Baghdad Now

it's my third week in baghdad. my last week was so hard and wearisome. in one single day i had to go to different far places in baghdad and with traffic jams, closed or diverted traffics it's not a strange matter to fuel the car every 2 days. as for baghdad, it's great. now it's on the way to heal and stepping forward in the road of revolution and good future. except for some what i call "defects" here and there, one may say that the city has settled down. the people now feel safe and can go out for shopping, visiting friends and relatives without fear. i feet that the normal life is getting back again. while in febuary last year (like the current days), i just wanted to get out of baghdad because at that time i couldn't get oiut of the outdoor. eveeryday we heard someone or two were murdered in our destrict. no one day passed without a funeral. 3 years before when i was a student, we were going to college and afraid of what the roads were hiding along our way. many female students were afraid of getting kidnapped and many times they accompanied us or gave them a lift. my close friend was about to be killed just because he was the son of an embassador!!!! and from that time we were obliged to carry a gun in the car for protection, the other one received a paper threatening him and i did my best to protect him when we were together just because he lived in Adamiyah!. they were bad days.as for now, we don't have to do any of those.i visited my friends in different dental centres and we went for buying some clothes and spent great hours and fortunately it was only us(the guys) or we were stacked in the markets for hours just on shoe shopping.the national guards checkpoints and outposts are eveywhere in addition to the american soldiers who you may see them walking by your side in the streets.
last week a business exhibition was in baghdad for 3 days called B2B (Baghdad to Baghdad). the exhibitors came from different countries and in different fields ( communications, power supply, trade, transport, security companies...). it was satisfactory but the most annoying was the entrance, one must pass through different kinds of personal searches including canine search and to stop many times for checking IDs. mobiles with camera were not allowed and you have to remove its battery. they were very welcoming but so restricted.
we still have some problems concerning electricity ( well they are big problems). the electricity in baghdad just say "hi" for few minutes twice daily. we have two generators in the house, subscribed to an external power provider and about to buy a big diesel generator next month."all that for electricity"
the goverment who lack experts spent millions of dollars just to provide every family with 10amps of elect. "WHAT A WISE & SMART STEP" 10 amperes for every family?!!!??. that means no A/C at all, can't iron with refrigerators turned on, can't use ovens or microwaves and and .... moreover till now we are not supplied with that 10 amps. where all that money has gone??. can any one of those big heads in the government tolerate to live with 10amps only (i'm not saying without electricity). i'm sure he will suicide.the victims are poor and people with limited salary.and the parliament (who is supposed to represent the iraqi people) spent two weeks of quarrels just to change the falg. is it a big matter to change it? or is iraq is so perfect to spend sessions on secondary subjects and left behind all the basic needs?
is it so hard to provide giant generators??they were saying that"because of the insecured situation and presence of terrorists and saboteurs in baghdad we can't achieve the contracts with big companies" and now what??i hope this will be solved soon.