Cairo is rocking more than ever
6 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Monday, August 28 at Monday, August 28, 2006.
It is awesome to be home. Something that I said to a few of the Egyptians in April when I was here - everyone in the world is blessed to have a home and family. Having a place called home is probably at the top of most peoples lists of things to be thankful for and treasure. People who do not have a home, or cannot go back to their home for whatever reason, spend their whole lifetime longing for it.
And the most amazing thing about travel for me, what beats all the sightseeing and photos and wonderful food and new discoveries - is that sometimes, if you are lucky, you can find a second home. Another place where you feel happy to be alive, safe, among great friends, home....And that is what Egypt is to me. It will never feel like my beautiful house in the countryside in Australia, or anywhere in Australia for that matter, but it will be a place where I will breathe a heavy sigh of joy and relief everytime I arrive....
Anyhow enough of the soppy stuff. Whats happening? Well first, I need to readjust again to a few aspects of Egyptian life that I have totally forgotten about. In particular:
Letting go of the fear of death while driving: any foreigner who has lived in Egypt knows what I'm on about here. Egyptians drive in a way that appears to be, well, how do you say this, fucking insane. Cairo traffic is like something from a video game, the hardest, most insane video game in the world. Basically, everyone drives everywhere, all the time. Cars seem to miss each other, and pedestrians, and donkey carts, and buses, by fractions of an inch every time they pass. The kind of incident that I would classify as a near catastrophe and spend the next day telling all my friends about in Australia is what Egyptians consider to be called "changing lanes". Well, they would call it that. If there was lanes. Or if they were in a lane to change from in the first place.
Anyhow, regardless of the insanity, the is an underlying method and rhythym to the madness. Traffic actually flows pretty smoothly for a city this huge, and everyone drives with a common, albeit crazy, understanding of how things work. It all just works, and the actual physical danger is smaller than most places, because you are never doing more than about 40km/h, which isnt really fast enough to do much serious damage. Although, this may be balanced out by the fact that you are ALWAYS doing 40km/h in Cairo, including while reverse parallel parking, reversing down traffic jammed one way streets, waiting at traffic lights, and going through the drive through window at the shawerma stand.....
After a few months here last time, I had learnt the valuable skill of placing you fate in the hands of the Great Magnet, abandoning all fear and apprehension, and just chilling out while in the passenger seat. I could sit with zen-like calm, staring blankly straight ahead with a blissful smile on my face, silently reciting peace mantras, even while it appeared that we were just miliseconds away from totally annihilating bunches of dudes 50 at a time. Somewhere along the way in the past year though, I have become all soft and pathetic and Euro styling, and I can no longer do it. I was freaking out every ten seconds in the cars yesterday, from the drive back from the airport, all the way until the inevitable 2am drives between different cafes, houses, streets etc. I need to regain my Cairo traffic-zen, fast.
More soon.....
And the most amazing thing about travel for me, what beats all the sightseeing and photos and wonderful food and new discoveries - is that sometimes, if you are lucky, you can find a second home. Another place where you feel happy to be alive, safe, among great friends, home....And that is what Egypt is to me. It will never feel like my beautiful house in the countryside in Australia, or anywhere in Australia for that matter, but it will be a place where I will breathe a heavy sigh of joy and relief everytime I arrive....
Anyhow enough of the soppy stuff. Whats happening? Well first, I need to readjust again to a few aspects of Egyptian life that I have totally forgotten about. In particular:
Letting go of the fear of death while driving: any foreigner who has lived in Egypt knows what I'm on about here. Egyptians drive in a way that appears to be, well, how do you say this, fucking insane. Cairo traffic is like something from a video game, the hardest, most insane video game in the world. Basically, everyone drives everywhere, all the time. Cars seem to miss each other, and pedestrians, and donkey carts, and buses, by fractions of an inch every time they pass. The kind of incident that I would classify as a near catastrophe and spend the next day telling all my friends about in Australia is what Egyptians consider to be called "changing lanes". Well, they would call it that. If there was lanes. Or if they were in a lane to change from in the first place.
Anyhow, regardless of the insanity, the is an underlying method and rhythym to the madness. Traffic actually flows pretty smoothly for a city this huge, and everyone drives with a common, albeit crazy, understanding of how things work. It all just works, and the actual physical danger is smaller than most places, because you are never doing more than about 40km/h, which isnt really fast enough to do much serious damage. Although, this may be balanced out by the fact that you are ALWAYS doing 40km/h in Cairo, including while reverse parallel parking, reversing down traffic jammed one way streets, waiting at traffic lights, and going through the drive through window at the shawerma stand.....
After a few months here last time, I had learnt the valuable skill of placing you fate in the hands of the Great Magnet, abandoning all fear and apprehension, and just chilling out while in the passenger seat. I could sit with zen-like calm, staring blankly straight ahead with a blissful smile on my face, silently reciting peace mantras, even while it appeared that we were just miliseconds away from totally annihilating bunches of dudes 50 at a time. Somewhere along the way in the past year though, I have become all soft and pathetic and Euro styling, and I can no longer do it. I was freaking out every ten seconds in the cars yesterday, from the drive back from the airport, all the way until the inevitable 2am drives between different cafes, houses, streets etc. I need to regain my Cairo traffic-zen, fast.
More soon.....
Return to the Dutchie-land
5 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Monday, August 21 at Monday, August 21, 2006.
Well, I left Budapest, and a few hours later, the city goes completely to shit. I think I was really tying that place together....
Arrival back in the Netherlands was a weird one. This place just isnt my home anymore, and I felt it. I can remember so clearly arriving back in Schipol Airport in April after our time in Cameroon, Petroula and I were just so relieved to be home, and I felt totally at home. Today, I feel like I am in transit, enjoying a stopover in the city where Arthur lives......
Now is a slow, pleasant 7 days of chilling here before Egypt. I intent to make the least of it....Thea arrives tonight, and her strange new fascination with windmills means that I think I know where I am going tomorrow. Whats the most amazing thing about windmills I hear you asking? Well have you ever tried grinding hundreds of kilograms of cinnamon at a time? Its either child labour or wind labour, and the Dutch are a fundamentally humanistic people.....
Arrival back in the Netherlands was a weird one. This place just isnt my home anymore, and I felt it. I can remember so clearly arriving back in Schipol Airport in April after our time in Cameroon, Petroula and I were just so relieved to be home, and I felt totally at home. Today, I feel like I am in transit, enjoying a stopover in the city where Arthur lives......
Now is a slow, pleasant 7 days of chilling here before Egypt. I intent to make the least of it....Thea arrives tonight, and her strange new fascination with windmills means that I think I know where I am going tomorrow. Whats the most amazing thing about windmills I hear you asking? Well have you ever tried grinding hundreds of kilograms of cinnamon at a time? Its either child labour or wind labour, and the Dutch are a fundamentally humanistic people.....
If you haven't seen it already...
1 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Friday, August 18 at Friday, August 18, 2006.
Return to blogging, or, a time for laughter and forgetting
10 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Wednesday, August 16 at Wednesday, August 16, 2006.
Answers to some pretty frequently asked questions:
Why havent you updated your blog for like 6 frigging months?
I was busy. And I lost my laptop, so all of a sudden those late night blog-friendly hours at home dissapeared. But plenty of people far busier than me make the time to blog, so that excuse won't get me too far.
I made a pretty concious decisiong to abandon my blog until I would be able to put some decent time and focus into writing good stuff again for it. I've been lurking on nomadlife, reading other peoples blogs and commenting occasionally, but nothing much has been written by me for ages. But as you will find out here, all that is about to change big time!
What are you doing now?
Since the end of the AIESEC International term (Aug 1), I have been chilling and doing pretty much nothing. And it was all that I could have possibly imagined to to be. I started out at Arthurs place in Amsterdam, enjoying some fine movie watching and lazy canal walking with Brodie. For the last two weeks I have been in Budapest, also known as Most Awesome Place To Chill on Earth.
Budapest has been special. Peter, a long time friend ever since he lived with me during his traineeship in Australia, has been hosting Arthur, Brodie, me, and a few others, and the one person apartment has become a close-knit community/refugee camp of 7.
The Sziget festival has been going on for the last seven days, ending last night. Sziget is unlike any other festival I have ever been to or heard of. It is huge, taking up a whole island in the Danube, with hundreds of different stages, tents, bars, chillout spaces and gerneral portals of weirdness. There is just so much of everything, wherever you walk you find a new place that you could soak up for hours.
On Sunday, I leave Budapest and go back the the Netherlands for a week, catching up with Thea and enjoying some final NL time. And on the 27th, I move to Cairo, where I will be living for at least a year...Which brings us to the next question....
What are you doing for the next year?
For the last few years I have been looking forward to a time when writing, my passion, can become my career. And now it is happening! I will be writing as a freelancer, trying to get myself established and published. I will be writing long-form non-fiction journalism kind of stuff, on topics like culture, travel, life in the Middle East, food, tourism, and anything else that people want me to write about.
I will also be working part time, in a traineeship with an advertising agency, which hopefully will also help me develop some creative skills and let me see another side of life in Egypt. So after 6 years with AIESEC, I am finally doing a traineeship!
Ideally, within one year I will be able to make enough money from writing to make it my full time profession, which would be absolutely dream-like for me. I will also work on a few side projects, which you will all find out about in good time!
I've always wanted to come to Egypt. When is a good time to visit?
Its always a good time to come to Egypt - there is sunshine all year round in Sinai and the Red Sea, even when it is chilly and raining in Cairo. And it is only chilly and raining in Cairo for about 6 weeks of the year, around January/February from what I remember.
To conclude - Come to Egypt. Its battles Budapest for the most awesome place in the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So there we go. Lots more to write, and I will be writing plenty more in the coming weeks. 5 more days of Budapest paradise time left.......
Why havent you updated your blog for like 6 frigging months?
I was busy. And I lost my laptop, so all of a sudden those late night blog-friendly hours at home dissapeared. But plenty of people far busier than me make the time to blog, so that excuse won't get me too far.
I made a pretty concious decisiong to abandon my blog until I would be able to put some decent time and focus into writing good stuff again for it. I've been lurking on nomadlife, reading other peoples blogs and commenting occasionally, but nothing much has been written by me for ages. But as you will find out here, all that is about to change big time!
What are you doing now?
Since the end of the AIESEC International term (Aug 1), I have been chilling and doing pretty much nothing. And it was all that I could have possibly imagined to to be. I started out at Arthurs place in Amsterdam, enjoying some fine movie watching and lazy canal walking with Brodie. For the last two weeks I have been in Budapest, also known as Most Awesome Place To Chill on Earth.
Budapest has been special. Peter, a long time friend ever since he lived with me during his traineeship in Australia, has been hosting Arthur, Brodie, me, and a few others, and the one person apartment has become a close-knit community/refugee camp of 7.
The Sziget festival has been going on for the last seven days, ending last night. Sziget is unlike any other festival I have ever been to or heard of. It is huge, taking up a whole island in the Danube, with hundreds of different stages, tents, bars, chillout spaces and gerneral portals of weirdness. There is just so much of everything, wherever you walk you find a new place that you could soak up for hours.
On Sunday, I leave Budapest and go back the the Netherlands for a week, catching up with Thea and enjoying some final NL time. And on the 27th, I move to Cairo, where I will be living for at least a year...Which brings us to the next question....
What are you doing for the next year?
For the last few years I have been looking forward to a time when writing, my passion, can become my career. And now it is happening! I will be writing as a freelancer, trying to get myself established and published. I will be writing long-form non-fiction journalism kind of stuff, on topics like culture, travel, life in the Middle East, food, tourism, and anything else that people want me to write about.
I will also be working part time, in a traineeship with an advertising agency, which hopefully will also help me develop some creative skills and let me see another side of life in Egypt. So after 6 years with AIESEC, I am finally doing a traineeship!
Ideally, within one year I will be able to make enough money from writing to make it my full time profession, which would be absolutely dream-like for me. I will also work on a few side projects, which you will all find out about in good time!
I've always wanted to come to Egypt. When is a good time to visit?
Its always a good time to come to Egypt - there is sunshine all year round in Sinai and the Red Sea, even when it is chilly and raining in Cairo. And it is only chilly and raining in Cairo for about 6 weeks of the year, around January/February from what I remember.
To conclude - Come to Egypt. Its battles Budapest for the most awesome place in the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So there we go. Lots more to write, and I will be writing plenty more in the coming weeks. 5 more days of Budapest paradise time left.......
