Here Comes Tomorrow

Adventures in Corporate America

2008-06-18T22:50:00.001-04:00

Which is worse? Hearing someone take a phonecall in the bathroom, or hearing someone checking his email on a Blackberry in the bathroom?

I know what I'll be spending a shit-load of cash on in 4 years...

2008-05-20T17:22:00.001-04:00

Eat it, Houston! And you too, Arizona - you eat it as well!

The Fine Art of Losing Gracefully

2008-05-15T09:49:00.000-04:00

"A man walks amid rubbish in Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester, England, following the UEFA Cup final. Zenit St Petersburg beat Glasgow Rangers 2-0 in the game." (BBC News)

Wow. Thanks for being such great guests, Rangers fans.

Thing a Day - Week 1

2008-05-11T22:09:00.003-04:00

Inspired by Ben's brace of lofty goals, here's the start of an attempt to take a picture of something - every day, for a year.

Sunday May4th - A taste of Egypt with home-made Fuul, a traditional stewed bean dish that basically kept me alive during August ought-seven.

Monday March 5th - Is it too soon to refer to the Gamecube controller as "retro?" Either way, a great controller and my choice for all things Smash-like.

Tuesday May 6th - Very strange to think I've been working at the same place for nearly 5 months, but having a view is kinda nice. From the 14th floor, W 53rd street.

Wednesday May 7th - Who lives here? City Year lives here. The second round has been and gone, and the waiting game ensues...

Thursday May 8th - Bump 'n Grind ready for another game of volleyball. The move to the top division hasn't exactly made things easy on the court, but at least we still have more fun.

Friday May 9th - Bert, in cupcake form, shortly before his demise.

Saturday May 10th - At the One Harlem Service Day, partially covered in green and orange paint (but not as much as the shed we were painting, thankfully).

The Long Weekend

2008-04-16T11:54:00.003-04:00

More lack-of-updates... I'd use the excuse that some of the stuff I enjoy, get up to in free time or have randomly done doesn't seem blog-worthy, but hey, who am I to set standards on what I write about irregularly?

The past few days saw dancing, good food, volunteering, more good food, a lot of walking and picture-taking and a triumphant first volleyball game of the new season. The walk was especially good - in an effort to reaquaint myself with Manhattan and take advantage of the first signs of spring, I covered the entire length of the island on foot, from Broadway and 9th at the top to Battery Park.

5 1/2 hours well spent, and a full post to come soon. It's nice to realize that just because I'm not wandering the globe anymore it doesn't mean you can't find some adventures to go on from time to time...

OMG EPIC FAIL

2008-03-21T23:40:00.000-04:00

Lame, IU. Lame.

Easy to Please

2008-03-21T11:28:00.003-04:00

I like New York at this time of year; either the first signs of spring start to brighten up the avenues and attitudes you see each day, or the cold skies and air mirror the sharp grey lines of the city. A few nights ago I was walking across Manhattan - the air was clear and crisp, the lights glowed warmly; even the ear problems I've been having muffled the usual sounds of the city to a gentle hum. It was comfortable, like putting on an old, favoured hoody and curling up somewhere you feel is home.

Back with the Random Crap

2008-03-16T15:51:00.002-04:00

As I walked to work last week, I ran into a guy wearing a Duke windbreaker, and NY Giants cap, and a cat perched on top of his head. Both man and cat were at perfect ease with this situation as they traveled down the street; the cat would glance around at the bustle around him, as if wondering what all the fuss was about. It must be nice to be so at ease, raised just above the cares of the world...

Celebrate Good Times (C'mon)

2007-12-31T18:44:00.000-05:00

I've officially made it through all of 2007 without dying.

Back

2007-12-30T12:51:00.000-05:00

Wow, no post all month... who do I think I am, Luke?

The flight back to New York was smooth and uneventful, 12 hours in the air passing quickly thanks to some watchable movies and a bit of sleep. The time since then has been spent getting settled back into life here, catching up with friends, making plans for the future. I've been temping at a law firm helping them get their new website set up (for which my bank account is greatful); the assignment should be finishing in about a week so from there I'll move on to something new as I search for a new place. Based on my preliminary searching places in my usual stomping ground of the Upper West Side might be a bit thin on the ground; maybe it's time to get to know a new part of the city? Headed out to Jersey to see my family over Christmas; tomorrow for New Year's is bowling with Jill, Jen and the usual crowd. Life is moving on, as it always does.

Khalaas y3ani

2007-12-06T10:09:00.000-05:00

Well, this is it – my last day at Silverkey and my penultimate day in Egypt.

When I first arrived here in March it came on the heels of 2 months of near constant moving around – around the US and Canada, then to the UK and Morocco – and initially I was planning on only settling here for a few months before moving on. Sadly those plans fell through, and after briefly considering leaving for another country in the region I decided to make a go of it here, luckily finding work through friends and moving to downtown Cairo from where I was living on the outskirts of the city. The year definitely didn’t turn out like I expected, but thankfully that’s not always such a bad thing.

The stuff I was expecting was fantastic. Getting to spend two weeks working with the Canadian MC and a further week and a half helping to lead MENA LDS gave me the chance to work with old friends on the things that I loved. Then my traineeship with the African YES Project made me push myself, learn new skills, make new friends and even helped me use what I learned in university to help teach others. I’m still stupendously proud of my team for taking on a project the size of starting up our own tea-making business.

Then, when things deviated from what I thought would happen, in true Cairo fashion this just opened up a whole range of new possibilities for me to take advantage of. If I had left, I never would have gotten the chance to work and live with a couple of crazy bastards. I never would have climbed Mt Sinai, seen the Mediterranean, jumped over sand dunes in the Sahara or snorkelled in the Red Sea. By my count I would have missed 6 crazy adventures, about 8 awesome parties, 5 good restaurants and many, many close friends. Khan al-Khalili? Never happened. Sitting on the street with the Boabs dressed in a Galabeya? Nope. That night Luke, Kent and I stayed up until 5am watching Chappelle’s Show and drinking chili vodka? Lost to the ages.

The sad part is that, while moving on means that there’s a whole new range of adventures ahead, there will always be things that are left behind. Egypt and Cairo in particular isn’t always the easiest of places to understand, or feel comfortable with. There’s much about this place that still seems strange and distant, and I think I could live here for the rest of my days and never truly understand certain aspects of life here. But for every annoyance there’s something to smile about; for every day I’ve returned home frustrated and angry, there’s a challenge that I met and beat. Like any time you’re in a strange place, far away from home, sometimes all you can do is plant your feet, smile, and meet whatever gets thrown at you with a steady mix of sarcastic humor and the ability to laugh at yourself. I’m sad to leave Cairo and the friends I have here, but happy that I had the chance to have that experience in the first place.

So, like I said, this is it. No more fuul, tamaya or shawerma, no more pomegranate juice or sahlab. No more dodging cars, arguing with cabs, riding microbuses in the middle of the night. No more karaoke at Harry’s pub, parties at Harrison’s place, drinks on the roof of the Odeon or laughing with friends at Horeyya. No more blue room, Mahroos, fighting with my shower, watching movies with Luke over dinner or saying hi to the guys on our street. No more sunsets in Al Azhar park. No more walking home over the River Nile. No more Cairo, no more Egypt.

At least for a little while.

Spider-Man likes Heavy Metal Music

2007-12-05T06:11:00.000-05:00

Adventures in Cairo: Taks!

2007-12-03T04:00:00.000-05:00

As Luke will probably tell you, I have something of a love-hate relationship with the cab drivers of Cairo. With the metro not quite reaching many parts of the city and the generally cheap cost of living, the thousands of black-and-white cars that patrol the streets are often the best way to go if you need to get from A to B – if you need to get to Mohandeseen, Maadi or Zamalek in a hurry, or out to Khan al-Khalili or further, cabs are your best bet if you’re not up for deciphering the bus system. Sadly, getting a cab can often be more of a challenge in itself.

First, you need to get a free one. While there are many thousands of cabs you also have to remember that there are many millions of people out and about as well. It might be 5 seconds before you spot one, or it could be my current record of 10 minutes. Of course, the cabs are also prone to stopping next to you as you walk down the street on the off-chance you want to jump in, but this usually happens when you have no need for one.

Then you need to get in. This is harder than it might sound. If the driver doesn’t know where you want to go, or he doesn’t want to go where you want to go, or just decides for shits and giggles not to let you in, then you’re out of luck.

Then you have to get there. This too is harder than it sounds. If you fall at this step, one of three things has probably happened; perhaps the driver has driven you 50 meters or so before intimating that he in fact has no clue about where you want to go. A second option might be that, after said 50 meters, the driver chooses to tell you that this particular trip will cost you 3 times as much as it should, at which point you repeat the number with a shocked look on your face before leaping out into oncoming traffic. The final option of course is that the car crashes, breaks down or otherwise expires en route – while this hasn’t happened to me yet there have been a couple of close calls.

Finally, you have to get out and pay. As the black-and-white cabs have no meters you pay what you think the ride should cost, and what you think and what the driver thinks this amount should be sometimes differs. I remember when I first arrived here I would negotiate before getting in to make sure I knew how much I’d be paying; now if the driver asks how much I’ll pay for the ride it’s usually a good sign that the guy will expect a high price.

So sometimes it can be quite an effort to get the form of transportation that should be the easiest option. That being said, sometimes you luck out and the guy is a badass. Like the cab driver who drove to the outskirts of the city to give me back the phone I dropped in his car; or the driver who presented Kent with a cup of hot tea the second he got in the car; or the driver with a MP3 player hooked up to his speakers, and who blasted Harrison, Luke and I with The Bee Gees, The Eagles and Prince as we sped over the Nile. And that one guy who got us singing falsetto disco songs in the middle of the Middle East definitely makes up for those past rough rides.

And so, in honor of the fine gentlemen mentioned in the previous paragraph, here are some eye-catching taxis from the streets of Cairo...

This guy had cool little skulls on his door locks. Spooky!

This guy had badass Street Fighter 2 decals.

Just above the shisha you can see a cab in Alexandria, painted their standard Black and Yellow as opposed to Cairo's Black and White. I was kinda hoping that each city would have their own color scheme, but nah.

That's not to say all Cairo cabs are the same - this one is Summer Citrus flavored!

Of course, in the desert the taxis are a little more lo-tech...

Phew

2007-11-26T09:43:00.000-05:00

Finally uploaded all 4,054 of my photos to Flickr.

Anniversary

2007-11-18T03:56:00.000-05:00

Today a year ago, everything changed...

Fabulous

2007-11-15T11:02:00.000-05:00

Mental note - read/watch all of this.

Ahly vs Negb

2007-11-15T03:51:00.000-05:00

Last Friday saw Luke and I finally able to make it to that cornerstone of the Egyptian cultural experience – a football match at Cairo International Stadium, a stones-throw away from my old apartment in Nasr City. The game was a big deal (it was the African equivalent of the Champion’s League final) and so finding tickets was a big deal for us unwitting Westerners and our Egyptian friends, and so when we found out we had them a few hours before the game alarms were duly rung and we made our way East to the stadium. This is where the fun began.

Instructed to wait in front of the green-and-white Mosque, I did so for 15 minutes before further phone conversations yelled over the noise of tens of thousands of fans indicated that a) I was in front of the wrong green-and-white Mosque, the right one being on the other side of the stadium, and b) I had 10 minutes to rectify the situation before the gates were closed. A brief period of sprinting ensued and thankfully I was able to find the others partaking in a 200-person Rugby scrum next to one of the stadium compound entrances. By this point the police and guards had decided to close the gates on the swarming fans, many of whom (like ourselves) were waving tickets in the air; like many things in Egypt though this wasn’t as final at it would be in other places, and by cramming under the barricades and pretty much shoving past the police we were able to get through the first line of defence, along with a great number of other fans trying to gain entry. Next came more charging down the street until we came to line-of-defence number 2, where everyone was herded through a narrow passageway, an ineffectual metal detector and more guards, who this time were brandishing riding crops and seemed a lot more keen on people now getting through. Still waving our tickets (and elbows) in the air, we managed to squeeze through somehow, me dodging two policemen’s arms and taking a smack to the back of the head in the process. Yet more running brought us to the final line of defence, a line of turn styles sorted by seating section that bordered on the orderly; showing our tickets gained us access to the inner sanctum of Egyptian sports. Our only hurdle came as Luke’s bag (containing two cameras and an iPod) was searched, with the guard demanding baksheesh (a tip) to let him keep our items with him. Thankfully our Egyptian friends help him avoid getting ripped off having to pay the fine gentleman and we staggered up the stairs to our section of the stadium.

At this point we still had a solid 90 minutes before the game got underway, so we had plenty of time to find space to sit, catch our breath and write “Ahly” on various body parts using red face paint. Somehow a vast number of fans with nothing resembling a ticket had made it through the various trials we had just navigated, and so our seats for the evening were the concrete steps in the aisles between the rows of chairs – thankfully this still gave us a decent view of the pitch and the thousands of fans surrounding it. Passions were running high – the chanting was continuous; altercations ranging from raised voices to physical violence was regular (and this was all between fans of the same team); a line of riot police kept a barrier of 20 feet around the huddle of away supporters; red clothing was ubiquitous amongst everyone else.

Sadly the game didn’t turn out the way the Egyptians had planned it to. The opposing team, Negb of Tunisia, grabbed the lead shortly before halftime, and although Ahly scored shortly after this result would have still meant Negb’s victory on away goals (the first leg in Tunisia had ended in a 0-0 draw). A red card for Ahly a short time later didn’t help things, an neither did Ahly conceding two goals in the last 5 minutes of the match. Final result: Negb 3, Ahly 1, and a lot of crying Egyptians.

Still, at least Luke and I can claim to have survived getting to the stadium and have seen a football match in Egypt – although maybe next time we’ll get to the stadium a little sooner to beat the rush…

Unpatriotic

2007-11-05T03:13:00.000-05:00

Sadly I wasn't able to watch the Colts-Pats game last night (CBS isn't a common channel over here, as you might expect). In the imaginary game that I imagined though, Brady tripped, fell and hurt his ankle during the team introductions; the backup could only throw 10 yards at a time; Moss got pissed and refused to run anything except Hail Mary routes, until he was torn in half by a flying Bob Sanders tackle; and Belichick just stared off into space the whole time, like a combination of Art Shell and one of those Easter Island statues.

When I check the score in 2 minutes, I do not expect this to be the actual outcome.
----------------------------
UPDATE: Bugger. At least it was a close game (and close when Indy was missing some important starters). How about we meet up again in January for another go-around?

Bail Out!

2007-10-31T13:54:00.000-04:00

See, this is the situation I hate getting into - I'm so behind in my posting that I've got a backlog of cool shit to write about, stretching back nearly a month(!). And I could just write a crappy catch-up post to get back on track, but where's the fun in that? Some of this stuff is important!

So, what this boils down to is that I need to not be lame when it comes to blogging. A lofty goal I know, but one that I think is achievable. So, with any luck, soon I'll actually be able to write about Siwa, the cabs of Cairo, my last AIESEC conference as a member, my (hopefully) badass Halloween costume, chocolate toothpaste and the fact that I'll be back in New York in just over 5 weeks...

OH GOD SUSHI

2007-10-22T13:13:00.000-04:00

Fuck yes.

We made it!

2007-10-11T10:45:00.000-04:00

Eid Mubarak, y'all - I'm off to lounge around in the desert for a few days. Woot for surviving Ramadan!

Adventures in Cairo: Busting Asses on the Giza Plateau

2007-10-10T16:47:00.000-04:00

Every foreigner that comes through Cairo will, at some point during their stay, find themselves on a horse in the “desert” at Giza (why the quote marks? Cause if you can see civilization and you’re constantly stepping on old bottles and bags of chips, that’s not the desert). Even if you swore off horses due to an embarrassing incident at a state fair when you were 12, or if you have no interest in channelling your inner Brendan Frasier as you bolt across the dunes, or if you’ve already done the whole horseback-riding-in-the-desert thing (like me), you’ll more than likely end up on that horse in that stretch of sands. So when invited to some dawn horse riding, I accepted my fate – although I have to admit as a random timekiller it’s kinda cool to have it as an option (New York: “Hey, you want to get Starbucks?” Cairo: “Hey, you wanna go ride around on horses next to enormous monuments thousands upon thousands of years old?”).

So we found ourselves on a back street in Giza at 5:30am eyeing a range of horses way more interested in eating than in taking us around. We got delayed by the fact that the stable owners lost the key to one of their stables (resulting in 20 minutes of beating the shit out of the chain holding the doors closed with a rock), but soon we were trotting comfortably into the desert. This would not last.

If you’re in a wide open space on a large animal in need of exercise, it’d be natural to open the throttle a little bit, right? At least that’s the theory; pretty much everyone you see out there is hitting about 80mph (or at least trying very hard to). Unfortunately, this time that caused problems – you see the thing is, at a steady gallop the horse tends to bounce up and down a decent amount, and at no point during the trip did I manage to get the tempo right.

Maybe a demonstration will help explain exactly what happened: hold your left palm out flat facing up, and make a fist with your right hand pointing down into your left palm. Now vigorously smash the two together over and over again. This is basically what was going on as we sped over the desert, only the palm was a horse and the fist was my butt cheeks.

So there I was, racing over the desert sands bouncing uncontrollably in my saddle, giggling uncontrollably at a) how goddam stupid I looked to the other riders passing by, b) how bruised my undercarriage was getting and c) how the hell I was going to stop. Item C was finally accomplished by managing to wrench back on the reigns – with the horse stopping abruptly and my crotch absorbing most of the impact, I was finally able to compose myself.

So long story short, my ass got wrecked (especially seeing as how the horse I had coming back was a lot jumpier and the saddle a lot harder); fortunately the long weekend we have this week gave me the chance to sleep off most of the bruising before returning to sitting in a chair for several hours every day. Plus I’m a firm believer in the understanding that every so often you’ll need to sacrifice something to get a good story – sometimes it’s your free time, sometimes your ego, and sometimes it’s an unbruised coccyx.

Meh

2007-10-06T11:34:00.000-04:00

Sitting in the Pottery Cafe just off the AUC campus on the weekend is pretty much the only chance I've had to blog in the past few weeks; can't blog at the office cause there's always something that needs doing whenever I'm there... Can't blog at home because we've yet to find a way to make our laptops spontaneously connect to the internet without actual wifi being present. And of course, now that I'm here, I can't really think of anything to write. Trying to avoid yet another multi-week recap limits my options somewhat, as does thinking that talking about upcoming events would be kinda lame if I can't guarantee that I'll be able to blog about them as and when they happen. So let's go for the random stream-of-conciousness, shall we?

I have a watermelon waiting for me back at the apartment, a fact that has raised my Quality of Life index by a few points
I'm not sure if I'll ever where my gear from last week's Pinky and Kinky party again, but it was worth it
This coming week I will work 4 days; the next week 3, the week after that 2
The AIESEC Activate conference in 2 weeks will more than likely be my last (as a member, at least)
The worst feeling is waking up in the middle of the night, being incredibly thirsty... and realizing that it's too late to drink because of Ramadan
Kinda worrying, but at least there's a bye week coming up
Super excited (yeah, dork, I know)
It's nearly the end
It's nearly the beginning

Adventures in Room-Matery

2007-09-16T10:05:00.000-04:00

(Last Night)

Luke: "When are you waking up?"
Me: "8, I gotta be at work early."
Luke "Don't wake me up then."

(This Morning)

Luke: "Aah... Chris?"
Me: "Buh?"
Luke: "It's 9:45."
Me: "...SONOVABITCH!"

The Black & White Night

2007-09-07T11:47:00.000-04:00

Dody also brought a bottle of absinthe he got in Prague, with hilarious results. Tom, Salman, Harrison - don't worry, no damage was incurred.