A Different Drummer

Despite the second bombing on a Cairo tourist site in less than a month.

Luckily Thea and I are lying on a beach in wonderful Dahab, far from the nastiness. All is OK. all is not cool, however, with this recent trend of things exploding in tourist places in Cairo. Will write more when I am back in the explodey-zone, Sinai is too pretty and relaxed to think or write about this sort of thing.

I asked for an animal sacrifice over the weekend the give me some luck in an upcoming decision - and it looks like the good work in Austin did the trick for me.

I have been selected for the 2005-06 AIESEC International (AI) team!!! I will be workin in Rotterdam from June 1 onwards as the AI Corporate Relations Manager.

Horray. Busy now, more later.

On Saturday, April 23, the world will celebrate many prominent events, including:

1014 - Battle of Clontarf: Brian Boru defeats Viking invaders, but is killed in battle.
1948 - 1948 Arab-Israeli War: Haifa, the major port of Israel, is captured from Palestinian forces.
1971 - The Rolling Stones release the classic album Sticky Fingers
1985 - New Coke, a marketing disaster is introduced.
1993 - Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum.
2001 - Intel introduces the Pentium 4 Processor.

And the otherwise thorough folks at Wikipedia missed what will become an especially prominent day:

1981: Birth of Tom Gara

Yup, 24 years on Earth this Saturday. I'll be waiting for some hopefully good news about my future over the next couple of days, but even without that, things are going pretty swimmingly - awesome job working in one of the worlds most amazing countries, with a whole bunch of great people, a wonderful girl by my side, a fairly good idea of what I would love to do with my life, and lots of cool options for the future. Oh, and I forgot to mention, two great loving parents in Australia, who manage to stay tolerant of my everlasting need for travel, money and self satisfaction at the expense of a stable life back at home close to them. I onlyhope that I can be so supportive of the happiness of my children as they have for me.

I'll be celebrating it in Ras Sidr, in the Gulf of Suez, where we will be holding our last national conference for the year. You see? Its being able to say sentences like that that makes me wonderfully happy with where my life is at right now.

Cross your fingers and sacrifice something for me this weekend, and hopefully I will have some good news to share on Monday morning....

Bill Clinton spoke yesterday at the memorial service for the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing - and came out with an amazingly impressive, poignant quote. I'd love to know if it is his own, or taken from somewhere else. Either way, it is beautiful, and true:
From experience, completely true.
(quote taken from BuzzMachine)

We have another Misr blogger within our midst - welcome Amr Askoura to the already considerable posse of Egypt bloggers on the system. We rule, massively. After the US, is Egypt the best represented country on nomadlife?

Askoura starts well:

"I was walking on Mohamed Mahmoud street from one campus to the other when i found a friend of mine beating a traffic policeman and surrounded by other 5 trying to get the poor policeman out of my friend's hands."

Askoura is fundamentally a genius - expect big things from his blog. How many other nomadlife blogs have javascript games to keep us entertained (scroll to bottom).

Tha advantage of dating a cute maltese girl is more than just the wonderful accent, strange choice of words (Thea calls a spanner an "english key") and Mediterranean temprament, it is the possibility of coming home to wonderful, wonderful food.

I've never eaten artichoke before, certainly not a whole artichoke looking like this:



Picking off the leaves, one by one, is a time consuming process, but interesting and melodic, and you really feel like you have earned it when you get to the delicious centre.

And I think these vegetables speak for themselves:



Bravo, Malta/Thea. Your food wins.

But its late at night, and Thea already has, so go read it there.

"He isn't John Paul II any more," Leon said. "From now on, he's the Incredible Popeman"......

ugh.

This is the first time i have used the internet in nearly a week. That is a serious crisis.

Arthur and Brodie were consumed by Egypt. They will never be the same again.

We have been in meetings for the last four days with all the national presidents (incoming and outgoing) of AIESEC in the Middle East and North Africa region. Been having a blast making evil schemes with the Tunisians, Moroccans and Emirati on how we devious Arabs plan on taking over the AIESEC world. Expect more great stuff to come - much of it in a haze of apple scented smoke...