tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67999945546886330472024-02-19T13:56:28.431+02:00TwitchyChinoRemnants of six-nine months working and eating in Cairo, and traveling about AfricaTwitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-4790459027800290932009-04-07T07:58:00.001+02:002009-04-07T08:03:43.640+02:00Rickshaws through India<span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:130%;" >Back in June 2008, I found something ridiculous online, and quipped that I really wanted to do it, with zero expectation of actually following up with it. Well, here goes.<br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://twitchytuktuk2009.blogspot.com/">I AM ACTUALLY GOING THROUGH WITH IT.</a><br /><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-53860321936632356132008-10-15T11:21:00.002+02:002008-10-15T11:26:02.751+02:00Lack of UpdatesAverage hours per workday: 12 hours<br />Average workdays per week: 6.5<br />Average sleep per evening: 5 hours<br />Average curse-words uttered per day during Ramadan: 0<br />Average curse-words uttered per day post-Ramadan: IncreasingTwitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-79334550553767715822008-08-27T21:51:00.011+03:002008-08-28T01:03:47.583+03:00Purty trees and dead gunmen<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Sightseeing 'round </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Libnan</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> was twofold awesome. Sure, there was the ridiculous scenery and the fact that a large majority of the country is the perfect mountains-next-to-sea blend. It was honestly one of the most beautiful countries I've ever been to, and I was blindsided by how fantastic some of the scenery was. Although many Arabs come as tourists to Lebanon, I'd never heard a single thing about it before beauty-wise, only negative descriptions of the violence and political problems. It's a big misnomer to pigeonhole Lebanon as a purely "Arab" country though, and that's as far as I'll go into any sort of political discussion on the matter. On to stories.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Oh yeah, the second fold of awesome. I'll get to that in a bit. First, pretty things.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjqK72aa5HTDRlHyCIO5x6GvkbxtEhN2HGCg3EawgfHs1yKqqDI_3u61W7iROweLa9qArVmQdf2_c5Ueno9xYZzwRAZt-5AAlLh2oHRCZau6ptaa6NWLg3fiX42i8DzO3QwZt5dOZze1s/s1600-h/IMG_1690.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjqK72aa5HTDRlHyCIO5x6GvkbxtEhN2HGCg3EawgfHs1yKqqDI_3u61W7iROweLa9qArVmQdf2_c5Ueno9xYZzwRAZt-5AAlLh2oHRCZau6ptaa6NWLg3fiX42i8DzO3QwZt5dOZze1s/s320/IMG_1690.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239286278875124626" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Old Roman ruins by the sea in the city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon. Most of the more famous ruins in Lebanon that I visited were of the Romany-</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">columny</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> variety, with remains of old temples, city walkways, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">necropoli</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, and even a chariot racing stadium.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LfHHZcZIxrAWGbhTQyKB4j5RDmVkgS2DzL8iFhWpSHQgb-Ghnt05CzB8FQYpSbv9xkVrok0C109195zXqheQivnaHrzOW8rYJWrRJAIE9eKAysVTkoA_z6GAisBld3M94O5a_N_k06Y/s1600-h/IMG_1736.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LfHHZcZIxrAWGbhTQyKB4j5RDmVkgS2DzL8iFhWpSHQgb-Ghnt05CzB8FQYpSbv9xkVrok0C109195zXqheQivnaHrzOW8rYJWrRJAIE9eKAysVTkoA_z6GAisBld3M94O5a_N_k06Y/s320/IMG_1736.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239287312236978450" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">View from one of (or The) largest and best preserved hippodromes EVER. This is from near the center of the stadium. The fuzzy triangle in the background is a portion of the amphitheater seating that once fit about 20,000 people hopped up on classical </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">NASCAR</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. Chariot races, from what I hear, often involved pretty spectacular crashes, especially at either end of the elliptical track as the chariots </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">skeetered</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> around the non-banked curves. I relaxed in the shade under one of the seating areas (amazing similar to modern stadium seating in acoustics and feel) and imagined watching a </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">specawesometacular</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> combination of </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">NASCAR</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, figure skating, jousting, and gladiators all mixed into one sport. Oh, and there was hibiscus growing in the stadium (the red thing ruining my stadium picture). I wonder if Lebanese drink hibiscus tea as much as Egyptians do.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNTvYNPbzwwI7xV49qrJvHyYHQoYiq8atF2flr910Ge41-7aMSQfAdMNRI2ShOlYkRL1ADeYAiwTjJPMNbqLSlNkr-xU04VT-WtjLSigNV1ifz6_JgvWcHfoclREzBSJChsAbLK2W6jKE/s1600-h/IMG_2003.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNTvYNPbzwwI7xV49qrJvHyYHQoYiq8atF2flr910Ge41-7aMSQfAdMNRI2ShOlYkRL1ADeYAiwTjJPMNbqLSlNkr-xU04VT-WtjLSigNV1ifz6_JgvWcHfoclREzBSJChsAbLK2W6jKE/s320/IMG_2003.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239288618833130034" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Cedar tree in the </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Chouf</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> Cedar Reserve, up in the northern area of Lebanon in the mountains. Lebanese cedars make for some good wood - these cedar forests are apparently mentioned in the Bible (somewhere in the chapter about trees) and traders used to transport </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">uber</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">-cedar-lumber all over the region, including down to Egypt for use in their boats 'n </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">shizzle</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">. Some of the larger ones are over 1000 years old - this one was just a mere 300 or so years old though. After I learned about the way older ones, this one was still visually pleasing but just not as cool...sorry, whippersnapper.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">So, onto the second fold of awesomeness. The stories we heard from random people we ran into (our driver buddy, a ranger/guide in the forest, etc.) were jaw-dropping to my grew-up-in-a-stable-country mind. The first was a cell-phone video our driver showed us while we were at a rest stop or something. It was a wounded Hezbollah fighter sitting against a wall, saying what were close to his last words, filming everything around him, including a dead fighter right next to him. At first I was curious why our driver would have downloaded this off whatever news website onto his phone, and temporarily </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">geeked</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> out wondering about the bandwidth available from his network provider and whether they had 3G, and how long it would have taken to download the video file.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Turns out one of his buddies got the video directly off the phone of the Hezbollah guy, who our driver buddy and posse had fought in their neighborhood during the recent conflict in early 2008 when Hezbollah took over parts of Beirut. Our buddy relayed this fact with minimal emotion or expectation of reaction, just totally matter of fact, like he was saying "actually, this ISN'T butter, despite your belief." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Later on, while walking through the forest with a ranger describing what baby cedar trees look like, he paused in a section of forest, smiled, and whipped out his cell phone. He then played a recording of some </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">staticky</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> panicked yelling and gunfire, started talking to our driver buddy in Arabic, then repeated the conversation to us, in English. The audio was of some Hezbollah gunmen who for some reason were fighting their way into the cedar forests, near where the ranger and his peeps live (and near where we were standing). The panicking was from the gunmen as they were all getting killed and driven out of the forest. Ranger Rambo beamed as he described how he and his posse defended their land, and it almost made me feel warm and fuzzy (from killing enemies) too, so effervescent and contagious was his pride.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihtXY-LTndXV3GK8dL-u4LiBz7uIYfrT9iWblCIQ_eOUxO9_3X5E_JRDMCvHV3CIDUg74l82ywxfDBJ53s2kKTPDE6nvi3x2-SN3mywOiyKC-_gfyZPI53Y-xfQOA4biuVM96kSpEkHKA/s1600-h/IMG_1913.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihtXY-LTndXV3GK8dL-u4LiBz7uIYfrT9iWblCIQ_eOUxO9_3X5E_JRDMCvHV3CIDUg74l82ywxfDBJ53s2kKTPDE6nvi3x2-SN3mywOiyKC-_gfyZPI53Y-xfQOA4biuVM96kSpEkHKA/s320/IMG_1913.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239290481942591986" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A scene from another cedar forest, which pretty much fits my definition of textbook beautiful. A little weird to think people were getting shot at around here earlier this year. I really admire how so many Lebanese deal with the constant instability and just deal with events as they occur, without sensationalizing the violence that seems so intense in my mind. Driver-buddy was talking about how, since his people live in the suburbs in the mountains around Beirut, they were safe when Israeli warships off the coast of Beirut were firing missiles into the capital during the recent war. What did he and his neighbors do during the attack? Sat on their roofs and watched the rockets flying through the air, like fireworks.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyGPrUzmaZjAiTaZiueiNFRMg6aqygeBd0BGpOncb1Ql3ZghqA7QVlS5Byq3a3ku8Ceq75sMOoS1KrGc4yEOEJoOdzMzkYLSgjRT0FitA9Zux5UMEtKuM9x3FSAIemj2KWXMiK1cGWNrs/s1600-h/IMG_1754.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyGPrUzmaZjAiTaZiueiNFRMg6aqygeBd0BGpOncb1Ql3ZghqA7QVlS5Byq3a3ku8Ceq75sMOoS1KrGc4yEOEJoOdzMzkYLSgjRT0FitA9Zux5UMEtKuM9x3FSAIemj2KWXMiK1cGWNrs/s320/IMG_1754.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239301141664602754" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A scene from near </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Sidon</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, back in the southern part of Lebanon again, what one of the contractors in my office refers to as "Hezbollah-land". Without degenerating into some crappy geopolitical history lesson, the south is where Hezbollah is most active and has the most support, since they were the Lebanese fighting off the Israeli invasions from the south, as well as firing rockets into Israel. There are martyr memorials all over the place of young men killed in fighting (possibly by Israelis, possibly by Ranger Rambo). Hooray sniper-shot pictures from a moving vehicle with tinted windows! </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Diversity. Lotta Christians, </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">lotta</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> Muslims in Lebanon, and being pretty ignorant about who's who, I never knew who to </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">salam</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">-</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">alekum</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> or who to, um, hallelujah or whatever. But in the south, it's predominantly Muslim so </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">yay</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> less potential awkwardness when greeting people! Amusingly, since the little Arabic I know is mainly Egyptian colloquial, a few people actually looked at me funny when I tried to talk to them and asked if I was Egyptian. Even weirder, I felt a pang of pride and often replied "well I do live in Egypt". Holy crap were people friendly though, and they barely even tried to rip me off as a tourist! Very refreshing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Brain is obviously </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">mushifying</span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"> now. Suffice to say Lebanon is awesome and I will definitely visit again provided all is relatively stable. As cool as it is to see shiny automatic weapons every few dozen kilometers on the road and tanks scattered throughout the city, I don't really have any huge urge to see any of the military in action.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwdce5YVA691Ti1qqFp_oBLy2YDWPxB3BsbqQPd0eZSGVTLV7wTs_xaHPuujq476duwAFUE7kcfavhNPf8-HY7xpU8ajiew6HJXyZy3o1BMHXxKR8JEDEq-DC1SGrGiJhIUeGPorHJZCY/s1600-h/DSCF4565.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwdce5YVA691Ti1qqFp_oBLy2YDWPxB3BsbqQPd0eZSGVTLV7wTs_xaHPuujq476duwAFUE7kcfavhNPf8-HY7xpU8ajiew6HJXyZy3o1BMHXxKR8JEDEq-DC1SGrGiJhIUeGPorHJZCY/s320/DSCF4565.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239281871786594722" border="0" /></a><br /><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-82066077995608595612008-08-01T15:52:00.016+03:002008-08-05T00:50:42.376+03:00I heart Beirut<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:130%;" >First time out of Egypt while on this project. A buddy of mine happened to be planning a trip to Lebanon and invited me along, woo! We'd been talking about this potential trip for a while, but there were some, um, Hezbollah-occupying-downtown-Beirut issues in Lebanon that would have precluded any sort of touristy trip to the area (as much due to the gunfire and fighting as to the closure of most of the nightclubs). Thankfully, the most recent civil conflict reached some sort of ceasefire/agreement in May, so we quickly booked last-minute airfare to hop over while things were cool for the time being.<br /><br />I knew a sum total of nothing about Lebanon before going there, so was pretty excited to head to an area ubiquitously raved-about by everyone I've met in Cairo. Dancing in my head before I passed out one the one-hour-plus plane ride were tales of beautiful mountains, forests mentioned in the Bible, gorgeous, erm, nightlife, and a cornucopia of friendly cultures accustomed to on/off military conflicts. Was really looking forward to a rockin' long weekend.<br /><br />Waking up upon landing, I looked out the window to see the suburbs outside Beirut, with residences and offices covering the hillsides - beautiful city, check.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYesj4tdEZgZ_TWpkT1-Te1FL7jNRBN7WLzzCZt324xNc_8TvlYYLFjipz4UALFNXKl3YTdAW8WcR8hJUkxEVNP_7BkIdm3Lq7LXluUMbNrDSh0LBuj63N4JkjggJFCbRgYFkS807gbMg/s1600-h/IMG_1579+edited.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYesj4tdEZgZ_TWpkT1-Te1FL7jNRBN7WLzzCZt324xNc_8TvlYYLFjipz4UALFNXKl3YTdAW8WcR8hJUkxEVNP_7BkIdm3Lq7LXluUMbNrDSh0LBuj63N4JkjggJFCbRgYFkS807gbMg/s320/IMG_1579+edited.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229924656817438530" border="0" /></a><br />First thing I see after going through the arrivals customs (free visa, whee!) was this.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNHSgI-_oCj3w7OHj0lMuNHTUV1rVik_1qwzMk86mp_9nk_d2D0EQH5RVt14R_eQfphXL4hH1ABmI7pyDn9hBsyFcb-QSMr0GOwNWenP9qJLsYIdUdp1oH2o0C-VlUMwZCy9LCsnL_nQ/s1600-h/IMG_1580.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNHSgI-_oCj3w7OHj0lMuNHTUV1rVik_1qwzMk86mp_9nk_d2D0EQH5RVt14R_eQfphXL4hH1ABmI7pyDn9hBsyFcb-QSMr0GOwNWenP9qJLsYIdUdp1oH2o0C-VlUMwZCy9LCsnL_nQ/s320/IMG_1580.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229542782385443618" border="0" /></a><br />Very promising.<br /><br />Plan was for three nights and two+ days touring the countryside during the day, and sampling the nightlife at, uh, night. Our first evening there we took it easy, taking some time to meet with my friend's driver-buddy in Beirut, plan out the next few days, and wander the city a bit without (yet) painting the town red, white, and green.<br /><br />Eurocup 2008 was going on at the time, and Germany won a game the night we arrived. Apparently, Beirutis love themselves some football - the streets near our hotel (near the American University in Beirut) were filled with revelers driving around honking and waving German flags. At first we thought that maybe they were die-hard Germany fans....until the next night, when Turkey won, and we witnessed the same phenomenon but with different flags. The third night, Russia won, and all of a sudden Russian flags appeared in the clubs and everyone went wild.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxFI5c80JoFmymmWdHNcK33VjAng2iQbVWqy4xNMCorOHc1RQBGG9EzXgDqeJVbTgX1dSSSSpoLSLtGU79rmA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:130%;" ><br />I suspected that maybe people just loved celebrations and football, and kept a supply of flags around so that no matter who won, it'd be reason to go nuts. Hell, any relativism that results in constant partying is A-OK in my book.<br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:130%;">Speaking of which, holy liver-cirrhosis Batman, Beirut is every bit as good a party-town as I had heard. [Random grammar/spelling victory insert - I somehow spelled cirrhosis right on the first try! Huzzah!] It was dang good idea to take it easy the first night, as I only got an hour or so of sleep the between the second night. After bar/club hopping for a few hours, right as me and my revelry-mates were ready to call it a night around 3 or 4 am, one of the fine fellows working at the bar took it upon himself to show us an even better time. I don't know how my mangled Egyptian Arabic sounded to the dude, but all of a sudden trays of "grapefruit juice" and "sparkling grape-juice-distillate" start showing up, some with random sparklers in the middle. All, for some reason, for free. Sword of Omens, get me sloshed beyond sloshed!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqygzFkx2YppQ-mWpE75WSGFvj0Iin6txEDcvMdhoX3x2o9KdPQScHm7CkOZBOiguKCGz7qtnXSpSNaohrt1siVtp6dQv4Iauwg2tJmYAaQN0J_g8vfkTeMAWhGKEax65Hae4_jF4U_js/s1600-h/IMG_1828+cropped.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqygzFkx2YppQ-mWpE75WSGFvj0Iin6txEDcvMdhoX3x2o9KdPQScHm7CkOZBOiguKCGz7qtnXSpSNaohrt1siVtp6dQv4Iauwg2tJmYAaQN0J_g8vfkTeMAWhGKEax65Hae4_jF4U_js/s320/IMG_1828+cropped.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229912072565253474" border="0" /></a><br />Drinking of fruit juices (3-4 AM), dancing on bars (?? AM), eating ridiculously rich-and-sweet cheese-honey caloric-juggernaut desserts called knefet jibly with breakfasting laborers in the morning (~6 or 7 AM), minimal sleep (7ish to 8ish AM), hop in de car (9 AM), TOUR-TIME (9:30 AM to I-don't-even-know-anymore PM). In totally achronological order, here are some sights we beheld in Beirut.<br /></span></div><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:130%;" ><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHp0wxpbVV9eQTTKJcOJKfpuDKV6PFHlk1zrhhURkZJrWRwL3hI3nDMwyH3bVywzp4fildChXw4kTuhUeO0EjIw17ZfaJijo87XKvErDUDbPyDAWJYIGAaZP6aoogOCIwd8EIG69sNRoo/s1600-h/IMG_1606.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHp0wxpbVV9eQTTKJcOJKfpuDKV6PFHlk1zrhhURkZJrWRwL3hI3nDMwyH3bVywzp4fildChXw4kTuhUeO0EjIw17ZfaJijo87XKvErDUDbPyDAWJYIGAaZP6aoogOCIwd8EIG69sNRoo/s320/IMG_1606.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229543769035232818" border="0" /></a><br />Pigeon Rocks. Very pretty, resembling pigeons not-at-all. I'm not sure if I even saw any pigeons in the area.....but then remembered that Egyptians are very fond of stuffed pigeon. Not sure if the Lebanese have that culinary tendency.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg70YzzThw9vwmTZQVELTGg5K-38HvJ6uY0swFTf3T_9F91z1RqnMW_yeARGI2yCvPqCpnGV9T2IfkMoaNYFjv3Olxg9vXrdPnKh79YZjEEiyk5-pH0d74mJauZvsdAvnI3waUufDkoIa8/s1600-h/IMG_2097.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg70YzzThw9vwmTZQVELTGg5K-38HvJ6uY0swFTf3T_9F91z1RqnMW_yeARGI2yCvPqCpnGV9T2IfkMoaNYFjv3Olxg9vXrdPnKh79YZjEEiyk5-pH0d74mJauZvsdAvnI3waUufDkoIa8/s320/IMG_2097.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229544970213684418" border="0" /></a><br />Memorial to Rafik Hariri, ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon who was assassinated in a block-encompassing car-bomb blast in 2005. The blown-all-to-hell buildings remain in their damaged state. I'm not sure if this is on purpose to memorialize the site, but the new construction of memorial items in and around the block, coupled with the immaculate new buildings throughout this quarter of the city, make an interesting contrast with the blast area. The memorial area still seems pretty politically charged too, keeping with the theme of, um, all of Lebanese history. Random guy driving by with this wife and kid berated me in broken English while I was photographing the area, but luckily drove off quickly after firing off some angry "no-photos-blurb-blurb-blurb-something"s. A politically-indignant Lebanese guy getting in the way of a hungover Asian taking photographs would not be a pretty sight.</span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-72044928921800006912008-08-01T04:18:00.003+03:002008-08-01T15:44:59.542+03:00Holy f-nuggests, an update!<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Still alive and twitching here in Cairo. Project's been pretty insane(r) here for the past two months here, as has everything else, including visits from famry, traveling around and outside Egypt, and somehow not getting sick in the process. Last comment there probably called upon the stars to put the karmic-Murphy-gastrointestinal-ruiner-machine back in motion.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />I really have no clue how to adequately face the task of back-blogging over two months of happenings. Luckily, facing certain failure and overwhelming amounts of work have been a running theme these past few months, and I think I've been able to adapt to the constant stress. Someone once said to me "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." I received this frighteningly-prophetic advice about a year or so ago, right around then time herds of elephants started thundering down my throat. As much as I tend to dislike proverbs and catch-all sayings, this question-answer snippet appeals to my love of eating, my love of eating endangered/protected species, and my love of eating way way more than I should ever try to consume.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I'll leave y'all to admire some wrinkly elephant butts (taken on safari in Tanzania around the time I received the advice) as I try to crank out some updates this afternoon.</span> <br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwDYAjQ0RcVeD8odoINStW6tlaPN5WUaPGH-p3Nawk8I2ewlhv4vqgz83m7K6D9BeHVuJ8kQ6pDgxQ-vFf0ngKy-soxRUT9KR06FK0IwZaqP2OjFTF5qMnm8yspMA0U7UTQGbOkidIg-4/s1600-h/IMG_6955.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwDYAjQ0RcVeD8odoINStW6tlaPN5WUaPGH-p3Nawk8I2ewlhv4vqgz83m7K6D9BeHVuJ8kQ6pDgxQ-vFf0ngKy-soxRUT9KR06FK0IwZaqP2OjFTF5qMnm8yspMA0U7UTQGbOkidIg-4/s320/IMG_6955.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229528921799519074" border="0" /></a></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-60670002405602638412008-06-07T22:47:00.000+03:002008-06-15T00:50:18.531+03:00Twitchy man in the boat<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Went on a boat ride on the Nile recently with some <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">hasher</span> friends, in a sailboat called a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">felluca</span>. They're one of the signatures of the Egyptian Nile in my mind, and some of the only boats that cruise around the city sections of the river. Not many drawbridges that I know of around downtown at least, so there are few big ships that use the river as a thoroughfare.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmq1oT2XD6YDZjusUhI9OvwPr5SUGo7UaV0GBi4ga9aTXksOpophYF2UXxWWNrTIITcoWeI9AV0xqc54t9D-DSK7RgsSjQ-xZNUV7kUVFMG4Rqw5a4GtTVidh-sZnaUbDVqkuOkPFKyKc/s1600-h/IMG_9503.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmq1oT2XD6YDZjusUhI9OvwPr5SUGo7UaV0GBi4ga9aTXksOpophYF2UXxWWNrTIITcoWeI9AV0xqc54t9D-DSK7RgsSjQ-xZNUV7kUVFMG4Rqw5a4GtTVidh-sZnaUbDVqkuOkPFKyKc/s320/IMG_9503.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209234991228909330" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Heck of a good time to meet up with friendly faces to down some beers and snacks on a silent boat, lazily cruising up and down the river away from the incessantly honking cars and yelling pedestrians. I actually did this 1-2 months ago when the weather was cooler, so it was pleasant to spend a Saturday afternoon in the shade of the boat with the (generally non-sewage-y) constant breeze. It was nice to just close my eyes and face into the wind, kinda like the content dogs with their heads poking out car windows on the road, with minimal cranial <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">processes</span> getting in the way of a good time. The beer, kebab-flavored chips, and caviar (!) certainly didn't hurt either.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGQy-4bKkZxR82yMdj5RaqttEq_qtsvOdHLPcanyUdZre6tV5-0VviPfwJehcAGJ1OrUfTOYinsmnm00j7Y8KGxoiq7kjRk-ej0szHOcpBh6B03Gur0wr-WautVGCHYOaL8-b1Zedh0o/s1600-h/IMG_0246.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeGQy-4bKkZxR82yMdj5RaqttEq_qtsvOdHLPcanyUdZre6tV5-0VviPfwJehcAGJ1OrUfTOYinsmnm00j7Y8KGxoiq7kjRk-ej0szHOcpBh6B03Gur0wr-WautVGCHYOaL8-b1Zedh0o/s320/IMG_0246.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209235354664154802" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I've been under the impression that swimming in the Nile was a generally ill-advised activity, but saw many a child and even a few water-skiers cooling off the in the water, and had some discussions with my fellow <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">hashers</span> about how the little </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schistosomiasis">water-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">nasties</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> only tend to be found in stagnant water. Still, I didn't feel any urges to strip down and dive into the Nile.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjiIenobkw1aRuiRqd3DrMd_5pnrZL8tbfPa9OilFdpHpPEZ8Is-Us4KqngAWIQQxq5rb72M5YcHTgi2EFxLgAZ4NQcf0WzN-81PnrD8bGf5ApHdwdKXfczlfOrxQwsC9KdaRbsEzMhSU/s1600-h/IMG_0252+cropped.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjiIenobkw1aRuiRqd3DrMd_5pnrZL8tbfPa9OilFdpHpPEZ8Is-Us4KqngAWIQQxq5rb72M5YcHTgi2EFxLgAZ4NQcf0WzN-81PnrD8bGf5ApHdwdKXfczlfOrxQwsC9KdaRbsEzMhSU/s320/IMG_0252+cropped.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209233396368562818" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A few beers later, I realized one of the limiting factors for <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">felluca</span>-enjoyment time; there are no restrooms of any sort on the boat. It's really just a basic single-deck sailboat, generally not designed for multiple-hour trips by beer-swilling foreigners. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Hmm</span>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A few beers later, I realized that we were surrounded by water, the boat was full of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">hashers</span> that I knew (well enough at this point), and that everyone else in Egypt was at least a few hundred meters away.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A few minutes later, I realized that the breeze I was enjoying before can also have other effects. Oops.</span></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-68085682158789854822008-06-05T12:04:00.000+03:002008-06-05T12:07:39.837+03:00omg omg omg<span style="font-size:130%;"><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://rickshawrun.theadventurists.com/index.php">I WANT TO DO THIS SOMEDAY SOON</a><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Must have awesome shark-fin spoiler too, like this one I spotted south of Cairo.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-VqUOLhAZN8bm2NDq5-5ZtsJIfQQ_c_1V1v8X0aQ6rv9wjpmihQ-jmE-IZDdKoZvxcRlsGJBuRGSz9DgX3hyFfckbswclxcFiNKpdTej9Ib3FCN6olQOuKlSaX8V2uCLPM0B1FFmJgQE/s1600-h/IMG_1091.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-VqUOLhAZN8bm2NDq5-5ZtsJIfQQ_c_1V1v8X0aQ6rv9wjpmihQ-jmE-IZDdKoZvxcRlsGJBuRGSz9DgX3hyFfckbswclxcFiNKpdTej9Ib3FCN6olQOuKlSaX8V2uCLPM0B1FFmJgQE/s320/IMG_1091.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5208321376445343202" border="0" /></a><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-71830565586793563392008-06-01T23:37:00.000+03:002008-06-02T00:55:58.138+03:00A few facets of Cairo<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Hooey, on a roll tonight, one last post before I pass out again into my dehydrated, stomach-percolating stupor. Just some pictures of things that say "Cairo" to me at this point in my travels.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYLkkK8rMpWYhy9cCZj2i1ECp0TNlIYHCsDoInQUSXjT48K_atKna1IUMghrLIkCJk0Jpt1HsWm3jAGueaifMYdcM5c74eECeM4BcMI1IGaPkDNbi0d6BrrLwvYbpmeEE0QCggQfsbCKc/s1600-h/IMG_0363+spoon+made+of+old+oven+metal.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYLkkK8rMpWYhy9cCZj2i1ECp0TNlIYHCsDoInQUSXjT48K_atKna1IUMghrLIkCJk0Jpt1HsWm3jAGueaifMYdcM5c74eECeM4BcMI1IGaPkDNbi0d6BrrLwvYbpmeEE0QCggQfsbCKc/s320/IMG_0363+spoon+made+of+old+oven+metal.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207017357483419090" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">A spoon at El Fishawy coffeehouse, possible the most famous ahwa in Islamic Cairo, located in the middle of Khan al-Khalili, a market/souq/bazaar. Note how spoon is actually made from what appears to be tin from a scrapped oven (you can see the word "Oven" on the handle).</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdBKJ2N_GHSjo0kCvD81HnOxX61jZaI8CxFAFMpC2mtjKuhyphenhyphenIk1qnlUUttG509ceo5IZrZ2XBt8QwUU-BoshkKWizSpZnFZ81Te3Z5oHbsNs9GulAOTB54LNiA20mASxgBjXbPbkREk0I/s1600-h/IMG_0331+black+cat.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdBKJ2N_GHSjo0kCvD81HnOxX61jZaI8CxFAFMpC2mtjKuhyphenhyphenIk1qnlUUttG509ceo5IZrZ2XBt8QwUU-BoshkKWizSpZnFZ81Te3Z5oHbsNs9GulAOTB54LNiA20mASxgBjXbPbkREk0I/s320/IMG_0331+black+cat.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207018323851060706" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Cats. This one looks both silly and regal, which for me is typical of street cats around Cairo. Not too many dogs as I think many of them have been culled and Egyptians tend not to be dog fans.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikq3iixC_2UwovHX_Wa6Tb5kj70GEPdXsVMyNu8KKAvZoyLLO5_Py-RedWqMkQK5gt3tjSmDpU8FXBY-pvIGyCUSrQTsvPkQvXmcyDHCYDUw6xNdtabjXhbczZJgiKtGGnpEZ-Ggq3Xw4/s1600-h/IMG_0348+priest+and+poster+cropped.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikq3iixC_2UwovHX_Wa6Tb5kj70GEPdXsVMyNu8KKAvZoyLLO5_Py-RedWqMkQK5gt3tjSmDpU8FXBY-pvIGyCUSrQTsvPkQvXmcyDHCYDUw6xNdtabjXhbczZJgiKtGGnpEZ-Ggq3Xw4/s320/IMG_0348+priest+and+poster+cropped.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207018547189360114" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Coptic priest who I sniped walking by poster of......hisself or a fellow bearded priest? Although a minority in Egypt, Coptic (Egyptian Orthodox) Christians still have a nice community south of downtown a bit.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXyTsmN1mEE7rOkny3yHV9kCtmx4j2M0xBdq80yNdnv6Bez-cCpRcEv0g9by99MNAsUPO0aOfbUkrVc3X_e4yNGj8mJeyXpZg7L11-ZqphIG2IGR8Cw2nts1Mx64avqs18V1LC8yf58jw/s1600-h/IMG_0509+Citadel.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXyTsmN1mEE7rOkny3yHV9kCtmx4j2M0xBdq80yNdnv6Bez-cCpRcEv0g9by99MNAsUPO0aOfbUkrVc3X_e4yNGj8mJeyXpZg7L11-ZqphIG2IGR8Cw2nts1Mx64avqs18V1LC8yf58jw/s320/IMG_0509+Citadel.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207020565823989266" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The Citadel, viewed from Al-Azhar Park. Citadel, awesome learning/ruling center of olden times. Al-Azhar Park, awesome greenery and parky goodness literally built on top of a huge pile of garbage....reminds me of that park in Mumbai that was built to keep vultures from dropping remains of dead Zoroastrians into the water supply as they carried remains away from the </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towers_of_Silence">Tower of Silence</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">. Read about </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://www.science-spirit.org/newdirections.php?article_id=750">Zoroastrian last-rites</a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> for some pretty cool information.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9B80CuMf2DwV_B7zNizk1jbF1IEC3nTsNiZpie5eCVvG8fQrxhDOEMfguD6DGPWq0pmNqpedinncbTDuEptPCw14Q4z1J5XOli9ciw6yO3_WuUxefqFhvU0J4nZSygTpSKnaDotiBd7Q/s1600-h/IMG_0468+hideous+angry+camel.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9B80CuMf2DwV_B7zNizk1jbF1IEC3nTsNiZpie5eCVvG8fQrxhDOEMfguD6DGPWq0pmNqpedinncbTDuEptPCw14Q4z1J5XOli9ciw6yO3_WuUxefqFhvU0J4nZSygTpSKnaDotiBd7Q/s320/IMG_0468+hideous+angry+camel.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207025900173370914" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Angry freakin camels. I'm pretty sure that every monster/alien noise from the original Star Wars trilogy was sourced from angry camel sounds, from Chewbacca's complaining-about-everything noises to all the monsters used as steeds. Camels can be pretty cute when they're just hanging out, but irritated camels are some hideous beasts.</span><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center; font-family: trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz0N5NbZpEx0mwgqcqGaZWws1o7AvnOqWGab25gKlUcA2qTocWcLF0zKXMPgSRaGoBn4SWBb3o88bLIhAz-Sw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikhuW64Iu7erBBLrxQ0OFlsRnAkoiCOoVU1QHFIjeEv0W7KFqa4g0rnWoDawasN9tzrjm-aWa7B87LEgODz8qPR03Mubtn-L64eYpKZhdIi15_u4Pt3r9yiQtwAkJPkuw7lSe-v3BxvPs/s1600-h/IMG_0450+Don+kiss+Sphinx.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikhuW64Iu7erBBLrxQ0OFlsRnAkoiCOoVU1QHFIjeEv0W7KFqa4g0rnWoDawasN9tzrjm-aWa7B87LEgODz8qPR03Mubtn-L64eYpKZhdIi15_u4Pt3r9yiQtwAkJPkuw7lSe-v3BxvPs/s320/IMG_0450+Don+kiss+Sphinx.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207032703401567794" border="0" /></a>Don making out with the Sphinx, with special thanks to the little kids trying to get tourists to take these horrible, disrespectful photos.<br /><br />And finally, friendly people confused by my friendship with a neon-green inanimate candy dispenser.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEzjotUMR-MGwSDWoqE1EL6S7G_Ux1nwbED9WGaoGihSf12MIYK2s9Wv3VDRg7VSG2IATAtp6EgeMIQP1bg0wkeLKiYafhe0PK4-q3HVv8-uqJindqLN1OzrWf4-DLlwCYM_-ywrSd8M/s1600-h/IMG_0215+Sarahs+confused+by+Don.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHEzjotUMR-MGwSDWoqE1EL6S7G_Ux1nwbED9WGaoGihSf12MIYK2s9Wv3VDRg7VSG2IATAtp6EgeMIQP1bg0wkeLKiYafhe0PK4-q3HVv8-uqJindqLN1OzrWf4-DLlwCYM_-ywrSd8M/s320/IMG_0215+Sarahs+confused+by+Don.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207034962554365522" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_qcVXPKAX8gAfoG438I-dJA2jLAorXwDdb9KEzFJyV8q5Qssd4YGskKJ4MLuWkiCLOhLM_tbxIaBAJ29MSWmx3X6kMWLTYiTDL0sgsyKuTrlkfpfzkZpJz7JWqfNniW1olaja-jAy2t8/s1600-h/IMG_0495+papyrus+guy+confused+by+Don+cropped.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_qcVXPKAX8gAfoG438I-dJA2jLAorXwDdb9KEzFJyV8q5Qssd4YGskKJ4MLuWkiCLOhLM_tbxIaBAJ29MSWmx3X6kMWLTYiTDL0sgsyKuTrlkfpfzkZpJz7JWqfNniW1olaja-jAy2t8/s320/IMG_0495+papyrus+guy+confused+by+Don+cropped.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207033665474242114" border="0" /></a><br /></span></div></div>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-16984654207997348032008-06-01T21:25:00.000+03:002008-06-01T23:36:04.939+03:00Fakka. Fakka? Fakka!<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Some words in Arabic, like any language really, are phonetically similar to English words. Occasionally, this occurs with amusing results.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In the great video game of living in Cairo, one of my favorite mini-missions is collecting small bills. Apparently Egypt has a shortage of small bills, so people in the know tend to hoard 25 pt (100 pt = 1 LE), 50 pt, 1 LE, and 5 LE notes. These bills are essential for tipping bathroom attendants, paying bus and taxi fare, and pretty much everything else associated with daily living. Especially for taxi drivers, it's nice to have exact change so you don't give the driver the option of claiming to have no change, or invite additional haggling. Just pay the man through the front passenger window and walk away.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">My obsessive nature and overwhelming cheapness makes this a hell of a fun mini-game. Every chance I get, I'll try and extract change from a point-of-sale. It's gotten to the point that I actually divide up my money into 3 pockets: 1 for big bills (20 LE and up), one for smaller bills (5-10 LE) and one for small change (1 LE and less). That way, I can just whip out everything in my pocket, starting with the biggest bills, and claim not to have any small change.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">One time while buying a large bottle of water (2 LE), I tried to pay with a 20 LE note. Cashier looks at the bill, then at me, and says "fakka". I blink, and blink again. Did he just curse at me? He didn't seem angry at all, or even slightly irritated. He repeated it again - "fakka?" I blinked some more, and then he sighed and just gave me 18 LE in change. As I was walking away, I figured out that "fakka" probably meant "change" or "what the hell" or something along those lines, an assumption later verified by some friends. It means "to break up or disassemble", such as breaking up a large bill into smaller bills - so "do you have anything smaller", pretty much.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">New mini game, at least for now - smiling and saying "fakka" at every point of sale when I try to pay for something with a bill that is at least 10 times larger than the actual cost of the item. The 11-year-old in me giggles every time, hehe. Then I walk away with my precious, precious change.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigYuegu-JDmSC2dCZ96pjHeZYizIvUPYpVgNzp-a2esbhMDt8jHZBj4Zz5CWCqqhY2AMrqYNR6ObsZ_F33tO7c57pXFbn_k7w7n-btGnVdV4hG-tCnC4n6b6bUbyP7Bo4O5UyTXlwb4zM/s1600-h/P1080805.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 334px; height: 445px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigYuegu-JDmSC2dCZ96pjHeZYizIvUPYpVgNzp-a2esbhMDt8jHZBj4Zz5CWCqqhY2AMrqYNR6ObsZ_F33tO7c57pXFbn_k7w7n-btGnVdV4hG-tCnC4n6b6bUbyP7Bo4O5UyTXlwb4zM/s320/P1080805.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207013526372591042" border="0" /></a></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-7707139808137482232008-06-01T20:47:00.000+03:002008-06-01T23:35:40.100+03:00Cocktail party<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Been over two months so far of risky street-food sampling, eating all manner of friend/grilled organ-y goodness, and overall flaunting of my immune system and manly stomach acids. And no sickness! Everyone seems mildly surprised when they find I haven't gotten sick yet so far given the length of time here, and my eating habits.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Well, surprise surprise, my culinary hubris has caught up to me. I knew this was gonna happen.....in fact, I kinda expected something to happen from this particular meal.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There's this little sandwich stand near the hostel where I used to stay. There's a guy there who serves little sandwiches filled with either sausage (sogo') or liver (kebde), and I cleverly named him "the kebde guy". There's always a crowd of guys around his stand sampling his wares, and the smells that come from his cart are generally downright divine. Multiple people in Cairo have even referenced this very kebde guy as a source of very, very tasty treats.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">They've also uniformly cautioned me that the food there, although delicious, is also highly "suspect" and that if I were ever to try it, to work out my immune system at other local places first, and even then, give myself at least two days after the meal to fully enjoy the "experience".</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">They were pretty much right on all counts. Twitchy has fallen, hard. Started feeling ill at work this morning (meal was last night around midnight), and slunk outta the office around 3pm when I really thought I was going to legitimately pass out (and then do unspeakable things while passed out). </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I feel like Icarus' lesser-known little brother Dwayne, who, after watching his big brother's escapades, went out and did the same freakin thing.</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Luckily, like in many developing/non-western countries, pharmacies dole out every medicine possible with zippy prescription. All you have to do is describe the symptoms to the pharmacist (who generally speaks a workable degree of English) and you're set. In my case, this involved pointing at my stomach and colon, emphatically huffing "moshkela" (problem), and then using my hands to make spraying motions from my orifii. In addition, drugs in Egypt are subsidized by the government, so they're super cheap too. After getting advice from coworkers and browsing a few pharmacies, I have this little cocktail of various "intestinal antiseptics," "anti-intestinal amoebiasis," and "anti-protozoal" medications of almost-recognizable chemical compounds, including some promising quinones and nifuroxazides. Cost me about $3 USD.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhugm7LBJ8ISRmcQSvW4_b0QSGOe_Q0oOlSnpqB5yJ85MsH3bLaM-WRHbGMKrn898qOx-MgVRIndZ-JC1DTVab9SWMsOcw2unul76Y1OToPWjFSWRFRG2dp6WXxgybKXJRf8-t2k-a70Y/s1600-h/IMG_1269.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 317px; height: 423px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhugm7LBJ8ISRmcQSvW4_b0QSGOe_Q0oOlSnpqB5yJ85MsH3bLaM-WRHbGMKrn898qOx-MgVRIndZ-JC1DTVab9SWMsOcw2unul76Y1OToPWjFSWRFRG2dp6WXxgybKXJRf8-t2k-a70Y/s320/IMG_1269.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206972462190273954" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I'm fine by most accounts, so no need to worry about me posting even less often than usual. In fact, after a few hours of shivering and sweating in bed, posting this is about as active as I'm going to get. So you have Egyptian parasites to thank for this recent update!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">And to flush out all the mental images you may have right now of tapeworm thrash-metal bands and amoeboid mosh-pits, here are some super tender kittens that live in a nearby alley.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi18QTUQy_RbMNBjVc_QSsXcCBMr-xpiT44VJevVV84SF0aUqtraSZOTgw0BV1nOqMpfeAlfCHnnw-XrArLFkUdAiRW3lusmOvyA34Hk1N_gnG79f8WtuLfog7lR9usJHKgvUaw_pkwX0/s1600-h/IMG_0243+kittens.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi18QTUQy_RbMNBjVc_QSsXcCBMr-xpiT44VJevVV84SF0aUqtraSZOTgw0BV1nOqMpfeAlfCHnnw-XrArLFkUdAiRW3lusmOvyA34Hk1N_gnG79f8WtuLfog7lR9usJHKgvUaw_pkwX0/s320/IMG_0243+kittens.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206979793699448242" border="0" /></a></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-31518738477890747792008-05-20T20:01:00.000+03:002008-05-20T21:36:06.843+03:00And now, Horrifying Baby Hour<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I'm about 3 weeks behind on updating anything, but the task of catching up is so daunting that I'm just going to continue avoiding it for now, and instead muse about how terrifying shopping for children's clothing must be for parents in Cairo. Some recent happenings such as goats on taxis or coming back from the Red Sea in a minibus full of Cairo ballerinas (who were all from Eastern Europe), have gone disappointingly unphotographed for various reasons. Inane, inanimate oddities, however, are easier to catch on film.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Preface: Individual kids tend to just annoy me. They offer nothing but constant movement and noise-making (kinda like Cairo), with none of the redeeming offerings of fun people, cheap tasty foods, and structured insanity. When they stop moving and quiet down, though, kids start to scare me. Encase them in plastic, and it's nightmare-fodder. On one of my wanders around the shopping districts downtown (down Talaat Harb for anyone around), I stumbled upon Hell.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Stores upon stores, windows alongside windows, of well-dressed, lifeless, ever-staring mannequins of children. Freakin hundreds of them.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZg2XvTse1epkx7t2HdzsQ9QJyXRgHXIJfVASlbrGZtZkIFkpEKTVvLb_RDGUxzYNHrVvnEFAvMULQxjX4B_NQdRI1yy5tqGK1HzQmdDYClosxPN3hwzn9fFlx3c6fqZ5EdJpPBQwOc_4/s1600-h/IMG_9377.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZg2XvTse1epkx7t2HdzsQ9QJyXRgHXIJfVASlbrGZtZkIFkpEKTVvLb_RDGUxzYNHrVvnEFAvMULQxjX4B_NQdRI1yy5tqGK1HzQmdDYClosxPN3hwzn9fFlx3c6fqZ5EdJpPBQwOc_4/s320/IMG_9377.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202509343748670962" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This first window actually wasn't too bad - just obedient little girls cheerfully watching their serpent overlord arrive from somewhere to the right of the photo.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0RHoPMjsxywl-1ajJtYmtwifjYlVeyJKL-y1O3E-Kp0icK23OjcmAtmzPInLbFKqsN66qJ10Jvth0JXAigGMYoPsUodZCzMMo7qwqX27eKuyxATvG216yEw15jw_XUkRHH8l9KW9a54/s1600-h/IMG_9380.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0RHoPMjsxywl-1ajJtYmtwifjYlVeyJKL-y1O3E-Kp0icK23OjcmAtmzPInLbFKqsN66qJ10Jvth0JXAigGMYoPsUodZCzMMo7qwqX27eKuyxATvG216yEw15jw_XUkRHH8l9KW9a54/s320/IMG_9380.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202512040988132898" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This scene bothered me because of the vague "grab your junk, grab your junk" motion that some of the kids are practicing. Little albino girl disapproves and quietly plots something on her own.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIkb8xGEuZwmvcIpdRGRIGcdB2A-KvKzvg4qrpK9Y15Qwk8HulU0D3_EcRvRrVuYHWXBFSyMui1vB5fPrKykqr41twyJp_Dp3N1EDfi1Ut3YTi2JYriorz2yPI8Q0oWa60o3Q1KzoQFMc/s1600-h/IMG_9382.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIkb8xGEuZwmvcIpdRGRIGcdB2A-KvKzvg4qrpK9Y15Qwk8HulU0D3_EcRvRrVuYHWXBFSyMui1vB5fPrKykqr41twyJp_Dp3N1EDfi1Ut3YTi2JYriorz2yPI8Q0oWa60o3Q1KzoQFMc/s320/IMG_9382.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202514162701977154" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I WILL RISE AGAIN</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_T9WiRzR7Isecu3cur-B485HQtM0fWhyphenhyphenB9y1CR3ULmOONmhLeGWCnZmCPGwOfimMByLMi5-vljyPeLiypxvqrBsrq6Bd4o-uB_9Uti1xQOavsM-NiQ3lwOIXFlVSLxB8mhHVRqdmvq9Y/s1600-h/IMG_9387.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_T9WiRzR7Isecu3cur-B485HQtM0fWhyphenhyphenB9y1CR3ULmOONmhLeGWCnZmCPGwOfimMByLMi5-vljyPeLiypxvqrBsrq6Bd4o-uB_9Uti1xQOavsM-NiQ3lwOIXFlVSLxB8mhHVRqdmvq9Y/s320/IMG_9387.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202517319502939746" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Here we witness the classic "pillar of children" so common in the nightmares of wicked people. My favorite babies are the ones with their heads cocked/kicked/twisted at odd angles.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgABQLL5N3EFON4biIOWdGIxbTU8Cx5xROpVWe1clq8rPUE98asM50ZymLtkosXSS85gPVv9MCUY7O-YL7lap4-WR-nKr4t2koypDEtr1W-3SEtodzY-ySlyFi0Ko01mqechueIbQ2Kr_o/s1600-h/IMG_9379.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgABQLL5N3EFON4biIOWdGIxbTU8Cx5xROpVWe1clq8rPUE98asM50ZymLtkosXSS85gPVv9MCUY7O-YL7lap4-WR-nKr4t2koypDEtr1W-3SEtodzY-ySlyFi0Ko01mqechueIbQ2Kr_o/s320/IMG_9379.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202529053353592434" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Yuppie-children with their little ties and vests, thinking of murder.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXWyXTJHr-S05x0e3SSEy_XJHQUvWURfDj1pTLuXHd7SGWmBFeS6URsZzG9eEvxOrNBNw3qtMea4Fpw_P7l-WR7rML2JlzpwaunAt9wcFx_vBpZTIOnxSqARZSjSgos8wuKbKLQ8gb8Dg/s1600-h/IMG_9383+cropped.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXWyXTJHr-S05x0e3SSEy_XJHQUvWURfDj1pTLuXHd7SGWmBFeS6URsZzG9eEvxOrNBNw3qtMea4Fpw_P7l-WR7rML2JlzpwaunAt9wcFx_vBpZTIOnxSqARZSjSgos8wuKbKLQ8gb8Dg/s320/IMG_9383+cropped.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5202530011131299458" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">No caption.</span><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-77234076580658650972008-05-13T22:51:00.000+03:002008-05-13T22:55:08.649+03:00I saw a live goat on the luggage rack on top of a taxi today<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">and it was awesome.</span><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-66332782004973097112008-05-04T22:48:00.000+03:002008-05-05T01:26:13.031+03:00The Shower Saga, Part 1<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Before moving into my new flat, I did what I thought was a pretty complete inspection of the unit, including making sure that accessories such as a shower curtain were included, and utilities such as the shower worked. Still relatively new to Cairo at that point, however, I made some rather poor assumptions and extrapolations that, alas, did not allow me to accurately predict how well the included amenities and utilities would </span></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:130%;" >actually</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> work.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Incorrect Assumption #1: The existence of a shower curtain rod above the shower and a shower curtain in a closet means that there will be a workable shower curtain for the apartment.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">L-shaped curtain rod around shower area? Check. Shower curtain? Check. Curtain rings to attach curtain to rod? Check, even though there are half as many rings as holes in the curtain where rings are to be installed. Install rings in every other curtain hole, hang on rod. Looking up at the curtain rod, curtain appears to adequate cover entire width of shower - Check.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Kg0pQZU64NxKUPV31IHlcE_4gAvBsm5HJw4QhXb1KR-bsB3Cj7BZAHDgM5lTevnnAmRIBSfFWz21NNEZne9U_DPYqmBmVQXrKwAKaSguF-JIVzm0doc7bAGv6nKcrB4BUIO6xq6-pS0/s1600-h/IMG_9524.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Kg0pQZU64NxKUPV31IHlcE_4gAvBsm5HJw4QhXb1KR-bsB3Cj7BZAHDgM5lTevnnAmRIBSfFWz21NNEZne9U_DPYqmBmVQXrKwAKaSguF-JIVzm0doc7bAGv6nKcrB4BUIO6xq6-pS0/s320/IMG_9524.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196628758267046322" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">But wait....something is not quite right. Look down at </span></span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:130%;" >length</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> of shower curtain.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxtCtAE8ZO2X0FivMcqhGXEwQ-CqEK0SZbQKGE-oygkNt4srVS7OITcafArREUoIbHDJISuJS7IBSQCW3pYtIACY4KtDnwo_j1NB7ITf0S6FyP3QNhFQ6Ww07FGG-wWotlrD3AwRsgs4/s1600-h/IMG_9525.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifxtCtAE8ZO2X0FivMcqhGXEwQ-CqEK0SZbQKGE-oygkNt4srVS7OITcafArREUoIbHDJISuJS7IBSQCW3pYtIACY4KtDnwo_j1NB7ITf0S6FyP3QNhFQ6Ww07FGG-wWotlrD3AwRsgs4/s320/IMG_9525.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196629720339720642" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">FAIL.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I don't know where the heck they got this shower curtain, how/if the previous tenants used it, or whether someone tall got bored and raised the curtain rod. When turning on the shower, the angle of the shower head actually caused approximately 99% of the water (maybe more) to gracefully arc out of the shower area and splash all over the floor, instantly turning the bathroom into a slippery death trap. One of my lingering fears in life is somehow ending up naked and dead in a situation not of my choosing. Even worse, being found mangled with boxers partially put on, with one leg in and the other foot tangled in the boxers. Then there's not even a question of what happened, and no opportunity for anyone to propose less-lame causes of death.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I played with rubber bands, twist-ties, and random plastic hooks from the 2.50 LE store for a few days, trying to lower/extend the curtain, with limited success. Hence the need for a new non-pygmy-world shower curtain, and the odyssey that I whined about in the previous post. After finding the new shower curtain, I rushed back to my apartment, giddy to install my awesome new bathroom accessory.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">It was still too short. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">There was just less clearance between the curtain and the stream of water as it continued to splash onto the floor. I now imagined an extremely tall person installing the curtain rod just a few inches higher than the usual height of a curtain, cackling maniacally to himself (or herself) before feasting on kittens and teddy bears. I'd grown tired of trying to be stable and agile on my feet after groggily showering in the morning, a time reserved for stumbling around dry bathrooms floors.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">But, with TWO short shower curtains, there was definitely a way to make one curtain of acceptable length. I tried taping the first tiny curtain to the second less-tiny curtain, creating an overlapping fantasy of smothering vinyl that clung to me while showering, which was exactly as comfortable as it sounds. That permutation self-destructed before I could get too annoyed with it, as the tape was quickly deactivated by water and steam. I finally settled on cutting a piece off of the first curtain and gluing it to the second curtain, hoping that the super glue and the reduced weight of a smaller curtain-piece would make the curtain-merge more permanent. Pictured below is the birth of my current </span></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:130%;" class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" >franken</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">-curtain.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsxWMgp1IBAsjL1eNPfRZvDRcbqhSHjlUMO68OjAehXuothVvw8Xj1e8BYGCCthtKYo7zgt2IfOSezbRHzIJCSNdJeCW8IsVLwfJG8i1rRWkRIteqwDoMEpOyFuQMgc6U3csX8Fhh6_Bc/s1600-h/IMG_9522.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsxWMgp1IBAsjL1eNPfRZvDRcbqhSHjlUMO68OjAehXuothVvw8Xj1e8BYGCCthtKYo7zgt2IfOSezbRHzIJCSNdJeCW8IsVLwfJG8i1rRWkRIteqwDoMEpOyFuQMgc6U3csX8Fhh6_Bc/s320/IMG_9522.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196630712477166034" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Looks like I've ruined a perfectly good curtain......no, TWO perfectly good curtains. Plus half of my fingers are bonded together with astoundingly-effective super glue, and the weird blue acetone I got at the pharmacy is nothing to alleviate the embarrassing </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndactyly"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">syndactyly</span></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;"> that I'm trying hide from my coworkers.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">And to top it all off, the past two </span></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;font-size:130%;" class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" >uber</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">-long posts have been about freaking shower curtains.</span></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-10141171539662250672008-04-20T21:45:00.001+02:002008-04-23T11:30:04.726+02:00My my my beautiful neighborhood<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I went wandering around my neighborhood finally, on a multi-quest to get lost, AND find a shower curtain (future entry on why I needed a shower curtain). I got some rough directions regarding in what general area I could find a shower curtain, so I started walking in that direction somewhat purposefully. I'm pretty sure those last two sentences were full of grammatical obscenities. Almost a solid month here, and I hadn't gotten lost in downtown yet, so I was pretty excited about finally having zero direction (in a venue other than work).</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">First stop - the 2.50 LE store, equivalent to a dollar store in the States. Actually, I don't think 2.50 is really all that cheap, but the store had enough of a selection of low-quality house supplies and essentials that I noted its location for future visits. Found some nice hair-care products: Who wants garlic in their hair? Mmmm boy. How about whale liver oil? Actually these may be perfectly legitimate products, but I'm a guy who washed his hair with hand soap for 2 weeks because I was too lazy to look for shampoo, with minimal (visible) effect on my hair. So this, like most of my pictures, may only be funny to me.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrr-r2iZkAtWLYfNJrc4QEtWiAQ0mhxJu63AaWm6dvImsjuhtFeMOho429Ri53rR6DBYRAHPWuzYMANK0qcE-zny-EQ-0xetNedmH3mimjfRL7-j9RVv513NdirQwBnBc_-Qvt2Tv4Avo/s1600-h/IMG_9394.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrr-r2iZkAtWLYfNJrc4QEtWiAQ0mhxJu63AaWm6dvImsjuhtFeMOho429Ri53rR6DBYRAHPWuzYMANK0qcE-zny-EQ-0xetNedmH3mimjfRL7-j9RVv513NdirQwBnBc_-Qvt2Tv4Avo/s320/IMG_9394.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191431860952130882" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Bigger non-western cities sometimes have streets where all the shops sell the same category of materials, from the all-wedding-dress and prosthetic-limb shopping streets of Seoul to the fireman's-paradise alleys of Cairo, pictured below. I was going to photograph the propane-cylinder-and-engine alley, but that place was a little too close and sketchy-feeling at first visit for me to want to whip out the camera. I'll have to photographically assault that corridor again later - but for now, the fireman's equipment square will have to do. I'm really tempted to stock up on gas masks and then just freak people out (and breathe easier) by walking around downtown and hailing taxis wearing a gas mask. Too hot to wear the whole suit and rubber boots though....sorry ladies!</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVIdaUqBR2wsWiLy2KEEBIt6B61SVw5f5EYOTlIk0LTny18m74raYWyzFtORYJJhVgYWgLRKWeX-S0r_MIlBUhSq4zoHQtMvQ769Gles4W25WBk80gt86clhohrn9-lITiqqKNXykuHY/s1600-h/IMG_9365+fireman%27s+store.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZVIdaUqBR2wsWiLy2KEEBIt6B61SVw5f5EYOTlIk0LTny18m74raYWyzFtORYJJhVgYWgLRKWeX-S0r_MIlBUhSq4zoHQtMvQ769Gles4W25WBk80gt86clhohrn9-lITiqqKNXykuHY/s320/IMG_9365+fireman%27s+store.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191420281720300818" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Continuing the theme of, um, themed shopping areas, this display had All Things Taxi. Beaded seat rests, faux-fur dash covers, leopard-spotted steering wheel covers, and all manner of flashing lights and decorations - rows upon rows of taxi knick-knacks to please the eye and distract one from the noxious exhaust/smoke fumes. Oddly enough, there were no tourists around this area - I guess crappy plastic accessories aren't the most desirable souvenirs, but to me, they make me think of Cairo more quickly than tiny stone pyramids.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLApEz1rhvOwfQzjSjT8-mHXYKwFXCX2aSsFyPVhzIl9_VsRe9Kp4GmwmD9pBZKEYxRymaj_QO5hbIb6Bf4HT76IwNO2zeU4rVWs8gliJvcBu53rhIJZZ5GnfkFOkyCtDTmHFDsW258-c/s1600-h/IMG_9389.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLApEz1rhvOwfQzjSjT8-mHXYKwFXCX2aSsFyPVhzIl9_VsRe9Kp4GmwmD9pBZKEYxRymaj_QO5hbIb6Bf4HT76IwNO2zeU4rVWs8gliJvcBu53rhIJZZ5GnfkFOkyCtDTmHFDsW258-c/s320/IMG_9389.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191424632522171682" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Not a joke, this isn't a Big & Tall store, it's an Average-Height & Potbellied store. All the clothes and suits were for guys about my height (maybe slightly taller), and about twice my weight. As tasty, greasy, and fatty the food is though, soon I will be shopping here. I'm also adding this to my list of mannequins-my-future-mansion-shall-be-full-of.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj26r4iLop-6opwtrqzt5atoY5LhSvxA_037RrX0xmao_22_FeHXoNWFOqbTrBS13DaT6VjXo2Rj9hjZrBBbZujku6N-Iw7hmQpyGe096K-50BJ6ycq0y5NURBT6Zy5aZXg6PO01mpEyv8/s1600-h/IMG_9364.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj26r4iLop-6opwtrqzt5atoY5LhSvxA_037RrX0xmao_22_FeHXoNWFOqbTrBS13DaT6VjXo2Rj9hjZrBBbZujku6N-Iw7hmQpyGe096K-50BJ6ycq0y5NURBT6Zy5aZXg6PO01mpEyv8/s320/IMG_9364.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191418323215213826" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Interestingly creepy art on the walls of a restaurant about 5 minutes from my apartment. Food was so-so, but it seemed like a hangout for older, well-to-do Egyptian intellectuals as much as it was another expensive place that foreigners go to dine. I want to try their mollokheyya (sloppy stew-sauce liquid made from some sort of tasty green leaf) to see if it's worth the 2x price tag, compared to the local places. Some of these ghostly ladies seem to be giving a two-finger peace sign, others seem to have fists in the air, while others look like they had their hands lopped off entirely. But it's not like they have faces or eyes, so I guess no-hands is the least of their worries. HAR.<br /><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0lpglAcyd2VRe1rAZoy5eTvzh8b-NIRyZvyL5I3APlZl6ww7FDfaj1Vy_6TTH2ves2WfrCss9UC6lSNmeYgLroucVutluRrVUG06qmcqDIdEHY3LvMncl3ieU5kbO6dHI0pvZGhDhMU/s1600-h/IMG_9357.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga0lpglAcyd2VRe1rAZoy5eTvzh8b-NIRyZvyL5I3APlZl6ww7FDfaj1Vy_6TTH2ves2WfrCss9UC6lSNmeYgLroucVutluRrVUG06qmcqDIdEHY3LvMncl3ieU5kbO6dHI0pvZGhDhMU/s320/IMG_9357.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192370581660903842" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRfyv2Eo6DXczHZU9nhF1_P76-RIHHXwjRSUOwyzG-EzNKhgBt5kluxZOWh6_HGOntNOygRgAuEaQQoWgwRwmco6dLRDehbze-ZCvBu-6bYLqgyg1IOjrqxwH9p73s3tYvP2T5V5hJlDA/s1600-h/IMG_9356.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRfyv2Eo6DXczHZU9nhF1_P76-RIHHXwjRSUOwyzG-EzNKhgBt5kluxZOWh6_HGOntNOygRgAuEaQQoWgwRwmco6dLRDehbze-ZCvBu-6bYLqgyg1IOjrqxwH9p73s3tYvP2T5V5hJlDA/s320/IMG_9356.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5192370010430253458" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Weirdest </span><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijab">hijab </a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I've seen so far. Honestly, I don't know if this is meant to be a hijab or just a weird underwear display. The blouse seems way too tight to be anything resembling a hijab anyways - panties on face and chest, perhaps not so modest. The more I look at it, however, the more I think this is just a weird display - there isn't even anything covering the hair on this metal mannequin, reducing further the hijabiness of the outfit.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcGqa3ab1QmGh89CYcjc_8timaGK0iBSZXvns9UL6zQM3Q7jr7VT2z6BqxB1xvlU8Ig2QOE3MOF7oCUWjYnqyJTmzfbM0KkPY7EneLencVX05JeTOm3quO9DthR7bSYaJqXMoIp8lQws/s1600-h/IMG_9390.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmcGqa3ab1QmGh89CYcjc_8timaGK0iBSZXvns9UL6zQM3Q7jr7VT2z6BqxB1xvlU8Ig2QOE3MOF7oCUWjYnqyJTmzfbM0KkPY7EneLencVX05JeTOm3quO9DthR7bSYaJqXMoIp8lQws/s320/IMG_9390.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191425835113014578" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">After about two hours of wandering around, the novelty of being lost started to wane, and I tried to focus on figuring out where I was in the city, and where I could find a shower curtain. There's probably a shower curtain district that I missed, but even the toilet-seat-cover and shower-head stores didn't have shower curtains. After another hour or so, I started to become somewhat irritated, and started looking for anything resembling a shower curtain, including sneaking around the industrial district looking for tarps, and later, trying to steal the plastic wrap off of a roll of sheet metal, thoroughly unsuccessfully. I was now desperate for shower curtainage.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I walked by a carpet store at one point, and, seeing something resembling a table cloth in the display window, decided to give it a try since trying all the stores that made sense (bathroom supplies, pharmacy, fish market) was not resulting in the purchase of a shower curtain. At this point I had gone through a few iterations of learning how to say "curtain" in Arabic, and tried it out. Blank looks. Tried it again, and the guy in the front pawned me off to an older guy in the back of the store, who took me down a narrow isle of rolled-up carpets, presumably to slaughter me and hide me between some carpets.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">And then, there they were, slightly dusty, but still shining in the fluorescent light like something awesome that's shining in fluorescent light. A whole freakin wall of shower curtains, in the back of an Oriental carpet store. Of course, why didn't I think of that? EXACTLY....no one would have thought of that, so the Infinite Improbability Drive of Cairo had me find my shopping target there. Whatever urge the shopkeepers may have had to rip me off likely vanished when I started hopping with glee singing "ilham d'illeh" (Arabic for "woo hoo!" or "rockin") over and over again. They went from surprised to curious to amused to vaguely concerned after about 5 - 10 hops, sold me a glorious curtain, and bid me a wary farewell.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2PgHk3zPWrf9Q124YH6TJ8U8ujU2wXHpo63jD-oGyT3gjpdSuQUmy2Me0bbub6MOPssUbe9H0HVT_H4XhlRCp57oJqd06JFEJzQWtAkX96d0z1hyh2o1Sd0c2zbMHOgktZmwvor4-EQc/s1600-h/IMG_9392+finally+shower+curtains.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2PgHk3zPWrf9Q124YH6TJ8U8ujU2wXHpo63jD-oGyT3gjpdSuQUmy2Me0bbub6MOPssUbe9H0HVT_H4XhlRCp57oJqd06JFEJzQWtAkX96d0z1hyh2o1Sd0c2zbMHOgktZmwvor4-EQc/s320/IMG_9392+finally+shower+curtains.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5191824597056644434" border="0" /></a><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-22707337163074293742008-04-15T21:58:00.000+02:002008-04-16T09:47:13.380+02:00A place to rest my head, at least until woken up by horns and children<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">So, after all that great apartment hunting and dealing with shady flat-finders, turns out the most ideal apartment was found by one of the guys working at my hostel! Apparently my near-constant nudity and obnoxiousness has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated...out of all the people in Cairo, these guys probably had the most motivation to help me find a place of my own. The guy at my hostel used to work at another hostel near the apartment, was chatting with the doorman at his hostel, who in turn knew the doorman at my apartment.....networking works, yeah? So, after some shenanigans (that I'll write about later) with the landlord, I've finally moved into my very own Cairo pad. Now that I've finally sat down to write about it, I realize that the majority of my pictures are on my camera, which is not at all on my person right now. Awesome. Here are the few I have so far on my computer though:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The entryway to my little slice of Cairene heaven: nice, marble, stone, and unpolished enough that I don't have to worry about slipping on the steps while wearing my work shoes and cracking my head open on the stairs. If the lighting weren't so institutional and fluorescent, it'd feel pretty classy, as it's kept relatively clean, and is quite open. Plus, some of the marble floor tiles are a bit cracked and loose, so they wiggle and rattle a bit when stepped on. Every time I walk on one, I have mini-daydreams about prying it up and hiding something cool under the stone slab, to be found by no one, ever. High on the list of stupid-things-to-hide-under-an-unmoveable-stone-slab are my only apartment key and passport.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWycq20otJdoM0SAHFE_r62Cr31JUJ0g-QWh-9qXqA-LXKw-iumHqOcnjB3peyIcwp5u5pQ_0uKmRtMF4Kg38xypxGnDe4LkC11BeWcPNPRVDKejQ-UaRal-L7s08Fp4qfJMDOMMJmCQ/s1600-h/IMG_9105.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghWycq20otJdoM0SAHFE_r62Cr31JUJ0g-QWh-9qXqA-LXKw-iumHqOcnjB3peyIcwp5u5pQ_0uKmRtMF4Kg38xypxGnDe4LkC11BeWcPNPRVDKejQ-UaRal-L7s08Fp4qfJMDOMMJmCQ/s320/IMG_9105.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5189593634908360914" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The view from the mini-balcony, accessible by both bedrooms, is pretty spectacular. Right across the street is what I believe is called Qasr (mansion) Champollion, possibly where the famous French archaeologist/Rosetta stone translator guy lived, or had dealings? I need to research this more later. But there's a fantastic abandoned classical-European-architecture mansion right next to my apartment building, and I fully intend on "accessing" it at some point, even if I have to get my hands on a grappling hook (or bribe the guards). Down the street a bit to the right, there is an all-girl's school that has classes starting at right around shut-the-hell-up-o'clock in the morning. I hear a steady stream of chatting and giggling every morning that's enough to wake me up, but not only to the half-awake/asleep state where sounds merge with dreams. In fuzzy-mode, their voices really do sound like a babbling brook or flowing/bubbling water, which makes for an interesting mindset to start the day. Like I'm drowning in children.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdiR_J6CqhFPHqEiGOcbI050Cw5iwOjYQRMTvPnrImusnkEtficUYrw6DoiHdJ6lUXkDnwUKAocVa1QksBZyY1g1Gc54nSoTpUbwO9-UHVWcanoFyE0KQMQWGU30-0LmeWvFKtRfYHbNQ/s1600-h/panoramic+view+from+balcony.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 442px; height: 145px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdiR_J6CqhFPHqEiGOcbI050Cw5iwOjYQRMTvPnrImusnkEtficUYrw6DoiHdJ6lUXkDnwUKAocVa1QksBZyY1g1Gc54nSoTpUbwO9-UHVWcanoFyE0KQMQWGU30-0LmeWvFKtRfYHbNQ/s320/panoramic+view+from+balcony.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5189599407344406770" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">My bedroom! Notice the random assortment of phone-with-no-cord, homeless mirror, disassembled vacuum cleaner, and oddly placed stool. All accoutrements around the nest of love at the core of Cairiasian central, complete with leopard-spotted blanket that came with the flat! Now even while unconscious, I can be P-I-M-P. After putting on my suit in the morning, I feel incomplete walking out of this room without a cane and a big hat. Note to self: go shopping.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGUgzUbtyn7_SJB3XeWpg0pNVr9Fk-yHj0OocR3TYrJdZvPlZMnzViolKSAtFOILvMWyeRVJGyiSHcHx9e_zCCXSavtsyCJZucBGG7aU9k79HIBt3ZOnrbUOqtUcf2Dt3gVDeesz4AAN4/s1600-h/IMG_9191.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGUgzUbtyn7_SJB3XeWpg0pNVr9Fk-yHj0OocR3TYrJdZvPlZMnzViolKSAtFOILvMWyeRVJGyiSHcHx9e_zCCXSavtsyCJZucBGG7aU9k79HIBt3ZOnrbUOqtUcf2Dt3gVDeesz4AAN4/s320/IMG_9191.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5189594914808615138" border="0" /></a></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-53697389612981366622008-04-13T23:34:00.001+02:002008-04-14T01:56:15.246+02:00It's been a slow/fast few weeks<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Been busy as all hell these past few weeks with apartment hunting and work, so not much to report on....or, it's been too long since amusing things happened, and I up and forgot them all. Slow regarding time to post/download things in my head, but quite fast regarding how quickly the time has passed. Luckily, I've gotten used to using my camera to create external memory pointers, allowing me to remember strings of events based on snapshots during the events. At least, that's my excuse for some of my crappier photographs.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">And now, random memory hour!</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUDF29GZAO5185u-lk0N0Gi50dimjVPUEx4jN2utXlNFnfrDi2SCaUTxY51AKbWnw6yBZA856JAqtqJoSv1fEOXaAfL-tISNksh0BvZvp9CS_qF-ZT66ioFpl8zPKNoBC5duuCUEKOEkg/s1600-h/IMG_9113.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUDF29GZAO5185u-lk0N0Gi50dimjVPUEx4jN2utXlNFnfrDi2SCaUTxY51AKbWnw6yBZA856JAqtqJoSv1fEOXaAfL-tISNksh0BvZvp9CS_qF-ZT66ioFpl8zPKNoBC5duuCUEKOEkg/s320/IMG_9113.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188848621291262066" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This rather creepy drawing was hanging on the wall of one of the apartment buildings I visited. It was the only decoration.....big white wall, crying-little-girl art smack in the middle of the wall, slightly above (my) head height. I sat on a couch opposite this painting for about 20 minutes waiting for the simsar (real estate agent) find the landlord, so really had nothing to look at but this painting. It may have been some sort of psychological ploy to make me so sad that when I saw the apartment, I'd feel better no matter how bad it was, since I just stared at a little girl crying for 20 minutes. Instead, passerby just wondered why I was snickering to myself for 20 minutes. Ah, the joy of children in emotional distress, who aren't seated near me on a plane. Like veal, lobster, and schadenfreude, nothing beats the flavor of suffering. Mmmmm, boy.</span><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8nmYaHyXClVRQSiv4paqJUVeELdberEBQF1y_MtTnZAL-_0aD2N7E-XsmvE9J94ZzctpOX0qi_bnMYST-TGHv8lIQGU9ozUg-Yd2jmhSClkHq0-tuTSE_daZoY09hgL-bjBuhm7AOeZ8/s1600-h/IMG_9171.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8nmYaHyXClVRQSiv4paqJUVeELdberEBQF1y_MtTnZAL-_0aD2N7E-XsmvE9J94ZzctpOX0qi_bnMYST-TGHv8lIQGU9ozUg-Yd2jmhSClkHq0-tuTSE_daZoY09hgL-bjBuhm7AOeZ8/s320/IMG_9171.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188847775182704738" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">On the way back from a meeting with one of the government ministries, I passed by a series of apartment buildings in various stages of construction. I noticed after passing a dozen or so buildings that something looked a little weird......if you look the buildings above, you'll notice a scarcity of windows. Some of the apartments appear to have no windows at all. I wasn't sure if they just knock out bricks for windows later, or whether some of the apartments just don't have windows, but either way, it seemed even worse than institutional housing. At least in prisons, there are windows with metal bars over them. My mild distaste looking at these buildings was tempered by my total ignorance of construction processes, as I hoped that there was just some cost-saving or logistical measure that explained the lack of windows. It's not just the lack of sunlight, it's the ability to let fresh(ish) air in from outside; after seeing some older inhabited and fully-constructed apartment buildings, I noticed that many of the windows were completely covered in sand/dust/brown anyways. Even dirty windows can be opened for ventilation, though.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF_weO3m8lLAmxyfEz1JRGv-v4H1sXijPOQIu1yEruhrHmJYGEewo9YG3e-vyZyHw1kGuKEiMQ6n2cX5tuhnxITP31u5wNkbKjuibWIaDRXRvSfnVjpssVY89Q7DMqpWUptwc3wJx922w/s1600-h/IMG_9203.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF_weO3m8lLAmxyfEz1JRGv-v4H1sXijPOQIu1yEruhrHmJYGEewo9YG3e-vyZyHw1kGuKEiMQ6n2cX5tuhnxITP31u5wNkbKjuibWIaDRXRvSfnVjpssVY89Q7DMqpWUptwc3wJx922w/s320/IMG_9203.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188852529711501474" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Found this little gem at a book sale that one of the hashers had, getting rid of old literature and collecting some cash. You can almost hear the voice of that severe man who narrates old 60's documentaries, talking about "the homosexual" as a plural/species. Believe it or not, I think this was actually FOR education about gay rights, and not some sort of hate manual. But man, check out those angry homosexuals on the cover. They sure are pissed about the law.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizTLjdlhE_jNTWuy2hm_1B3hY_sJvG_oNF4TTWbmtlta5HgqnXRly_zmUMusHuM9HCmCD8VCR7iWs7VkJ7K-1nOnos4RbAqDQE3XxclLGtDTPBZ6B6ZAL6xHKMg3xx9E7PQC8cvzTKTrs/s1600-h/IMG_9167.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 373px; height: 126px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizTLjdlhE_jNTWuy2hm_1B3hY_sJvG_oNF4TTWbmtlta5HgqnXRly_zmUMusHuM9HCmCD8VCR7iWs7VkJ7K-1nOnos4RbAqDQE3XxclLGtDTPBZ6B6ZAL6xHKMg3xx9E7PQC8cvzTKTrs/s320/IMG_9167.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188851756617388178" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">No trip to a foreign country would be complete without deformed Disney characters. The resolution here might suck too hard to see clearly, but there's Goofy lounging and the left, Donald and Daisy sharing a drink (probably dairy-based, not sure why) in the center, and the immediate aftermath of something hurling Mickey out of a window, on the right.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLzqOV2MjOx3Yk_gtszESgVkNsAu8HPgvZIj0vDtuUlWLQ_E8XZ82S3mgNr0WId5s-NiV8Na3WmIn15hKIhwnaHoEHsdpdKdoenCG_zDu2SmQmuZzRY68btZ6IIkAl8U0QxAEk0Qgdr1M/s1600-h/IMG_9374.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLzqOV2MjOx3Yk_gtszESgVkNsAu8HPgvZIj0vDtuUlWLQ_E8XZ82S3mgNr0WId5s-NiV8Na3WmIn15hKIhwnaHoEHsdpdKdoenCG_zDu2SmQmuZzRY68btZ6IIkAl8U0QxAEk0Qgdr1M/s320/IMG_9374.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188862356596674754" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Biggest freakin stack/pillar/tower of shawerma meat I have ever seen. While I am sure there are larger in existence, I snapped a photo of this to remind myself of the shock/wonder/delicious feeling I got when seeing that much greasy tastiness, ready to be sliced, packed into bread, and then given to you by the same hands that just handled your money and scratched his butt. I wanted to combine the word shawerma with something implying "large mass", but am too tired to be witty right now. Hell, that's why this entry is so photo-heavy. Oh wait....shawermassive? That sounds like a name I'd give my group of friends if I lived in the UK and loved shawerma and drum and bass. London shawermassive, represent!</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF-t5IMNHySwquaOTW-KRRZqPDwFE-Ma490thzDaOi9JJLvSxEuXJxCiprrA6_fwN0rwch2iIr7X0X-gyOnA78yWG1d6iLql6V6uEFAGuGSdGIoAYXwKSPOQ41xk1a_oNfagoInds_yEA/s1600-h/IMG_9334_cropped.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF-t5IMNHySwquaOTW-KRRZqPDwFE-Ma490thzDaOi9JJLvSxEuXJxCiprrA6_fwN0rwch2iIr7X0X-gyOnA78yWG1d6iLql6V6uEFAGuGSdGIoAYXwKSPOQ41xk1a_oNfagoInds_yEA/s320/IMG_9334_cropped.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188856579865661618" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Hee hee hee. Next time I feel like ending a meal very awkwardly, I'm going to order this. Note that "F.F" is french fries, on the side, not to be confused with a french-fry sandwich, which also exists here. French fries stuffed in a sub roll or pita bread are a common fast-food item, which would make any Atkins-freak shrivel and then explode with fear and longing. Also, misspelling "dessert" as "desert", a common error even in the States, takes on new hilarity in Egypt. Especially when the first item is a bottle of water, hehe.</span><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-15641605823463530562008-04-01T20:57:00.001+02:002008-04-14T02:01:25.659+02:00In Search of a New Home<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This post is after the fact, but I've been going on an apartment-hunting rampage lately. Emailing various listserves, contacting shady ready estate agents (which is almost all of them apparently), talking to random people I meet, trying to find a place where I can finally unpack all 32 kilos of luggage I've been dragging around. While I do like the hostel where I've been staying, it's been over 2 weeks and about time I have a place where I can shower without needing shower slippers, and have the luxury of wandering around buck-naked all the time. Heck, it saves on the A/C bill and laundry.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I visited a pretty wide variety of places, from rather comfortable and fashionable apartments in far-off locations, to downright-scary crackhouses in great locations. I visited probably 12-15 places total, but didn't have my camera on me for all the visits, stupidly enough. Asians everywhere, shake your heads in disappointment. Here are some of the highlights of my potential abodes, in no particular order.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">One of the first places I visited, in a great location downtown, very close to my hostel, close to all manner of cheap food, and a 15-20 minute cab ride to work. It was located in the corner of an auto district, where every shop sold some sort of automotive supply or service, primarily bumpers and windows, it seems. After getting used to the chaos of Cairo's traffic, the proliferation of bumper and glass stores made perfect sense to me. This place looked like a den of whores and dealers right when I walked in the front door, into a narrow, lightless stairwell with a super-sketchy elevator (even compared to many others I've seen here). The tenant said the landlord's mother used to live there, until she passed away a year ago. Awesome.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Rockin' paint job and nonfunctional A/C unit from the 50's.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNkeB2Wqj8V-vJ97Pwvm2M7C32RjFSleE-fdLXgsjUfu5WXmg5fYvBt1kMsXcA6MghcUlrvacdjRbS_JEgNIJkDaRUAXxgSiWkunK2KF-v9yZTfYNchgMaDS9dN7ztnj4TqcN05a0uyZ0/s1600-h/IMG_9094.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNkeB2Wqj8V-vJ97Pwvm2M7C32RjFSleE-fdLXgsjUfu5WXmg5fYvBt1kMsXcA6MghcUlrvacdjRbS_JEgNIJkDaRUAXxgSiWkunK2KF-v9yZTfYNchgMaDS9dN7ztnj4TqcN05a0uyZ0/s320/IMG_9094.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186243126544114722" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Shower basin, sink, toilet and washing machine, all cuddled together. The washing machine is manually filled, and really is just an agitator with a timer - you pour water and soap in, it jitters for a while, then you open the spout to dump the water into the toilet. Rinse and repeat. Then you take the clothes out, wring them out (no spin cycle), and hang them.....somewhere. Now I can clean my insides, outsides, and clothes simultaneously!</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMikRR-ZxeO4miwcccL0CcHE0IsUIRXLNmCvsa3EGsxSZX-z-WjieSB0_LpEvlJyuYT48yunDNbUUws4W0sF58Z4FssBZbC_DYTDsxqClpYEOkxLWOlX4S9Z7wBFXn2f71KW4KGggPqd4/s1600-h/IMG_9095.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMikRR-ZxeO4miwcccL0CcHE0IsUIRXLNmCvsa3EGsxSZX-z-WjieSB0_LpEvlJyuYT48yunDNbUUws4W0sF58Z4FssBZbC_DYTDsxqClpYEOkxLWOlX4S9Z7wBFXn2f71KW4KGggPqd4/s320/IMG_9095.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5186243676299928626" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Shockingly, I passed on this jewel of the Nile.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Here's a place that was middle-of-the-road; not too terrible, but alas, not so great either. It didn't have A/C, which was pretty much an instant deal-breaker. But hey, check out the awesome guest room! Now, I just need to find some 4-feet tall guests who don't mind sleeping on the floor...</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLYu4hTfLs18-o3xAu8Zaxr6QIrECFXLW_YjGuUpUAhYw38xlhyIrgq8jyCQV1uZFp7yPUqEMJZP9AS0PO8uI5sttdz8EiMu-3ntDQLNfb5ld-gkp37htDIxsbOALi3aZfkBW6sN-J7LE/s1600-h/IMG_9132.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLYu4hTfLs18-o3xAu8Zaxr6QIrECFXLW_YjGuUpUAhYw38xlhyIrgq8jyCQV1uZFp7yPUqEMJZP9AS0PO8uI5sttdz8EiMu-3ntDQLNfb5ld-gkp37htDIxsbOALi3aZfkBW6sN-J7LE/s320/IMG_9132.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188122044164660546" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This next flat was actually pretty nice, with a large bedroom and dining room with table/chairs for 6! Only one bedroom though, which isn't guest-friendly, and more important, it's on the other side of the Nile, which means I'd have to deal with the horrid traffic crossing the bridge to and from work every day. Plus, the neighborhood (Doqqi) isn't as lively as the downtown I'm used to; I like cool shisha/tea bars (called ahwas) every 10 feet and super-cheap food everywhere.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Another big plus was the cool suspended tv-stand, shown here behind the current tenant (not included with the apartment). Crazy tv-hangy-bobber was part 60s, part 70s, and totally awesome. I was sad to have to turn it down for "logistical" and "practical" reasons.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMHk2O4UvoM8eIQFEm3aCUbkHd8vxgD4PS_eLQwi-xp0FgF9GaXT4SupkX-UrgdjGL3UxukgsJvvs-vM7rcxnDI7pqJIbIPb72yQuxIaZrM7sPfqV_aWowF9eG-ewRVS0xXqn-FVnFoHM/s1600-h/IMG_9120.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMHk2O4UvoM8eIQFEm3aCUbkHd8vxgD4PS_eLQwi-xp0FgF9GaXT4SupkX-UrgdjGL3UxukgsJvvs-vM7rcxnDI7pqJIbIPb72yQuxIaZrM7sPfqV_aWowF9eG-ewRVS0xXqn-FVnFoHM/s320/IMG_9120.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5188139417307372882" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Neighborhoods I looked at included Maadi, downtown, Zamalek, Doqqi, and Mohandeseen. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Downtown is where my hostel is, and 15-20 minutes from where I work. It's smack in the middle of the chaos, with a few nice-ish restaurants and 17 handfuls of cheaper koshary and shawarma joints scattered everywhere. Foreign tourists wandering here and there but not as many expats, a big international college (American University in Cairo, or AUC), and cars and people making noise for a large majority of the day and night. Perpetually smoggy, perpetually raucous and rockin'.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Maadi is south of downtown and an expat hive, with green tree-lined streets, western restaurants, various clubs and community associations, and Germans and Americans walking around in shorts with their kids. If I myself had kids (that I was raising responsibly versus paying for monthly), I would consider living there. But, given that this is not the case, and it would take me close to an hour to get to work from Maadi, I ruled it out after visiting some rather nice flats there.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Zamalek is an island in the middle of the Nile immediately west of downtown, and another expat-heavy area, although not as enclave-feeling as Maadi. Similar to Maadi, it has a large variety of nice bars and restaurants, is quite trendy (i.e. expensive-ish), but very foreigner-friendly. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Doqqi and Mohandeseen are one bridge-span west of Zamalek. Doqqi I didn't really get a strong vibe from one way or another (although it does have some clean western-style coffeeshops and cafes), and Mohandeseen is uber-crowded with people and traffic, and appeared to have a whole lot of high-end shopping, which interested me not-at-all.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">While living in one of the 'nicer' areas would give me an easier quality of life, I'm making the decision to focus my apartment-hunting in downtown, where it's more Cairene, lively, Egyptian, and bonus, closer to work too. If I'm only here for 6 months, I'd like to make it as full-tilt as possible, woo!</span><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-54835207381774952462008-04-01T20:57:00.000+02:002008-04-06T00:08:28.277+02:00Personals-ad writer to the STARS<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">STARS meaning one of the guys who I've gotten to know at the hostel. Not quite sure if he's started working here, but a long-term tenant, but I see him here a lot and we occasionally chat. I'm trying to help him with his English so his online profile is a little more coherent, at his request. It's a little weird helping someone write their own (non-joke-on-another-ethnicity's) dating website profile, let alone if I don't even know the guy all that well. Weird cultural experience too, looking around an Arab personals site and trying to figure out what the profile averages are in terms of headlines, profile text, photos.....yes, I am so indoctrinated by consulting and work now that I do competition analysis and industry research even when writing a freakin 100-word profile description for some guy I barely know.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">While I write the next post, I leave you this to ponder: non-alcoholic pineapple flavored malt beverage. Oddly enough, it tasted exactly as I expected without being disgusting - it was like a bud light with no (or even less) alcohol flavor, into which someone had dumped pineapple syrup.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2fDkxzoWm5r5OANN9Erf8JyB3UXx-veJBTXXWxlh0h6Kswg9QPSnkiSJ9vOP_-7RriskTR_mdz7LEkqdEzSZzDVNUOTnewlRPkzdufQW9W6dGInWfBZO30TxnkMSomVSRv9azNrDQeTQ/s1600-h/IMG_9154+fayrouz+non-alcoholic+pineapple+flavored+malt+beverage.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2fDkxzoWm5r5OANN9Erf8JyB3UXx-veJBTXXWxlh0h6Kswg9QPSnkiSJ9vOP_-7RriskTR_mdz7LEkqdEzSZzDVNUOTnewlRPkzdufQW9W6dGInWfBZO30TxnkMSomVSRv9azNrDQeTQ/s320/IMG_9154+fayrouz+non-alcoholic+pineapple+flavored+malt+beverage.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185873347039798290" border="0" /></a><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-30767331912275715032008-03-29T19:23:00.000+02:002008-04-16T12:27:13.800+02:00Death on two wheels and four legs<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">April 1st, weather is quite nice, a little smoggy today, but otherwise everything started out quite well! Then I was struck by a vehicle.....one that had a really angry donkey as an engine. Was visiting one of the government ministries that was out on the outskirts of the city, where you do get more animal-driven carts and random vehicles, like unlicensed 3-wheeled motorcycle tuk-tuk taxis, like the ones in Thailand, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc...except here they're technically illegal and unlicensed, so you'll never see them closer into the city.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Crossing the street after the meeting to get a snack, I walk into traffic as usual, trying to project minimal hesitation and regard for my own safety. Cars, buses, trucks, the odd motorcycle, I frogger-around with no problem. They beep, they swerve, everything is normal for a Cairo street during rush hour (which is 00:00 to 23:59). I hop up onto the median, ready to cross the other side of the road, casually glance at the carrot-covered cart with a donkey at the front. Donkey and cart (with no driver to be seen) were both sitting still a few feet away, apparently minding their own business. I pay them no further attention.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I step onto the road, but pause, as there's a microbus speeding my way. Think about one of those old Volkswagon vans with more windows and seats, and like 20 people crammed inside, with a driver on a combination of methamphetamines, and you've got a microbus. Donkey flips out right as I step onto the road, trying to shake off its reins and looking mighty frustrated with being tied to a bunch of carrots it can't reach. Donkey's head shakes to the left and right.<br /><br />Donkey's head shakes left, towards the road, right as the microbus speeds by.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Donkey's head pretty much explodes as the microbus blasts into it at full speed, no braking.<br /><br />Something horrible, hairy, and wet flies right at me, bouncing off my laptop bag (thankfully) and rolling out into traffic. By now the microbus has stopped in the middle of the road, there is donkey-head all over its front and side (and probably some of the passengers), and there's quite a commotion. I was too shocked and awed to even take out my camera.</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br />Hehe, April fool's! The vehicle was actually a wobbly bicycle ridden by an older fellow, on the streets of one of the main squares in the city. It did hit me though. Nothing serious, just a bit of a side swipe, with neither of us falling over, but both of us quite surprised, probably me more than him since I didn't really foresee the collision happening until I heard his flustered yelling a second before he skidded by. I guess my calibration and movement strategies through traffic don't translate to man-powered vehicles. I've been ok at dodging the few scooters and odd motorcycle, and even a couple of horses, but give me a clear road with dude on a bicycle, and apparently I'll just try and tackle him. Bet ya liked the donkey story more, yeah?<br /><br />And now, a cross-dressing camel.<br /><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9xpwKXUSxE5vN3cZy08xToGHZKqvlm931BSaSs8waaU7s1rgFijcikQ6uDfjudA7g8xOr3G214eCCO2ynP9B3fHUx0OplYQUAuKVrpVDRlRppfSHEc0ZuKYyETezdKs3fmfhsoBNZz8s/s1600-h/camel+in+drag.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9xpwKXUSxE5vN3cZy08xToGHZKqvlm931BSaSs8waaU7s1rgFijcikQ6uDfjudA7g8xOr3G214eCCO2ynP9B3fHUx0OplYQUAuKVrpVDRlRppfSHEc0ZuKYyETezdKs3fmfhsoBNZz8s/s320/camel+in+drag.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184361733299971074" border="0" /></a>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-22279109447614173312008-03-29T14:09:00.000+02:002008-03-29T14:43:34.408+02:00i knows technology<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">I almost always write these from the hostel so as not to waste work time, even though I pretty much work all the time anyways, in or out of the office. A side effect of working at the hostel, however, is the vastly reduced bandwidth and network availability, so I generally don't upload as many pictures as I'd like, and don't do too much extraneous loading of pages. Side effect - didn't really check out blogger settings, or notice that there is a feature allowing anonymous comments...hopefully that will reduce sign-up requests from blogger when people try to comment. I think.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Random pictures - closer view of the neighborhood by the office building. I'd say "find the goats" but I don't think the resolution is good enough.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs7qwVyAIh7N4d1mgW6fmxQ9Z1vQSfjvMYnblKjaEATKhvhxcnJLjgs5qbmCYvUT1FptXOlb5lk7S5bk9-mvJqyAxINmCQA_blUErVoPeK0RFSMzJfQhK4rli8czRURygYvvVwxX4RtBI/s1600-h/IMG_9084.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs7qwVyAIh7N4d1mgW6fmxQ9Z1vQSfjvMYnblKjaEATKhvhxcnJLjgs5qbmCYvUT1FptXOlb5lk7S5bk9-mvJqyAxINmCQA_blUErVoPeK0RFSMzJfQhK4rli8czRURygYvvVwxX4RtBI/s320/IMG_9084.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5183141249623335906" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Hee hee, this is supposed to be "Lotus Palace for Flower Extract", one of the many perfume/cologne places into which touts try to drag/lure tourists. The misspelling into "Louts palace" amused me.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoedcKxPCGlUmhxSeBNeC2ZpzMdFltbvD1Xdb_ydbee7kYlFXXHlTYa3Q82xCnCnPUV0d2K_iHpETMRpu5pQ6GFlRXpCvxeNqthS2I3zl1MFKCF08eWQiIOZPwP1is-TXBQVXmqJWyU6I/s1600-h/IMG_9107.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoedcKxPCGlUmhxSeBNeC2ZpzMdFltbvD1Xdb_ydbee7kYlFXXHlTYa3Q82xCnCnPUV0d2K_iHpETMRpu5pQ6GFlRXpCvxeNqthS2I3zl1MFKCF08eWQiIOZPwP1is-TXBQVXmqJWyU6I/s320/IMG_9107.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5183142718502151154" border="0" /></a><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-64771646657947459372008-03-28T10:48:00.000+02:002008-03-28T12:00:05.582+02:00Road Rage<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Angry angry taxis. On the trip back from the Giza pyramids, had quite a bit of difficult finding an available taxi in Giza, and even after finding one, the young fellow seemed a little ornery and irritated. <br /><br />I think taxi drivers in any country tend to span a huge range of driving aggression, desire for conversation, desire to rip passengers off, and road rage. My experience so far here is that the driving aggression is pretty consistently high, desire for conversation is pretty variable depending on time of day (and oddly enough, not as dependent on English skill), desire to rip passengers off is directly proportional to the passenger behavior in the first 2-3 seconds of waving down the taxi, and road rage isn't too incredibly bad.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I've gotten used to the driving aggression, as it's kind of a more chaotic version of New York City driving, with more horns and cutting off, but also way more driving skill. Drivers really don't get on the road without knowing the dimensions of their car to, it seems, within +/- 2 mm, and even though there are a heck of a lot of deaths due to road accidents, there would be exponentially more if drivers weren't so used to the chaos. It's consistently uber-aggressive, with little "no man, you go first" politeness, but at least everyone's on the same page. <br /><br />The desire to rip passengers off is really as much as they think they can get away with, and translates to really any country where people can rip someone off. After I first arrived and had to move from the Conrad to a hostel downtown, carrying big luggage and trying to get a taxi from the concierge at the Conrad was poor idea. Concierge said the fare wouldn't be more than 20 LE, which I figured was b.s., but I didn't feel like dragging my luggage down to the street, play frogger with it in tow, and then catch a normal taxi. Paid 20 LE for the ride. My normal commute is slightly further than that ride, and I pay 5 LE each way, which is a pretty fair fare. I just wave down a taxi, try and spit out a few words indicating my destination (and speaking as little english as possible), know the appropriate fare range, and just hand it to the driver as I'm exiting the car at the destination, with zippy discussion of the fare.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Usually the discussion starts like this: As I get in the car, I'll say sabah el-kheyr (good morning/day) or misa eh-kheyr (good evening) depending on the time of day, he'll respond and kinda give me a curious look in the rear-view mirror. Then, possibly depending on how much I stuttered or slaughtered the pronunciation, he'll just start talking to me in Arabic and I'll smile and respond with randomly placed aywa's (yes) and ilham d'illeh (praise God/Allah, or what I use in place of "woo-hoo!"), insha'allah (God/Allah-willing, or what I use for "I have no idea if that's remotely feasible, but I hope so, worth a shot") until I get a confused look. That usually takes about 5 seconds.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">He may also ask me where I'm from. I've found that saying "America" usually confuses people, makes them ask me again, or insist that there must be another more correct answer, pointing at my face. I've just taken to saying "China" as my first response now, as I don't speak enough Arabic to properly explain that I am a Chinese-American. If speaking to someone face-to-face, sometimes I'll try with a combination of English, Arabic, and pantomime. I'll say America, use Arabic yes/no's to the next few questions, then try and say "my blood is from China". I usually do this by tapping the vein in my arm that I usually use for giving blood, in the bend of my arm on the opposite side from the elbow. Then I say "China". That seems to satisfy them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">There's a potential issue though - I also use the same arm-vein-tapping motion when I'm joking about heroin or injectable drugs, and that ALSO gets people to understand what I'm trying to say. Thinking about it now though, I may be communicating as part of introductory conversation, "I don't know where I'm from at this moment, but I know that in America, they get all their heroin from China." My smile and nod then indicates that I really, really like heroin. Either way, it's working to introduce myself.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Oh yeah, road rage. Rambled for a bit. So I didn't think road rage was too incredibly bad....until I met this driver in Giza. The whole drive back, his head kept drifting to the left, then snapping back to face forward. It wasn't, however, a downwards drift indicating he was falling asleep; I'm very well acquainted with that motion. It was more like he was a lion watching a gazelle run across the road (or field), quickly lost interest, then saw a really fat, legless antelope asleep directly in front of him. It was really peculiar, and I kept trying to guess if he was on drugs or something, and if so, which drug. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">His driving didn't seem erratic (compared to the norm in Cairo), so I didn't really pay much attention....until he started sparring with another driver. I think the other car, a regular non-taxi car with a guy as his wife in the front seats, cut my taxi off in a more aggressive way than usual, which pissed off my driver. Unfortunately, they were going in the same direction, so they ended up taking turns cutting each other off. That didn't bother me, as it was pretty much normal driving, albeit with a single target to cut off instead of just everybody. The driver, however, was getting really, really pissed off, and right when we were at an intersection about to get on a large bridge, he REALLY cuts the other car off, looking like he was trying to hit him. The other car stopped about 10 cm from my door, so that I couldn't even open it; hooray skillful drivers not maiming and crushing me. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Much to my continued surprise, my driver then gets out of the car and immediately attacks the other driver, who'd also gotten out of the car at this point. Now usually in the U.S., there'd be an exchange of words and yelling, and then maybe physical violence/gunfire. The taxi driver pretty much escalated from yelling to shoving as he was approaching the other driver, and the started tussling right in the middle of the street, cars beeping everywhere, with a crowd quickly gathering from the passerby. I was pretty amused and mildly concerned, so stayed in the taxi and just watched the devolving drama through the rear window. The two yelled and shoved and grabbed shirts for a bit, and other guys from taxis and the sidewalk quickly pulled them apart and tried talking to them, who were both snarling and spitting at this point. It was interesting watching other taxi drivers trying to talk some sense into my taxi driver; I wonder what type of feeling of community they have. The two tried attacking each other multiple times as others held them back, but oddly enough it didn't seem like it was too extraordinary a scene. Sure, it blocked a lot of traffic and there were people standing around watching, but just as many people kept walking by as cars drove around the scene. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I didn't start getting concerned until the crowd had successfully disengaged the taxi driver from the other guy, and the taxi driver started walking back into my taxi, still (presumably) swear ing at the other driver and occasionally trying to re-engage the fight. At this point I decided I was close enough to my hostel to walk (which I was), and kinda didn't want to be in a vehicle with this guy at the helm. I popped out of the door on the other side and paid him since he'd gotten me most of the way back, and actually tried to console him, mainly out of curiosity to see what his reaction would be. I patted him on the shoulder and said "ok? ok? calmate" which in retrospect, is Spanish for "calm yourself" and really had little place in the conversation on a Cairo bridge. He was actually quite friendly with me (since I'd paid him) and got back in the car. I walked to the sidewalk and tried to take a picture of the scene, rather unsuccessfully. The grey car in the middle was the other car, and you can still kiiinda see the guys in the street who broke up the fight.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWbjsAmTvO53laYPWfBnkaMKy-5nDktox1FmK98iCj_bwX8Wz5-_3dkOacRKiezIKO9hMMp0UrEtQRrh7FRdtX-f6y-tf-9GkbjsD1aeAwFCeqffxJmMqv4h9ZmwYaPuky6UGzF_67wc/s1600-h/IMG_9055.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 349px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtWbjsAmTvO53laYPWfBnkaMKy-5nDktox1FmK98iCj_bwX8Wz5-_3dkOacRKiezIKO9hMMp0UrEtQRrh7FRdtX-f6y-tf-9GkbjsD1aeAwFCeqffxJmMqv4h9ZmwYaPuky6UGzF_67wc/s320/IMG_9055.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182726201163719634" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I chatted a bit with some of the bystanders, mainly pointing at the cars and saying "magnoon", which means "crazy" in Arabic. They probably said something similar, I said "itneen magnoon" for "two crazy [people implied]", they likely replied with something similar, and I walked back to the hostel (away from the hostiles, man look at that wordplay). Chatting with some people later, although this incidence wasn't too common, it certainly wasn't unheard of either.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Note to self: do not learn any driving habits in Cairo, and treat them like raw meat or goat poop: under no circumstances should they be allowed back into the States.</span></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-28595415896965494902008-03-27T09:40:00.000+02:002008-03-27T09:54:03.862+02:00Stab me in the eye, Part 1<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Quick note from the office. Someone brought in a sound system with nice speakers. The guy who loves Celine Dion, because his phone blares it when someone calls. People call him a lot.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">They are playing Beauty and the Beast on repeat.</span><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyCb1Sew7av7EiWlmGgup51HPLlCmNAgIhfCiU948KDPDkw-hnTWmNIOH_TdNZ-md_zU7cJB5ftPjvvdbiL9A' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-13766759662813010032008-03-25T21:09:00.000+02:002008-03-28T10:55:54.090+02:00Finally being the tourist everyone assumes I am<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Two weeks in Egypt, and I finally get to some sightseeing. Right now just adjusting to life here is giving me enough stimulation, but there was a long weekend this past week, so I took some time to look around. Not a holiday for Easter mind you, but for the Prophet's birthday. Had Thursday (which is effectively "Friday" here) off, and some of my officemates were even nice enough to clue me in on a holiday tradition of eating little snacks on the Prophet's birthday! Many of them had long blue boxes full of little snacks, and offered me a couple. I geeked out and wrote the occasion down on the back of a coaster and photographed it, just in case I forgot why I bothered taking pictures of a little coconut thing (the orange thing on the left) and a peanut-brittle dealy.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji7dDH72ue8vORPJtDuTpyL5a96qmz5RVrUp7V-A6updMgng4LeJ1wsppef6xiR04SJo-brgExVxDL1KEOhXlulGDm-p9qzWPJoKSmrFpGB267fKNm9w0CCL2g-FwiobVMeknvUnZHOPY/s1600-h/IMG_8867+Prophet+birthday+snacks.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji7dDH72ue8vORPJtDuTpyL5a96qmz5RVrUp7V-A6updMgng4LeJ1wsppef6xiR04SJo-brgExVxDL1KEOhXlulGDm-p9qzWPJoKSmrFpGB267fKNm9w0CCL2g-FwiobVMeknvUnZHOPY/s320/IMG_8867+Prophet+birthday+snacks.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181766804254040898" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Those of you in the States (that'll be 1 out of the total 3 people who read this) may have noticed that I'm trying to use the date format used by most of the rest of the world, with day/month/year. Actually, now that I look at it, I actually wrote "5" instead of "3", and I have no idea why. Maybe I was thinking of my own birthday in May....but then again, my birthday's not on the 20th. What the hell? Anyway, I ate a snack and then went back to staring out the window for a bit. It's weird (for me) but I guess normal in many neighborhoods to be working in a really nice corporate office building overlooking a pretty poor area. It's a nice reminder of why I'm here, and one of the weird juxtapositions that I get to enjoy in countries like this. Behold the corporate shadow blocking the sun from the poor....or maybe shielding the poor from the sun, in a toasty place like this?</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1EfwxWTv8HzNT2wjrNrx9HgJVJBhPe6o8_Zj5enyAyN0ToyqhKrqxZizQye6S2OIBQ5ZyVV8RN0ewL9gFobz0Du6hnwZj5sWnW9iA-jQ8Tvq_gV9x5OkQABy3xHdcORLlfgoH5ErfE8/s1600-h/IMG_8860.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 397px; height: 297px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU1EfwxWTv8HzNT2wjrNrx9HgJVJBhPe6o8_Zj5enyAyN0ToyqhKrqxZizQye6S2OIBQ5ZyVV8RN0ewL9gFobz0Du6hnwZj5sWnW9iA-jQ8Tvq_gV9x5OkQABy3xHdcORLlfgoH5ErfE8/s320/IMG_8860.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181768629615141714" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Decided to start off my weekend of touristyness by going on a corny dinner cruise, complete with wretched buffet where I was again duped by beef-mimicking liver, a "life band" that consisted of 2 soulless singers and a keyboard player who seemed to want to die, and an even meatier belly dancer than the one at the wedding.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSQzuqVtfiOeU7IMDrn7Cxc5wIJa1Ov9FcsHNEbcuaTa4P7DwWuRUy2XDsgQTZsZc4FyzhRBijocpR7kWcZ9DOoRhiRHd3T5P2NCFUuRuzo1Ev980aZ8deaO1D2brPNS6dwdwULJGlXE/s1600-h/IMG_8906.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSQzuqVtfiOeU7IMDrn7Cxc5wIJa1Ov9FcsHNEbcuaTa4P7DwWuRUy2XDsgQTZsZc4FyzhRBijocpR7kWcZ9DOoRhiRHd3T5P2NCFUuRuzo1Ev980aZ8deaO1D2brPNS6dwdwULJGlXE/s320/IMG_8906.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181800257754309490" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The chain around her belly kinda sunk in when she moved. Mmm mmm good.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">On to pyramids. Giza is actually a suburb of Cairo, so the city/suburbs sprawl right up to the three big (and six small) Pyramids at Giza. Kinda weird to see the pyramids looming huge and awe-inspiring the background of some guy peeing on a wall by the car-choked streets. Or a steel lattice tower and some kids playing football/soccer.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHcZ_7EpqxGbZ6yzPkrbz4079xEnOFEFXcKR0VAYA0CgqEsQL0l-y1rmY3MB2FTcMknfIZQnTky_mokCUV5ZH0PNqbuZtgSzEFcn4haaYhPUPeVoRuI9bv-RXmm1BovYBDr-CozodIKus/s1600-h/IMG_8928.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 341px; height: 254px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHcZ_7EpqxGbZ6yzPkrbz4079xEnOFEFXcKR0VAYA0CgqEsQL0l-y1rmY3MB2FTcMknfIZQnTky_mokCUV5ZH0PNqbuZtgSzEFcn4haaYhPUPeVoRuI9bv-RXmm1BovYBDr-CozodIKus/s320/IMG_8928.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181803169742136194" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">And of course, no postcard-worthy photo is complete without being ruined by my buddy Don, or Dontxu, as someone calls him in Basque ;p.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihj_6AyBr5QhoJkrouN9bmXY3PLS5Ahtu1JIGBcDs7WJeZseMKG7PRLeZQCaoUx8I55cNZo1G5pskYAxFaSBwk2CmDvP7Ou5LJhyphenhyphenjNOPV5jrvWPilCbQR7hzlG-GFjuOWxFnM5M6hHaCA/s1600-h/IMG_8957.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihj_6AyBr5QhoJkrouN9bmXY3PLS5Ahtu1JIGBcDs7WJeZseMKG7PRLeZQCaoUx8I55cNZo1G5pskYAxFaSBwk2CmDvP7Ou5LJhyphenhyphenjNOPV5jrvWPilCbQR7hzlG-GFjuOWxFnM5M6hHaCA/s320/IMG_8957.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181782910381400930" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The mystery of why I'll focus a shot on a plastic candy dispenser instead of one of the coolest antiquities in the world:</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcWIVlZN4u-B-XVlG0SU7nNqCspT3IWmj3TAg7q2i4RcebSL6z-DQTIXDPP0j-hl2f8VYId-BoxsdJBh3PJn7qru4x-IglyJs-01lWdZEnU6yLENQ8735UR-I94srEwte4570bEMWGv1M/s1600-h/IMG_8989.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcWIVlZN4u-B-XVlG0SU7nNqCspT3IWmj3TAg7q2i4RcebSL6z-DQTIXDPP0j-hl2f8VYId-BoxsdJBh3PJn7qru4x-IglyJs-01lWdZEnU6yLENQ8735UR-I94srEwte4570bEMWGv1M/s320/IMG_8989.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181804642915918738" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">SarcophaDon</span><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirN04PF5U_sNhQOokypPkmN-mpqy0bG4m7ltTcdumebACU0axWDvFOaUX_sf9lQdoJDcFfK7afICQxv0XGWZ7Y-psK8s2-yUmGswAspKJAdrpmHXSbX5Xs2KMGfaGUOIFmDiEaveMfKwQ/s1600-h/IMG_9007.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirN04PF5U_sNhQOokypPkmN-mpqy0bG4m7ltTcdumebACU0axWDvFOaUX_sf9lQdoJDcFfK7afICQxv0XGWZ7Y-psK8s2-yUmGswAspKJAdrpmHXSbX5Xs2KMGfaGUOIFmDiEaveMfKwQ/s320/IMG_9007.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181808529861321650" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Below is the reason my rear hurt for 2 days after going to Giza. These were the guides (or rather, one non-English-speaking dude and a feisty little kid), who agreed to bring me back to another hill near the pyramids later on that day, to see all three of the big pyramids together. Rode camels and horses this time instead of just horses, and the little kid decided he wanted to race. Guess who was on the hard-galloping camel holding on for dear life while his loins took a county-jail-like pounding. Riding camels is not nearly as cool as it looks; I can't imagine riding into battle on the damned things, unless it was for the purpose of making death-by-sword seem like nothing compared to the pain of the initial camel-charge.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1l4EezgnDlpO8iGSYdZC4gvQ68QETVrEfzDPp5ddWtzxmeX-Dh4q5TYS58O3XLLsdq_HADgcQ7dxxQx8TBe9qHVvI4Ytg2-FVSQVxCr-1spi2-0Jm7D0hRB2pBK6FOOHW-v5U3Frvv78/s1600-h/IMG_9046.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1l4EezgnDlpO8iGSYdZC4gvQ68QETVrEfzDPp5ddWtzxmeX-Dh4q5TYS58O3XLLsdq_HADgcQ7dxxQx8TBe9qHVvI4Ytg2-FVSQVxCr-1spi2-0Jm7D0hRB2pBK6FOOHW-v5U3Frvv78/s320/IMG_9046.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181807438939628450" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Back to the grind for now. Plan to try and make a crossing-the-insane-streets video at some point, which I'll hopefully be able to make AND survive long enough to post.</span><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-73680538067060403072008-03-18T22:45:00.000+02:002008-03-18T23:45:29.009+02:00First food post<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Someone mentioned that they wanted to see some camels, so here's some camel (on the left):</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1t8GgKJ_qp5w6vPueRP3ZEdy0KUgDMGflaCu-o_yFGjiix9sC-Vw1DMIW8AWRScTYpJIgRrZwomxgzP4D-gi4zzQRHnFpjWs7mmLPSk0RFmhfcbOnCj_IM0J1PMbMng4dLvbiQdSiySw/s1600-h/IMG_8866+kofte.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1t8GgKJ_qp5w6vPueRP3ZEdy0KUgDMGflaCu-o_yFGjiix9sC-Vw1DMIW8AWRScTYpJIgRrZwomxgzP4D-gi4zzQRHnFpjWs7mmLPSk0RFmhfcbOnCj_IM0J1PMbMng4dLvbiQdSiySw/s320/IMG_8866+kofte.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5179189815815434482" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This was kofte or kafteh or something like that....everything is phonetic but there's really no standardized way of representing the sounds in English letters, so any given word tends to be spelled around 74 different ways, depending on where you look. It may even be spelled differently on either side of a map. The good thing though is that it encourages you to try and pronounce the words, and once you get the hang of it, the same-word-spelled-differently dealie isn't as tricky anymore, plus then you learn how to consistently mispronounce words. Then you can insist on saying it wrong repeatedly to cab drivers, and end up in the middle of nowhere after work in a suit with a laptop bag, trying to find a metro station. Anyways, kofte is usually either camel or beef, camel being a little easier to procure. I really couldn't tell the difference between ground camel and ground beef, as spiced as it was. Plus, I was nervously trying the very tasty salad (in the middle) and seeing if fresh veggies would turn my insides into fresh battlefields for incompatible critters. Although I like the home team, I want the Egyptian buggers to eventually win so I can eat food here more easily. Ideally, it'll be a gradual infiltration, so that before I know it, Egyptian parasites will be all over my stuff like Asians in Vancouver or Jersey people at University of Maryland. The above meal cost abount 13 LE, which just over 2 bucks. I whined about them charging me 3 LE (a bit over 50 cents) for one cupe of shay (tea), and vowed to bring my own beverage next time.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Specimen 2: Koushari, kushari, kohsaree, the national dish of Egypt, at least according to Lonely Planet. It's actually a really tasty, safe-tasting, cheap dish of some tomato-based sauce on rice and/or macaroni, topped with fried onions. This bowl cost me about a dollar (~5.5 Egyptian pounds, or LE), and even then I think I could have paid less for it. I see myself doing a lot of koushari-hunting while in Cairo...because tomatoes are about as easy to kill as macaroni.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvmDG3l4-7CNC-6WnrsKT6yFV7XW1t01yX1UDeOEAQeqbgglugMDwqOWFSRasv90dKxI7bv9BKQqpFafTAX0zQ-mZEzgf3MPO5EFtwPITqoP-Eto4nI8Lt6O0YT9ucBkttTrvSIo4ltzw/s1600-h/IMG_8659+first+koushari.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvmDG3l4-7CNC-6WnrsKT6yFV7XW1t01yX1UDeOEAQeqbgglugMDwqOWFSRasv90dKxI7bv9BKQqpFafTAX0zQ-mZEzgf3MPO5EFtwPITqoP-Eto4nI8Lt6O0YT9ucBkttTrvSIo4ltzw/s320/IMG_8659+first+koushari.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5179191808680259842" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Specimen 3: A tasty little spread of goodness at Kazaz, a fast food joint near my hostel. Walked in the first floor and saw the all-Arabic menu, and just kinda stared for a bit wondering which one to randomly point to, before someone waved me to the upstairs seating area with English menus. Ordered until the waiter said "enough, enough" which was luckily not too far into the ordering process - hooray honesty, or at least not-wanting-to-clean-up-my-pukesty. From left to right: "Alexandria" falafel (Alexandria just meaning bigger-size apparently), ubiquitous pita-like bread, super-fun-mystery-fried-grilled-protein-plate, shaksouka (some meat-and-vegetable-chopped-up-tomato-onion-something served cold), another sketchy salad. Mystery-fun-meat plate was a little too much fried goodness for me, and the only non-fried area of the plate was this grilled-beef-looking thing. Fun fact: horrible flat-pounded grilled liver is very grilled-beef-looking, and very not grilled-beef-tasting. Reminded me of when liver kicked my butt in New Zealand.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy8rkj6jzvbwM9Yh8Q0KFATJmW50ULvITHQsd9yN4GQgDPEcq5xzET0RkWPib8iVaXFM6LqpOWRGB55b-6X-6zw3achb2gc4zpKTEfk-VGnfh7k66vyA17wu_V9LlqsivWYo7_9tIQ00/s1600-h/IMG_8645+alexandria+%28big%29+falafel,+grilled+meats+and+liver,+shaksouka.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPy8rkj6jzvbwM9Yh8Q0KFATJmW50ULvITHQsd9yN4GQgDPEcq5xzET0RkWPib8iVaXFM6LqpOWRGB55b-6X-6zw3achb2gc4zpKTEfk-VGnfh7k66vyA17wu_V9LlqsivWYo7_9tIQ00/s320/IMG_8645+alexandria+%28big%29+falafel,+grilled+meats+and+liver,+shaksouka.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5179194553164362002" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Liver, you bastard, you are my culinary nemesis.</span><br /><br /><br /></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6799994554688633047.post-73924251348002332422008-03-17T22:09:00.000+02:002008-03-17T23:55:07.567+02:00Sorry Dad, I ended up at a wedding<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">....but don't worry, it wasn't mine. 6th night here and I ended up getting invited to a wedding somehow; son of the owner of the hostel got married, and the guys working at the hostel grabbed me along to the wedding. Good thing I'm here for work, and had some decent clothes to wear, as well as extra to let a buddy here borrow. Didn't get to the hotel (which was within sight of the freakin Giza pyramids!!) until about 10pm or so, right when the reception was getting started, apparently. Then, dancing! For like, 2 hours! Then, some eating, around midnight.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieO-D-d7pNwgCs4drgXTYPA1epMi6NBh6qEBFUp5l-ysBQV_Rvbx7kUqhJvGmq994CPPZ1JtV-LLyuqoVDuSHSVQi3sinXSRqyLLgX-VEOVeoT1tWKHvWtECyUvKZMfVovfkbwfdWaDLU/s1600-h/IMG_8791.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieO-D-d7pNwgCs4drgXTYPA1epMi6NBh6qEBFUp5l-ysBQV_Rvbx7kUqhJvGmq994CPPZ1JtV-LLyuqoVDuSHSVQi3sinXSRqyLLgX-VEOVeoT1tWKHvWtECyUvKZMfVovfkbwfdWaDLU/s320/IMG_8791.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5178817437855903922" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglbLBFfCYshkMzvpP9lXm_SOiitnpBeygB1s5741BAt6IQchLCO5BukovlFzVRSpSscPNua1tw1PFINpgbTD7ZYp0AWqgdqpiXfqLYPF0wGWUoxJPHwXalokIlInIImCdb7gNlWNOsi9w/s1600-h/IMG_8752.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglbLBFfCYshkMzvpP9lXm_SOiitnpBeygB1s5741BAt6IQchLCO5BukovlFzVRSpSscPNua1tw1PFINpgbTD7ZYp0AWqgdqpiXfqLYPF0wGWUoxJPHwXalokIlInIImCdb7gNlWNOsi9w/s320/IMG_8752.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5178821234606993602" border="0" /></a></span></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Everyone really enjoyed the meaty belly dancer. I was confused as to why I only had this one picture of her, until I realized I just took a whole lot of gyrating videos instead - not so uploadable with this connection (shut up spellchecker, uploadable is a legit word). All for me, or rather, the very pleased guys at the hostel. At some points, it looks like I somehow had the skills to digitally remove a pole from the dance floor.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisXnzms5nmVHoQYkqAKWKRXoY3NeX3WMm7gTow88Wp6yuOfwjoDQCqHctVb_m5BGqiUlLkBZOl54CIYYzr2Efn5XNZLUkDMehL8FJNDFfIwdgEP504EtPBfxu_Q1PT7LQ44tCC0oF64yA/s1600-h/IMG_8808.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisXnzms5nmVHoQYkqAKWKRXoY3NeX3WMm7gTow88Wp6yuOfwjoDQCqHctVb_m5BGqiUlLkBZOl54CIYYzr2Efn5XNZLUkDMehL8FJNDFfIwdgEP504EtPBfxu_Q1PT7LQ44tCC0oF64yA/s320/IMG_8808.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5178822673421037778" border="0" /></a>Then they killed the hell out of the wedding cake with a sword.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYK6c46mC8wUs4YypHbAURzDNfJjYv7-ulsooV9RSt-0f1tJn9w3LJSoog9pkbYFza9QuV8hDzk_w54Y66cq3LyRqryUrKiAj8JgeReBSBn0jzyzrr0WW5njWK0TU5hrBsdowo1yNVegY/s1600-h/IMG_8817.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYK6c46mC8wUs4YypHbAURzDNfJjYv7-ulsooV9RSt-0f1tJn9w3LJSoog9pkbYFza9QuV8hDzk_w54Y66cq3LyRqryUrKiAj8JgeReBSBn0jzyzrr0WW5njWK0TU5hrBsdowo1yNVegY/s320/IMG_8817.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5178825615473635554" border="0" /></a><br />Got out of there around 2 am or so, which was just awesome timing for getting enough sleep before my first day at the office.</span></span>Twitchy Chinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12061569474555668963noreply@blogger.com0