This is a purely comedic video I made while in Cairo showing the lighter side of Cairo traffic. For all intensive purposes it's really stupid, but nonetheless does include a fairly accurate depiction of what Cairo is like at night.

I should also say that this was taken during Ramadan and was one of my most memorable evenings in Cairo.

I wrote this before I left Cairo, but didn’t post it until now. Something about it just doesn’t seem right, but I figure if I don’t post it now, it will never happen. Here it is, an overly poetic attempt.

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December 21, 2007
Since I arrived I have been trying to somehow capture the essence of the city so that those reading my posts, viewing my photos or watching my videos could somehow get a feel for what it is like here. Nonetheless, I feel this is simply not possible.

One of my best stories from a trip to India a few years ago was the site of 3 men and a goat riding in an autorickshaw (a 3 wheeled 2 cycle taxi) on the streets of Bangalore. This week I saw something equally amusing, two boys stuffing five live sheep into a four-door sedan.

Normally I might pass by something like this as a fact of life. After all, if you need to transport sheep, and all you have is a car, than what is funny about it? However, in light of the sheep putting up a bit of resistance and the local men finding it equally amusing, I figure I can find some humor in the situation.

We have entered the last two weeks of our stay here in Cairo, which means all the things I have been putting off either need to happen or be forgotten. Over the past few months I have gone back and forth over whether I should buy a tent. Fact is, having a hand made Egyptian tent is completely sweet! However, I have been a bit concerned about how to get it home. I finally decided to stop being wishy washy and just get the darn thing and take it home on the plane. Rather trivial actually.

We purchased the tent in an area of Islamic Cairo aptly named the "tentmakers street"(Sharia Khayyamiya). They have been making tents here for hundreds of years and the shop itself sits in the oldest covered market (souk) in Egypt. After some bargaining and looking around we finally made a deal with the seller and agreed to pick up the tent in 2 to 3 days, giving them time to make it.

When faced with the minor inconveniences that are a matter of daily life in Cairo it's nice to see the humorous side of things.

Recently we have experienced a few instances of the water suddenly being cut off. The first incident occured during my mother's visit just after we spent the morning touring the pyramids around 1pm (i.e., we were disgusting after walking in the desert surrounded by camels). When we discovered it was off we asked our bowab (doorman) who said it would be back in an hour so we went ahead with our trip to Coptic Cairo assuming it would be working when we returned. When we arrived around 6pm the water was still not working and the bowab again told us an hour. After another hour with no water we called our landlord who explained that there was an outage affecting a large portion of Cairo and he estimated it may take anywhere from a few hours to a day to fix. He also assured us that the bowab had no way of knowing how long it would take and his estimates were invalid. We were a little perplexed how the landlord got this information from the water department so late in the evening, but we took it at face value and prayed for the best.

One of the greatest things about Egypt is there is always something you haven't seen yet. This comes in really handy when friends or relatives visit, because it means you aren’t forced to visit the same places for a second or third time. Recently my mother came all the way from Oregon to visit and it gave me a last chance to see a few things for the last time and a few things for the first time. The first time I visited the Pyramids at Giza I left feeling a bit disappointed. Things felt rushed and overly commercialized, there was a lot of hassling and it just didn’t live up to my expectations. When I found out my mother was coming to visit one of the first thoughts was "oh man.. I have to visit Giza again!". Fortunately my second trip was much more memorable than the first. It is nice to take your time and enjoy everything around you.

When I left Yahoo! back in February I listed three things that I wanted to do while I took some time off. As I get ready to return to the U.S., and reality, it seems prudent to reflect on these things.

The three items were (in no particular order):

1. read more
2. travel
3. hack

Soon after leaving California I moved to Malaysia where spent much of my time going back and forth between Kuala Lumpur and Penang. When not on the road I was able to do a decent amount of reading. Most of the books I read related to political theory (e.g., Fanon, Humphreys, Fukayama) or Middle Eastern history. Considering that I was about to move to Egypt for 8 months my reading list was quite relevant and without having this time off, chances are I never would have read these books. So I will check reading off my list as an accomplishment.

Before I arrived in Cairo last April I imagined a place that was dry and hot year round. I had heard stories that the summer heat was un-bearable and that the locals all fled town to escape it. Actually, many of the privileged locals did flee town, a fact that isn’t easily lost on those driving around Zamalek in the summertime. However, it turns out that the seasons here are rather distinct. When we first arrived in April the weather was amazing, it was about 75F during the day and the evenings didn't drop much below 65F. Aside from the occasional dust storm, it was very similar to southern California at that time of year. Summer began to take over around May, and soon the notorious summer heat was showing itself. Yes, it was definitely hot, but it really wasn't as bad as I expected. Summer in Cairo isn't really that much hotter than a heat wave in LA, or even in Portland for that matter. I remember plenty of 100 plus days during my childhood. The main difference is that in Cairo the air is much more polluted and there is rarely a breeze, which makes it difficult to escape the heat without A/C. Now that we are deep into Autumn, the weather is getting fairly cold.

Traveling back from Luxor I found this advertisement in the Egypt Air in-flight magazine. I don't know about you, but normally when I see an advertisement for food, it looks better in the photo than in real life. In this case, if this is better than the real thing I fear this restaurant has some serious problems. Apparently they not only utilize their marketing budget for airline magazines, but also giant billboards, I saw the same photo in Mohandiseen on the way home from class.

At 4:30 Thursday morning I awoke to the sound of drums and songs drifting over the rooftops outside the open door of my bedroom veranda. I have not yet asked any locals what was happening, but I must assume that people were celebrating the beginning of the first day of fasting, which begins at sunrise each day. It is customary in many Muslim countries for people to wake up early in the morning to eat and drink before sunrise then go back to sleep for a few hours so that they can make it through the rest of the hot day before breaking fast in the evening.