A Different Drummer

Michael Totten, a blogger and reported based in Lebanon, has a great post talking all about the nightmare-that-becomes-comfortable that is driving in Lebanon. It might as well be written about Egypt, because it is spot on, and gave me so many flashbacks to life on the roads in Cairo.

"When I first arrived in Beirut I thought Lebanese drivers must be among the worst in the world. They don’t stop at red lights. They drive the wrong way down one-ways. Seat belts are verboten, and the concept of lanes is utterly alien. Speed limits? No way. Traffic circles are unbelievable clusterfucks. Stop signs are suggestions that translate into “slow down just a tad if it’s not too much trouble.” The soundtrack of the city is an unending cacophony of blaring car horns and screeching tires................"

Read the whole thing. At the end he mentions that his brother instantly "got" the system, after living and driving in Argentina. I wonder if there is a general way in which developing world traffic works? I can imagine factors like relatively loose policing, low budgets for road awareness and maintentance, and general public acceptance of chaos and disorganisation all push traffic culture in a certain direction.

Like Totten, I love crazy traffic like this, and the boring, plodding, goody-two-shoes system of orderly traffic in the West utterly bores me.

Totten also has a great article up on Tech Central Station covering a lot of first person experiences in the Lebanese - Israeli border zones, which I highly reccomend reading.

I go to a warm sunny North African paradise for a week, come back, and Rotterdam has turned into a freezing cold hell-hole. Seriously, it is so cold here right now. The 5 Day forecast isnt looking so hot either....

Today	Tomorrow	Saturday	Sunday	Monday
Showers Hi 7° Lo 1°	Snow Showers Hi 4° Lo 1°	Showers Hi 3° Lo 0°	Showers Hi 5° Lo 2°	Showers Hi 4° Lo 2°

Lord, give me the strength to prevail......Australia is in the peak of summer, and I will be there in 3 weeks.....

I'm ready to drop everything and move to this little slice of heaven on the Mediterranean. I am still an Egypt man through and through, and Basata still holds my title for Best Place in the Universe, but Sidi Bou Said is six different kinds of awesome, all rolled into one.

Thea has the pictures......

If anyone is interested, I'll be updating the AIESEC International blog semi regularly live from the World Summit in Tunisia. Things are pretty cool so far, with the big potential "crisis" of the summit looking like it has been avoided before it even really began...

The business/civil society workshops I have been to so far have been great. Its just so awesome to see how much cool stuff is being done at a grassroots level, some really funky shit with IT enabled development efforts all over the place.

Tonight I will be at the launch of MIT Media Lab's super dooper incredible "100 Dollar Laptop". This is a really incredible project that has the potential to be a major disruptive technological development for the world, and word has it that they will actually be showing off working models of it this evening. Can't wait.

Anyhow, ai.myaiesec.net is the place to be if you want updates...

If anyone is interested, I'll be updating the AIESEC International blog semi regularly live from the World Summit in Tunisia. Things are pretty cool so far, with the big potential "crisis" of the summit looking like it has been avoided before it even really began...

The business/civil society workshops I have been to so far have been great. Its just so awesome to see how much cool stuff is being done at a grassroots level, some really funky shit with IT enabled development efforts all over the place.

Tonight I will be at the launch of MIT Media Lab's super dooper incredible "100 Dollar Laptop". This is a really incredible project that has the potential to be a major disruptive technological development for the world, and word has it that they will actually be showing off working models of it this evening. Can't wait.

Anyhow, ai.myaiesec.net is the place to be if you want updates...

They emerged from the canal, and nothing was ever the same again....

Nothing restores your faith in our cruel, heartless biosphere more than watching this awesome clip of 30 bad-ass wasps killing, one by one, a colony of 30,000 honey bees. The dramatic narrator (speaking in the voice of the horror movie preview guy) and the emotional Lord of the Rings esque soundtrack add to the drama, and some clever people must have spend a long time working out how to get such close up footage. Just incredible, and frightening, and a reminder that life isn't fair sometimes....

So, for the assclowns of the week award - heres to the incredibly talented staff of the Tunisian embassy in the Hague, who will only speak to callers in French or Dutch. The person I was connected to spoke English - but she told me (in slow French) that they will not speak in English over the phone. "Shhpeeke Nederlanshe??" - "No". "Parle Francais?"

How much more retarded and not in the bests interests of your country can you get? Say I'm an optimisting young Korean toursist travelling around the world with a big bag of money to spend. I've tired of Europe's cold grey skies and boring urban scenery. I see some awesome photos of the North African coast, the Sahara, I become interested in making my way there. I look on google and see lots of tourist information about Tunisia, but to go these, I need a visa.

So, I our young Korean friend calls the Tunisian embassy in the Netherlands, and they basically tell him to fuck off because he doesn't speak two completely irrelevant languages. Real smart thinking guys.

Anyhow, I'll be in Tunisia next week for a conference, so I guess I will be able to see in person whether this kind of retardedness is limited to overseas Embassy weirdos, or if it has infected Tunisia proper....

tom - happiness makes the flowers shine says:
so how did libya seem on first impression?

Thea failed attempts at making Ethiopian Coffee... off to tripoli tonight says:
man libya is greennnnnnnnnn

Thea failed attempts at making Ethiopian Coffee... off to tripoli tonight says:
not in terms of natural greenery

Thea failed attempts at making Ethiopian Coffee... off to tripoli tonight says:
but everything is painted green

tom - happiness makes the flowers shine says:
hahhahahahah

Thea failed attempts at making Ethiopian Coffee... off to tripoli tonight says:
and called green....

Thea failed attempts at making Ethiopian Coffee... off to tripoli tonight says:
green square, green street, green hospital, green library

tom - happiness makes the flowers shine says:
that is so funny