Monday 26 February 2007

From the top of my building

My building is one of the highest in the area, sixteen floors high. Since i arrived here i asked everyone in the building if the top was open, i wanted to see the view; everybody told me that it was not, as it is very dangerous. Yesterday i ignored everybody´s comments and went out to the stairs (see picture) decided to discover for myself, or even to find an alternative way to access the roof.


For some reason the lift (oh! the lift deserves a post of its own) goes up just to the 12th floor, even though the shaft indeed reaches the top of the building. Another little mystery, i could try to ask Aam Sahad :) So, i walked up four floors and to my delight, there was no lock to the roof...mmm actually there was no door at all! I do not know why i do not go and check things for myself every time. The view is mind blowing, truly amazing! From there it can really be appreciated the high density of buildings, as well as to explore the surroundings from a new perspective. You can see the mosque in my street in this picture:


This is a picture of the building next to ours, it contains all the elements that repeat all around: lift shaft, satellite aerials, water deposit and ladder:


In this view we can see the roofs of the buildings surrounding the little street in the back of my house, particularly curious is the great amount of piled up wood in one of roofs to keep the building rising:


In a zoomed detail of the last photo you can find this boy, he seems to be having quite a lot of time in his hands:



In this other building builders could be seen in action and three children playing around in the floor underneath:


I have done a pasting exercise with photoshop for composing a panoramic view of the north-north east skyline of Alexandria from the roof, the result can be seen in the picture (sorry for the couple of patches :P):


Fact of the Day: Since the assassination of Sadat in 1981, Egypt have been uninterruptedly under emergency law.

6 comments:

AlvaroLondon said...

I love the picture of the stairs of your building! And i don´t want to imagine how anoying could be to weak up in the flat just in front of the mosque´s tower in a morning of hangover...

nono said...

The colours in the stairs are very warm,i have another one u will love... which takes me to a technical point:

-No photo in this blog has been edited, all the the pics are taken with my shit camera and with natural light, no conservants, colorants or additives :P (i even hate the flash!)

The mosque in my street is just one of out three in the surroundings, the songs in the morning are quite nice actually! in any case theres no alcohol here so there are no hangovers! :P

regards
nono

Naga Simpson said...

when you say... "great amount of piled up wood in one of roofs to keep the building rising"

the wood is building material or something? I was quite confused by this one for a while!

I think you should stop rattling on about buildings and tell us more about the local football team!

nono said...

ehem...you are not aware of the building techniques that they use in here for building. Those wood planks are used to make the preforms to be filled by concrete. What did u think??!! i will send u a picture for u to understand better :P

regards
nono

بلال حســــنى said...

u have frame in your eyes

Naga Simpson said...

ok... formwork. If I knew about the construction methods there I wouldn't bother reading your blog :P

discovered a wicked website today
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/yourhome/technical/index.htm

and....the local football team?