Downtime

Posted on Sunday, December 31, 2006 by Hani

The fall semester is over, my grades are out (which were not exactly what I hoped for but still fine), and I have a short vacation. So I went to the Red Sea for a few days of R&R. I spent 3 days loafing around Naama Bay, snorkeling, reading and drinking overpriced coffee.

There are so many Russian tourists in Sharm El Sheik you’d think Moscow had annexed it. Not that I have a problem with Russian tourists, it’s just those who dive or snorkel among them who really piss me off. I mean, exactly what part of “Do not touch the friggin reef” do they not understand. Of course they do understand it, since the signs and handouts are in 4-5 differnt languages, they just want a little souvenir to take back home. The divemasters often turn a blind eye to that kind of behavior since they fear for their livelihood, intentionally oblivious to the fact that if they keep on not doing something about it, these beautiful coral reefs on which their jobs depend aren’t going to be there for too long. And I don’t mean to say that its only the Russians who do that, they might have been just the ones that I have most frequently personally caught red handed while on a diving trip. The perils of mass tourism.

Morocco again

Posted on Sunday, December 3, 2006 by Hani

My usual hotel was booked full, so I booked a room in what turned out to be the filthiest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. The building itself was falling apart, the lobby is a mess, the elevator stank of a stench suggesting that it was also used as a crapper…and I still haven’t gotten to the worse of it. In the room the furniture was dirty and moth-eaten, the phone didn’t work, the TV didn’t work (which was fine by be), no hot water, no towels, no anything. To top things off, the staff were extremely dense. And this was advertised – and priced – as a four star hotel. I changed the room twice after finally settling on one that I could bear spending a couple of nights in. I am not easily put off by this kind of stuff but I have stayed in 5-bunk hostel dorm rooms that were much cleaner.

Moroccan tea rocks though.

Hanius Morsius, The Victorious Champion of the back alley push-up Olympics

Posted on Friday, November 24, 2006 by Hani

How schexy am I in a toga?
For explanation, see Mike’s blog

Murphy’s law was invented in airports

Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 by Hani

The path from the airplane door to the entrance to our hotel in Kuwait was reminiscent of a classic video game: you have to overcome multiple hurdles, or levels if you will, to get to the next, until you reach your final destination. First up was the visa, which most of the group had to queue for in a never ending line. Then they held one of the reps in passport control for a little over an hour for “security reasons” (She had an American passport but was born in Iraq). As the group assembled outside waiting for our bus, the next run-in with Murphy’s Law materialized in the form of..our bus. It was large enough for our luggage, but not for us. We waited another 30 minutes or so while they got a van to take the luggage, then we boarded the bus and we were on our way. But Mr. Murphy was not about to let us go so easily. This was the “boss level”, to use a video game analogy. The bus got out of the airport grounds, but wouldn’t get out of second gear, and it broke down a couple miles down the highway. The group broke into a communal fit of laughter, while Joseph, the group leader and fair organizer, yelled his butt off on the phone at some poor soul at the hotel. It was so much fun.

Middle East touring redux

Posted on Saturday, November 4, 2006 by Hani

So I am in Amman on the first leg of the usual annual tour. Great to meet up with old trip buddies as always. On Thursday we went to Tafileh, a rural town a couple hour south (?) of Amman. Funny day. After the fair, they took us on this “tour” of the town. We went own to a valley that had some stone quarries. We stayed there for something like 5 minutes. Then we went to another place that overlooked the valley, maybe to look at it from another angle, then we had what seemed to be a never ending ride on a bus with almost no brakes on narrow winding roads to check out some hot springs in the desert, which were actually pretty cool. Thankfully, dinner was served there, and a pretty good one it was.

The second day was the Amman fair, usually one of the busiest. After 3 hours of continuous talking, sometimes yelling, I completely lost my voice. Drinking copious amounts of hot drinks with honey and whatnot didn’t seem to fix my screwed up vocal cords. Right now I sound like…well, I don’t even sound.

Today the group went to Petra, which I wanted to do but I decided to sit it out. I had loads of stuff to do. Email, papers, meeting with prospective students, etc. Productive day but I still regret not going to Petra. Oh well, at least its something to look forward to next time.

Tomorrow we’re leaving to Kuwait.

I am sick of cell phones

Posted on Sunday, September 24, 2006 by Hani

Give me a hammer...

I just hate the thing, and regret the day I got one. Becuase the minute you buy a cell phone, you instantly give up a huge chunk of your privacy. Example:

Friend: “I called you 5 times and you didn’t answer”

Me: “I was in class”

Friend: “...but then I sent you an sms”

Me: “I was still in class”

etc, etc..

AND IT WASN”T EVEN URGENT!!

So you see, once you recieve an sms or a missed call, you are now expected to call back instantly no matter how trivial the issue is or how busy you are. So for the purpose of filtering unwanted calls in pursuit of efficiency, I activated voice mail…

Message on voicemail: “Hi Hani, can you call me as soon as you get this, bye”

This ticks me off even MORE! The caller has made no mention of the urgent issue in question (AGAIN, IT WASN’T EVEN URGENT!), which basically rendered the benefit of using voicemail to zero.

And don’t get me started on the morons thoroughly amused by getting new ringtones for their cell phone. Nobody cares about your Ricky Martin ringtone..get a friggin’ life. And you don’t have to set the ringing volume at the ear piercing 900 DB. And while your at it, turn down the volume of your own yakking, the world is not interested. And remove that wirless headset from your ear when your not using it, you look like a tool.

So here is my policy on cell phones for like, the next whole month or something: The damn thing will stay ON and recharged, on silent. I am just not answering calls or sms. If its urgent, leave a voice message or better, email me. I am not trying to be a jerk, but I’ve had it with this crap.

I feel much better now.

Not that anyone is hanging on the edge of their seat…

Posted on Sunday, September 17, 2006 by Hani

..but I still haven’t got around to posting the rest of the entries from last summers trip to Europe. Hell, I almost forgot I even had a blog. The fall semester has started and its chockfull of fun: a full-time job and a full credit load. Probably not a good idea since I will be abroad for at least a month. Oh well. I am officially striking out the word “boredom” from my dictionary.

As for the rest Europe trip entries, I’ll probably just rip out the pages from my notebook, scan them, and post them here with a bunch of random pictures. Good luck with my handwriting. Not that anyone reads this. Well, I know of at least a couple people who check here every now and there is always the rare chance of a mildly amusing story amidst the crap I post here. But anyway…

This semester I am going all out techy. I am using a tablet PC to manage my utterly chaotic life. I don’t actually own the thing, since I currently can’t afford this kind of gadgetry goodness, but let’s just say its on an extended loan from work. I’ve actually had the thing for around 6 months now, but just recently I’ve begun to discover its wonders. So I basically decided to go paperless this semester. Almost paperless. I plan to accomplish this feat by using a Fujitsu Siemens P1510 tablet PC and a bunch of cool software apps. More on that later in a series of posts documenting the whole “paperless experience”.

On a different note, I came across this somewhere on Facebook. I consider it an addendum to my post on traffic in Cairo from way back:

1. Speed limits are just suggestions
2. You take the 6th of October Bridge to go almost every where in Cairo
3. You can see your school but somehow you’re not getting there
4. It’s faster to walk
5. You get stuck in traffic at all times of the day
6.There’s no such thing as a rush hour, Its a rush 24 hour
7. Its not actually tailgating unless your bumper is touching the car in front of you.
8. A yellow light means at least 5 more cars can get through.
9. A red light means 2 more can.
10. You can cross 4 lanes of traffic in under 30 seconds
11. Stop signs mean slow down a little, but only if you feel like it
12. A slow driver is someone who isn’t going at least 10mph over the speed limit
13. Someone has honked at you because you didn’t peal out the second the light turned green.
14. You’ve honked at someone because they didn’t peal out the second the light turned green.
15. Rush hour lasts all day
16. You know at least 3 alternate routes to avoid sitting at a stop light.
17. You refer to distances in minutes, not miles.
18. When you put on your turn signal to change lanes, the people next to you speed up.

All of the above is very true.

Speaking of traffic, I am currently on the hunt for a motorcycle. When telling random people I know about this, the range of responses I’ve been getting varied from speculation on how long it will take before I am hit by a truck, to facial expressions of real and uninhibited terror. I like the Honda Steed

June 2nd 2007, Berlin, Germany

Posted on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 by Hani

My guidebook revealed that the first Sunday of every month was free admission day to all museums on the Mueseuminsl (Museum Island) in Berlin. Today was the first Sunday in June, so off to Museuminsel I went. On arrival, I found out that the info was out dated and that free admission is now restricted to the last four hours before closing every Thursday. So much for the $25, 6-kilo brick aka guidebook I am carrying. I intended to go to the museums anyway, I still get a student discount. I bought a student ticket for 7 Euro and spent the whole morning checking out all of them. I like art, but here I wasn’t into the art as much as I was fascinated by the massive amounts of Greek, Roman, Persian, Islamic and other artifacts and exhibitions. At one point while inside the contemporary art museum, I quit checking out the paintings to watch on of the German museum staff members. The guy was so uptight about people getting a step too close to the paintings you’d think the veins in his forehead were gouing to explode anytime now. Whenever a visitor approached a painting, he dashed to him/her from behind, freaked the living shit out of them screaming “DISTANCE, PLEASE DISTANCE…BEHIND THE LINE“, stressing every syllable of his words you could almost see the letters floating in the air. This was great i wanted to shoot video, but I was too scared to do so for he could’ve bit my head off if he saw me.

After ODing myself on ancient artifacts and modern art, I ventured out and wandered into that flea market near the museums. They sold all kinds of neat stuff. I bought a bunch of Soviet-era pin replicas and a Russian Pojlot made watch. Setting the time and date on it was a pain in the rear but the watch looks cool. I almost asked the vendor’s daughter out.

Check out the stamps on this envelope:

I met with Marc and Angela at 19:00 and we went out for dinner. We went to this Vietnamese place near Hackecher (sp?) Markt. They served pretty good food at very reasonable pricing. No wonder there was a standing wait list on tables. Marc and Angela told me about their trip to Thailand and how much they enjoyed it.

My last day in Berlin is tomorrow. Marc drafted a day plan for me to save on time and research. I went to Fredrich Str. (apologies to any Germans reading this, I am probably messing up the spelling of all place names) to check out Checkpoint Charlie and the museum by the same name. The museum had some pretty intense exhibits. There were all kinds of displays explaining various ways East Berliners devised to escape to the West. They used a hot air baloon, home made single-seater plane, home made SCUBA rigs, improvised hiding places like inside TV sets, suitcases, cupboards, etc. You name it, they tried it. They also showed the methods used to deter potential escapees. Viscous guard dogs on 80-meter leashes, silent alarms (yes, there is such a thing), self-firing guns and many others. Then there was the section dedicated to the success and failure stories of people trying to get to the other side of the wall. I was into that stuff. So much intense history there. Art museums are nice, but they don’t induce that kind of historical awe a museum of this kind does.

Check Point Charlie:

The Jewish Holocuast Memorial in Berlin:

I forgot where this was taken, but i think it had to do with a tribute to the fallen of WWII:

Part of the Berlin Wall:

I am pretty sure she was taking a picture of me . So I did likewise. its only fair

I checked out a few other places and later met up with Marc. We went for a walk in the now empty Fan Mile, go to the Potsdamer Platz where Marc explains that this whole place with its shiny buildings was built in about six years.

We go to one of the “beach bars” in Berlin, which are basically riverside outdoor pubs with sand and hammocks. We have a few Radlers (I love that stuff). Then we go to the Reichstag, a building with cool juxtaposition of old and new architecture.

I fly back to Cairo tomorrow. It seems it was only yesterday I was landing in Barcelona. That’s not fair, I want to travel some more! All in all this was a great trip, I really enjoyed it. I should be thankful I even get to travel for almost a month.

Next trip? South America…Asia…Central Africa? Who Knows? Can’t wait to go again.

June 1st 2007, Berlin, Germany

Posted on Monday, August 14, 2006 by Hani

I had breakfast with Marc and Angela and decided to go down to the Fan Mile stretching the length between the Brandenburger Tor to the Victory Pillar. The weather was great. The games of the day were Britain vs. Portugal and Brazil Vs. France. The place was packed. or at least I thought so until later Marc told me there was close to one million people here yesterday during Germany’s game. I walked around, took some pictures and watched parts of the games.

I went back to Marc’s place around 20:00. He was having a bunch of his friends over for a barbecue and the France vs. Brazil game. We hung out until around 2:00 a.m.

June 30 2007, Amsterdam to Berlin

Posted on Saturday, August 12, 2006 by Hani

After checking out a little more of Amsterdam, I went to the train station 90 minutes early. I met two American girls who seemed to be hopelessly lost, had the backpacker conversation and showed them where to validate their rail passes. On the train I sat next to a friendly Dutch guy who was on his way to Hamburg to see one of the World Cup games with his friends. He talked non-stop for the duration of the train ride to Berlin, which was fine because he was funny as hell. He talked about European stereotypes and made impressions of different European accents in English.

My ETA to Berlin put smack dab in the middle of the Germany Vs. Argentina game. I tried calling my friend in Berlin, Marc, to let him know I was arriving in town but something was wrong with the cell network. I hoped Germany would win for the sake of the general atmosphere in Berlin. You don’t want to spend the last few days of your vacation in a city where the residents are bummed out because their national team is out of the World Cup they’re hosting. That would be depressing. I love Berlin, I spent a few days here in summer 2005 and I think this is one place I would really like to live in for a while.

Arrived at 17:35 in Berlin’s new shiny Hauptbanhof. The place is huge, probably the largest in Europe, and crawling with people. Check it out:

I am sitting in a Chinese food place in the station’s food court (yes,the station has its own full size food court). People have converged in large groups around areas with TV screens so that they can watch the game. In the half time break I call Marc and he instructs me to take the bus to the Postdamer Platz. I go there and go into the Arcadium (sp?) and watch the second half of the game. Germany wins by penalty shootout. The Germans went wild.