Sunday 29 April 2007

the fallen man

"The fallen man, if is abandoned to his own resources, finds himself somehow in a dilemma between the mental knowledge and the sensitive knowledge: he knows that the mental knowledge is superior to the knowledge of the senses and has to be valued in consequence; but he knows too that the inferior knowledge possesses an intensity that the superior knowledge lacks. The knowledge of the heart explains everything; but in the absence of it and of its extensions, in the absence of faith and the virtues that go with it, in particular the patience in front of what one cannot understand and the reliability in the Providence, it seems like something is wrong; the soul finds itself in a dilemma between hypocrisy and sensuality", M.Lings

As a fallen man I have been looking for water digging a bit here and a bit there, if i keep doing this i will not find it and i will die of thirst. I have to begin my travel digging deep on just one place: my heart; trying to find the string that connects my soul to the world around, trying to find the path that bridges between the finite and the infinite, trying to find the eternal in my memory, trying to find the light in the obscurity of my blinding ignorance. In the place that i am searching, my mind, my heart and my soul will be fused for eternity.


Thursday 26 April 2007

Over two thousand hits and the digital divide

Well, and another milestone in my blogger experience. Thanks to the wonderful work done by Google Analytics i can see where is (almost) every person that reads the blog. The Geo map overlay of the last 500 visits are shown in the picture:


I know u cant see nothing in this view, please click on the image for appreciating the pretty orange points that represent your computers on the map. Actually the localized distribution of the people reading the blog is not surprising at all. Yesterday the Internet World Map 2007 was released in http://ipligence.com , from there this image was extracted:

It can be seen how the people hitting in this blog are confined to the areas of high density of the net. The data are quite shocking, large areas of the planet (and some of them very densely populated, Indonesia and India as the main example) are almost empty...but for putting some numbers to it, is good to recall the table ipligence provided:

Geographic Area Number of Addresses % of Addresses
Africa 40.241.664 1.519%
Antartica 15.620 0.001%
Asia 371.297.015 14.015%
Caribbean 1.681.866 0.063%
Central America 2.557.340 0.097%
Europe 569.838.903 21.510%
Middle East 12.011.131 0.453%
North America 1.481.754.661 55.932%
Oceania 76.417.711 2.885%
South America 93.409.304 3.525%

Some striking data are: 1. fifteen thousand IPs in Antarctica?! (that was a surprise to me) 2. Taking into account that the population of US is only the 5% of the world total, they hold the 55% of addresses 3. Africa has the 13% of the world population and only 1.5% of the IPs...and so on. Because of this, is obvious that the most of information on the net is in English, which means that a person with no knowledge of English cannot retrieve most of the data, which is a massive language barrier. Furthermore, the levels of illiteracy in many developing countries make Internet an Utopian land for many (not very extreme estimations are that 30% of people in Egypt are illiterate). Others, simply do not have access the technology as many cannot afford a computer or even paying in an internet cafe. These fact is one of the main problems of the so called "Digital Divide", which refers to the gap between those who benefit from digital technology and those who do not (please visit digitaldivide.org for a more detailed description of this global problem). Anyway those who can read and write and have access to the tech dedicate most of their online time in playing games, chatting, porn and downloading...Even in developed countries many times educated people do not make a great use of the vast amount of resources available; there are many many PhD students in European Universities that still make their research in Google (not even the scholar version).

So why is all this mess??? we have been lucky enough to be blessed with one of the most powerful cultural advances (if not the most) of all human history: the computers and the net. The last time that a similar cultural revolution took place was with the invention of the book (through the Arabs that stole the paper technology from two Chinese prisoners :P and then improved greatly the fabrication processes) and the invention of the movable character print by Gutenberg. The time that passed from the moment of the inventions until the majority of people could benefit from that massive cultural tool were centuries. So it happens now, we have an amazing tool without instructions. The people of my generation were educated in a system developed for the old world by educators that thought that www was some association of world wrestling. They did not know, they never taught us. We had to discover ourselves, to explore a vast unknown land with no much guidance...and we still are. I understand it can be very discouraging to search in the net, spending time in distinguishing between useful data and crap... it can be quite overwhelming, but that cannot be an excuse...lets go and use already discovered resources, discover new resources we did not know, use them wisely, identify new resources, use the tools to spread knowledge, to collaborate, to bridge through national borders. Do not forget that, until very recently, information was a rare precious thing. My parents in Spain could not get newspapers from France 40 years ago, and today we can read the news in real time or speak with people from many different countries just with a click.....enjoy the wonderful opportunity that is to have access to information. Enjoy the wonderful opportunity that is to have access to information from this side of the digital divide.

Tuesday 24 April 2007

King Farouk´s palace and gardens

Here we have a green area, the one closest to Miami in Montazar, south Alex. Apart of being one of the few green areas, is not free to enter and is open to public only when security reasons do not oblige to close it. This beautiful lion welcomes you the the garden:


These gardens host the palace of King Farouk, the controversial penultimate king of Egypt, built in the mid XX century. Today is the Presidential Residence and the interior of the palace cannot be accessed by the public, so unfortunately the otherwise beautiful visit was reduced to a walk in the gardens. The Italian architect (i cannot be bothered to find out his name, im not interested) mixed a variety of styles: a tower in the corner resembling a minaret...but not quite:

And we always need more details, these stairs looks like extracted from an Gothic abbey:

And this reminded me of the words of Charles Correa when talking about Indian gardens: "when the built elements catch part of the sky"

The place when looked closely gives the sensation of a luxurious fortification. And those overhanging roofs...arent they the same than in my parents place in Santa Clara (Sevilla)?


The pines, palm trees and grass surround the palace. This particular view reminded me of south of Morocco (Agdz for example :P)


And in the middle of the palm trees this recently built white void tower is found, being a water deposit:


Some nice details were scattered around, the lamp posts:

The sleeping Lions on a fountain, but the tale tell us that the sleeping looking Lion is really awake, and the Lion with open eyes is really sleeping...


One of the palm tree wood bridges, with the pine trees in the background:


One detail of the sitting place in one of the kiosks built with wood and palm leaves:


The coast surrounds half of the perimeter, the ever present Mediterraneo in Alex. Lovely that was early in the morning and it is still not summer, so the place was deserted:


King Farouk even built an island in for drinking tea at 5pm, some say that he built the whole complex for that reason :D does it really matter? The rich people keep enjoying their tea in here, but in these days in their luxurious yatchs, the lighthouse help them to find their way:


And this fisherman was here at early time to catch his lunch:

And in here a couple more of fishermen in a concrete structure that is literally falling down. I think that is obvious the life time of this building material, no wonder why companies do not insure concrete buildings for longer than 10 or 25 years...meanwhile the pyramids in Giza and the Yemen stone and mud skyscrapers are still there after thousands of years:


Observe how in the first line of coast within the complex they are building these little beach houses, and they are selling them at ridiculous prices...and those beaches are private of course, so they are not accessible to the public either. They have built more things within the massive extension, like the Palestine Hotel (ugly and out of context) and a disco... Weird flavoured place...not quite my favourite taste.

Monday 23 April 2007

Cats, Gatos and Kettas

There are so many cats around Alexandria and Cairo, not so many dogs i have got to say. And most of you know i love animals, and cats are special :) Here are some of the cats i found in the seaside, who were being fed by a lovely old man who looked like a sea man:


Some chill in the sun...

Others still are hungry and ask for food:

This one was sitting on the side of the owner of a cafe, it seemed like he has been sitting there all his life, but for some reason was quite scared of me:


Many feed from the bin at the time of the pray:



In here a close up of a cat eating from the left overs of a fish restaurant:

One day sitting in a cafe in Cairo we found these couple of kittens learning to walk under the supervision of their mother:



One of them goes on his first exploration to the next table, i have warn the waiter that is unaware that the little creature is getting under his feet:



I was wondering that being so little how was possible that there were only two around. In that moment we saw the mother jumping on a very big amphora in the door of the cafe and...



In another cafe, i found a mother cat feeding her kittens...and at one point enough was enough:



Then i played for a while with some of the little kittens:



This cat was asking me insistently for food, and he loved the croissants i gave him :)


And how not? my cat in Tugareia:

but the only one i have not found yet is the little Andalusian cat...i think this guy was looking for it:


Some music and chants in Egypt

Of all the things in Islamic countries, the one that i missed the most when i was in Europe was the call to pray five times a day. It actually took me sometime to realise what was it that made me feel different in the streets of Rabat or in a little town of the Draa valley. I know that i could make some point about the noise pollution introduced by so many mosques around the world, but i wont. It marks the rhythm of the day, it grounds the time in such an effective and beautiful way. The voices of the Mohaicins (the ones that call to pray) are filled with emotion, and that feeling soaks every alley way, every street, every town, every city of the Muslim world. It is a daily reminder of our human condition, that we are tiny in comparison with the Universe that we are living in, that our power is negligible in comparison with that of nature. In here i post a verse of the Holy Qur2an sung by a Sheij:

http://omoniak.ath.cx:8888/af_nono/114.mp3

And an islamic chant of a more romantic nature (as i was told):

http://omoniak.ath.cx:8888/af_nono/18.rm

My experience with music has not only been related directly to Islam, actually i have assisted to a multitude of concerts in Alexandria and Cairo. The African, Asian and Islamic influences give birth in this region to a great variety of styles. They are impossible to account for an egnabi like me, but here are some nice examples:

http://omoniak.ath.cx:8888/af_nono/mzmar.mp3

The percussion that makes me go mad, yalla al-tabla!!!

http://omoniak.ath.cx:8888/af_nono/tabla.mp3

And the sagrita, those known high pitch shouts that women perform, they remind me so much of traditional weddings in Islamic countries. You dont know what im talking about?

http://omoniak.ath.cx:8888/af_nono/sagrita.mp3

Apart of the modern anti-music of westerner influence (pretty girls/boys that show loads of skin during their stupid dances but they have not composed a single poem or a melody in their life) contemporary compositions flourish too nurtured by the aforementioned musical traditions, one of the most beautiful examples i found:

http://omoniak.ath.cx:8888/af_nono/secretlove.rm

And i was lucky enough to watch a professional Anun player in my own living room. Here i present the young local talent Amira, from Collage Band in Alexandria, playing a composition of the living legend Belal Hosni...The canabe ahmar crew is in tha house, and this is just the first day of rehearsal !!! wait to see the final version:


This traditional Egyptian instrument is one of the most complicated to play and difficult to master, but as u saw the beauty of its sound when in expert hands cannot be described with words. In here another clip from Amira accompanied by a Re (la pandereta de toda la vida), performing a melody of a known Turkish composer that i cannot spell:



And as a final comedy note, remember:


Saturday 21 April 2007

People and their jobs in the streets

In here i present some of the random pictures and videos i have been taking of people in the streets of Alexandria. The people is what defines a country, a culture, a way of life...and the people is what i love the most in Egypt, whatever the hardships they face they still find a way to keep smiling and keep working to feed their families. I really admire their strength, they make me feel alive.

Attending to the streets...many of Alexandria´s pavements are under continuous works. The strategy of the major for improving the city is quite shocking: first call hundred hammer-men to destroy them all, and then begin redoing them little by little...so half of the city pavements are virtually war zones (major vs people). I dunno why he didnt choose the more adequate strategy of "destroy just ONE street, rebuild it and then go to the next one". Maybe he is looking for the lost treasure of Alexander the Great for financing the rest of the works...who knows? Doesnt he realise how hard is for people, specially old people, to live in such environment?. If you are disabled or on a wheel chair, you would be in serious trouble here, refrain from living in this city in 2007. In here we can see an old man watching his steps coming back from buying the bread in my still destroyed street:


But little by little pavements are done, sometimes with the old Spanish standard of one works three look, sometimes they look like most of them are actually doing something about it:

The reconstruction of the pavements is not the only work to be done in the streets, some need installation of new pipes. This guy does all the job on his own, around the corner from my house:


Apart of the people working in repairing the pavements and piping, there are many other people that work in the street. I would guess that the profession that gives more jobs in this category is transport services. There are simply sooo many taxis, sometimes a caravan of them can be seen in a yellow and black procession on the streets of Alexandria. They are more relaxed than the ones in Cairo, but still the drivers have developed a refined language using their horns for insulting each other. Certain combinations of short and long sounds refer to your mother, others to your sisters and others specially dedicated to you :D By the way, horn in Ameia (local Arabic dialect) is called clax, very similar to the Spanish claxon. Taxi drivers like in every country around the world are a very varied species, from hilarious to mad, from serious to absurd, from bullshitters to cultivated...there are all kinds in the fields of God (hay de todo en la viña del Señor).

As the buses are so few, the minivans are the life support of the transportation system here. This city extends along 30 km of the Mediterranean coast, long avenues and the tram run parallel to the sea making the transportation very easy and linear: you either go up or down...So do the minivans. There are no minivan stops of course, so another vernacular body language has been developed for knowing if the particular one you are flagging is going where you want. There are hand signals for every neighborhood: the clock, the all straight, the 5 fingers + 2 fingers, the signal of the bridge, the 5 fingers together pointing down, etc...it is tremendously efficient, and makes it easy even for an egnabi like me. In here an extract of one of my maaany minivan trips, observe how i was not kidding about the pavements:



But there is a particular type of public transportation that i found extremely charming: the tuk tuk. It is a mix between a motorcycle and the car of Mr.Bean. It does not goes very far distances, but for the wonderful price of 5 pences (in English pounds) saves you a 10 minutes walk, and with sound track :) Here we can see one in a street of Alexandria at the time of the pray:



And if you were wondering how does it feel to go on one of those, here we are...and yes is a bumpy as it looks:


In the category of public transportation i am going to include the trolley men, there are versions with and without donkey. The service they give is not to transport people, but to move stuff for a more than fair price, that television you just bought for example:

The winner of the price to the second most popular (economical) activity in the streets has to go to food vendors. I am not going to go in any depth to explain the vegetables and fruit vendors, as they are too obvious and they were covered in a previous post. But how i love to see people carefully examining the goods and negotiating:

The bread and milk sellers and delivery service, either in bamboo trolleys or simply bikes-with-stall. Why are these almost extinct in Europe?

There are sellers of baked sweet potatoes, literally with an oven on wheels (pretty much in the same style that the classic castañero). It serves the delicious and dirt cheap sweet potatoes on a newspaper, i love them.

The sellers of Al-Tarmuz in brine, altramuces in Spanish or lupin in English according to the Collins dictionary. Candy sellers, in here in a quite curious version: a guy carries a long stick with the inflated pink and white bags hanging like balloons from the top of it, and optionally blows a ridiculously loud little trumpet.

Pistachios vendors (and versions with other nuts) that walk around cafes from table to table delivering their nutritive goods. The hommos el sham stalls, that i found to be weird food. A kind of soup with floating chick peas (!!!???), i.e. como el caldo del puchero version chunga. The fool and tameia are two traditional plates that extremely popular and are sold in the streets and i throughly enjoyed many times. And of course the cochari, I love cochari! i could have never though of rice and pasta in the same dish, but it is delicious.

In the category of food and drink in the streets you cannot forget the tea and coffee delivery service. Waiters walk with their tray on their hands serving to the people in shops, to the barber, to the people waiting for the bus, anything goes. Others simply serve tea in the street, i had so many of those:

The award to the oddest job i could find in the street has to go to the guy of the merry-go-round. No engine no nothing, simply push:



Some beg in the street, obviously it does not qualify as a job, but is where they obtained their money and pass much of their time:

Others do not have to beg neither so much to do, they just sit watching the passing cars, people and time:

But by massive difference, the favourite activity of Egyptians and egnabis alike in the streets of Alexandria is to sit in cafes to talk,smoke and drink, a true paradise:

PS: these are just some of the jobs in the streets. There is the guy with scales in the middle of the pavements for telling you your weight, perfume vendors, stalls with only remote controls, the ice boy, the guy selling tapes riding a sound system on a bike, tissues sellers, books vendors carrying 20 books on their arms, the stall that recharges batteries of mobiles, children selling socks cafe by cafe, shoe polishers, the flip flop vendor, the photographer that offers you a pic, and so many others...god bless them.

Wednesday 18 April 2007

and the Doctor is...


I just received this email, the one that has made me the happiest man in the known universe. If i was feeling lucky before, now i have another big reason.

"Peter Huggard and Paul Snow have approved your corrected thesis. The paperwork is now being passed onto the department and faculty. You should officially hear soon that you have passed and will be awarded your doctorate.

Congratulations Dr Nono"

I would like to acknowledge to all the people that has made my PhD possible with their technical and personal support (many of you reading actually and particularly Dr. Party, gracias hermano, Dr. Pek and Dr. Frog). Thanks soooooo much to all of you

This is a 3D model i did based on Ait el Caid Kasbah, Agdz, Morocco. You can get the full model for goggle sketchup in the 3D warehouse...long life to mud:
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=kasbah&btnG=Search&styp=m

PS: For obvious reasons the name of the blog has been changed ;)

Saturday 14 April 2007

im lucky for...

im lucky for having a smile in the face and...

...for having clean water...cold and hot
...for all the clothes
...for the food i eat everyday
...for all the people that helped me
...for having electricity
...for knowing how to read and write and for having education
...for having ethics and morals
...for having Internet
...for the books i have read
...for not being subject of violence
...for having a passport that allowed me to visit so many places
...for speaking more than one language
...for the people i find that become friends
...for having money on my pocket most of my life
...for all the places i slept
...for respecting everybody regardless of condition
...for my critical thinking...or even for having brain cells at all
...for my hands
...for being an independent thinker not brainwashed by media
...for being healthy
...for my body that withstands adversities
...for having no disabilities
...for having my brothers, my father and my mother
...for being mentally sane (really??)

I would love to know what is the percentage of the world population that could subscribe my words...Those not as lucky as me and many of you spend their life in a struggle for getting things some take for granted...it is an utter disgrace that people that has survival ensured forget what a privilege it is to have it, and still they keep complaining about stupid stuff. It is a responsibility and an obligation for us to make this world a better one for all those who cannot choose.

Curiosity of the day: Remember about fulan? well actually i discovered that there are no zutano and mengano, but actually there are three in Arabic too: fulan, aelen and terten...would be something like aeleano y tertano?

Saturday 7 April 2007

Streets and Cafes in Cairo

The center of Cairo boils with activity, it is filled with shops, malls, restaurants, take aways and people selling in the street daily useful stuff and completely useless junk. Billion coloured lights flash everywhere around, in the middle of the night the noise of the horns decreases....but it never totally dies (mal bicho nunca muere). I sat in one of the restaurants in this little street to eat the whole menu: brain, liver, salad and tahina:

The Tahrir square is a massive (and means really massive) square en the centre of Cairo where governmental buildings, mosques, the Egyptian museum and KFC can be found. A street view from the metro station exit:

Just around the corner from where this picture was taken, there is this tiny old style cafe with tables on the pavement and on the street...where old men smoke shisha:


If this city is the city of the thousands minarets, then it could as well be the city of the million cafes :) I have just tasted a few of them. This is the view of a shop from a cafe in El kalili souk where i sat all nite:

In the city center we sat in a quite nice cafe, hidden in a back street:

This cafe was very particular as the building next to it looked very suspicious. Loud music banging through its windows, laughs of women, dodgy guy in the door and so many air conditioners...what happens in that place to get so hot???


And finally my lovely local in Helwan with its chilled out atmosphere and its carved chairs:


The filled stones ready to be smoked in the shishas:


The covers of the shishas piled up on a dusty box :

And in the entrance of my local you can find the latest model of washing machine, i have never seen one this size before...and i really dunno what is it doing there: