Parlor Tricks

I'm Addicted

2007-12-07T07:03:00.000-06:00

The commencement of my 22nd year in life (for birthdays are the celebration of a year finished--you are born into your first year of life) has been marked by a repeated consumption of a particular beverage, but it's not Stella (which I think I will have no problem giving up in 10 days--yikes!): it's sahlab.

A few nights ago, I finally conceded to the souvenir shopping impulse deep within my soul and went to the Kahn il Khalili su (market), where I purchased several gifts that I won't reveal for you, the reader, may actually be receiving one of them. Taking one of many breaks from haggling and the assorted issues that arise when shopping with girls, I had this particular Egyptian drink for the first time. It has a consistency somewhere between pudding and milk, a product of the thickening agent of a ground Orchis mascula bulb. Suspended in this milky, gelatinous solution are golden raisins, coconut, pistachios, and cashews. Here's a recipe (including a substitute for the ground orchid bulb) if that description didn't scare you.

And I've had it every night since. Every place makes sahlab a bit differently--last night's variety was a bit sweeter and closer to a liquid consistency, while the offering the night before was diluted pudding mush which sat at the bottom of my stomach. It's not fantastic, but it's not bad either. I think this may be how I'm coping with leaving. Ten days.

Definitely in Dereliction of Duty

2007-12-02T02:06:00.000-06:00

So much for resolutions. I could attempt to rationalize my 20-some day absence from the blog by saying that I've written three research papers. And that I've been wanting to edit my pictures before posting. But 20 days is quite a long time, and let's be honest, I've watched a good five or six episodes from the second season of the West Wing when I could have been engaged in more meaningful activities (i.e. blogging).

So, what to say and what to post? I've been on two adventures since last posting from the comfort of a Costa Coffee franchise. One was a day trip to Alexandria (it's only 2.5 hours by train), and a longer four-to-five day excursion to Pharaonic Egypt beginning in Abu Simbel, which is 50 KM north of the Sudanese border. Rather than excessive dialogue, I'll just do the whole picture posting thing, and then make long comments about each picture.

The train station in Alexandria was lined with spiritually-trimmed bushes--those say Allah in Arabic.

The Greek amphitheater in Alexandria, a city named for Alexander the Great and a possible location of his final resting place (his body has yet to be discovered anywhere).

This is the entirely underwhelming "pillar of Alexandria." I actually paid three dollars to see it, so I had to have a picture taken.

This, on the other hand, was the entirely magnificent Fort Coitbey, which is built atop the foundation of the Alexandria Lighthouse (one of the original seven wonders of the world).

The very modern Biblioteque Alexandria, built in the late 1990s by a UNESCO team from across the world, photographed from across the bay.

A glimpse into a government-owned bread factory in Alexandria. In my opinion, the government-subsidized bread is probably the tastiest and most certainly the heartiest selection, as long as you don't mind a bit of sand, toenail clippings, hair, or chunks of sea salt mashed in with the baladi loaves. You can buy about 100 loaves for one US dollar.

This is what the interior of the library looked like. It's surprisingly sparse--almost all of the books only date to about 2002, which is when the library opened.

Sunset in Alexandria.

Four days after a day trip to Alex, I was on a 4 AM plane to Abu Simbel via Aswan. The current town is a relatively modern creation, as the original Abu Simbel (and the original site of the temple) is now under the 200 meter-deep Lake Nasser, which was formed by the damming of the Nile at the High Dam. UNESCO archaeologists moved both the Abu Simbel and Philae (below) temples to higher land in the 1960s to prevent their submergence by water; the result is that they appear a little fake.

Fresh off the airplane in Abu Simbel (the airport has one gate).

An impression inside Abu Simbel, which was the most pristine and intact temple that I visited.

Abu Simbel was built by Ramses II, mostly as a self-venerating, fear-imposing symbol to any foreigners cruising down the Nile from Nubia & Sudan, warning them of his power and tyranny. He also commissioned a smaller one to be built for one of his four wives, Nefertiti. The walls of her temple, however, are mainly graced with impressions of Ramses worshipping himself.

After spending two or so hours at Abu Simbel and drinking Nescafe with a Japanese-speaking Egyptian guide Meg and I had met on the plane (who learned English from watching American movies--his favorite actor is Nicholas Cage, and his favorite movie is Face/Off, though The Rock is a close second), we re-boarded a plane for Aswan, where we promptly reunited with Dave & Halley, who were fresh off the 14-hour overnight train from Cairo to Aswan. Working with a tout, we got ourselves a couple of hotel rooms (because Nev was flying down to Aswan that night) for the princely sum of five bucks per person per night (including breakfast) and also arranged our transport from Aswan to Kom Ombo temple (or almost all the way there): a felucca, or sailboat.

Impressed with our logistical capacities, we drank beer on the Nile, which is much wider in Aswan than in Cairo.

Sunset on the Nile in Aswan.

The next morning, we went for a pretty terrible tour of the Aswan High Dam (no good pictures) and Philae, a Ptolemic temple that we had approximately 40 minutes to see, which included the boat ride to and from the island.

The pylon of Philae, which looks a lot like all of the other pylons.

The sketches on the pylon are still quite marked after some 2500 years of erosion (and some six months underwater).

Doing the tourist thing.

We caught a boat down the Nile (but headed north, so most of us said up the Nile). It was a relaxing vehicle for travel, especially since the Nubian crew also prepared our meals.

Meg, Nev, Halley, & Dave (my illustrious traveling partners) take a break from sailing.

At night, the Nubian crews from other boats came to our felucca, which was blessed with a battery-powered boom box, and proceeded to smoke Sudanese hashish while blasting Bob Marley. Once they were sufficiently stoned, they summoned all 50-something of the people camping on the Nile to sing and dance and make fools of ourselves.

Sleeping on the felucca was interesting, or rather, cold. It was probably only 50 F, but it's a dry 50 degrees, and all I had was part of a blanket, as I was sharing with Nev and Halley. One time during the night I awoke to being big-spooned by our boat captain. Awkward. The crew awoke early, and set sail down the river before alerting all of us to go to the bathroom. Stress and frustration ensued among the boat's occupants.

Once we finally came back ashore, we caught a shady-looking pickup truck to the Kom Ombo temple, which was pretty clutch.

The ruins of Kom Ombo. And tourists.

Kom Ombo was a temple specifically to the alligator form of Horus. They also had mummified alligators there. However, there are no longer any alligators in the Egyptian Nile, for they are trapped behind the Aswan High Dam.

Due to a series of terrorist incidents and the government's lack of authority in Upper & Middle Egypt, tourists are required to travel by caravan anywhere between towns, which means that we had to join one to bus it from Kom Ombo to Edfu and then onto Luxor. Traveling by convoy was not only annoying for ourselves, but frustrating for us with respect to the other tourists. We had seen much of Egypt and had thoroughly experienced (some would maybe argue too thoroughly) Egyptian culture. However, many on the convoy were doing Egypt for a week, and all they could see was on government-approved stops, which were replete with hawkers, overpriced junk food, and the repetitive shouting of broken English.

Edfu was probably my least favorite temple, and so you'll find no pictures of it here--it looks like a combination of Kom Ombo and Philae. Luxor, however, had plenty to offer (besides the relentless sexual harassment of female tourists). Nev and I awoke early (5:40 AM) the next (and last) day to catch a tourist-free Luxor Temple at sunrise, which was amazing.

Morning sun cuts across the entrance to the temple.

The Avenue of Sphinx leading to the temple's gates.

Light warming Luxor Temple's hypostyle hall.

The temple from a far.

Returning to the hotel (another steal--4 USD per night per person), our group decided to go to Karnak temple along with the rest of the tourists in the county. Once again, I took a lot of pictures, but I don't want to inundate my readership (if I still have any after not writing for almost a month...). So, instead, I bring you pictures from much cooler and much quieter locations: Medinet Habu and Hatchepsut's Temples. At this point, Meg & Halley had Egypt-ed out and found the nearest pool, but Dave, Nev, & I had a good time exploring these as well as the Valley of the Kings, where photography is not allowed (Nev assumed she was above this rule, and had her camera temporarily confiscated).

Hieroglyphs at Medinet Habu.

Two of Medinet Habu's caretakers console(?) each other.

Approaching Hatchepsut's temple, which almost appears carved into the bluffs.

Paintings at Hapchepsut's temple.

Aww.

Moonrise over Luxor.

Upon returning to the hotel, we migrated to the bus station to catch the 10-hour SuperJet service back to Cairo via the beach town of Hurghada. I took a NyQuil and slept the entire time that Halley wasn't talking to me about psychology and family dynamics. And then I went to class the next morning. Good times.

In Light of My New Resolution, Another Posting

2007-11-10T16:44:00.000-06:00

If I blog immediately after my previous entry, I can coast on my feeling of accomplishment and self-worth and then just sort of slide into the next one. And thankfully, blogging is all about numbers and little to do with content, so exhaustion and boredom has little to do with the overall success of this blog. With that in mind, may I present the long-overdue next installment of When in Egypt...

No one, especially the government, is even remotely certain on Cairo's population. In fact, I don't think the government wants to know, for its feigned ignorance means it doesn't have to provide social support of any kind to them. And since the majority of individuals here admit to not paying income taxes (which is partially why the sales tax is 10%), they're fine with improper censuses and a lack of acknowledgment and support, especially since the support would be mediocre at best (unless the request was law and order related). Qualitatively, however, it's crowded. It's dense. It's loud, and it smells. Or reeks. Whatever the case, the 16-25 million people which live along the narrow banks of the Nile, surrounded by the Sahara, is far above its carrying capacity. This notion has spurred the creation of several entities, be it the three-story stacks of roads which throttle traffic across the city or the reclamation of the desert and the creation of entirely artificial suburbs, complete with McDonald's PlayPlaces and Chevy Suburbans. But, perhaps most importantly, it's created a thriving delivery industry for whoever doesn't want to venture out into Cairo's teeming din (or, in the case of restaurant food, pay the addition 12% service fee which is automatically added in to your bill if you choose to dine in the restaurant--that's before the tip mind you).

So, what can you get delivered. Answer: just about anything. McDonald's has a bustling delivery service, featuring a central Cairo call center which automatically distributes your order to the geographically-closest restaurant for delivery, which, as for most establishments, is a moped-based service.

However, you can have a latte delivered to you, from one of several upscale cafe chains. Or a pack of cigarettes, which are ridiculously cheap here (7 LE for Marlboros, or about $1.15). Or a single cigarette--yes, I've seen it done. Phone cards are popular delivery items, as is American pizza, be it from Dominos, Papa John's, Little Caesar's, or, Cairo's favorite, Pizza Hut. Another popular item among non-dorm-residing AUC students is Stella, for the majority of cab drivers refuse to shuttle alcohol-bearing Americans from the liquor store to their home.

Ahh, a doubling sense of accomplishment--two posts in one sitting. I'm going to celebrate by ordering a McFlurry (they just hit Cairo) for delivery.

Well, Stuff is Happening Again.

2007-11-10T14:58:00.000-06:00

Eight days have past since my own prose has graced these sacred charcoal walls. I exercised my prerogative to avoid writing about nothing as to avoid further boring you; Google Analytics shows a diminishing amount of return hits, and, there's no one I can blame for that beside myself. And my friends, for not wanting to live such exciting (i.e. bloggable) lives. And this school, for it prevents all sorts of fun. Or, rather the useless yet all-time-consuming schoolwork.

But, onwards and, inshallah, upwards (in frequency of blog posts, that is). Today, I resumed being a tourist in Cairo and paid a visit to the Citadel. As my trusty guide states, "the Citadel ( القلعة) is the natural focus of a visit to Islamic Cairo. The whole fortified complex was begun by Salah al-Din, the Crusaders' chivalrous foe. The focal point of the bastion, however, was built much later, as construction was begun by the Egyptian leader Muhammad Ali which this particular mosque was eponoymously named after.

This is the most Turkish-looking mosque that I've seen in Egypt. True to most mosques and holy buildings in general, the interior was quite dark and fairly un-photographable, but the Citadel is by far the worst-smelling mosque I've had the opportunity to patronize while in the Middle East. The musk of sweaty feet and and the particular scent of mothballs combine in the air to create an altogether-repulsive stench, which has the benefit of ensuring that only the devout remain in the mosque for periods extending beyond five minutes.

Like the mosques in Turkey, the Muhammad Ali mosque also had an ablutions fountain. Unlike the Turkish mosques, however, said fountain was non-operational. Which means it becomes yet another place to have your picture taken.

The Citadel also had some amazing viewpoints of the city of Cairo and surrounding area. Here's a sampling:

Looking north to the City of the Dead (where an estimated 500,000 live in a large cemetery).

Meg & I, and Cairo.

The Pyramids of Giza, obscured both by smog and by a decorative wooden screen.

Islamic Cairo.

Besides the mosque, the Citadel is also home to the Egyptian National Military Museum, where overtly erroneous (I suppose the proper term is revisionist) murals adorn the walls, flanked by models of tanks and actual cannons. The prize-winning holdings of the museum? The original plans of the Free Officers coup in 1952, when Nasser & Co. seized control over King Farouk's regime, a puppet of the UK.

We also saw the prison cell where Anwar Sadat was held by the British for espionage.

After sufficiently touring the Citadel, Meg & I walked around a neighborhood of Islamic Cairo that surrounds the mosque in search of the Ibn Tulun Mosque. After heading in the exact opposite direction for almost a mile, we finally asked directions at a large bus stop, and were given about three different answers, all in Arabic. This leads to a tangent/cultural judgment which almost any Egyptian will confirm: despite the fact that the phrase mish araf (I don't know) exists in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, an Egyptian will never actually use it. An Egyptian never does not know. Even if they have no clue what you are asking or where you are going, they will give you an answer backed by a tone of absolute certainty. Anyway, two Egyptians actually walked us the two kilometers or so to the mosque; our journey led us through the "American TV" section of Islamic Cairo, where we spotted both a Friends Restaurant (the signs featured the entire cast of the American sitcom) as well as a Clarissa Explains It All hair salon.

The Ibn Tulun mosque, a rare survivor from the classical Abbasid period of the ninth century, is appreciated for its simplicity, and was quite worth the walk. It's also enormous; the pictures don't really convey its size.

The ablutions fountain and corkscrew minaret.

I arrived back to the AUC dorms, satisfied with a seemingly productive day, only to find that my room had mysteriously flooded; freezing, foul-smelling water had saturated my clothes, some books, my MacBook power adapter (shameless product placement), my sheets/bed...pretty much everything. I just considered it the icing on the cake of my unfortunate second half of the week, when I decided to get a hair cut on Wednesday. Apparently, this particular barber was using the character Lloyd from Dumb & Dumber as a reference point for Americans' hair, for this was the product of my request, which I felt like was pretty simple and quite understandable, even given the immense language barrier.

Eliza has commented that I look pure. Or, rather, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, like a Puritan.

As you can see for yourself in the previous photos, I've since had my hair cut again--at a salon called Miami. I got a free eyebrow waxing there too.

Incidentally, I've been listening to the new (sort of) Jens Lekman album while writing this, and I'm a big fan.

What else have I done? Do you care about what I do in my daily life? If not, skip to the next paragraph.
-My internship at Ashoka is going quite well. I designed a newsletter for them on my recently-acquired copy of Adobe Creative Suite II (Egypt has no copyright protection, so anything and everything is available, quite cheaply, as long as it's not pornographic). I would definitely consider working for Ashoka full-time sometime in the future. I've also applied for a summer internship at the U.S. embassies in Cairo and Damascus.
-School is pretty terrible. I attribute my lack of motivation to the disappointingly low quality of the school's professors, academic environment, and curriculum. The only course which I consistently strive to excel in is Elementary Modern Standard Arabic; the other ones I see as impediments to my full exposure to Egypt and the Middle East, since the class meetings prevent my exploration of Cairo, and their ridiculous assignments prevent weekend travel.
-For some reason, my group of friends has drastically increased its preferred value of dinner. I'm consistently spending at least six U.S. dollars on dinner each night. Though I enjoy it, I'm not sure if this habit is sustainable. Thursday night was sushi, Friday night was kimchi, and tonight was a half-pound burger that I will undoubtedly be digesting until morning.
-I'm going to Alexandria for the day next Friday, and then on a long adventure along the Nile for Thanksgiving.

OK, it's safe for all those selectively reading. On Tuesday, I left another useless class early to see Cornel West speak. In addition to being inspiring and a gifted rhetorician, he also made me feel quite inferior in terms of my education. Damn you, Carleton. Or, perhaps, damn you America. Is the American educational system really preparing the country's future intellectuals? That's another blog posting. But right now, I think not. West's lecture was on his colleague Edward Said, the great high-brow, cosmopolitan Palestinian-yet-New-Yorker intellectual who is most famous for his essay "Orientalism." I was most influenced by West's ultimatum: that American intellectuals, policymakers, and leaders alike cannot just be Socratic. Socrates never cried, West pointed out. They must also immerse themselves in the concrete individual, striking a blend of Socratic intellectualism steeped in profane humanist beliefs. Also, my favorite quote of the evening (it was something like this): "The only thing more evil than evil is indifference to it."

Last thing: I went to Helwan, a poor slum on the outskirts of Cairo, last Saturday, to visit the Tofulty Foundation, the project of an Ashoka fellow which takes in street-dwelling orphans, which the Egyptian state denies even exists. In addition to drawing, clay-molding, and attempting to speak with some of the kids, I took pictures.

If you got this far to the end and are reading this (that's you, Kevin), you can reply with a gift request. I can't guarantee it, but I might as well take advantage of my killer purchasing power since the dollar has tanked just about everywhere else.

November 11th Resolution: to blog more.

Halley Chimes In: Istanbul Isplorations Day 4

2007-11-05T09:57:00.000-06:00

In a refreshing gesture, guest correspondent the illustrious Halley Morrissey has volunteered to recount our fourth day in Istanbul (yes, that was on October 14th...). Without further ado...

So, at the request of 'bencanblog'—the self-proclaimed demigod of the blogosphere—I am writing an entry for "Parlor Tricks" as a guest blogger. Apologies to all, hope you will not be missing your dear Ben too too much. He's off eating apples and saving the world…..

On our second to last day in Turkey, we awoke to gray skies and rain. I would say it was wonderful reprieve from the endlessly sunny days in Cairo, but this was day four (or was it day five?) of gray and gloomy low cloud cover over the city. I had absolutely no interest in crawling out of my bed that morning….or rather, out from under the skimpy coverlet that served as my makeshift bed on the floor. I had somehow endeared myself to the floor over the past few nights (note: couch surfing does not guarantee a couch. Be not surprised when you find yourself on an unelevated plane of floor with a kitten sleeping next to your head) ….so getting off the floor was as difficult as crawling out of bed. But Ben's cell phone was trumpeting an alarm, and it was time to get up. I think I kept my not-so-pleasant morning grumbles to myself—the day before Ben had received quite the earful—"I'm not taking a shower, I've changed my mind. I'm sleeping for the next fifteen minutes!"…….oh the joys of traveling with a 'morning person', which Ben definitely is….you know you secretly dread these types, even though you outwardly applaud them for their ability to wake up chipper and refreshed on the less than six hours of sleep they managed to squeeze in the night before.

And we were off for the day! Ben politely refused the shelter of my umbrella as he had brought a raincoat--let's call him the ever-prepared urban explorer shall we! We continued in the general direction of the harbor. Ben and I both enjoyed a heart- and body-warming breakfast of potato pastry and cheese-pasta delight. Both of us decided we very much liked with the Turkish breakfast offerings.

On to the harbor, where our faithful water chariot awaited. There was a long line at the ticket window for the Bosphorus ferry, which was very comforting. The day before, there was no line, and we didn't speak a lick of Turkish and it was all very unsettling—we assumed it was closed and moved grumpily along. But on this day, there was a long line of tourists, ready for a lovely little jaunt on the ferry, in the pouring rain. We bought our tickets and hoped on the vessel, forget the name of her, but no matter. Meg enjoyed a cup of coffee, and the rest of us had tea. The roomy cabin was warm and the bustle of old and young travelers moving about to enjoy the scenery mingled with snippets of happy conversation in German, French, Japanese and English. Reading materials brought by our little group of four included The Turks of Today, Lord of the Flies, and A Moveable Feast. Really, can this group get any cuter? I took a short nap, because any trip—whether by land or by sea, short or long—calls for one.

Views from the stern of the ship were quite stunning. Grand villas (does this word apply to residential architecture outside of western Europe….in any event, the homes were villa-inspired) lined the straits. Green hills crept up from the water, with little and big burbs nestled into the creases. There was lots of greenery, more than we had seen since we had left the states. "Feast for the eyes" would certainly apply. Smartly dressed Europeans took photos and then returned to the cabin, likely clearing off their equally smart eyewear of mist and fog, only to return again to take more photos. The Galata Bridge, an impressive suspension bridge that spans the straits and connects the European and Asian sides, got much attention. We all went out on the stern deck to watch it pass overhead. When we finally arrived at our destination, it became apparent that catching a taxi to Yoros Castle would not be necessary. We climbed up through a series of stone pathways flanked with gloomy looking restaurants. The panorama from the top was definitely a 'moment I will not forget'. The mouth of the Black Sea loomed in front of us and the Bosphorus stretched behind us, with the Istanbul skyline a faint smudge in the distance. A couple of lone industrial looking ships made their way out to the Sea. We took some photos, the wind whipping hair and coats around as we posed, smiling big, in front of the perfectly beautiful grey sky and still greyer waterway below….The castle itself was not especially captivating.

We made our way merrily down the road. Ben commented on some of the Turkish signs posted on the fences outside a Turkish military installation. We assumed they were communicating such imperatives as "Keep Out!" and "Danger!", and Ben thought they would make for great Indie t-shirts back in the states. Before hopping on a bus back to Istanbul, we bought some fresh bread and candy. Nothing compares to a crunchy loaf of French-Italian style bread. Yes, we were tired of pita by then.

Bus ride was followed by another bus ride, which was followed by a short ferry ride, which was followed by a long walk back to Beyoglu. Shoes were soggy, we were soggy, and all were pretty eager to say farewell to one another and enjoy some much-needed alone time. The group split up and Meg and I went off to warm our bones with some hot chocolate and reading time. When we reunited a few hours later, Ben brought good news. Brian, a vegan chef and fellow couch-surfer staying at the apartment with us, was going to make us dinner. We headed to the grocery to pick up some produce, olive oil, bread, and peanut butter. He made us a veggie stir-fry rice bowl, served with a peanut sauce that was just right! I hadn't had Asian cuisine since August, it was such a treat….

After dinner, I was ready to hit the hay, or the floor rather. Ben and Brian faired the cold and rain to go meet up with friends at a bar. It was really a great day, spent in the company of great friends.

………Ben, I hope this blog entry is up to snuff. Halleycanblog. As my life coach and ad hoc nutritionist, I think adding editor to the list would be overdoing it. But overdo it we will! All other assignments can be forwarded to Dave Harvey. I hear he is quite a talent with quite a bit of time on his hands. Cheers to our trip in Istanbul Ben! You truly were a joy to travel with!

An Excuse, an Expose, an Expectation

2007-11-02T05:10:00.000-05:00

Well, my parents having tearfully departed after having their flight on the EgyptAir monopoly mysteriously delayed four hours, I have no excuse to procrastinate from the blogosphere. However, with so much lost time (I'm not even done blogging about Istanbul and I've been back for over half a month), I don't think it's very feasible to offer a play-by-play, as much as everyone would love it. So, a couple brief highlights, and then a return to normalcy (inshallah):

-Friday (today) is the Muslim world's Sunday, and so most shops are closed until the late afternoon as it is obligatory for Muslim men to attend prayers at the mosque. As I write this from the comfort of an air-conditioned cafe which is loudly blasting the Soundscapes albums you can buy at Hallmark and Target, about one hundred Muslim men are praying across the street, sprawled out on carpets outside a flower store which obscures the small neighborhood mosque. There is something overwhelmingly sensual about Islam; hearing their prayers and chants (loud enough to permeate the glass walls and the obnoxious music here in the cafe) and to witness the men rising and falling in tandem is in itself a religious experience. As I stated before, the men are on a street, yet they are universally undistracted by the cars, women, nd Westerners strolling by. Some of the men are on-duty police officers, evident by their all-white uniforms, presenting the odd juxtaposition of praying (and rising and falling onto the prayer carpets) with an AK-47 slung over their shoulder. Clerks and bagboys from the market (Seoudi) across the street still wear their aprons during the service. Not being very religious myself, I am tremendously aware of the devotion of almost every Muslim I have met and observed. As I write this, the service has ended, the men fold up their ornate prayer rugs, and the street scene quickly returns to normal, with only a few stragglers remaining to pray on the sidewalk. The end of the prayers consequently bring a return of the Cairene din of taxi cab horns, meowing feral cats (who suspiciously also respect the prayers), and the shouts of the Egyptians.
-The past two days not only coincided with the departure of my parents, but also with me being the sickest since I arrived in Cairo and, perhaps since I came to college. Yesterday consisted of the consumption of some seven liters of water to replenish all of the liquid I was perpetually losing, as well as a diet of strictly plain corn flakes, bananas, and anise tea. I also ran a fever of 101 F, and, according to my roommate, mumbled and shouted in my sleep as I fluctuated between shivering and sweating profusely. On the upside, I got to skip class and instead went to go see the film Stardust, complete with Arabic subtitles and an Egypt Ministry of Culture-added intermission i.e. cigarette break.
-I very much enjoyed my parents' time in Cairo, and I think/hope they had a good time. They also spent a week traveling between Cairo and Abu Simbel, which is near the Sudanese border, visiting literally everything of note in between. A particular highlight was a visit to the Grand Hyatt (I know...) Rotating Restaurant, which at the 41st floor, offered an incredible view of Cairo as well as the Pyramids of Giza as well as a pretty fantastic French meal.
-I took two midterms this week in class. One had absolutely no pedagogical utility, for it consisted of two essay questions: "What does Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' article say?" and "What does Raymond Hinnebush's article say?" Yes, between the 400-some pages we've read for the course, we simply had to recall the intricate details of these two particular authors. The more we could remember, the better our grade (for instance, he said an automatic "A" would result if we could recite the articles word for word). The second midterm was more constructive. However, despite my grumbling, I almost guarantee that I did better on the midterm which require recitation, despite my poor didactic memory.

And now, a couple pictures from Cairo for you to enjoy. I promise that I will be more diligent on my updates from here on out.

Out of the Office

2007-10-29T02:50:00.000-05:00

Don't you go worrying now, I'm not intentionally letting this blog wither away. And it's not that my time in Egypt has reached some sort of stasis either. Rather, the reason for my absence can be summarized in the following picture:

Yes, my parents have taken Cairo by storm, single-handedly supporting the city's economy through the purchase of informative guides, overpriced bottled water, and a suitcase worth of trinkets, jewelry, spices, and books.

Also, I have a new camera (my other one broke). Hopefully it's dividends will be evident.

The Hammer Falls: Isploration Day Three

2007-10-24T01:54:00.000-05:00

I hope you're enjoying your Egyptian respite, since I'm only halfway through recollecting my almost-romantic affair with Istanbul (it was a five-night stand, but I hope to be back in its arms this summer). So, sit yourself in a (comfy) chair to brace yourself, for here, like it or not, is the next chapter in Istanbul Isplorations.

Waking up a bit groggy from the first full night on the floor, we quietly exited our apartment near dawn (so Halley would say--it was probably close to 9 AM) only to discover that it was pouring rain outside. Now, Western readers may not be fazed by the previous sentence. However, I currently live in a desert. Deciduous plants, rain, and temperature temperatures do not exist here; at first the chilling droplets splashing onto my muddled mess of hair, I was convinced that I was standing under a dripping air conditioning unit. When I realized it was rain, I began to melt.

Rendezvousing (in the rain) with two of our friends staying at the Orient Hostel, which, according to Lonely Planet, is known for its partying clientele that go out to drink every night with the sole expectation that they will get laid upon their return to the hostel (shame on you, Lonely Planet), we did the whole Turkish breakfast thing (which is astonishingly similar to the Egyptian breakfast) of Nescafe, cheese, tomatoes, and, best of all, leavened bread. In hindsight, I carb-loaded to return for Egypt, where the majority of the population (and the majority of the restaurants) subsists on subsidized whole-wheat pita bread (80% flour and 20% sand) from the government ovens. I have found fingernail clippings, a hunk of sea salt, and a spool of thread in my Egyptian bread. Thus, Turkish bread rivaled or even (on my relative scale) surpassed the quality of the Italian and French staple.

Over brunch, we scoured our guidebooks to look for indoor attractions given the glorious rain that was falling (in fact, Istanbul hadn't received rain for two months either, and the city's three reservoirs were dried up), and soon found ourselves on a tram to a bus station, where we would board a crowded vehicle bound for the old Istanbul city walls (think Roman empire old) and, god-willing, find the Chora Church. Chora is translated to "country" in Turkish, and can be explained by the Byzantines' intention that this church remain outside the city of Istanbul. Now, however, it is very much in a densely-packed, non-tourist neighborhood. Which was a good thing, since most tourists hate other tourists, and there's nothing more that people in non-tourist neighborhoods enjoy than camera-touting American tourists.

I'm glad that we went though; the photos speak for themselves. The Chora Church's mosaics were, like the Aya Sofya's, plastered over when the building was converted to a mosque. However, they are poignant and startling in this more intimate setting, as are the frescoes.

The exterior of Chora.

Jesus Christ.

In a vaguely Egyptian fashion, Jesus summons Adam & Eve from their sarcophagi.

Part of the Church's interior--note the mosaic on the left.

Chora Church was so magnificent that my camera committed suicide, convinced that it had reached the apogee of its career. So pictures from the remainder of the trip will be sparse and, let's be honest, not of the same indescribable quality (since I didn't take them). Don't fret, however: I have purchased a new camera, and will be posting photographs once the following two conditions are simultaneously met: a) There is something worthy of me taking my camera out of its case and b) I have my camera. Nine times out of ten, "b" is the absent condition.

It was only 2:30 PM in the afternoon as we left Chora, and we were once again at a loss for things to do in the rain. It was completely natural, then, when one of the girls suggested that we board a boat bound for Asia so we could explore the other side. I reluctantly conceded, forcing myself to realize (and prepare) that I would inevitably get wet, either from the boat or from the rain.

However, upon arrival at the docks, the girls seemed uninterested in actually purchasing a ticket, preferring to stand exclusively in a triangle and exchange information (but not gossip). So, playing the heroic male role, I went in search of a ticket booth, a difficult task given the sheer amount of crowds.

Here begins my BREAKDOWN. A tinge upset at the girls' diffidence and surrounded by touts selling me a scenic (synonym for expensive) trip up the Bosporus or a sandwich or a hotel room or a pair of shoes at least three sizes too small for my gigantic feet, I got increasingly frustrated at the lack of order (This was Europe goddamnit! Not Egypt!), and began to use my one physical asset--my mass--to push through the crowds and escape the salesmen which had attached themselves to me in a fashion reminiscent of burrs in a forest.

Things may or may not have gotten violent (they didn't. Really). I did not, however, locate a ticket booth. They were closed as it was Sunday. What I needed was to be alone, which hadn't happened since Wednesday afternoon, and a mind-altering substance, either a stimulant (caffeine) or a depressant (alcohol). So I told the girls "peace out," high-tailed it back to Beyoglu, bought an English book on modern Turkish history, and drank a 12 YTL glass of red wine in a warm (both in terms of temperature and atmosphere) cafe. Am I bound to become a yuppie?

Never fear for my lashing out, however. We reunited for dinner at a traditional Turkish mezze restaurant called a meyhane, which was incredibly awkward due to drama between the girls I was with and other AUC students occupying the meyhane, drama that I was not privy to (explains the earlier triangle). So I enjoyed my small plates in peace, and especially enjoyed the ruki, a pungently anise Turkish alcoholic spirit which came with the meal.

So, it was only natural that we went out to the bars after dinner. Aside from the notable 1980s music and the size of the chalices of beer, I do not remember much about the bar.

What's to look forward to in the next Istanbul intry [sic]? More rain, a boat ride, another vegan meal, and yet another rendezvous. Stay tuned.

Yes, It's Another Post About Istanbul!

2007-10-20T02:40:00.002-05:00

With an overwhelming amount of people reading and commenting about my previous post about Istanbul (OK, who am I lying to? This blog is more for historical preservation (and apparently my family) than for the consumption by any of my peers. I don't want to waste their time or anything by forcing them to read about my time in Egypt. And I'm not bitter.), here's the next installment of Istanbul Isplorations (Day 2).

It was 3 AM. I was disoriented. Not only had I not fully adjusted to my surroundings in the two bedroom flat overlooking Taksim Square, but something wasn't physically right. As I drifted out of sleep, I thought I may be sick--my head felt so heavy. Yes, I felt seasick. And this feeling was confirmed by me as I peeked open my eyes and ascertained that, indeed, my feet were a good half-yard above my head. Our air mattress was deflating, slow enough to avoid exposing its intentions by emitting the characteristic hiss which indicates that something's wrong. So I did the first thing which came to mind in my current state (fight or flight, you could say): I rolled off the bed slowly, hoping to keep Halley in a deep sleep (she continually attests that she needs eight hours of sleep a night, which is ridiculous). This desired effect, however, was idealism at its best, for it violated the laws of physics, which are relatively the same between the United States, Egypt, and Turkey. The air mattress, adjusting to my missing weight, sent Halley plummeting to the floor, promptly waking her too. We slept on the ground the rest of our time in Istanbul.

As stated in the previous Istanbul post, few Egyptian cell phones functioned in Turkey, mine being one of the exceptions. Needless to say, it was difficult to rendezvous with our other friends who had traveled to Turkey for El-Eid, the post-Ramadan holiday. But, being the smart travelers which we are, we had agreed on a meeting point in the off-chance that our cell phones were non-functional: 10:30 AM at the entrance gates to Tokapi Palace. So, bright and early at 9:30 AM, Halley & I as well as Brian, the vegan chef from Portland, were on a public bus bound for the Sultanahmet, so we could meet our friends.

I don't think we could have picked a worse rendezvous point. First of all, Tokapi Palace is huge, with about seven or eight entrances. Second of all, it was closed until 1 PM because of the Eid holiday. None of our friends could be sighted. What now? There was no Plan C. Was I stuck with Halley (and Brian) for the rest of the vacation (Not a bad thing, I would come to realize, but I had agreed to meet up with other friends.)?

With nothing scheduled, the three of us decided to wander over to see the Grand Bazaar, an acres-sized covered market which lures in tourists like those buzzing bright lights attract insects (and then kills them). Though Tokapi was closed, surely commerce couldn't be stopped by a simple religious holiday (actually, in the secular state of Turkey, it's a non-religious holiday called Bairum, which means candy or sweet, that consistently corresponds with Eid), especially when the city was rife with tourists in need of a suckering.

Yes, even the stores were closed for the next three days. What were we to do in Turkey without shopping for three days?

We proceeded to wander throughout the Eminonu district (again), stopping by a shady restaurant for pilav (rice and garbanzo beans) and a doner (sandwich) near Istanbul University, with the intention of killing time before going back to Tokapi at 1 PM to look for our friends and tour the home of the Ottoman sultans.

Prominently placed on the lawn in front of the palace as to be sighted by our friends, Brian and I had an engaging dialogue about the merits of Obama's presidential candidacy, and I revealed to him Matt Kirby's (of Carleton '07 fame) secret plan to take over Washington (don't worry, I later "took care of" Brian to prevent the secret from being revealed). However, the lack of friends evolved into a photo shoot, of which only a couple shots turned out. It also, however, led to a dinner invitation from Brian (he was, after all, a vegan chef) who promised us delicious vegetables back at the apartment at 8:30 PM. All we had to do was furnish the wine (not true, actually we offered to bring it).

Really the only good photo.

So we went our separate ways--Brian back to Beyoglu and Halley & I through the entrance gates of the palace. The palace was OK...not too interesting as we were not just cheap in our decision to NOT tour the harem (a big mistake, but it was another 10 YTL in addition to the 10 YTL we paid to simply enter the palace), but the room displaying the Holiest of Holies (AKA the Relics Room), including a tooth and a beard hair of Muhammad and the arm of John the Baptist (encrusted in jewels), was closed for renovation. So, after gazing at the entire collection of the Palace's china and tapestries, we settled for the scenic views the palace offers from its strategic location at the tip of a peninsula.

A mosque near the back of the Palace.

The Bosporus-spanning Ataturk Bridge, which holds the European and Asian continents together, in the background.

Beyoglu in the background.

Also, we ventured into the Circumcision Room, which had beautiful tiles that I failed to capture on camera. What I DID capture, albeit blurrily (not a real word), is the circumcision DEVICE! Yes, I'm still quite immature.

That ends my pictures for the day. But NOT my story-telling. After peacing out from the Palace, we went on a search for wine, dessert, and TopShop, a pricey clothing outlet. (Read: I bought the former two while Halley searched the bargain racks at the latter).

Dinner was amazing. I have rarely had something seasoned so well with so little, and I also have rarely enjoyed cabbage to the degree which I did that night. We decided to call it an early night, for we had made plans to seek out two of our friends staying at a hostel early the next morning. And we were full of delicious carbs, cheap Turkish merlot, and baklava.

So, what's next? How can I entice you to check back tomorrow--OK, I'll be honest with you--the next three days? Well, stories of my first rain since Cairo (it's a big deal, OK), mosaic sightings, and my BREAKDOWN will be prominently featured in the next post. And a couple of my pictures, pre-camera breakage. Get excited!

A quick point as well. Turkey and Egypt are on entirely different tracks of development. However, they are not too different. Both have around 70 million people. Both have Sunni Muslim majorities. Both possess supposedly (but not actually) secular states. Though Turkey possesses more arable land, much of it is unused (whereas the small bit of Nile-spanning agricultural land is maximized in Egypt). Egypt at the turn of the 20th Century was much more developed than Turkey, though both were under Ottoman rule (though Egypt was semi-autonomous). Both have a viable shipping industry and access to the coast. So why are they seemingly so different? Is it Turkey's turn toward Europe? Or is it something more fundamental? Can it be that Turkey is actually a viable democracy? Does democracy drive development? Or is it Turkey's economic reforms under Prime Minister Ozul, an economist who implemented structural adjustment programs in the 1980's? And can Cairo become a city like Istanbul over the next 20 years? It's more of a thought exercise, but one I have been considering much since encountering Turkey.

Security Points & Bad Music

2007-10-20T02:40:00.001-05:00

Brace yourselves, for here's the next (and brief!) release of When in Egypt... as a prelude to Istanbul Isplorations Day 2. My, my, two recurring series in a row, what have you done to deserve this?

As I'm sure you've heard, Egypt is the land of the Pharaohs. Yes, we have pyramids here. And a few mosques. The Nile scenery ain't so bad, and some of the desert-scapes can be quite nice. However, what the liberal media/travel guides omit from their accounts of Egypt is the variety of security checks that have been installed in just about every establishment to stoke fear into your soul and prevent you from doing anything insidious. You think you may get annoyed by walking through some 50 metal detectors and having 30 different Egyptian men rifle through your personal items, but the lack of any sort of standard procedure on these security checks, however, guarantee them to be entertaining and surprising, for "you never know whatcha gonna get" (yes, Egyptian security checks ARE like a box of chocolates, Forrest). Here are some typical encounters at security checks:

1) The sleeper. I, a white male, walk through the metal detector, prompting a piercing tone for I did not remove my cell phone (or my gun/explosives). The security guard is asleep, and, though a little disgruntled, seems thoroughly annoyed to be awoken by someone who is clearly not a security threat. Sneering at you for your presence, he proceeds to immediately fall asleep.

2) The magic touch. Arriving at the entrance to AUC, I'm asked to hand over my bag, which the guards search as I walk through the metal detectors (which have never, ever beeped). Usually, the guards will take a cursory glance at the contents of my bag as they check for cameras (BAD! The government cannot know about the bastion of liberalism which lies beyond these privacy hedges!), a kitchen knife (WORSE! Yes, I had one confiscated.), or whiskey (UNSPEAKABLE!). Sometimes, an overzealous new employee will actually empty the contents of your bag to examine your belongings before they are chided by a seasoned veteran of security. These veterans have been at it so long that they don't even need to search your bag. They have bomb-sniffing, whiskey-detecting, magnetic hands which allow them to gracefully touch your bag to determine its contents, usually while it's still on your person.

3) The anti-American attitude. I've met very few people in Egypt who dislike Americans, almost as few as the people who haven't told me that they dislike George Bush. However, you have the occasional checkpoint guard, usually in the middle of the Egyptian desert, who just doesn't care for Americans. He's fine with EU or Australian passports, and even gives you the benefit of the doubt until you reveal your crisp blue book (my new one apparently has sensitive electronics in it, which prevents me from putting it through the wash). The guard, aghast at the neoimperialists who are touring the countryside, then forces the entire car/bus/caravan to line up outside as he personally inspects our possessions and inquires about the particular nature of our business in this tourist area (I mean, spies have to relax too). If one of your compadres lacks a passport (this never fails to happen), expect a detainment of two to five hours.

4) The oblivious music-lover. My personal favorite checkpoint would probably be the entrance to my dorm. From Ehmet, the bag checker that claims that the bite wounds on his arm are from his wife and who personally asks my friends about the presence of whiskey in their backpacks, to the large figure sitting by the computer whose name I do not know. This particular figure, however, has a penchant for shirt/tie combinations of the same color (blue tie on blue shirt, red tie on red shirt, etc.) and 80's music. Yesterday, looking particularly ominous after busting out the black/black combination (He should do it more often. It's rather slimming.), this forty-something supervisor was blasting Survivor's Eye of the Tiger (the Rocky theme) so the entire lobby could rock out with him. And boy, was he rocking out. He had the air guitar strung and prepared for the solo. He wasn't just lip syncing--he was singing. Loudly. And he really didn't seem to care that the constant stream of students entering the building were staring. I guess you can't fight the music. I've got to figure out his name.

Five Days, Three Continents, Three Cameras

2007-10-18T03:35:00.000-05:00

Hopefully my week-long departure from the blogosphere did not leave any of you of utmost faithful readers worried (or doubting) my return; the literal and digital vacation was quite nice, but, as usual with such vacations, I returned to a fair amount of work as soon as we started burning rubber on the Cairo International tarmac. Unfortunately, as per-usual with successful vacations as well is the disappearance of any internal motivation to do such work. So Tuesday and Wednesday was 75% procrastination, 20% confusion, and about 5% real work. Yet, to be honest, this is typical to most of my days here.

For those who haven't been faithfully reading (and why not?), I have returned from a five-day, glorious trip to Istanbul. Only 772 miles away from Cairo--almost entirely of which are over water--Istanbul is an entirely different world. Compared to Cairo, I felt as if I had entered the apex of modernity and "Westernism," even though I was still technically in the "Middle East" and the "developing world."

However, rather than overwhelm you with a minute-by-minute, photo-intensive recollection of my five day respite, which would also entail me investing several hours of time into one bloc, I have decided to appease the muses of efficiency and efficacy and report on Istanbul over several days, day by day. I have a lot to comment on, but, then again, I would describe myself as verbose. So, consider my trip to Istanbul yet another recurring series on this blog--Istanbul Isplorations (rather than Explorations) if you will. Also, a special note: my camera broke halfway through the trip, so I will be relying on others' photos.

Istanbul Isploration Day 0
Almost as soon as I published the previous entry to this blog from an AUC computer lab, I hailed a taxi and attempted to finagle my way with my limited Egyptian Arabic to get a cheap ride to the airport. No dice: I ended up paying 55 LE, which approaches outrageous, and was also almost delivered to the wrong airport (a strictly domestic budget airport, in the Imbaba slum) because I was trying to make small talk (read: practice my past tense conjugations) with the cab driver and explain that I had spent the previous weekend in Bawati (see previous post). Apparently he thought I wanted to go to Bawati rather than Istanbul. After redirecting him, we sat in pre-Iftar traffic for a good 1.5 hours, usually in awkward silence since my Egyptian Arabic teacher foolishly hasn't taught our class how to speak in the present tense (she has since capitulated and informed us that we may, if we're lucky, learn before leaving for winter break. I can't wait to use my Egyptian Arabic present tense in Iowa and Minnesota.) and my cab driver spoke no English (or at least feigned ignorance).

After gathering a significant amount of back sweat due to the stifling conditions of the 1960's Fiat cab, the driver dropped me off at the entrance to Terminal 2 (the international terminal) of Cairo International Airport. He couldn't actually enter the airport, and I had to board a bus to actually arrive at the terminal. As is the case with traveling, it was the wrong terminal. Who knew that Istanbul was actually a domestic destination? Given the placement of certain international cities in the domestic terminal, one would think that enough travelers would make my same mistake to justify an inter-terminal transportation service. But none such thing existed, and I was barred by an Egyptian guard from simply walking to Terminal 1 (about a mile away). As taxis are not allowed to enter the airport area, I had to bribe a package delivery driver to ferry me to Terminal 1.

After checking in, I perused the abundance of Duty Free shops in the airport as well as visited the preposterously-priced "coffee area" of the airport, where Starbucks (one of two in Egypt), The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Costa Coffee, Beano Coffee, and Cilantro (a coffee shop) all had kiosks strategically placed next to each other. They actually all shared a sitting area--talk about perfect competition.

The flight was relatively uneventful, save for the fact that I was randomly placed in an exit row. Apparently Egypt hasn't ascertained that one now charge someone extra to risk their life and potentially martyr themselves for the sake of the other passengers, as they do in America. In said exit row, I sat next to a Turkish gynecologist-turned-pharmaceutical representative, who let me in on all of the secrets of the Turkish clubs. Also of note: I would wager that AUC international students were a good half of the plane's population.

Upon landing in the ultra-chic Ataturk International Airport, I rendezvoused with my travel partner Halley, who has so graciously agreed to write about her experiences on this very blog (stay tuned), bought our entrance visas, and headed for Taksim Square, the heart of European Istanbul.

"Where were we staying?" you might be asking. And I sheepishly say "Oh, you know. With a guy we met on the Internet." Did your stomach churn? Are you incredulously doubtful? And here's where I assuage your fears and suspicions and advertise a phenomenon which I recently discovered (props to my roommate Dave, who has another column for the UCSD paper here). It's called CouchSurfing, and it's a social networking website where one can meet people around the world for a more authentic (and perhaps cheaper) traveling experience, whether that be meeting a local for coffee/drinks or staying at someone's home. And it has several security mechanisms, which, at least in its nascent state, contributes to its overwhelming success among its practitioners. So, Halley & I arranged to stay in a two bedroom flat shared by a 24-year-old former Michiganian and a black-humored 22-year-old Englishman, the former of which was a real estate agent/hotel manager and the latter an English teacher (I came to find that a noticeably smaller population in Turkey speaks any degree of English compared to Egypt). I only had to send them an SMS upon arriving in Taksim Square.

Which is where we soon were, amidst the efficient public buses, crowded bars (oh my!), schwanky restaurants, abject lack of hijabs, falling leaves, and cold temperatures, undergoing a mild sense of culture shock, for Egypt lacks all of these. What I also lacked at first was a working cell phone, but after several tries at powering it down and turning it back on, I managed to pick up the Turkish Vodafone network, where I was charged a mere 34 LE (over $6) per minute of call time (in Egypt, it's 0.20 LE). After contacting Josh, the Michiganian, he left the bars and scooped up our two confused selves and delivered us to his apartment.

At the time, Josh worked five jobs (he quit one while we were there) and about 100 hours a week. He assured us that he enjoyed not having days replete with free time, and I'm assuming he enjoyed a steady (and powerful) stream of income. He was an interesting guy who had spent a summer in Cairo, and thus could understand our cultural prostration. He recommended a large stein of Efes as a panacea, and directed us to one of the 400+ bars lining the Istiklal (Turkish for Independence), the Champs d'Elyesses of Istanbul. He gave us a key to the apartment, showed us his couch (and, implicitly, his floor), and pushed us out of his apartment. We chose a bar, I doubledosed on Josh's recommended remedy, and we didn't return to the apartment until 3 AM.

Istanbul Isploration Day 1:
After spending the night on the floor and being viciously attacked/rudely awoken by Josh's teething cat (which he proclaims to be schizophrenic), we were up early, quite eager to see Istanbul by day. Outside, the sun and breeze virtually beckoned us out of the flat.

The view from Josh's apartment window, overlooking the Bosporus Strait.

Halley partook in borek for breakfast, which is filo dough and potatoes, while I had some nameless dish composed of lasagna noodles and goat cheese. Turkey is quite expensive, especially given the dollar's plummet; 1 USD gets one 1.18 Turkish lira, and breakfast was 3 YTL (only outrageous because of Egyptian standards).

We walked throughout the district of Beyoglu (the g is silent), the most "European" area of the city, for it was the Italian/French merchant's quarters in the initial development of Istanbul. In typical European fashion, the area is saturated with fashion boutiques, expensive cafes, nightclubs, and cobblestoned alleys which romantically wind aimlessly throughout the neighborhood, allowing one to stumble upon the discovery of even more of the aforementioned.

Overlooking Beyoglu and across the Good Horn (not the Bosporus).

Our destination was the Sultanahmet, an area in the Eminonu district across the Good Horn which is the major tourist area of Istanbul, for it possesses the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya, and Tokapi Palace (where the Ottoman sultans withered away their days in unsustainable luxury). However, our walk led us through the other side of Eminonu first, which is flanked by another two large mosques: the New Mosque and the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent.

Admiring Suleiman's mosque from across the water.

The bridges of Istanbul are lined with casual fishermen.

Halley gets some face time. Also, the Beyoglu area (prominently featuring the Galata Tower) seen from the bridge. The Turkish flag is more prominent in Istanbul than anywhere in the United States or Egypt--or anywhere that I've been.

Upon arriving in Eminonu, we fittingly visited the Egyptian Market (in Engish, it's advertised as the Spice Bazaar), where I feasted on Turkish Delight (cliched) and observed others scooping up Turkish Viagra (also a cliche?) while being overwhelmed with the scents of saffron and paprika which shopkeepers dust into the air to lure in loosehanded tourists. However, dominating the Bazaar is the New Mosque, which actually used to operate the Bazaar to generate funds for its continual construction and upkeep.

The New Mosque, from its side.

It's very difficult to take pictures inside these mosques, as they're not just rather dark, but also expansive enough that flashes are not effective. However, here's the ceiling of the New Mosque, which is a stark departure from the austerity of the interiors' of Egyptian mosques.

It was only a long walk over a hill (Istanbul is built on seven of them) to reach the Sultanahmet, which features ridiculously priced Turkish patisseries and bars in addition to its tourist attractions. Yes, I may have spent 6 YTL on coffee and a sandwich. Yes, I may be a little bitter. But, seeing wonders like the Blue Mosque ameliorate any and all of my particularly hard feelings.

Me in front of the Blue Mosque.

My attempt at capturing the interior of the Mosque, which is, despite the sheer amount of loud and obnoxious tourists, still one of the most popular places in the city to pray. Halley and I just sat and watched the activity while admiring the aesthetics of the building for a good half hour.

Literally a third of a kilometer away from the Blue Mosque is the Aya Sofya, a church turned mosque turned museum. Built by Emperor Justynian of the Byzantine Empire, it actually spurned the construction of the Blue Mosque to challenge the architectural feats of the Christians. Both are enormous. The Blue Mosque features four "elephant pillars" which supports its many domes, while the Aya Sofya's pillars are hidden, making the domes seem as if they magically float.

Posed.

It's an odd juxtaposition of Islamic medallions and badly-damaged Christian mosaics (they were plastered and painted over by the Muslims which occupied the building) in the Aya Sofya, but it's architectural magnificence compensates for the latter.

Once again, it's difficult to take flashless pictures in the dark.

Unaccustomed to walking so much and becoming a bit weary from the numerous feline attacks the night before, we decided to head down to the Bosporus and relax on the jagged rocks. My definition of relax, especially given the hard and sharp surfaces, was to watch the Mediterranean-bound barges navigate the treacherous strait. Halley interpreted it as a nap.

Looking across the strait to Asia.

Halley awoke 45 minutes later, marked by skin imprints from both the rock and her tote bag-turned-pillow, and we continued our plodding across Eminonu. All in all, we probably walked close to eight or nine miles the first day. However, I personally enjoy walking around cities at first (or all the time), as to get oriented, explore, etc. With stops at a restaurant, English bookstore, and bar, we weren't back to Josh's apartment until 1 AM, where we promptly met another traveler who would be CouchSurfing in the same room as us. His name was Brian, though his introduction was a bit muddled (and rightfully so) since he was awoken by Halley and my rummaging throughout the bedroom. However, as he began to regain coherence, we learned he was circumnavigating the globe and hailed from Portland, where he was a vegan chef. Interestingly enough, I had eaten at his restaurant (Blossoming Lotus, located in The Pearl District) when I was last in Portland this past spring break. Quite a small world. After the awkward introductions subsided, Josh blew up an air mattress for Halley and I, and, soon, the four of us, almost perfectly lined up across the room, from couch to air mattress to bed, drifted to sleep.

But not for long, as the air mattress had a hole in it. But that's reserved for Istanbul Isplorations Day 2. Stay tuned.

The Desert (and Oasis)

2007-10-09T16:29:00.000-05:00

Christ, I left Cairo for only three days, and, thanks to the gracious gift of a school-free Sunday, missed no class. Yet somehow I spent the next three days catching up. I thought AUC was supposed to be easy, but between paper writing (yet another essay on why the World Bank should be scolded for imposing austerity and neoliberalism), Arabic studying (I now look at English plurals with a new-found appreciation for its ease and commonsensical nature), and researching (albeit this was for Ashoka, to which I volunteered to surrender my time and thus have no right to complain), I am losing grasp of my ability to enjoy Cairo--perhaps to the point where I've considered dropping a class. I'd still be a full-time student, and I don't need the credits to graduate. More to ponder.

Anyway, before I sidetracked myself with my characteristic complaining, I was saying that I left this weekend. And that's where the story begins.

After staying in (and staying up) on a Thursday night (i.e. weekend) trying to buy airline tickets and write a Model UN position paper on emissions trading (so much for an escape from Carleton), I slept for two hours and awoke at the ungodly hour of 5:30 AM to board a bus for Bawati, the main town in the Bahariyya Oasis approximately five hours' drive from Cairo. The bus was chartered and more of a 15-passenger van, of which was completely full. If you've met me, you can probably imagine how well I comfortably fit in any sort of transportation situation, let alone a cramped non-American conversion van for five hours. My knees are still quite bruised from their continuous collisions with the seat back (read: bar) in front of me. I sort of wish someone videotaped me trying to sleep.

I always imagined an oasis much differently. Unexplainably lavish in the middle of a desert, I had perceived that this accident of nature would seep into the culture of the oasis’s residents, contributing to a sense of lawlessness and excess. My imagined conceptions of oases almost always included belly dancers shimmering off into a mirage-induced haze. Bawati didn't confirm my mental depiction: its culture was overwhelmingly conservative, at least within the main town, its dwellings and roads were more dilapidated than Cairo's (a feat not easily achieved), and its residents (save for the tour guides) are autonomous from the desert; it only serves as an incredibly large buffer between their small world of Bawati and the mega-city of Cairo.

But the shattering of my stereotype aside, Bawati was pleasant enough, though I suppose given the bus ride which had preceded our arrival, I would have been fine with a dim and lifeless room with a repungently feckid scent. However, Bawati isn't really a part of this account; it was only a starting point where we met our four Bedouin tour guides, the head of whom was Osman.

Osman drove the Land Rover I rode in for the next three days. He's from Bawati, and has been leading tourists (mainly Americans, Germans, and Japanese) out into the desert for 20 years. He's unfazable and, as he admits, not the most devout of Muslims. He knows the desert by rote, and he claims to have never gotten lost, either by himself or with a tour group. To be honest, being a Bedouin tour guide wouldn't be too terrible of a career. You drive around, set up camp for those richer than you, cook them food, show them some sights, and get paid a princely sum.

After piling in Osman's candy apple red, early 1990s Toyota Land Rover, he quickly sped us around in a tour of the oasis, which I will present with pictures.

Graham walks down a path surrounded by date palms. Dates are the primary export/trade of Bahrarriya; the palms are fed by underwater hot and cold springs.

A farmer growls at my camera as he collects dates on his donkey. Little industrial agriculture was evident in the oasis; almost all work was done by the donkey, the plow, and the humans who shimmy up palm trees.

Our transport throughout the vast Sahara.

The pyramid in the background (to the right of me) is called Pyramid Mountain, for it's naturally shaped by the wind into something which looks uncannily (not to mention ironically) like a tomb of a pharaoh.

It looks less like a pyramid from close up.

Dave and I ascended the top of the "pyramid" which was little more than loose boulders, some schist (maybe?), and lots of sand. We're totally badass. This is the view.

So after journeying all around the oasis and its surrounding desert, we set up camp in the middle of the Sahara in an area surrounded by sand dunes. Luckily, one of my travelmates brought an innertube so we could slide down (a la American winter) the wind-shaped hills. Unluckily, the hills were too steep, and all attempts at innertubing resulted in immediately being thrown from the tube and propelled into a sort of roll down the dune. While we frolicked, the Bedouins did their job, setting up our camp and cooking rice, potatoes, bread, and meat, which we would eat for the next six meals.

Our camp.

Sunset in the desert.

My roommate savors his last cigarette. Who said smoking was no longer sexy?

Ahh, look! A trail! To the designated bathroom area!

The next day, we piled into our respective Land Rovers towards our destination of the White Desert. However, we had several stops throughout the day, including a visit to another sand dune (the Bedouins must have known how little we cared about sightseeing and how much we enjoyed dizzingly rolling down the soft dunes), a cold spring (read: sewer) which we swam in (it turned our skin a putrid yellow), and a hike up a mountain which gave us a "panoramic view" of the Black Desert. And you know what panoramic views mean, right? PHOTO SHOOT.

The three of us which were suckered into buying the Bedouin scarfs (We were told they would be of much use in the desert. They weren't.) pose for a picture. I think we were trying to look like militant Palestinians; how culturally sensitive of us.

You know, just working out on Crystal Mountain. No big deal.

So after spending close to an hour in the car (mind you, not on a road), Osman suddenly slammed on the breaks right before we sped over a 9% grade sand hill. This was the view:

I climbed up higher to get a better view of...the same thing. But I had to take a picture to prove that I went the extra effort to see the same thing from 500 feet higher.

This is probably one of the most famous rock formations in the entire world. It's in the White Desert, which was eponymously named for this and other formations. I think they're mostly talc and gypsum, for they crumble easily and are so malleable.

I think Graham was shocked with my climbing abilities. Not that I was trying to scale one of the world's most famous rocks, of which this is most definitely the most frail.

That night, we camped in the White Desert. As you can imagine, there's not much to do after the sun sets at 6 PM except tell stories [I was appointed the story teller, so I crafted an international relations and National Treasure (yes, the movie)-inspired tale of Princess Sophia, the daughter of an Assistant to the Regional Sultan]. However, after the story had successfully put the majority of our group to sleep, myself and three others decided to embark on a bit of an adventure.

I'm ambitious, I'll admit it. I have more than a few life goals. I'm forward-looking. But, I'm proud to report that one of my life goals was completed last weekend, albeit a lesser one. Yes, I hiked through the Sahara. Naked. Check it off the list, moving on now.

I returned to Osman trying to woo one of our group members into his sleeping bag by calling out to her as the "Desert Fox." Creepy. I don't think she got much sleep that night (out of fear, not from Osman's continuous smooth talking).

The sunrise the next morning overlooking the White Desert.

Well, I'm off to Istanbul in about half an hour, which will inevitably be the feature in an upcoming blog post. However, the much-respected "When In Egypt..." will be returning, as will continual updates (that is, complaints) about my life at AUC. Enjoy.

It's Coming...

2007-10-09T03:40:00.000-05:00

An update coming soon. This will have to hold you over until then:

Lost in Translation

2007-10-04T15:40:00.000-05:00

I just bought airline tickets at the local EgyptAir agency. As I sat at the desk, waiting for the agents to process my American Express card (I'm pretty sure that no one had ever purchased tickets at that particular venue using an AMEX, but then again, it isn't Egyptian Express), I noticed EgyptAir's English motto: "EgyptAir: The Sky's NOT The Limit." What does that mean? Will I be jetting to Istanbul for the weekend via the International Space Station? Or is it something more...worrisome?

More Than Manna Falls From the Sky Here

2007-10-02T07:59:00.000-05:00

Has the Great I Am (re)alerted the world of his presence by resuming the manna downpour a la the Book of Leviticus? Or is there actual liquid precipitation forecasted to fall upon this barren city? Neither, unfortunately (knowing the actual existence of a deity would be quite nice). Rather, the Great State, personified as our loving father/godhead Hosni Mubarak, has given us an unexpected federal holiday.

Unlike the United States, which schedules its holidays meticulously some fifteen or twenty years in advance (Wikipedia lists the date of Labor Day until 2011), the Egyptian government today (Tuesday) issued an edict that this coming Sunday would be a federal holiday. Though I would cautiously generalize Egyptian society to be a bit more capricious than that of the micromanaging variety found in parts of American society, it's a little inconvenient when the holiday is announced a few days before it actually occurs, especially when it's for a seemingly arbitrary reason (they've moved Armed Forces Day so that it coincides with the landmark "10th Day of Ramadan," which I also don't understand as the day falls about six days before Ramadan concludes). In typical AUC form (see my earlier post about the unscheduled switch to Daylight Savings Time), no one has (officially, at least) informed the ignorant mass of international students about our newly-gifted vacation.

On this same day, 15 opposition and privately-owned newspapers will not publish as a sign of solidarity and protest against the government's crackdown on press freedom. The most prolific arrest of a newspaper editor has been that of Ibrahim Issa, who wrote several articles for al-Dustour which suggested that President Mubarak was in the throes of death. However, 11 other journalists are currently being sentenced by Egyptian military courts for similar charges of challenging the government's authority and inciting domestic turmoil. The upcoming protest is also occurring amidst the context of a 27,000-person strike at Egypt's largest textile mill, whose unrest is over the absence of the trickle-down effect in the Egyptian economy, which the World Bank just named to be the world's most improved for 2007.

In more personal news, my International Politics in the Middle East course devolved (or maybe I should say digressed) from a discussion on orientalism's effects on American foreign policy to a passionate verbal exchange about American national identity. The tables were turned, so to speak, from my experiences at Carleton, where my Arab Nationalism class extrapolated, speculated, and generalized about Middle Eastern or Palestinian or Egyptian identity without any real exposure what so ever to the actual cultures. Similarly, many Egyptian students had an opinion about American national identity, but generally about how muddled it is. Other nations, they explained, have values and principles--something's Lebanese or Syrian or Jordanian. Yet America, other than its penchant for domestic violence (in the Middle East, the sign language "sign" for the United States is a rapidly-firing gun), has no universal value. Perhaps attribute it to the melting pot society we are so proud of, or perhaps to the fact that American culture has globalized into something far beyond its national and state borders. Needless to say, Americans get a little testy when non-Americans voice their opinion about the essence of the United States.

So, to talk about me some more, I've started working at the Arab regional headquarters of the international development-focused qausi-NGO Ashoka. I'm one of two native English speakers in the office of about ten, and our director is, well, intimidating. She's big. At least six feet tall. That's pre-Stilettos. She has the persona of Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada; she's far too busy developing the Middle East to have the time to dig around in her purse for a lighter or a calendar, and thus requires a personal assistant to tow these around. More than that, she has a booming voice that could double for a string bass at the Cairo Symphony (which I went to see last week by the way). And she has an ever-so-intimidating mole plonked above her upper lip. I frankly don't know why I'm so fixated on her since I have such little interaction with her. All I do is research (right now I'm beginning a memo on social inclusion and job training programs for mentally disabled Egyptian youth--I can't imagine there's that many programs on such a narrow field) and English press, which means I get to speak with "notable" people such as the NY Times Middle East bureau chief and the Cairo correspondent to the BBC. Anyway, it seems like a good organization, and apparently Bill Clinton just appropriated us a bunch of money, so we'll see where it goes.

UPDATE: Also, my roommate Dave is writing a semi-frequent column for the University of California-San Diego. His first one is available here, but it unfortunately didn't make it through editing unscathed. However, he's a great writer/storyteller, and I think the column is a fairly accurate account of our first week in Cairo.

Imbibing

2007-09-30T10:01:00.000-05:00

There's no use trying to suppress that feeling of glee, for speeding at you at an incredibly underwhelming speed (due to the Orientalist nature of this T1 connection) is the next edition of WHEN IN EGYPT...

I'm fond of quads on college campuses, and Carleton has two-ish, which, if you're unfamiliar with the campus, have been christened (officially) the Bald Spot and (unofficially, and also a tad un-creatively) the Mini Bald Spot. As the city of Cairo almost as a whole lacks green grass, AUC's quads are a bit more nontraditional: cement and brick cobblestones enshrouded by a mismatch of towering modernist buildings and former palatial estates. Yet students treat these sacred areas just the same (save for the absence of frisbees); perhaps here at AUC the quad substitutes for more of a fashion runway than at its distant relatives (U.S. LACs). And there's something else which is certainly out of place...I can't really say if it's more off-putting or just bizarre.

So, dear reader, I want you to imagine something. Imagine me, your typical college junior, walking across some nondescript campus quad at the U.S. academic institution of your choice. Looking thoroughly collegiate while nonchalantly walking to class, a little proud of my disheveled nest of hair at 9:30 AM in the morning, I pop open a can of O'Doul's halfway across the surrounded lawn without batting an eye. I imagine looks of utter confusion masking condescending and malicious glares would result.

Yet on the other side of the globe, the drink of choice for teetotalers, twelve steppers, and precocious fifteen-year-olds is slowly making its way onto college campuses, the Mecca (if you will) of American binge drinking. Ironically, it's happening where most students never drink alcohol, let alone on campus on their way to Management 201.

Have a Freeze, which looks suspiciously like a Smirnoff Ice, with your croissant, a Barbican with your falafel, and a Birell to substitute your afternoon coffee. There's a non-beer beer for every season here in Egypt! And AUCians, "intoxicated" with their hyperbolized perceptions of the United States, guzzle them with careful abandon.

In the News...

2007-09-26T02:41:00.000-05:00

Everyone in Cairo reads newspapers; there are about forty different daily publications, but only a couple of them are in English (and the state newspaper is published in English on Thursdays only). In the spirit of an informed populace, I thought I'd post some pertinent links to news stories about what's going on in the Middle East.

The New York Times reported today that Sunni extremist groups in Iraq have begun a systematic extermination campaign targeted at police officials, Ministry of the Interior bureaucrats, and tribal leaders. According to the paper, "Sunni Arab militant groups have a history of using such high-profile killings to sow fear in the public and to discourage people from working with the government."

Haaretz reports that Syria is willingly allowing the United Nations to take custody of the contested Shaba Farms, which is currently under Israeli control. The sovereignty of the Farms has been enshrouded in confusion since 1923, but in 2000 the UN ruled that the land belongs to Syria rather than Lebanon. Israel is refusing to withdraw as it would be a "prize to Hezbollah."

Unable to reach a quorum, the Lebanese Parliament postponed its presidential elections until October 23rd, hoping that the extra month will stimulate dialogue and the emergence of a consensus candidate between the anti-Syrian and pro-Syrian blocs. This postponement is on the heels of a recent assassination of an anti-Syrian MP.

Monday's Los Angeles Times commented on the popularity of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Middle East, especially in Egypt. "Ahmadinejad's appeal is especially strong in Egypt, where he is compared to the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose bold, yet doomed vision of pan-Arabism in the 1950s was also aimed at stemming Western influence. In the minds of many Egyptians, Iran's quest to expand its nuclear program despite United Nations sanctions is similar to Nasser's confrontation with the British and French over nationalizing the Suez Canal. What's striking in Ahmadinejad's case, however, is that the leader of a non-Arab Shiite nation has ingratiated himself with the Middle East's predominantly Sunni Arab population...'He's a brave man,' said Tayseer Ibrahim, an employee of the Egyptian Education Ministry, who was hurrying toward the subway the other day. 'He's standing up to the U.S. He could have been intimidated after what happened to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but he's not. The Iranian people must love him a lot. Hopefully, our Arab leaders will see that you can defy the West and nothing will happen to you.'"

An incredibly biased account regarding press freedom in Egypt is running in the English, state-owned Al-Ahram weekly.

Under new leadership, France is lacing its combat boots to prepare for conflict with Iran.

And, since U.S. partisanship and politics don't actually end at the water's edge, Senator Clinton is leading Senator Obama by 23 points in the most recent New Hampshire poll. Both have different visions for the Middle East, foreign policy in general, and the War in Iraq, and will also influence the Republican-Democratic debate over the war in both the Senate and the presidential elections.

Back...With Half-Hearted Vengeance

2007-09-25T15:00:00.000-05:00

Remember the one-hit-wonder Dirty Vegas, who released the song "Days Go By," which is more memorable for its music video of a sole break dancer on the side of a sleepy metropolis? Well, though I don't have a tangible lost love that I can bring back by busting out The Robot (dance move) in a taupe suit, I'll try to resuscitate my past weekend (a one-night stand sort of love) by flashing some undeveloped narrative and dangling a few photos in front of your eager eyes.

The excitement began on Thursday night. Freshly infuriated courtesy of my "Political Economy of Development" professor, a Marx-admiring, World Bank-despising (not neo-) Keynsian economist whose arguments are darkly tinged by social justice (not a bad thing necessarily) and historical revisionism rather than facts and statistics (if you cite statistics that are contrary to her argument, the statistics are wrong), I broke my fast for the last night of the first week of Ramadan (AKA the end of my fasting) at 6 PM. With most of my friends vacationing outside of Cairo, I ran errands at my neighborhood AlphaMart (which stocks everything from lawn mowers--wait, who has grass in Cairo?--to kitchen knives). But, at 12:30 AM, rather than settling onto my cot of sorts for a night of restful sleep, I boarded a bus...to Asia.

Yes, my 15 minute excursion to the world's largest continent (see earlier post about Port Said) sparked a persisting yearning for return. However, this time I trekked across the entire Sinai to the town of Dahab, which sits on the coast of the East Sinai on the Gulf of Aquba. Scheduled to be a 9.5 hour bus ride, I took a heavy dose of NyQuil for the sore throat I had conveniently developed earlier that day and tucked myself into my window seat. The next thing I knew, it was almost 9 AM. It was stifling on the bus (we were in a desert after all), and we were stationary. Peering out the window (that is, after peeling off my eye mask and removing my earplugs--I'm sure the majority of the conversation on the bus consisted of harmless jokes regarding the tall white American who didn't quite fit in a bus seat and drooled while he slept WHILE sporting a posh eye mask encased in a navy blue cloth patterned with twinkling stars), I discerned that we weren't moving. And I noticed that I was the only one on the bus. Apparently our bus had broken down approximately 45 minutes before my rousing, and my seatmate didn't feel like informing me that the driver was evacuating the bus.

Ashamedly exiting the bus, duly noting the smoke emanating from its engine, I migrated to the shadeless area where the rest of my bus-mates had camped, and a German student who spoke both impeccable Arabic (I think) and English informed me that we had broken down, etc., graciously omitting any sort of brutish joke about my drug-induced sleep. After mentioning that Dahab was still 1oo+ kilometers away, I grew anxious; would I spend my weekend camping on a seemingly abandoned desert highway while the East Sinai Bus Company sent a replacement bus only after navigating the red tape and Ramadan-warped schedules of the drivers? However, just as some things fall apart, some things are mysteriously glued back together. In the midst of my apprehension, a Dahab-bound bus roared by, pulled off to the side of the road, and absorbed every stranded passenger. And I promptly fell asleep for the remaining time.

Getting off the bus in Dahab, I caught a cab to Bishbishi, the hotel where three other AUC-ians were staying. Cabs in Egypt illustrate the particular character of certain cities: Cairo's cabs are particulate-puffing black and white Peugots from the 1960s that still have meters from a bygone era (cabs in Egypt no longer run on meters; one just shouts their destination at empty cabs, hops in the front seat, and then pays the driver whatever one deem to be the appropriate fare upon exiting the cab), while Port Said's cabs are new blue-and-white Hyundai Accents; Dahab's cabs feature colorful murals painted on the side of bright green pickup trucks which lazily rumble up and down the one road strip of the town.

From there, we brunched. The intriguing thing about Dahab's restaurants are the lack of variety--they all serve the exact same thing in the exact same environment. All serve five breakfasts platters. All serve fresh seafood. All serve bad curry. All are on the beach. All lack chairs, preferring pillows and the occasional couch. All the prices are roughly the same...you get the point. However, none of the food is bad, and you can't really complain about the setting; have a look for yourself.

You can make out Saudi Arabia faintly in the background.

From the restaurant (this particular one was called the Funny Mummy), the four of us (names = Becca, Halley, & Alfred) headed to the Blue Hole, a diving/snorkeling legend across the world--apparently it's second only to the Great Barrier Reef for the viewing of aquatic life due to its distance from civilization and the salinity of the water. A conventional road to the Hole, however, is nonexistent; one must travel either by camel or by ATV. We chose the latter because it's cheaper, and piled into a 1960s-esque Jeep with a Louis Vuitton canvas roof and commenced on the treacherous cross-desert, half-hour expedition, a segment of which I captured on YouTube per Alfred's request.

Unfortunately, my digital camera doesn't have an underwater setting, so you have to take my word (or Google Image's) for the spectacular colors of both the coral and the fish, of which there were hundreds of varieties. You can sort of see the reef in this photo of the surrounding area too.

Here we are with our trusty ATV in one of our many "family portraits" of the week.

After our mouths could not tolerate any further exposure to the supersaturated saline solution that is the Red Sea, we persuaded the Jeep driver to take us to the beach for the sunset. Or at least close to one. Here are some more pictures!

Alfred's took this picture. He clearly used to be on Maxim's payroll.

After exhausting ourselves by looking at the sunset, we walked up and down the shore of the Gulf, scrupulously examining the identical menus of the thirty-some identical restaurants. Each restaurant employs a tout, usually their best Italian/Russian/English/Greek/Japanese speaker (that's sort of the order in which the tourists come according to Zissou, a shopkeeper I met the following day), who drastically lowers the prices to entice backpackers, divers, and gullible AUC students into their particular establishment. We ended up at "Chill Time" or something like that (because they gave us free appetizers, salads, and dessert), where we promptly decided to eat the very creatures at which we had spent the afternoon gazing. Our three-tiered platter was replete with white snapper (is that similar to red snapper?) and calamari and overflowing with grilled vegetables. Have a look:

The night digressed into visiting the bars, which had the cheapest Stella I've seen in Egypt (6 LE for a pint, or about $1).

The next day (until 11 PM) consisted of eating, beaching, eating, shopping, eating, reading, eating, drinking coffee, eating, drinking beer, and eating. Rather than nonsensically expounding on my eating habits, I'll just post some more pictures.

Rema was a young Bedouin girl with great English who successfully sold us woven bracelets. But only after she talked with us during breakfast for 20 minutes.

The shore.

Lounging at the restaurant we camped at for approximately nine hours (that's not an exaggeration).

However, at 11 PM, we boarded a conversion van bound for St. Catherine's, a village in the middle of the Sinai. Our purpose: to ascend Mount Sinai (of Moses & Ten Commandments fame) in the middle of the night to reach its 2285-meter summit for sunrise. Enlisting a Bedouin guide, we began our trek at about 1:30 AM. By 2:00 AM, the batteries in my flashlight (purchased the day prior at AlphaMart) had expired. Left with only one flashlight, we were forced to take the path slowly, to carefully scour the upcoming square feet of ground before each step (okay, I'll turn it down a notch). By 4 AM, we were finishing the last of the 738 steps that complete the ascent, where Alfred and I promptly celebrated by purchasing Starbucks Coffee.

So we didn't actually have Starbucks (I've yet to see one here in Egypt, though apparently CityStars, the largest mall in the world, has one), but we did have hibiscus tea, since it was about 45 F at the summit.

The ascent was entirely worth the little trouble it presented; the sunrise was a religious experience of sorts.

The reading of the Ten Commandments at sunrise.

The religious experience at the top was completed by a group of South Asian pilgrims who sang for the entirety of their camel-bound ascent and proceeded to cry and wail as the sun illuminated the mountain. Yes, it was captured on YouTube.

The descent from the mountain was much brisker; it was via the Stairs of Repentance, a sole monk's life project of etching almost 4000 stairs into the side of the mountain, and it was during daylight. Which means two things: jellied legs by the time we were at the base of the mountain and MORE PICTURES.

The quintessential family picture.

The Coptic monastery of St. Catherine's at the base of Mt. Sinai.

Alfred snagged this picture of a teenage Bedouin guide.

Alfred posing with our guide, who has climbed Mt. Sinai for about 362 days a year for the past thirty years. While smoking three packs of cigarettes per day.

Becca & I ate Speed for breakfast to catch our third wind after a night without sleep (and instead a hike up a 7000-some foot mountain in the middle of a desert).
Even more pictures from the adventure are available here.

And, apart from a luxurious six-hour ride back to Cairo in a conversion van (during which all of us slept) that included a trip under the Suez Canal, was the weekend, summarized mostly in pictures since I am exhausted after two long days of classes (and playing catch-up from skipping a day of class on Sunday).

But what, oh faithful reader(s), do you have to look forward to in the next few days? Well, I have a couple "When in Egypt..." posts in the works, but, more importantly, I've taken an internship with a super-NGO here in Cairo. What NGO? What does it do? What is my tenor-voiced, well-powdered, Meryl Streep's character in The Devil Wears Prada-esque boss like? I'll post tomorrow, inshallah.

Why I Haven't Written

2007-09-18T05:14:00.001-05:00

So, three days is apparently a long time to be silent in the so-called "blogosphere." Big Brother detected a large drop in readership. The only explanation I have to offer is this: I'm hungry. And when I'm not hungry, I'm eating.

In solidarity with the majority of Egypt, I made the decision to observe the first week of Ramadan and fast (albeit a slightly adjusted fast which allows coffee and cough drops) while the sun is shining. FYI: Strict observant Muslims will not brush their teeth during daylight hours to prevent the accidental swallowing of toothpaste. So I'm basically a heathen.

Hunger is an all-consuming sense; not only do I have the attention span of a Ritalin-dependent child who is bored even by a violent episode of the Power Rangers, but all feelings of compassion, happiness, and anger are consumed (it's a pun!) by my ravenousness, which is apparently apathetic. It would probably be better if I awoke at 4 AM to eat breakfast (or, rather, begin-fast), but I have yet to wake up to the ringing of the alarm of my roommate, who has devoutly pledged to fast the entire month and has thus taken the precaution of eating more than once a day.

Ah, but those thirty minutes of gorging are almost indescribable. The food continues to slide onto my plate, almost like its propelled by some invisible conveyor belt, and soon I will have consumed half a roasted chicken (my vegetarian past screams from its recently-dug grave--but I anticipate resurrecting its empty shell upon my return to the United States), a plate of rice, a pint of tahini and baba ganoush, 43 olives, a handful of dried dates and figs, five or six pieces of pita bread, and, of course, copious amounts of apricot pudding and a baklava-like shredded wheat dessert coated in honey.

Though I haven't given it justice, the experience is almost spiritual. Especially because it is in tandem with 100s of others, many of them more experienced at breaking fast as indicated by their use of extra large silverware to maximize the energy spent lifting the spoon to one's mouth. The prelude to this glut of nourishment is pseudo-religious as well (for me; I'm sure it's actually religious to many); while grumpily look at our watches, my dorm floor collaboratively fantasizes about the impending feast and listens to chanted hymns emanate from Mecca (though through the medium of satellite television). The official breaking of the fast is signified by none else than the firing of a cannon, though to me it sounds more like the song of the Sirens'.

Writing about this is leaving me uncomfortably hungry. Only five hours and 17 minutes until sunset, or rather, joy. So I'll just show you some pictures from a previous jaunt to Islamic Cairo for iftar.

Bab Zuwayla, (باب زوالا, or something like that), a gate built in 1087.

Ascending the gate.

View from the top, looking north.

The sun is setting. Surprisingly, the photos don't capture my excitement.

Don't go all Edward Said on me--it's just an observation

2007-09-15T03:27:00.000-05:00

That's right: It's round three for the eagerly-awaited When in Egypt...

Last night, I paid a ridiculous sum of 100 LE to break my fast (which wasn't too bad, seeing that I awoke at 1 PM, leaving me a paltry five hours until sundown) with other AUC students...at the Nile Country Club in Maadi, a southern suburb of Cairo. I wasn't too interested in all of the pomp and pampering after driving through multiple slums to reach our coveted destination, and became increasingly frustrated with the all-discernible levels of Egyptian inequality. But that's an entire separate blog post--one I've been mulling over for a while now.

As we poured into the over-air-conditioned dining room of the club with a mere ten minutes of daylight left, the organizer of the event was quite adamant that we line up by table at the buffet line (yes, 100 LE for a crappy buffet). He seemed visibly surprised by our unprotested agreement--how else would one get food from the buffet line?

And then I realized that Egyptians don't do lines. American study-abroad students at AUC line up at the on-campus cafeteria, only to have Egyptian students perpetually cut in. The former look to the cashier for some sort of reprimand, but all they receive is a courtesy smile from the nonplussed authority figure.

The situation at Felfelas, an extremely popular Egyptian fast food joint, is more evident of the common Egyptian practice: a surging horde. At the restaurant, a patron purchases his desired sandwich from one counter and carries his receipt to the appropriate window at the back of the standing-room-only eating area. At one of these two windows, one battles with the twenty-some others by shoving your hand bearing the receipt to the front of the squalid mass of misbehaving (by American standards only) and waving it around, trying to somehow make it look more attractive than everyone else's receipt. Other "moves" include elbow jabs, glares, and the occasional bargaining phrase (the last one isn't really an option for me yet). Everyone eventually receives his own food; some may have waited 20 minutes for it in the brouhaha, while a lucky winner received his sandwich in 20 seconds.

All across Egyptian society, there are anarchic masses where Americans would mindlessly queue: at the urinals in soccer games (that's a quite interesting experience), waiting to board a bus, and at security checkpoints, just to name a few instances. My d'Tocqueville-esque notion for this difference seems a bit jingoistic and cliched, but I'll offer it regardless. Fundamental to American political culture is the idea of achievable equality. Though the United States possesses vast inequalities, they are often explained away with statistics or anecdotes of upward mobility. Bribery is a less acceptable occurrence than in Egypt, so the American rich are more equal to the poor before the law. The United States also has a less evident and less entrenched class system, and fairness is a value often preached from the pulpit, the lectern, and the government, as toothless as the remarks may be. These differences may contribute to the lack of lines (or rather the proliferation of them in the USA). Lines form in "equal societies" because there is no other basis for the offering of services besides the time that one arrived. In Egypt, the service you receive is entirely dependent on your religion, income, party affiliation, nationality, graft, parents, and size/elbowing capacity. Without this basis of equality before authority (whether that's a cashier or ticket-taker), there is no need for a line.

Cash Money

2007-09-14T17:21:00.000-05:00

Though I'm sure you're salivating over the thought of reading a play-by-play recollection of the last 72 hours, the thought of writing it just isn't too appealing. So, vignettes it is.

With a long day of classes under our belt and Ramadan on the horizon (quite literally, as it began at sundown on Wednesday night), my roommate Dave & I found ourselves in El Horea ("Freedom"), the psuedo-open-air 'ahwa/cantina near the AUC campus, slowly sipping Stella while either gazing out at the gridlock of Falaki Square or surreptitiously observing the chess abilities of the older men, generally dressed in dirt-ridden galabiyyas, which I can only kindle to a male nightgown lacking the usual flower pattern. The 8 LE Stella is bitter, the only sensation which really stands out from something that otherwise screams Busch Light (it's especially terrible when you realize that it was the Egyptians who invented beer). Tables are haphazardly scattered about the large open room, they're flimsy and cracked from years of use by plotting revolutionaries, aspiring writers, and Americans looking for the cheapest drinks in Cairo. Every third floor tile or so is absent, creating an interesting fractal pattern that interacts with the hundreds of bottle caps and asbestos fragments cast across the room. Despite seeming quiet, it's impossible to whisper because of the din: sound waves from car horns and squealing brakes easily enter the building from all directions (as it lacks both windows and doors) and bounce around the room. Everyone competes with the sounds of the city, and soon you have to virtually shout across the small, circular table (it's more of an ashtray holder than anything else) at your friend. Scratch the conniving revolutionaries--its romantic, but certainly not pragmatic.

Though both Dave and I have been here one time before, this time there's an air of urgency; the three servers bus the the tables a bit more frantically despite the heat, the clientele shovel in the complimentary cold fava beans a bit more quickly than usual. I imagine that the chess games in the corner of the room mirrored this attitude, with the more ornery than usual players making more risky moves. The reasoning for this contrast--almost a sea change from Cairo's endearing attitude of "bukra" (tomorrow)--is implicit: Ramadan is nipping at everyone's heels. At sundown, a 75-year-old waiter of sorts for El-Horea dramatically put a lock on the establishment's store of Stella, unable to serve any alcohol until October 13th. The cantina quickly clears out, leaving only the devout who have been drinking shai all along.

We headed to a restaurant for what everyone agreed to be the worst meal we've had in Cairo. The only highlight was that Dave got to live the (secret) dream of almost all New Yorkers: eating (and therefore proving yourself superior to) a pigeon.

Look at that smile. Even after only three months in New York City, Dave had some rage for these particular birds. I'd say it would only take one nice shirt being splattered with falling bird feces to detest the creatures enough to consume them.

Being in Cairo during Ramadan is certainly a fortuitous experience. Though I've been told that tempers are high (yesterday a few fights broke out near our dorms, which I had previously never witnessed) during the first two or three-day abstentions from nicotine, caffeine, calories, or water (especially when it's still technically summer), observing what I can only call the piety of almost every Muslim. To be a devout Muslim already requires discipline and commitment: they must awake at dawn every morning (albeit temporarily) as well as four other times during the day, none of which are particularly convenient, and they are also much more charitable than the Christians I have observed with their money (though I may be mistaken, the zakat religiously requires Muslims to annually give 2.5% of their net wealth as alms).

Yet (and these are exclusively my observations) unlike Lent among Christians and Passover among the Jewish, almost all Muslims (even the exclusively "cultural Muslims") judiciously follow the abstention from putting things in one's mouth, wearing provocative clothing, etc. As stated above, all non-Western establishments cease the sale of alcohol until the passing of the religious month. Retail stores and offices restructure their hours to accommodate both the needs of their customers and their staff, especially with respect to iftar (the breaking of the fast), which is usually done with the entire family. The United States is less accommodating to religious practices such as these; I remember many a high school activity falling on both Jewish and Muslim holy events, and I can't imagine malls closing early during Lent. Granted, the United States possesses a significantly higher level of religious diversity, but this difference alone does not even begin to fully account for the chasm between its people's religious practices and those of the Muslim world. Americans--or is it particularly Christians--just seem less committed to this temporary asceticism.

Three reflections from a foreigner on Ramadan:
-Just because you fast during the day doesn't make you less of a glutton. As I've stated before, repression incites irrational behavior. Many Muslims (and non-Muslims who also observe the fast) top off the iftar meal by running (actually walking, since no one wants to exert any excess energy during Ramadan) to the store and eating something like a kilogram of chocolate. And then following that with a McArabian at their neighborhood's friendly McDonalds. In between, some will smoke an entire pack of cigarettes. I think a really interesting study for an aspiring cultural anthropologist would be to track caloric consumption throughout the year and see how disparate the results are from Ramadan. I would wager that total caloric consumption may actually surge during the month known for fasting.

-Supermarkets aren't being particularly "Muslim" during Ramadan. The Koran specifically bans usury, but an insidious combination of Westernizing supermarkets and "market forces" has caused a surge in the prices of nuts and dried fruits, the two foods used to break the daily fast. Since I've arrived, the price of dates has more than doubled (Muslims eat these first, and must consume an even number), while cashews and figs have increased by 50% (a fellow AUC-er confirms this). Supermarkets apparently are price-setters in the Cairene market, for street vendors' and smaller neighborhood stores' prices parallel the former's increases, though with a three-day lag. There's no fruit or nut shortage, and Cairo typifies the economics "problem of perfect information," so I'm suspecting that market forces actually has little to do with these price increases. Unfortunately, these items (or at least dates) are necessary for all Muslims, regardless of social class (more on that later) to purchase.

-Vanilla Sky should have been filmed in Cairo during Ramadan. I can't seem to locate the article, but I remember reading an article a few years ago which detailed the trouble and expense Artisan Entertainment incurred while producing the two-star Vanilla Sky. For it's epic opening scene, New York's Times Square had to be completely cleared of auto and pedestrian traffic for a half hour so Tom Cruise could be filmed speeding his car throughout its vast emptiness. Though it would create a decidedly different mood for the flick, the studio could have significantly cut these expenses had it filmed Sky in Cairo, known for its terrible traffic--except during itfar. On the holiday's first breaking of the fast, I wandered through the empty avenues at dusk, alone except for the plastic bags effortlessly drift across the pavement and the ubiquitous feral cats, and counted a total of four cars during my half-mile walk through two of Cairo's largest city squares. I could neither prevent myself from singing U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" nor help feeling like Tom. Except I have better hair than both him and Bono.

However, Cairo re-awakes at about 8:30 PM, especially when there's a football game. ESPECIALLY when El-Ahly, which is Egypt's version of the New York Yankees or Manchester United (they're everyone's favorite team by default) is playing. So ten of us crowded into two cabs to catch their 9:30 PM match against the Arab Contractors at the 80,000-capacity Cairo International Stadium. We were told the game would be full--it was El-Ahly, after all. So we were obviously quite confused when we arrived to find an almost-completely empty stadium.

After the match concluded as a draw, we realized that it was only a short four hours until dawn. What was the point of sleeping, we thought, if we were just going to awake shortly (no one really has a choice, as the calls to prayer seem doubly loud during Ramadan) to gorge (did I mention that I'm trying to fast-as-long-as-I-don't-have-to-give-up-coffee?)? So we returned to my friend Alfred's apartment, where we wasted the night away smoking Cuban cigars (this is not a habit), watching an Arabic-dubbed JFK and Mean Machine, overreacting to my first sighting of a rodent (see post below), and consuming copious amounts of halawa (sweet and crumbly sesame paste), omelets, and bagels. And soon, it was 5 AM, though in our reclined positions, we were hardly able to see over our swollen stomachs to see dawn break.

But our walk home did allow for the capturing of the sunrise over Cairo, which was almost worth staying up the entire night. Now I understand why Muslims try to sleep their Ramadan away.

Sunrise over Cairo.

Being lulled to sleep by the Nile waters, intensified by our exhaustion.

So I just re-read what I've quickly wrote above, and realized the fairly vast changes in my writing as I've become increasingly cognizant of last night's lack of sleep. As the great Nate Stephens would say, "curiouser and curiouser." And as the less famous Bill Shakespeare quipped, "brevity is the soul of wit." So, the next post will contain less, but hopefully more engaging, prose. Something to look forward to I suppose.

How a City of 20 Million Avoided a Rat Problem

2007-09-11T11:48:00.000-05:00

UPDATE 9/14: At approximately 3:30 AM on September 14th, I sighted a rat inside a friend's apartment. Approximately six inches long from nose to tail, it demonstrated its shape-shifting and scaling abilities as it scurried across the floor, up a wire, and into a hole approximately half the size of the creature's torso.

And now, may I present the much-anticipated second edition of When In Egypt...

The neighborhood of Georgetown in Washington, DC may conjure varying images and cliched adjectives in the minds of individuals cognizant of the location's existence, including white, quaint, privileged, clean, and wealthy and/or cobblestone streets lined with towering sumacs, overflowing baskets of lilacs, and copies of the Washington Post (neatly bagged) laying lackadaisically on the front walk of a five million dollar row house. Given this entrenched imagery of what is perceived by many to be Washington's finest neighborhood, most people are surprised when I tell them that it has a mammoth rodent problem. Not only did I see large numbers of rats. I saw large rats, easily mistaken for raccoons. U.S. Senators and college students alike have conceded to coexistence with the pests, having been unable to eradicate them for the past 200 years. So, given the prodigious amounts of trash, food, and fecal matter which line Cairo's streets, not to mention the fact that the city has something like 40 times DC's population in a smaller area, I was expecting to see rodents that could be misjudged for being GMOs.

I haven't seen a single rodent here.

Instead, there's another pest, a trophic level above the common rat, which lines the street of Cairo, consuming both the hypothetical rodent population (Cairo must have one) along with the rest of the city's refuse. Meet Mr. Mange.

Yes, Cairo has a cat problem. Walking down the block of just about any city street, I usually see a pack of cats digging through a trash can, a couple male cats (presumably) each mounting a partner they probably just met earlier that morning, and another triad engaged in a turf war, hissing and bearing claws at one another. More introverted felines wander across the city, a few with a bit of foam building up in the dam around their dirt-ridden lips. These cats wouldn't make it through the auditions for Fancy Feast commercials either. Their hair is knotted and mangy, their viciousness from their abiding forage for food replacing any semblance of well-mannered affection. However, the cats are incredibly clever, and hence have merited the creation of cat-proof garbage cans, similar to the raccoon-proof variety in the states or rabbit-proof devices for gardens.

Though they are a bit more approachable and certainly a bit less off-putting than rodents, I can't say Egypt's problem is any better. In addition to the above, one occasionally steps over a feline carcass on the street, most likely a victim of a Cairene Peugot taxi or, worse, starvation.

And that's that. Stay tuned for the next edition of WHEN IN EGYPT, hurtling towards the blogosphere whenever my life gets boring enough that I don't have anything constructive to write about.

Oh boy, do I love Analytics

2007-09-10T02:10:00.001-05:00

Sorry, but this post isn't really about Egypt. It's about my blog. Parlor Tricks is published on the Blogger platform, which was acquired by the Google empire sometime ago (not a bad thing, for Google's an oh so benevolent empire--check out the Gphone). The pictures on the blog are hosted on Picasa, Google's photo service. And though you couldn't tell (unless you intently gaze at the status bar at the bottom of your browser), Google Analytics has been acquiring data about you, the visitor (and probably me, since I visit my blog every so often as well). Ready for some facts?

Parlor Tricks has 80 absolute unique visitors (all of them faithful, I'm sure). These visitors spend an average of five minutes and 58 seconds on each visit to the blog. Now here's where it gets a bit creepy. The most visitors are from the United States, followed by Egypt. In addition, there have been people viewing the page from Sweden, Ecuador, Argentina, Taiwan, Jordan, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Czech Republic. Within the United States, the majority of the visits come from Iowa (Thanks Mom & Dad! Also, there are hits from the University of Iowa, Grinnell College, UNI, and Marshalltown), then Pennsylvania (mainly Philadelphia but also in Pittsburgh), then Northfield, followed by the DC area, Milwaukee, New York City, the Bay Area, Maryland, Texas, South Dakota, and Colorado. Fortunately, Google hasn't found a way to pinpoint your identity, so you can remain (somewhat) anonymous.

Also, almost half of this blog's visitors enter the website directly, while 16% click on it through my Facebook profile and another 15% find it by looking through the blogosphere (blog-verse?). The majority of the visitors use Firefox, while a healthy cohort uses Internet Explorer.

Anyone a little creeped out yet?

Suez Sabbatical

2007-09-09T12:34:00.001-05:00

For the second weekend in a row, I found myself, once again on an early Friday morning, on a crowded tour bus barreling towards a large body of water. Yet this is about the only similarity to my journey the week prior, to Ein Sukhna (read earlier post). Instead, I was bound for Port Said, which sits about 220 KM from Cairo (see map), and is significant almost exclusively for its strategic location: at the mouth of the Suez Canal, where one of man's most tremendous feats meets the Mediterranean.

A sleepy beach town of 540,000 marked by salty ocean winds, seafood restaurants, and construction, our 34 hours in the small town (compared to Cairo) consisted mainly of sitting on the beach or walking up and down the one main street in town. The repetition, the ease, and the obvious lack of traffic actually made the jaunt a vacation. But rather than just read a long account where I relentless pursue the 7th-grade mantra of "showing, not telling" in my writing, I'll incorporate some pictures and save both you and me the trouble/pain. But I will probably have to spice it up with some vignettes.

Ahh, the beach. This particularly pristine photo omits the rotting piles of trash and sea water-ridden debris that has washed up onto shore that accumulates on the beach, as well as the relatively large posse we had surrounding us for the first half-hour at the beach. Inconspicuousness was futile as soon as I began to lather up in suntan lotion; a seemingly gigantic white kid rubbing in cream all over his shoulders earned me the attention of three Egyptian 15-year-olds, who stood at less than arm's length to determine what precisely foreign thing I was doing to my body. And they stayed.

Though I was flattered to garner the attention of the locals, I was a footnote to Halley. Especially since she wasn't wearing my shorts or that t-shirt when she walked onto the beach. When we went swimming (in these clothes), they followed us, I think hoping that my ever-so-loose plaid shorts would slip off in the strong ocean tide. They didn't.

Everything was for sale on the beach. Want to buy a kitchen knife? Head to the Port Said beach. Backpack? They got 'em. And then there's the food: sweet potato fries, roasted corn, and the ice cream man.

Rather than playing delightfully tacky music to alert the world of his presence, the ice cream man blew a kazoo which sounded like what I can only kindle to a bird's final death knell. And it probably carried better than any sort of music, for I heard it the entire 2.5 hours that we sat on the beach.

Oh, what a cute kid! A big-boned child who would sometimes inadvertently get stuck inside his inner tube, he laid like this in the waves for the entirety of our stay at the beach, though he had a peculiar dance that he did every so often that only the wonders of YouTube could document (sorry for the quality).

After spending the night at our overpriced hotel (As Halley wasn't married to either Dave or I, she had to get a separate room. We convinced the clerk to give us the Egyptian residents' price, as we are residents, even though we speak about 20 words of Arabic between the three of us. It was a rather unremarkable hotel, but for 220 LE a night for two rooms, it shouldn't have been.), Dave & I ascended one floor to the tenth floor of our Panorama Hotel and took in the view for which I'm guessing the hotel was named.

It's actually illegal to take pictures of the Suez Canal, so if I don't update for awhile, assume my prison cell doesn't receive a Wi-Fi connection.

Though a little lost, Dave & I eventually stumbled upon the Port Said Military Museum, which is the archetype of Egyptian historical revisionism. Did you know Egypt never "actually" lost a war? Did you know the brutal assassinations of British intelligence officers are actually national heros? Ever wanted to see a 25 x 10 foot portrait of Anwar Sadat or a cache of Israeli landmines, radios, and helmets? Well, you'll have to go to the museum, because I was too cheap to pay for the 2 LE photo permit.

A cool mosque behind the museum.

There are a lot of American franchises in Egypt--in fact, I just ate Pizza Hut since it was free (guess what--stuffed crust just hit Egypt, and I'm on a nostalgia high), and we could have ordered from Papa John's, Little Caesars, or Domino's. However, sometimes these chains get it just a little bit...wrong.

ASIA! I'm now 4/7 with the continents. Technically, after crossing the Suez Canal into the Sinai Peninsula, one's in Asia. Our mighty transcontinental vessel was the ferry between Port Said and Port Fouad, which glamorously smelled of oil fumes and took a whopping five minutes to complete the monumental journey. The 15 minutes I spent on the continent were great.

Look how happy they are to be in Asia. Asian Egypt is so different from African Egypt. Dave had been to Asia before, so he was our guide.

After solemnly returning to the African continent, we hailed a cab and asked to be taken to Ashtoum El-Gamil National Park. My guide recommended it, promising we would see flamingoes and other wild birds in their natural habitat. The driver seemed to know exactly where he was going as he rushed out of town. After tediously going through a security checkpoint, we soon arrived on a trash-filled beach (but that's ordinary), and the driver declared that we were "here." Said driver spoke one word of English ("no"), and the majority of our Arabic is reserved exclusively for the grocery store. The only action we could think of to signify the location we wanted to be was to flap our arms and caw, sort of like we were doing the chicken dance constrained in the blue and white Hyundai Accent. It was about this time that another occupant of the beach who just so happened to speak some English hobbled over to our car, probably perplexed at what we were doing in the car. Anyway, after a very frustrating conversation that occurred entirely within the sizzling and cramped confines of the cab, and featured quote-worthy words of wisdom such as 1) "You don't come to Port Said to go to a park. Go to Cairo if you want a park. You go to the beach in Port Said," (I know full well that there is only one park worthy of the title in Cairo), 2) "Do you have relatives in Manzala? Are you visiting them? People don't go to Manzala," (this occurred after we read that Lake Manzala might be where the birds are) and 3) "This is a beach. It's nice. Stay," we decided to stay at the burkini- (yes, waterproof burkas) and trash-filled beach, along with our very confused cab driver, Abdul.

After renting him a chase lounge made out of camel hair and splintered driftwood, Abdul repaid us a favor by searching us out some Lipton tea and taking me on an intimate, long walk on the beach. No joke. Though there is an immense amount of homophobia in Arab society, men hold hands when they walk here, and do the whole kiss-on-both-cheeks-but-not-really thing when they greet and bid adieu to acquaintances. So, with his hand guiding my arm, Abdul and I walked down the beach in silence, for we had very much exhausted my embarrassingly limited Arabic skills. He led me onto the wavebreakers, constructed from ship anchors, and I followed, terrified I'd slip and end up with either tetanus-induced lockjaw or a concussion. From the edge of the water, I got a spectacular view of the oil refineries which surrounded us on the shore, in addition to the several oil platforms sitting a couple of miles off the Mediterranean coast.

I'm told that the beach's bathroom is worth noting, but fortunately I didn't have the opportunity to utilize it. So, in his Parlor Tricks debut, my roommate Dave offers his recollections (he's a writing major, so get psyched): "On the hard, dirty sand of the trash-strewn beach, a few haphazard stone structures stand against the heat and wind of the Egyptian Mediterranean. One of the perilously strewn together structures looks as if it may have been the inadvertent target of an October War Israeli jet fighter. With its crumbling half-remaining walls and thatched drift wood ceiling, the pile receives just enough sun light to serve as an outhouse. The door--or rather wood plank serving as a door--creates the illusion of privacy without actually providing any. And the elevated foot bricks carefully placed on either side of the shit-clogged "drain" were about the only part of the floor not covered in piss. In any case, it was better than some, and fairly free of nauseating odor, given it was pretty much like being outside."

As we re-entered Port Said after our three hour vacation from vacation, we told Abdul that we'd like to pick up some take-away sandwiches for our bus ride (thankfully, sandwich is the same in Arabic as it is in English). So, fittingly, he took us to an expensive (or at least we thought), sit-down fish restaurant for our fourth seafood meal in a row (somehow I kept on ordering the same thing at different restaurants--white rice and a seafood curry--even though this same dish's description was entirely different on each restaurant's menu). As the restaurant lacked English menus (nothing that new), we were content with the tried-and-true point method. But rather than endure our potential chagrin, the restauraunt's manager escorted the three of us back to the kitchen, where we got the American treatment: we got to physically pick the fish we wanted. Ironically, seeing that we didn't know the Arabic translations for any of the fish, we just pointed at the two most scrumptious looking fish. And then asked to try every single one of the varied salads that were sitting out in the same kitchen.

After rushing to the bus station, incredibly sated, we arrived to find out that the next Cairo-bound bus would be leaving at 8 PM, which was a long two hours and 45 minutes from the time that we purchased our dirt-cheap tickets back to civilization. Exasperated, we laid down on the grass and were promptly confronted and yelled at by a fierce-looking Egyptian police officer who averted his mean gaze from our direction only once, when he was distracted by a pack of wild goats running through the bus station's parking lot. Apparently you can't sleep in the bus station, and reclining is a perfect recipe for such rule-breaking.

Forced to wander as to escape the stares of the aforementioned zealous police officer, we stumbled upon this semi-permanent, decrepit amusement park, home to not just this ferris wheel but also a non-operational bumper cars facility, a ball pit, disassembled tea cups, and a house of mirrors. And you thought they didn't have fun in Egypt!

On the bus to Cairo, we watched a film which I feel may have been the equivalent of Muslim pornography. I clearly didn't understand anything in the film, but even I could detect the sexual tension in the film (the movie consisted of a man dating several women at once, most of whom were attractive and all of whom were scarf-less). There was touching, and there were scenes that, to say it politely, didn't need direction from an entire costume direction firm but rather just a couple of interns (if that's confusing, sometimes the characters were scantly clad). None of it was inappropriate, and it would receive no more than a PG rating in the United States, but I believe this disparity in our two culture's film industries is evident of a much more powerful and vast chasm between Western and Muslim culture.

And the weekend was soon over.

AUC = The America: Unrestrained Club

2007-09-09T08:43:00.000-05:00

I'm perched on the third floor of the AUC library, overlooking one of its three somewhat peaceful quads awkwardly superimposed onto the bustling Cairo street grid. This particular quad, the Greek campus, is home to the Gucci and Versace corners, two of many actual, bonafide institutionalized cliques at the school. They call themselves the Gucci corner, as does the staff/faculty. Even the school newspaper features a weekly update from the Gucci corner.

Even though a thick pane of dust-smeared plate glass separates me from the hundred-odd students in the quad, the library cannot sustain the constant bombardment of shouts and conversation, and the building has succumbed to the din. Consider the campus a high school cafeteria juxtaposed with a country club; every Egyptian student saunters around with either a Faruz (sparkling juice) or a cappuccino in one hand and an [insert designer here] purse or backpack while gossiping with a small, tight pack of peers. These cliques are incredibly insular; in fact, during international student orientation, we were told that attempting to enter the Egyptian students' social circles was a futile effort. As was told to me by a Palestinian, the "nerds" sit in front of the library, the "cool kids" strategically place their base of operations in front of the on-campus Pizza Hut for maximum face time and the maximum display of wealth (through food & beverage purchases). No one goes back to their dorm room (if they even live in one--most students live with their parents for the entirety of college), so they are on campus from 8:00 AM until 6:30 PM Sunday-Thursday, even if they only have 50 minutes of class on any particular day. Since most students don't study [the same Palestinian confirmed this, adding that "Americans are the only ones who use the library" (which was incidentally built by the US Agency for International Development)], their days consist of idle chatter & shouts, and, if they can afford it, the flaunting of excess wealth. According to one of my roommates (who was asked by an Egyptian if her Cartier diamond around her neck was named after a US President), this display of status is an attempt to be American. If this is true, I find it hilariously ironic that I flew halfway across the globe to immerse myself in a culture which is assiduously attempting to become the culture I left.

Arbitrary Changes in Time

2007-09-06T23:16:00.000-05:00

Not a single one of us non-Arabic speakers were informed about a relatively important impending incident: the premature regression to standard time. Yes, Muslim countries (or maybe just Egypt) fall back a whole two months ahead of the United States in anticipation of Ramadan. I'm not sure, however, if we revert to daylight savings time once we celebrate the last itfar (breaking of the fast) around October 13th.

This oversight (some of which on my part) leads me to a formal blog announcement: the status updates about the weather & GI system have run their course like a bad case of a food-borne illness, and will now fade into the ever-so-well-preserved blog history. However, when the good Lord closes a door he opens a window, so may I introduce the "When In Egypt..." feature, which will be regularly filling the void left by these updates. Get excited!

When In Egypt...use a bidet. Yes, most toilets here are equipped with this ancillary apparatus which adds a bit of haute couture to the bowel movement experience. In fact, you may have to exclusively use a bidet--for the first three days in the dorm, there was a severe toilet paper shortage. However, move over francophiles who are coo-ing with Egypt's adoption of this not-so-glamorous component of your beloved culture. The bidets are utilitarian and industrial and often completely rusted through, so that the water sprays everywhere in the toilet bowl rather just focusing itself in a more precise stream towards a general region. Stay tuned for the next entry to hear about Egypt's rodent problem (or rather its absolute lack of one).

Last night I attended two shows at the 19th Annual Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival, and oh boy, they lived up to their festival's name. The first, a monologue performed by a Tunisian drama troupe, was a mixture of modern standard and Tunisian Arabic, or so I'm told, since I don't understand either. So, I could search around on the Internet for a Susan Sontag quote about the power of the stage and the actor, regardless of his or her's semantics, and impress you either with my Googling prowess or my perceived command of quotes from dead American intellectuals, but I would be or a fraud. Or, rather, I couldn't find a quote despite looking for one in a separate browser window. Anyway, I DID understand the words Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Palestine, & Isreal, so I gather it was a rather political 90-minute soliloqy. Even better, the play had an incredible soundtrack, which commenced with Eminem's "Lose Yourself" but also featured Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'," Pink's "Just Like a Pill," and Puff Daddy's "I'll Be Watching You."

The second was a dance interpretation of Homer's Odyssey. Either my ninth-grade literature teacher taught us the wrong book (my education involved Lotus Eaters, a Cyclops, the Sirens, temptation, and a triumphant return) or these three Ukranians had a very, very liberal understanding of the epic. Most of the play involved the two buff Eastern Europeaners getting progressively undressed while chanting and doing a mixture of playfighting and contortionist acrobatics while an unbelievably thin woman quietly sang as she encircled them. Don't worry, I took pictures.

Wednesday and Thursday brought the first two days of classes here at AUC. Rather unremarkable save for the fact that my first development studies class (which only meets once a week) was cancelled. My colloquial Arabic teacher is approximately 80 and, everyday thus far, wears a skirt which serves a double purpose as chest support, for the elastic band in said skirt is hiked up that far around her torso. Apperance aside, she has a command of popular Egyptian history, marked by her ardent romanticism of President Nasser (did you know he invented the term "momma's boy?") as well as an incredible penchant for tangents (not only did she tell our class the best place in Cairo to buy a satellite dish twice, but we also got a lecture on the role of women in the Egyptian military. However, the tangents are often helpful in understanding Egyptian culture, etc.

Well, now that I've spent 30 minutes blogging rather than sleeping since I was unaware of the time change, I'm leaving for Port Said, which is on the coast of the Mediterannean where it meets the Suez Canal. Stories of deviousness, undoubtedly awkward interactions such as arranging a hotel room, and pictures will ensue.

Lost in Cairo (Again)

2007-09-04T11:13:00.000-05:00

State of the GI: Calm before the storm (see below)?

State of the Weather: I wish backsweat was a marketed commodity.

I literally just returned from yet another Cairene adventure. I am pensively sitting in my air-conditioned, tiled, peaceful, hermetically-sealed dorm room and I've cranked up my Beck playlist on my iTunes so I could maximize my reflection and recall abilities. (Un)Fortunately, this exploration lacks pictures; sometimes snapping photos of people's lives extends beyond the inappropriate violation of privacy to almost a mockery of the perceived simpleness and/or difference of their livelihood.

For all intents and purposes, the day began at around 2:30 PM, when Dave (my roommate) and I finished our doctor's check-up for our AUC gym membership. Upon leaving the clinic, we meandered up to Faliki Square, AKA the center of Cairo for cheap food. We stumbled into the juice bar Muhammad Ali, parched and in need of a sucrose rush. Which is precisely what we experienced after downing aseir asab, or for those who don't speak transliterated Arabic, sugarcane juice. The juice itself is a sort of sickly green froth, its base a healthy dose of Cairo tap water. Yet it was worth the risk (and the impending diarrhea); it tasted sort of like a watery milkshake.

From there, we strolled down Talaat Harb, one of the city's main shopping avenues. Cairene fashion is about eight years behind that of the United States, but they make up for this oversight with their interpretation of the English language. One shirt advertised that "University is a time to through consistently" while another said that "Summer isn't endless, so don't be disadvantaged" or something like that.

And then, onto Midan Tahrir, where we gazed at the Mogamma (the ominous Orwellian government building where 50,000 Egyptians enter every day seeking services; in Egypt, it's the official symbol of bureaucratic red tape), the thousands of taxis spewing black smoke into the atmosphere as they carried their passengers through the heart of downtown , and the crowds flocking to KFC, Pizza Hut, & Hardee's. But the cacophony & the paradoxically organized entropy outside paled in comparison to the cafe where we overlooked it. Quickly rebuilt after it was bombed by hashish dealers in 1993, this standby has been serving shai (the typical Egyptian tea which the average man must drink fifteen times a day), 'ahwa (Yemeni/Turkish coffee), sheesha, and probably bathtub gin to disgruntled Mogamma employees since Midan Tahrir was a crowded agglomeration of donkeys and horses. As we drank our shai (which across Egypt is served in glassware, as apparently they've shunned the insulating and hand-protecting properties of ceramic mugs), mobs of men gathered stacks and stacks of 50 LE notes and piled them into a nondescript suitcase. Another man smoked an entire pack of cigarettes in the half hour we were there. Unsurprisingly, the cafe was as chaotic and dirty as the city square it sat on; smog that has collected on the cafe's Arabic menu makes the prices virtually unreadable and has turned the yellow interior to more of the greenish brown characteristic of so many 1960's American elementary schools. Occupants shouted at each other and the burly guy manning the cash register in the back. The tea was about 16 cents.

As we sauntered back to Zamalek where our dorm is located, we took a few wrong turns, walked two-too-many miles, and suddenly found ourselves utterly lost at the entrance to a Cairene slum. With a distant government building on the horizon serving as our only point of orientation, we slowly inhaled (and then proceeded to cough for a few minutes) and entered the slum.

And it was an incredible experience. Children played on decrepit carnival rides which have met their final resting place in the slum. Countless men passed away the day puffing on their hookah with one hand while holding their tea with the other. Donkeys, mopeds, and bicycles whirred (or in the case of the donkey, ambled) through the small dirt alleys, as children waved at us and shouted "welcome" and as the rest of the neighborhood went upon their daily business of hawking various goods, baking bread, butchering meat (which isn't refrigerated here--seems to be a trend), and "cleaning," which consists of dumping water on dirty things and just diluting the dust and dirt particles so they disperse across a larger surface area.

What was amazing was that it wasn't the hotbed of Islamism and anti-Americanism that many books, professors, or family members would have led me to believe. Though I have no doubt that the majority of the slum's occupants were devout Muslims, all of them seemed to have no qualms about an American (or two) intruding on their personal space. In fact, most wanted to talk to us, and not just sell us goods. "What's New York like?" is a common question. Another query is usually directed at one of Dave's three tattoos. Their hospitality is unlike any I've ever experienced. I am sure that some of this is a facade so they can maximize profits (who wouldn't?), but I believe some of it is inherent in the Egyptian culture. After all, the traditional catcall to foreigners is not "HEY, AMERICANS" or a derogation of Bush, but rather "Ahlan bik fe masr," which means "welcome to Egypt."

Apologies for the encroaching romanticism, but I hope I remember how to get "lost" there again. Though I have a platonic crush on all of Cairo, the most passionate human interactions I have observed was here, among the poor and forgotten of the city.

Well, that's enough writing for tomorrow. Here's a picture for the people who thrive on them, though it's from yesterday's journey to Al-Azhar Park.

Yeah, I'm a Tourist

2007-09-02T13:06:00.000-05:00

State of the GI: Like the Army--don't ask, don't tell.

State of the Weather: Hotter & drier than a sauna.
So, I went out and "did" Egypt today. Or rather, the conventional Egypt at least. Awakening at the much-too-early 6:45 AM (six hours after writing the previous blog post, for just a little perspective), we soon found ourselves boarding a bus once again, but this time headed to Giza. The same 1.5 hour security wait was endured. The same complaints were issued on the bus. These same belligerents insisted on sharing their opinion with higher-ups. I was a little astounded, as this was an "optional" trip which all of the bellicose, helicopter children had "optioned" out of because they didn't have time to wait for security when they could be shopping or boozing.

What's that creepin' up behind the suburban residential living? Oh, why hello there, my Great Pyramid of Cheops.

The panoramic, currently my desktop background.

Always the conformist, I did it because everyone else was going it.

Looking off towards the suburb of Giza.

The Sphinx's nose was either removed by a) Turkish soldiers during target practice or b) Napoleon. Sort of like Moses was removed from a well in Cairo (see earlier post).

We were going for Sphinx-like, but I think we ended up more with an uncomfortable Elton John pose.

A police officer, doing his thing.

The pyramid of Titi. I took this picture as I was entering the tomb, which was full of impressive hieroglyphics as well as a 45-ton obsidian or basalt (ok, well, it was black) sarcophagus.

From looking at the map, I think this was the industrial zone of Helwan.

Lazy Sunday afternoon.

Our Uzi-clad, French suit-wearing bodyguards, fraternizing with the cops while a lone camel looms in the distance.

The Step Pyramid, also known as the first pyramid.

Looking off towards the Great Pyramids of Giza from the Step Pyramid.

Looking through a hole in the Step Pyramid proved to be fruitful.

I've added another section of links on the right to other blogs of friends. They're mainly other Carleton students studying abroad, but there's also a blog another AUC-er is keeping of his experiences. Check 'em out.

Studying Abroad...in America

2007-09-01T16:24:00.000-05:00

State of the GI: Solid. Both literally and metaphorically.

State of the Weather: Sunburnt (I realize this isn't the weather). Pleasantly hot. To translate that for Pablo, it was probably about 95 F today with no clouds in Ein Sukhna.

Apparently the movers-and-shakers in the International Students Office was a little worried about the degree of culture shock the 400 international (primarily American) students-to-be would be feeling while planning our orientation, for they decided to have two days of orientation on an American compound 1.5 hours from Cairo. So for Thursday & Friday, we were at the Stella di Mare complex, basking in the sun on the Red Sea, eating buffet food reminiscent of a Morman potluck, and sneaking drinks from the bar; it was like an abbreviated college Spring Break without openly-flowing bottles of alcohol and the indecent exposure.

If you're wondering what it's like to transport 400 Americans across a small part of the Egyptian desert, you're going to love the next paragraph. Whenever we leave the campus on an AUC-affiliated tour/event, we're accompanied by a Secret Service-esque fighting force, armed with semi-automatic or automatic weapons and decked out in silk suits with patterned ties, who protect each bus and follow the group everywhere (it's actually sort of glorifying to have a bodyguard). And in case you think ten plush tour buses barreling across an apparently Islamic terroist-filled desert might be a target, we had a fleet of Egyptian Tourism police and U.S. State Department escorts that surrounded our buses. The non-financial cost of this security? We sat on the bus from 8 AM - 10:30 AM on Saturday waiting for the three security forces to coordinate and give each other clearance.

The beach itself was pretty nice--soft sand, a bounty of wooden umbrellas and chairs, and lots of expensive juice bars. The Red Sea water, however, was about bathtub temperature. But you can't really complain.

The guy on the right is from St. Olaf if the blond hair didn't give it away.

But the trip was throughly un-Egyptian, or at least un-Cairene. The squalor, the trapped feeling the heat fosters, the frustration of traffic and coughing--it was all missing. And that's what I came to Cairo for--not to be sheltered on a quiet compound. In addition, the bus ride back to Cairo consisted mostly of complaints about Cairo--it's people, it's food, and it's character--after only being exposed to the city for a brief week-and-a-half. It might be a long semester.

However, the one benefit of having 400 white kids on a beach for two days and a night is that I got to meet a lot more people, a few of whom fall outside the character of my incessant bellyaching. And once classes begin, I won't really have to worry about the majority of the kids who came to Egypt for its undervalued currency and its beaches.

Perhaps even more shocking, especially on the so-called "grand scheme" of things, is the vast inequality of Egypt. Dinner at our resort was about 110 LE per person (for bad food), and any sort of cocktail (of which many Egyptians were drinking) would set you back 50 LE. Some Egyptians survive on 200 LE a month. Others drop it without second thoughts in about five minutes.

What's also intriguing is the liberalness which comes with wealth. Though there were a few birkinis at the beach (waterproof birkas, which cover a woman's entire body), many Egyptian women were bikinis for the week before they go back to wearing their hijab. There's such a culture of repression here, and the avenues for venting it are both fascinating and disturbing--an American AUC study-abroad-er was sexually harassed by Egyptian men at the resort. They were arrested by the police.

Well, off to the Pyramids tomorrow. G'night.

ReCap

2007-09-01T13:46:00.001-05:00

Apologies for the lack of activity on this blog for the past couple of days--I just got back from Ein Shukna (see above post) and was out of the Blogger-realm.

The past few days in Cairo (prior to going to the Red Sea) were strangely left orientation-less, which meant we only had a 4-7 PM Survival Arabic obligation each day, leaving our mornings, early afternoons, and evenings open for exploration, sleeping, and, apparently, debauchery. Almost everyone would sleep until noon, a side effect of preferring the Cairene night life only the privileged (the extremely socially liberal ones) here enjoy. Rather than recount the varied details of these three days, which would undoubtedly provoke some readers to poke blunt objects in their eyes/stop reading the blog, I'll just recount a few highlights (four), half of which have pictures.

AL-AZHAR:
Al-Azhar mosque was built in 970 at the beginning of Fatamid control of Al-Qahirah. Then the introduction of the Tunisian blend of Shi'ite Islam to Cairenes, now it is one of the most respected Sunni Islamic universities in the world (and arguably the oldest university, Islamic or otherwise), home to Muhammad Abduh (father of Islamic liberalism), Hassan al-Banna (founder of Muslim Brotherhood), and Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (a member of a militant Islamic group who is now serving a life sentence in the federal pen for actions related to the 1993 WTC bombings). More pertinent to this blog post, however, is that it houses one of the tallest minarets in all of Islamic Cairo, which we ascended after bribing the mosque's shoe-keeper 3 LE. And I took pictures.

We went up the one on the far left.

The other culprits. Aisha (L) was born in Cairo and speaks fluent MSA & Egyptian Arabic, but has spent most of her life in North Carolina. Halley (R) is from Wellsley, MA.

The Citadel looms in the distance.

Downtown Cairo, obscured by particulates.

After descending the millennium-old spiral staircase in the pitch dark, the three of us ventured to the Khan El Khalili market, an extending maze of Egyptian souvenirs made in China, perfume shops selling the same company's scents, and a couple of notable cafes serving karkaday, a saccharine hibiscus infusion which is dually used as a purple dye.

LATEX
So, you want to go out in Cairo? Well, if you can afford to be socially liberal, one can go to the Nile Hilton and club 'till dawn at Latex, which is one of the many varied institutions here where something was not just lost in translation, but it also became latently sexual (Friction and Three-Way, a couple clothing shops down the street, are two other ones). It's here where Cairenes can go (but it's almost all Westerners) to actually touch members of the opposite sex. Women enjoy a free cover; men are slapped with a 100 LE door charge and must also accompany a woman to ensure that men don't just walk into the club and ogle all night to vent their repressed desires. I went to see Egypt's top 1% in action at this archetypically American venue and had a fairly mediocre time. I don't like to dance; I'm the awkward tall guy who can gaze across the entire dance floor who clumsily steps on everyone's exposed toes. Nor can I make the best small talk. So, it was a long four hours. But the true travesty is that a lot of my program-mates go to Latex or one of its Western cousins (like the Cairo Hard Rock Cafe, which is a club here) almost every night.

CONCLUSION OF SURVIVAL ARABIC
Haela, my Arabic instructor for the past five days, thought it would be beneficial for us to walk around the streets of Cairo and prove to her our bare knowledge of Arabic vocabulary and basic sentence structure while buying dinner, fruits/veggies, school supplies, and clothing. Haela's actually a pretty cool woman. I'd reckon she's about 50, she's probably around 5'4" and 180 pounds, and she, as I recently learned, has the magical power of controlling and commanding Cairene traffic in addition to commanding our class with a benevolent yet authoritarian iron fist (of Shari'a justice). So, in the event you need a translation for street food and household appliances and/or need to know how to alert the authorities that you've been robbed in (butchered) Egyptian Arabic, I'm your man.

WALKING TRIP
This one's pictures only.

Midan Tahrir, right outside the American University of Cairo.

A glimpse over the hedge at my University, which is spread across a few buildings in Central Cairo. Though lacking a similar architectural style, all of the AUC buildings are clearly evident due to the uncharaceristically large security checkpoints which surround all of their entrances.

Mubarak is everywhere, including at this gas station in Central Cairo.

A view from Cairo Tower (in the distance), can be seen on Wikipedia.

My roommate Dave is behind Wesley, another student from UCSD.

Trash is everywhere. Most Cairenes burn their household trash. The rest is put on the street. Only commercial offices and the wealthy can afford trash pick-up

The fact that a slum is directly south of the upscale neighborhood of Dokki yields interesting juxtapositions like this.

So, that was a little boring and nothing more than an excuse to put up some pictures. Now, for the next post on Ein Shukna.

AK-47's & Falafel

2007-08-27T15:55:00.000-05:00

State of the GI: Shouldn't have drank the guava smoothie from the sketchy street vendor yesterday afternoon.
State of the Weather: Today was a strictly "back sweat" day--none on the brow.

I told someone today that I thought I could make Cairo my permanent residence--at least for a few years (any much longer and there would be a severe and detrimental impact on my life expectancy). Her response, after being in the city for a little over two days? "This city is SO draining on me. I'm checking into the Nile Hilton or the Four Seasons for a couple nights to pamper myself so I don't forget what home is like."

Shortly after this, as I was sauntering to Metro (arguably the island's nicest grocery store), I walked past a security checkpoint and politely said "merhaba" to the six or seven policemen, armed with AK-47's, 9mm's, and knives. Not a mistake, but certainly a mixed blessing, for it earned me the opportunity to have a private luncheon with Egypt's finest. There on the street corner, the eight-or-so of us dipped 'aish (like naan) into fuul (fava bean spread), some sort of spicy cheese dip, and ate falafel & grilled eggplant. The language barrier was a little much for casual conversation, but Fouad, the unofficial leader of the corps, managed to speak enough English/strike enough fear into me to not only search the entire contents of my backpack, but also rifle through my wallet as well as carefully scan the contacts of my mobile phone. Nothing was stolen, but my so-called privacy was a bit violated. However, my Arabic instructor informed me that there's no such thing as a search and seizure law in an emergency Egyptian state (the "emergency" has been occurring since around the time of Sadat's death in the early 1980s).

Pictures from the most recent adventure:

The mighty Nile.

Looking towards Giza.

Traffic on Arab League Avenue.

I'm a little uneasy about one of my purchases at the supermarket today: super-pasteurized (I hope) boxed, non-refrigerated milk. It's packaged in individually-sized "juice box" containers (complete with the flimsy plastic straw), and is currently sitting on my makeshift refrigerator (the air-conditioning vent), which keeps the milk at a tepid 60 degrees (see photo below).

So I was quite excited by the presence of comments on my first post from Egypt. I'm not insinuating that I'm disappointed with my more recent posts...but...I sort of am.

Going Corporate (Sort Of)

2007-08-26T02:15:00.000-05:00

There's a void in the U.S. food market that the archetypical Egyptian fast food can fill. No, it's not the McFalalfel sandwich at the Egyptian McDonald's, but rather kushari (kosher-ee). As long as you're not on Atkins, there's something for everyone to love in a bowl of it: steaming hot rice, spaghetti, macaroni, lentils, and chickpeas are topped with tomato sauce, spicy chilies, vinegar, garlic, and fried onions.

Mmmm. And best of all, you get an un-finishable portion for about 3 LE, or approximately 55 cents. If the crepe stand goes under this term, maybe I'll come back ready to distribute kushari among the Carleton campus.

Too Many Parentheses

2007-08-25T11:29:00.000-05:00

Due to popular demand (or rather, due to popular conceptions about Egypt), I have the privilege of introducing two new "status reports" to my blog: the state of the GI (the country gets a bad rap for its fundamentalist terrorism on the digestive system of Americans) and the condition of the weather (because Egypt is hot).

State of the GI: Content, even after brushing my teeth with tap water for the past 36 hours AND eating a hunk of lamb.

Weather Report: Yesterday, I soaked through an entire shirt (100% cotton). Wringing it out yielded 1.5 quarts of sweat. Today's temperatures were lower because the smog didn't burn off until 11 AM. Unfortunately, these pollution particulates (yes, you can actually see the dust sometimes) actually turn the dry desert air into a jungle-like, humid blast.

Yesterday, after the second absolutely unproductive orientation session, six seemingly brave souls (myself included) departed on a mission to venture out into the "real" Cairo. The AUC campus is incredibly protected, armed with alcohol-sniffing detectors (under the guise of metal detectors), a security staff which appears to outnumber the US Secret Service, and wrought-iron gates. So we walked out, down a street, and were lost within 10 minutes. And that's with a student who's fluent in both colloquial Egyptian Arabic as well as Modern Standard. Somehow, we ended up in a roaming street market where we were frequently hissed at (Don't worry, that's a good thing. Hissing is "slang" for "come in."), slapped on the arms (also a good thing), and encouraged to buy fake hand bags, vintage T-shirts that are actually new in Egypt (Michael Jackson's Thriller has seemed to just hit Cairo, as has the Matrix). This scene was set to mosques blasting their sermons throughout the city (it was the time of Friday prayers, but that didn't seem stop the street vendors). Full disclosure: whenever I heard an imam/sheikh raise his voice or speak passionately, I always assumed he was derogating the United States and/or Israel. Anyway, I had to bust out the map in the middle of this part of Cairo--stylish I know. But when you're the only white person on the streets, not to mention 6'5", you sort of have to give up on being inconspicuous. However, I WAS mistaken to be Spanish (once). Pictures!

Chillin' on the street. Doing nothing because it's 108 degrees and humid.

1984 anyone?

Stealthily finding out our location (which involved asking three people what street we were on).

Anyway, after a treacherous three mile power walk back to campus, I slipped into my "Survival Arabic" class drenched in sweat and smelling like rotting olives. Thankfully, that's what parts of Cairo smell like, so my scent was either unnoticed or quietly forgiven. What's great about Survival Arabic is that you get to learn useful things like how to speak to your neighborhood butcher (since so many of us have refrigerators--oh wait, they don't refrigerate their meat here--let alone kitchens). Actually, I'm being untruthful; it's really quite helpful, but I have trouble remembering the hundreds of phrases we are learning as to aid us in haggling/deal-making with cab drivers, grocery store owners, landlords, and our Egyptian roommates.

The night wound down with a felucca ride down the Nile, which should have been great. A river breeze, memorable views, an escape from Cairene noise. Except for the noise of all the people on our boat talking about either a) how much better the New England Patriots were than the New York Giants/Jets, b) bluntly posturing on how much better (i.e. well-travelled or experienced) each person was than the rest of the members on the boat (best quote of the night "oh yeah, we'll I've been to Ghana TWICE!), and c) bitching about wanting to get off the boat because it was boring. To be honest, I could either tone out (perhaps drown out is a better term since we're on a famous body of water) those uttering selections "a" and "b" or simply make fun of them with Dave [my roommate, whose last name is Harvey (which I learned since he logged onto Facebook on my computer and didn't log out--GOTCHA)].

I was having a great time--what was wrong with being on a boat in the middle of the Nile being cynical about our program-mates? It's not like you were missing an episode of Top Chef or Lost, so just take a sedative or something. Nope, one of the Arabic-speaking whiners asked our felucca driver to go in a half-hour earlier than all the other boats (not realizing that we would just sit next to the dock for the next half-hour to wait for our compadres in the other boats still out on the water). So upon our return to shore, Dave and I went to the bar at the Four Season's hotel, for which we were completely underdressed.

So that was yesterday. Today's main activity can be summed up with a question and answer. Q: What do you get when you herd 150 impressionable American college students through Old Cairo? A: Incredibly extrapolated myths & three body guards dressed in silk suits and armed with AK-47's and Tech 9's (as well as the standard hawkers).

Explanation: A huge cohort of us boarded buses for Old Cairo today, which involved a road tour of the Imbaba slum (I think). Not only were we shown the first synagogue, first Coptic church, and first mosque in all of Cairo (these are all believable), we were also shown the crypt where the Holy Family chilled for a month during King Herod's purge of male babies in Palestine as well as the well where Moses was found by the Pharoh's daughter (keeping in mind that Cairo barely existed at the time, and that the capital was further south in either Thebes, Memphis, or some other ancient city). To keep us safe during this adventure, AUC employed three bodyguards to presumably eliminate any potential threats to its "precious cargo." Per usual to gatherings of international students, the competition to out-do each other was rife. The winner for the day? Probably the girl who "was totally tripping out with some friends" and decided that they were going to "give peace" to war-torn Ethiopia in the midst of its scuffle with Eritrea. So she and her hallucinogen-dependent friends went to the mountains of Ethiopia, working on missions "healing" victims of gunshot and machete wounds by day while fighting and shooting AK-47s by night. Totally legit/plausible, right? It also explains her new-found dependency for Zoloft that she described to me (but have no fear, because she's thinking about switching to St. John's Wort).

Yes, Moses was pulled out of the Nile in "Old" Cairo.

This Coptic church was actually pretty cool--it was built over the foundation of a Roman fortress and is decked out with intricate woodwork and extensive symbolism.

The crypt where the Holy Family supposedly hid. I'd reckon it was about 150 cubic feet--lots of room to get away from the colicky Son of God.

The pack, or rather just a small portion of them.

Also, FYI: the entire time I've been writing this, my other roommate (Tim, whose last name I haven't sleuthed out yet) has been playing Counter Strike on his computer. In Cairo. What am I leaving out? That I took a three-hour-long break for dinner. I hope he ate something.

So I'm in Egypt Now.

2007-08-23T07:31:00.000-05:00

Charge the paddles and re-arm the defibrillator, because this blog is busting out of complacency, Arab-style. I can no longer blame shoddy Internet for lack of updates, for Wi-Fi in Cairo is paradise compared to that of DC: the hotspots are everywhere, they're free, and unprotected (that's assuming your definition of paradise parallels that of a brothel).

I arrived yesterday at around 4:00 PM. I live on an island in the middle of the Nile in a dorm which seems to be quintessentially Egyptian; that is, there are about 15 loyal "guards" (14 too many) who watch over the building for a pittance of a salary. The unemployment rate in Cairo is ridiculous--almost 65% for men without a university education (with a bachelor's degree, one in four are still jobless).

Also, I have returned to dorm life, but the stringency is similar to that of an evangelical megachurch's summer Bible camp. No females allowed on male floors and vice versa, and the curfew is technically at 10 PM (but I don't think it's enforced). Two of my roommates have already moved in, and we're already on a first-name basis (or rather, I don't actually know their surnames): "Dave" was in the US Navy for six years doing radar work and now goes to UCSD, while "Tim" goes to the "real" American University in Washington, DC. None of us seem to know much Arabic, though Tim has taken a year of it.

The American University of Cairo (AUC) is about an hour's walk from my dorm (there's a free shuttle too, and a cab ride there will cost a little less than $1). It was already about 80 degrees when I walked to the University this morning, and the air quality/haze was (at 7:30 AM) so terrible that one could barely see across the river and I proceeded to cough and hack up black phlegm.

AUC itself is very posh by Egyptian standards: ornate gardens with primly-trimmed green grass surround the main building called "The Palace" (fitting?), the security is tight, and the accommodations approach gaudy at times. Franchised cafes like Cilantro and Beano (which scream Panera, Starbucks, and Pret a Manger) as well as KFC, McDonald's (which apparently has a McFalafal), and Pizza Hut line the streets surrounding the campus.

Us international students blend in quite well with our Gucci bags, white skirts, superiority complexes, and standard-issue Egyptian cell phones. With the latter, it's a lose-lose situation like in the States: if everyone else has a cell phone, the one who lacks it is perpetually left out because of the others' newfound inability to coordinate or make plans. So, of course being the sucker that I am, I went out and dropped the $40 for a pre-paid cell phone.

Anyway, while I was writing this, my voltage converter which gracefully and quietly reduces the flesh-frying, untamed 220 volts of power that the country of Egypt (and pretty much the rest of the world, those freedom-hating fools) employs into a quaint, non-harmful, freedom-philic, American 120 volts has exploded. Yes, as it was recharging my innocent white (a symbol of its purity) MacBook, a large cracking noise emanated from the converter followed by a moderate amount of black smoke (more pollution for Cairo!). My computer was safe...at least for now; however, I'm considering it my first experience of Islamic extremism.

Pictures will be uploaded...soon.

Is It Too Early to Cue the Celine Dion Tracks

2007-07-24T19:45:00.000-05:00

So, I've been doing a tremendously poor job at keeping this blog up to date. Perhaps it's blogger fatigue. Perhaps it's because my life has become a series of closely-scheduled events, which range between sleeping (12:00 AM- 7:00 AM), running (7:05-7:45 AM), showering/making breakfast and lunch (7:45 AM-8:25 AM), going to work (8:30 AM-5:45 PM), going home and making dinner/going to my fellowship at Energy Action Coalition (6:00-ranging between 7:00 and 9:00ish PM), and drinking with my housemates (9:00-12:00 AM). Hopefully I remember how to sleep sober.

So, have I done anything productive outside of work. Not too much, apparently. I've read a couple books. I've planned out my life a bit more. Seen some more DC scenery. Done the Charlottesville and NYC thing. Put on a couple pounds. And to be honest, it's a blissful life. But by mid-August, I'll be ready for a change.

I just came from an EAC session which was especially inspiring. Victor, the ED of the Liberian Literacy Foundation, came and spoke about a market-driven approach to not just putting books in the hands of Liberian students (80% of males and 90% of females are currently illiterate), but also powering their schools with 1 kWh and 10 kWh wind turbines and PV cells rather than the traditional kerosene and biomass. Where do the books come from? American donations, no surprise there. Where does the money for renewable energy come from? More surprisingly, books. Victor sends donated K-12 books to Liberia, but the majority of the donations are from college students, which (not trying to be presumptuous) are above the level of almost the entirety of the Liberian population. So he sells them to American students, for about half the price of online competitors like Amazon and eBay. Intriguing. We did the whole DC networking thing; he's got my phone number now.

Anyway, as I will be on the ground acting the American-in-Cairo type scene in approximately a month, I really need to commit to this blog, which no one but my parents and closest friends--I know of one (and apparently my grandparents--shout out to South Carolina). So expect more.

Warning: The Following is Almost All Politics...Take Back America: Will It Be Taking Back Anything?

2007-06-19T20:46:00.000-05:00

The past two days of work have been quite different than the first week--I've been staffing the Young Voter Strategies table at the Take Back America (TBA) 2007 conference, which is sponsored by the Campaign for America's Future. Supposedly one of the biggest annual progressive conferences in the country, it convenes every June in the sweltering heat of Washington, DC, and a couple thousand aged hippies, conspiracy nuts, and svelte blogger-geeks converge to talk trash about Republicans and network for the prophesied progressive takeover. Yes, I'm a bit jaded.

More than anything, my observations of the TBA conference elucidate why the Democrats couldn't put a candidate in the White House in 2004, and why the Party is still struggling despite a President with historic public opinion lows and a controlling vote in the House. First off, the progressive movement is biting off far more than it can chew. Not just wanting to put an adroit Bill Clinton-Democrat in the White House, activists want to eschew the very political and economic structures which have been bolstered by politicians on both sides of the aisle since World War II. I certainly agree that much must be done to ameliorate the vast disparities in income as well as the insurance-health care-pharmaceutical complex, but it seems that some progressives advocate measures as drastic as a transformation to a Soviet-era command economy. Unfortunately for them, the new backbone of the country is Corporate America, like it or not. We're no longer an industrial power, but rather a financial powerhouse. In a post-Cold War world, our strength comes not primarily from our arsenal, but from our economic largesse. Though I contend that economic growth must be tamed to consider total social cost in terms of its effects on inequality and environmental degradation, among others, it's cessation is not a desirable outcome.

Relatedly, progressives' goals are incohesive and disparate--most are concerned with an exclusive issue and refuse to adopt a broader and more comprehensive agenda. Sure, though I have viewed the policies of 2008 candidates primarily through a climate change lens, I also consider myself influenced by the candidates' visions of energy, national security, educational policy, and health care. Most people, even so-called experts, seem to know very little about politics and policies which fall outside their particular realm. This undoubtedly contributes to the immense disorganization of progressives. There's a plethora of obscure grassroots organizations which do not coordinate with each other (and in fact are quite competitive, even resulting in in-fighting), resulting in double-coverage, lack of coverage, and a divided message. Thus, there's no common goal or vision other than putting a Democrat in the White House, but they have no idea what kind of Democrat. And when they finally agree on something, the motivation to convert this consensus to a platform policy is lacking. The community lacks any and all knowledge on political strategy and only a few--mainly the youth-affiliated organizations--know both the importance and the struggle of mobilization. What does this inefficacy yield? A lack of seriousness for the movement, perpetuated by the conspiracy nuts which flock to these sort of conventions, despite the price tag ($390 for three days + a ticket to the gala). Because of it's perceived pettiness, there are few, if any, business interests present at the conference, which are essential for electoral success. There are some who spoke that DO have the intellect, charisma, and political suaveness to effect a change in 2008--I was particularly impressed by Van Jones, who I met after he spoke, as well as members of the Center for American Progress--but these are few and far between.

Regardless, any serious presidential candidate shows up to this event. I saw Bill Richardson by telecast while I staffed our under-appreciated booth in the exhibit hall, where there are free lattes (progressives and their damned fine tastes in coffee), and also saw Barack Obama and John Edwards in person.

I sat next to prolific liberal blogger Ezra Klein for Obama's and Edwards's addresses (and for full disclosure I acknowledge that any marginally perceptive person could figure this out), there's a (small) potential he overheard me commenting to Matt, another YVS intern who was sitting next to me, that though Obama and Edwards said the same thing, Obama said it better. Here's Klein's post, which does a great job of summarizing the speeches. However, to Edwards's credit, the former senator's speech was much more substantive. The fact that his foreign policy extends beyond the war in Iraq and energy independence into the humanitarian sector (primary schools to 100 million children abroad, surges in money for AIDS relief), intervention in Darfur, and the resulting restoration of America's reputation was also refreshing. Obama, ever the rhetorician-turned-rock-star, was a bit more fluffy. I like Klein's contrast: "where Obama promised to radically change our politics, Edwards promised to radically change our policies." I taped three minute segments of each of their speeches, and, pending me getting a YouTube account, will upload them to this blog.

Oh, and I ran into Al Sharpton in the bathroom today. He didn't wash his hands.

All Work and No Play is Not True and Also Not Too Bad

2007-06-17T22:12:00.002-05:00

Ok, so I like my internship. Even though I get paid something like $2 an hour. Every weekday, I leave my quaint basement room in Georgetown and head for either the closest bus stop (app. two blocks east) or my bike. Here's the front of my rowhouse for your viewing pleasure:

My commute is approximately 20 minutes give or take two, and is almost entirely downhill. Here's the destination of my commute (I work on the fourth floor of the red brick building):

It's on the GWU campus in Foggy Bottom and next to a Tower Records, Au Bon Pain, and GW's main quad. What do I do, you may ask?

Well, I get to my office a little before nine, where I proceed to read the news for anywhere between twenty and fifty minutes. We take our news pretty seriously:

That's right, six stations at once. And I check my email. A lot. Sometimes I write for another blog. The projects start coming around 10:30. I've written for the YVS newsletter about politics and Facebook. I've been on and off the phone with all fifty Secretary of State's offices across the country asking them to clarify their voter registration deadlines for the 2008 primary season. And now, I'm working on some really cool things with corporate partnerships, which hopefully I'll be able to report on later.

Then, lunch. Usually I pack my own (I've been making some pretty tasty sandwiches recently), but I eat at a restaurant with the other interns, all of which are entertaining and smart. And then more projects. Sometimes, there are diversions: on the first day, I went to the Hill for the launch of the One Vote '08 campaign, and on Friday, we ate Baskin Robbins ice cream cake from 4-4:45. To sum it up, it's turning out to be pretty interesting and engaging. At least for the first week.

Carleton Reunion!

2007-06-17T18:10:00.002-05:00

I've been dangerously negligent in my blogging, but I'd like to rationalize that it's because I have things to do and people see rather than nothing of substance to report. Eliza and Kevin came to DC this weekend to witness the icebox apartment firsthand, which, I might add, has become much more tolerable now that I have in my possession not just one but two comforters, fleece pants, and a supplementary sweat shirt. Thanks Mom.

Anyway, Eliza rolled into Union Station on Amtrak around 9:40 PM on Friday evening, and the two of us and Evan Rowe hopped onto the Metro to Dupont Circle only so we could walk the remaining 1.5 miles to 35th St (my apt.). We guzzled a bottle of some rather peppery ancient Shiraz, shot the shit, and, in a slightly tipsy state but actually more out of seeking to quell both boredom and our chilled bones (from my A/C), we went and ate some overpriced falafal at the always open Georgetown Cafe, whose tables were mostly occupied by off-duty rent-a-cops. And then, with fried chickpea particles still wedged between our teeth, we went to bed. I wish I could remember what we talked about.

Morning began with hot coffee and the decision to walk to the Mall via a bagel shop. I embarrassingly fell into the tour guide role despite me only having actually lived here for a week. I don't know why I can remember all of this useless DC trivia but not Calc I when I need it. There was some sort of Free Vietnam protest in front of the White House and the Old Executive Office Building, as well as the typical fair of amusing tourists mysteriously drawn to the most mundane changes that happen on the other side of the White House's wrought iron fence. (Do I count as a tourist? Am I permitted to scorn them?). There was also a large contingent of Indians (i.e. from the subcontinent) hanging around the Washington Monument eating na'an and wearing matching trucker hats which usually clashed (both in terms of culture and color) with their sarongs.

Neither Eliza nor I had been to the Jefferson Memorial in almost ten years, so we sojourned over there along the flooded Tidal Basin via the FDR Memorial, which is my personal favorite. I always get a little frustrated at this monument, however, for I read the engraved quotes of such an eloquent man with such a radical vision for the country and realize that we're repudiating it with the policies our government currently pursue. Also, I'm curious if all the quotes illuminating Jefferson's godliness were added after the monument's construction during FDR's administration, for communist-fighting purposes or something. Anyway, some pictures!

We then killed time at the National Archives, which was replete of ignorant tourist parents spreading falsities (I was going to say misinformation, but that implies some sort of intention) to their tourist children. For instance, a portly fellow without any detectable accent (read: there's a 90% chance this guy's an Iowan) told his two young girls to "take a picture" of the blatantly obvious facsimile (it was sparkling white and laminated--clearly our forefathers were aiming for posterity rather than functionality) of the US Declaration of Independence behind a single plate of plexiglass because "it's the real thing." He didn't have much to say when his daughters asked him what the piece of paper protected by a vault (i.e. the real Declaration) was.

Kevin finally decided to show up from Baltimore around 4 PM; we met him fittingly at a street ball basketball tournament. For your information, Kevin claims to hate DC. Despite his deep-seeded antipathy, he seemed rather eager to ascend the twelve floors of the Old Post Office tower for breathtaking views of DC. Our only impediment for maximum enjoyment was a fellow who was, in his words, "phobic," and demanded that only ten people be in an elevator at one time. His serious condition is particularly amplified, however, because of his innumeracy: he freaked out when there were only nine people in the elevator.

We got back to my apartment, watched some of the US version of The Office, and played on this giant Adirondack chair which is in a green space across the street from my apartment.

Dinner was had at the aforementioned Turkish restaurant, which still has the prize for the best pita bread I've ever tasted. It's baked in a wood-burning oven and served steaming hot, and, most importantly, is ever-so-slightly doughy (but not at all undercooked). We also met two of Eliza's friends from high school (sort of) at dinner, where we tried to surreptitiously top each other's outrageous stories, various school's traditions, etc.. And then...nothing really. More TV Links. An outing to Tryst, which apparently becomes a 21+ venue on Friday and Saturday. So, we ended up a diner for a second night in a row; James Hannaway must be so proud of us. Evan Rowe really wanted carrot cake, and, for some reason, really wanted me to split it with him. And, as I lack willpower and aim to please, capitulated to his demands, making me $3 poorer.

And now we're just on TODAY. We went to this Afro-Caribbean restaurant for breakfast, where I had this pumpkin omelet and a hot biscuit with this amazing onion spread; Eliza had caramelized mango crepes which I actually attempted to make with Abby Gaul in Ames two nights before I left for DC. The restaurant's chef, maybe having a bit more experience caramelizing than myself, was much more successful than my creation, which was more like charcoaled mango crepes.

And...to the National Gallery for more tourist watching! Though there were some more incredibly hilarious people, I'd say my personal highlight was this guy I saw in the rotunda of the gallery. Pretty normal guy, I'd say about 50, has a bit of a receding hairline. He wore a t-shirt which should have been let out to wardrobe pasture a little while ago, for the elastic in the neck had relaxed...to the degree where it illuminated the furriest back I've ever seen. He needn't worry about his baldness, for he could hypothetically graft his back hair onto his head. Oh, and I guess there were paintings or something there too. I really only paid attention to the Central European photography special exhibit and our country's finest citizens.

And then, it was back to Union Station, and back to being by myself. Sort of. For literally as soon as Eliza and Kevin had re-boarded the train, I was on the phone with three different friends and a certain family member who's celebrating one of his two special days. People become fathers for different reasons, but I think the fact that you get both Father's Day AND your birthday to be celebrated is compelling enough of a reason for me. Add in Boss's Day (or maybe Administrative Assistant's Day as not to get ahead of myself) and I'll be set.

Oh, and I wrote this whole thing on my new computer. And I have an iPod now. Now I'll stop gloating.

Flip-Flop Folly

2007-06-13T00:19:00.000-05:00

As I write this, the big toe on my right foot reluctantly dangles over a large pot filled with lukewarm water. This ridiculous looking action is a result of, well, poor-planning and ridiculousness. I had the grand idea of welcoming my fellow Carleton student and good friend Evan Rowe to DC by meeting him at Tryst, a trendy coffee shop in the area which is actually open late (most coffee places, whether chic or Starbucks, close by 7:30 for some reason). Now, I have the (mis)fortune of not living remotely close to a Metro stop (closest is Dupont Circle, 1.3 miles away). But taking a bus to Dupont Circle is no big deal either (only $1.25), especially since the stop is about 100 feet from my door. However, for some reason, the bus never came this evening. I waited a while, called some friends, talked to the neighbors, etc., but no bus. So, with Evan in mind, I quickly left for Dupont by foot, alternating between a brisk walk and a halfhearted jog, as I made the mistake of wearing flip flops. The walk was uneventful until I was almost to the Metro stop, when my cheap impulse purchase of Old Navy flip flops snapped. Once again, "no biggie," I thought to myself, I'll just walk in bare feet and scour the sidewalk ahead of me for debris. No problem, until I arrive at the Metro's escalators, which I just assume are clear, since they circulate thousands of times per day. POOR ASSUMPTION, for as I flew down the escalators like a student late for a final, I stepped on a (large) shard of glass, which sliced right into the big toe which I am now soaking. Yet, in my dedication (or stubbornness) and stupidity, I pressed on for Adams Morgan, where Tryst is located, wrapping my bloody stump in a free newspaper.

By the time I reached the Adams Morgan stop and had ascended its seemingly infinite escalator, my clotting agents had assumed control of the situation, allowing me to walk the remaining half mile to Tryst, where Evan was no where to be found (later contact would suggest that we missed each other by no more than five minutes). However, what I did encounter was a coffeeshop that I will be returning to, especially once I have my bike (more on that later). Now featuring my first posted photo from my new camera, which arrived in the mail yesterday (but I had to wait until today to pick it up at the Georgetown post office). Behold (I'm still getting the hang of my camera):

As it was 1 AM and my foot was throbbing, I indulged myself and took a cab home.

Cutting the Tops of Skyscrapers

2007-06-10T12:24:00.000-05:00

I'm in Washington, DC now, and I will be (impulsive yet planned trips to New York and Charlottesville excepted) for the next two months, indicating that this digital mouthpiece of a blog may actually serve a communicative purpose rather than just a kid blathering about the news and of other things most people are already aware.

My two bags, one of which was 14 pounds overweight, somehow beat me from Chicago to DC by over an hour, so they were exposed to the vicious elements of Arlington, VA; someone could have made off which a cheap suit and a few pairs of khakis. My cab driver had been in DC since 1998, having emigrated from Ethiopia via Greece. His warnings about the frigid DC winters may have been an omen, as when I arrived at my Georgetown apartment...

...it was about 60 degrees. And I have no control over the thermostat. Now, I appreciate a slightly cool room temperature, but the interior climate is downright cold, making it difficult to do much. Its insidiousness was amplified by my choice to not only ditch packing a sweatshirt or any long sleeve non-dress shirt, but also my failure to bring a comforter/blanket. So, for sleeping, I wrapped myself in a towel and some t-shirts, accepted the permanence of my goosebumps, put a belt between my teeth to stop them from chattering, and tried to sleep. Despite my oversight, my apartment mates seem interesting and fun.

This morning, I went grocery shopping by myself for the first time in my life. And spent $93; my receipt indicates I'm a sucker for fresh produce, coffee, and dairy products. Also, on my run past the Russian Embassy/Compound (it's an entire city block and is totally self-sustaining), the National Cathedral, and Dick's house, I encountered my favorite restaurant from former visits to DC, a Turkish restaurant called Cafe Divan. Also searched for a pillow/blankets. Search has failed thus far.

Update 10:45 PM:
I went out on a limb and purchased a $15 Nike sweatshirt (priced down from $40) and an $8 sateen (not satin) pillow.

A New Bush Climate Change Policy?

2007-06-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

This morning, The Washington Post heralded Bush's tardy entrance into the climate change debate--better late than never. However, it is barely a departure from the Administration's current policy, which favors investment in marginally cleaner energy (ethanol and gasified coal) and shys away from any sort of emission commitments. President Bush introduced the country’s new climate "strategy" while revealing his international development agenda, which consists of sponsoring a series of summits attended by heavy-emitting nations, including India and China, where the countries could set long-term “global goals” for reducing greenhouse gases. There would be no international framework for enforcement. In my opinion, goals are something to aspire to, but if one fails, there is no negative consequence. I believe that this is Bush’s opinion as well; his administration is frightened of offending Big Energy and Big Industry, as well as stalling our economy, by accepting a binding reduction target. I also believe that the Bush Administration will successfully lead the charge to accept a post-Kyoto climate regime that lacks any sort of substance, including binding reductions. These negotiations will be sponsored by the United States, held in the United States, and controlled by the United States. Also, Bush’s insistence on the attendance of developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil indicate that the current administration will not agree to anything that these nations reject, and none of these countries have been assessed reduction targets by Kyoto. Why would they now accept targets at the bequest of the Bush Administration, one of the most hated institutions abroad?

Bush also unveiled plans to produce electricity in cleaner ways, including clean coal technologies, which is “going to help the developing world immeasurably, and at the same time, help protect our environment.” Clean coal doesn’t really exist though; it is simply gasified coal with some impurities removed. Power plants using clean coal do burn less coal for more energy, but gasified coal is generally strip-mined, resulting in the degradation of natural habitat across the country and world. Furthermore, clean coal still emits plenty of carbon into the atmosphere. The new idea is to pump the carbon dioxide created from coal burning into the ground, where it can be stored in porous crust several miles below the surface of the earth, a process which remains relatively untested. Though I wholeheartedly agree that gasified coal technology is superior to regular coal burning, the construction of these new coal plants will put the United States on a coal-dependent energy path for the next 50 years, the average length of a power plant. Can we really afford 50 more years of coal reliance? Bush also stated that if we’re “truly interested in cleaning up the environment, or interested in renewable sources of energy, the best way to do so is through safe nuclear power.” I reject the claim that nuclear power is renewable, for it relies on either mined uranium or synthetic plutonium—both of which are nonrenewable resources. Furthermore, considering the toxic byproduct of nuclear power, which must be stored in a secure location for thousands of years to prevent both radioactive fallout and nuclear proliferation, nuclear power is not a renewable option.

Bush once again reiterated his support for biofuels, hybrids, and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Yet there was no commentary on American car-culture or bold statements pledging to improve the quality and reach of public transportation. No comments on a congestion tax, like London has implemented to reduce traffic within the city, or a carbon tax. Bush seems uninterested in compelling his fellow countrymen to accept either responsibility for or a willingness to change their damaging emission habits. Just as he supports the continuation of coal energy dependence, the administration also fully believes that America is necessarily a car culture (sounds like they’ve been reading Thomas Friedman’s article).

Bush’s speech was not an introduction of a radical new energy or climate policy. It was actually just a public relations stunt to continue business as usual. There is still no government support for reducing emissions, nor is there funding for real renewable energy, such as wind, geothermal, and solar power. Nothing to stimulate the American people. It’s just the same old same old, and it will be for the remaining nineteen months of the Bush presidency.

Back, With Fortitude

2007-06-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

The trimester complete as of 9:08 PM last night, I can now redouble my currently lackluster blogging efforts. A recap of the term: Arab Nationalism (History 395) had a sizable amount of unrequired reading of some fairly interesting books for the first half of the term, but the second half (or maybe last third) consisted of independent research on self-selected topics. If I was to repeat the term, it's unclear if I would have taken the course (mainly because the teacher/fratboy, Louis Fishman, made the study of Arab history into a farce), but I most certainly wouldn't have written a thirty-page paper on Staff Brigadier Abdul Karim Qasim and Iraqi nationalism from 1958-1963, at least not without speaking Arabic. The other two courses were environmentally-focused, one being John Barry's mislabeled course on sustainable development, where he made the lectern his pulpit from which his barefooted self could proselytize and guilt the class into joining the global justice movement, and the other being Alex Barron's much more reasonable (and surprisingly rigourous) Global Change Biology.

And now, I await for the future. Five days remain at Carleton, and then I depart for seven months. Many farewells are pending, some temporary and others more permanent. I'm certainly ready to be away from the campus, the work, and the town of Northfield, but the fact that I resumed blogging as to stay in touch with Carleton folk is an indication that I'll miss school soon enough. I arrive in DC on Friday, June 9th, and this is when the real fun of blogging begins; until then, I'm digitally treading water.

Alternate Universe

2007-05-04T09:33:00.000-05:00

When calculating certified emission reductions (CERs) under the Kyoto Protocol, consultants and analysts have to consider two universes: the baseline (business-as-usual) and the actual. The process of determining whether the actual is an entirely dependent outcome of the baseline is apparently quite tricky. Similarly, as of this morning, I have my baseline, which is spending a summer in DC, and an alternate (which will never be actualized)--spending the summer working on the Edwards presidential campaign. Currently, I'm thrilled that I accepted the job with YVS, but, like the world of emissions trading, I hypothesize that I will tirelessly compare my experience to the one I could have had, which will most certainly be romanticized in my mind's eye.

Summer Plans

2007-05-04T01:48:00.000-05:00

Approximately 13 cover letters later, I now have an internship in Washington for the summer. It is with Young Voter Strategies, a non-profit consulting group under the auspices of the George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management. And yes, it's affiliated with Rock the Vote. Now I just have to find a place to live.

Chesley Lecture

2007-05-04T00:43:00.000-05:00

Rather than working on my didactic, anti-World Bank tirade against Clean Development Mechanisms for the Irishman, I went to the annual Chesley Chemistry Lecture at Carleton this evening to hear Harry Gray from Cal Tech inform the audience on the exact method of how he proposed to power the planet on solar energy. Solar energy currently costs between $0.25 and $0.50 per KW/hour, while coal's cost varies between $0.01 and $0.04 KW/hour, with wind also coming to about $0.04/hour. This seems to be partially due to solar's inherent inefficiency--according to Gray, "full "efficiency in solar panels is actually about 18.5% efficiency. It can also be attributed to solar's needs for rather expensive (I speculate) metals--titanium, gallium, platinum, and ruthenium, all of which are needed to split two molecules of water into a molecule of oxygen and two hydrogen molecules. Regardless, the area necessary to supply our nation exclusively with solar power is actually not that large--1.7% of our land area (around 3 TW/year). Gray proposes locating it in a square that overlaps between western Kansas, the OK panhandle, and northern Texas, or along the interstate highway system.

Gray also made the comment that the world will be almost entirely dependent on solar and nuclear energy in the near future. I have no hesitations about the former, but nuclear energy seems neither safe nor sustainable to me. He also did not acknowledge the potential of wind power while vocalizing his doubts about corn ethanol. Though I agree that corn ethanol is only marginally efficient, I wonder if his lack of support for wind power is simply because he is a chemist, and is thus more proficient in electron transfer (solar) and nuclear power.

Potentially Habit-Forming Behavior

2007-05-01T19:59:00.000-05:00

As a self-proclaimed "blogger" in high school, I have strong hesitations beginning another blog. In its former incarnation, I generally had very little to say, which partially contributed to a slow decline in my frequency of posting along with the rise of my Facebook usage. However, with a supposedly compelling summer and fall ahead of me, I deemed it appropriate to once again begin thrusting personal details, thoughts, pictures, and criticisms upon the Internet populace. And like the Carleton Capital Campaign, I thought it best to prelude these more momentous posts with less substantial filler to have a blog that is perceived as marginally more established.