a full bar signal in my cell phone. The man whom I talked to in Cingular store in Center City was rude to the customers. It wasn’t only me whom he behaved like this with. I noticed he did the same with an American woman who was about to yell at him. After she got her phone and left, he stood with the other men behind the counter and started mocking her in front of me! However, the only place which I remember I was welcomed well in was GAP in Chestnut Street where the employees there were really helpful despite the fact that I was shopping during the holiday season in which the two floors were filled with customers.
The storm was getting worse. I went to the library to use the computers since my computer is down. I studied for a while, wrote several assignments and left at 5 p.m. It was extremely difficult to walk. Although I live across the street from campus, it took me about 15 minutes to get there by the time it usually takes me no more than 5 minutes. I went back home, had some lunch, and then took a shower to get ready for tonight’s class! Guess what? There was no class! All classes were cancelled because of the storm! Best news ever. lol
I made some hot tea and decided to study for the next day classes. This time, I thought of drinking my tea while watching the 6:30 p.m. news on of the main channels. ABC, NBC, and CBS had the news bulletin at once! It’s amazing how all their news is similar except the breaking news ABC gave about Muqtada al-Sadr “escaping from Iraq”. So funny! Breaking news! Anyways, the similarity in the news was incredible. I was flipping through the channels to see if any of the channels had something different! All of them talked about the storm, the Congress meeting, the secret death of a famous model, North Korea, and some news about Iraq. Huh! Some people still say that media in the US is free and has no propaganda! I was about to suspect that even the correspondents were lined up together in the same places but each one of them had a different camera.
The news item that I found most interesting was not the escape of Muqtada al-Sadr since it happened several times and the media here is broadcasting it for the first time to tell the American people that the army is doing something positive despite the fact that they don’t have a clue why he “escaped”! The news about North Korea giving up its nuclear weapons plan was amazing, not because they will no longer be a threat to anyone but because of the smart decision the NK government made. This government decided to give up all nuclear weapons and research programs in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil, as a first step. Wow. Good deal! That was a smart decision in my mind but the question remains, where all this fuel and humanitarian aids will go and how much American citizens are going to pay to their government to make these aids delivered to North Korea!
After the news, I studied for a couple of hours, had some dinner, watched FRIENDS and went to sleep!
