A Different Drummer

"Romania and Bulgaria have welcomed the announcement that they will be admitted to the EU in January 2007, albeit under strict conditions." (BBC News)

On top of their beautiful looks and Mediterranean/Latin sensibilities, Romanian girls now also have a pretty damn attractive passport.....

Seriously though, this is awesome, and it must be a great feeling for a whole lot of Romanians and Bulgarians all around the world. I think the EU, despite its endless supply of incompetence, beaurocracy and generally bad thinking, is still the most active force for peace on earth today - and may it keep expanding eastwards (and possibly South?) for as long as its citizens and leaders will allow it....

For anyone who reads this blog and not the main nomadlife front page, just a little update - I am writing right now on Blogging Ramadan, a group blog made up of people all over the world, from New York to China and plenty of places in between, experiencing the month of Ramadan.

Its a really great site, I'm loving all the stories - from the beautiful insights down to the funny randomness.

If you want to read what I think may be the best blog entry I have ever written, check this out.

Other highlights of Blogging Ramadan project so far:

Luly's post on women, Ramadan, and that special "time of the month"
Meri on Sarajevo during Ramadan time
Saba, on Pakistani delicious goddies come Ramadan time
Luly's amazing sounding first day of Ramadan dinner

I'm loving it, and I hope everyone else out there does too....

Andrew Sullivan's new book has experienced a minor/major setback - amazing that this can happen with such a high profile author and book, in the year 2006:

"As I write, the entire print-run of my forthcoming book, The Conservative Soul, is being pulped or trashed. A horrible printing error spliced half of the fifth chapter into the middle of the sixth, rendering the entire second half of the book incomprehensible...................All copies that were shipped are being recalled from booksellers. This is every writer's nightmare - especially as I discovered the error myself while re-reading the book late one night last week and couldn't believe my eyes."

Right now some poor bastard is getting fired like no-one has ever been fired before...

Yes.

The whole set from our day around the beautiful Ibn Tulun mosque is here....

Im currently in the middle of a category 1 major discovery of a new genius who will permanently remain in my life. And even better, he kind of shows me a blurry snapshot of what I have dreamt of being without fully articulating all the details.

His name is Tom.

He is an incredible writer.

With a fascination for Egypt, and the Arab world.

And a demented, beautiful first person writing style, an even mix of crazy, creative, abstract, intelligent, philosophical, simple, true....Ahh the list goes on. Needless to say I am fucking happy to have been randomly introduced to Tom Robbins by my new buddy and soon to be evil-housemate Megan. The book of his that has been schooling me hard since I picked it up a few days ago is "Still Life With Woodpecker". I will not even try to describe it in my own words, but for a few tasters:

The blurb on the back cover describes "Still Life With Woodpecker" as:

"Sort of a love story that takes place inside a packet of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads"

It had me from the first line of the blurb. Then you open the book, and before it begins, you are presented with this quote, by Franz Kafka:

"You don't need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Don't even listen, simply wait.
Don't even wait.
Be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you.
To be unmasked, it has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet"

And the first paragraph, on the first page, just nailed me with its truth and simplicity:

"In the last quarter of the twentieth century, at a time when Western civilisation was declining too rapidly for comfort and yet too slowly to be very exciting, much of the world sat on the edge of an increasingly expensive theatre seat, waiting - with various combinations of dread, hope, and ennui - for something momentous to occur."

Can it get any better? Short, sweet, and so on the mark. And just one page later was the real nailing:

"Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus must have got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is:
Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and end of time.
Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon."

Believe it or not, the book keeps getting better, and better. I am less than a third into it, and every sentence is starting to feel like an unbearably giant crescendo of awesome beautiful truth, the kind of thing most writers would be proud to end their lifes work with. Its just how he rolls.

If you love awesome things, read "Still Life With Woodpecker", by Tom Robbins, from here on to be referred to as Victorious Justice Tom.

On of my top, "must read" websites over the last year has been Kevin Sites' "the Hot Zone" on yahoo.com

Sites travels to the worst and most difficult of places, and covers conflict zones better than anyone, with a wonderful human touch and a real sense of what the big story is in any given situation.

Kevin Sites has been doing some awesome conflict journalism for years now, and was a pioneer of the web based journalist telling a story directly to his readers. He also was one of the first "Solo Journalists" in conflict zones, travelling completely alone with no crew or support, using a backpack full of digital equipment to write, film, record and transmit his stories to a global audience.

One year ago, recognising how special he was, Yahoo bought him up, and gave him the backing and resources to really kick some ass. One year on, they are looking back at their first 12 months of covering some of the most difficult places on Earth - if you havent heard of Sites or checked out the Hot Zone, now is a good time, as they are doing a sort of "best of" review.

This incredibly painful, beautifully human story of a young Afghan girl is a good example of how much ahead of the game Sites is when it comes to recognising the truly important stories to be told in a war zone. Check it out, but as a warning, it is very, very, tough.

So every day, without fail, as I exit the metro on the way to work in the morning, and as I enter in the evening, the same thing happens. In front of the station there is a big, smiling old lady, always sitting in the same spot on the ground, always with a big black garbage bag full of packets of tissues for sale. She is there all day, or at least from 9am when I arrive until 7pm when I am leaving. And every day, twice a day, without fail, she sees my coming, gets a huge smile across her face, and tells me she loves me. In English. At first I ignored her, because I assumed she was begging for money. But she has never, ever, asked me for money, or held her hand out to me, or even looked like she would want me to give her money. She doesnt even try to sell me tissues!

Sometimes I reply to her statement of love with an affirmation in English, sometimes I bust out the old "Ana Behabuk Aawy" (I love you very much) in Arabic, but whatever, she is definitely becoming a valued part of my day. Its good to be loved, right? Especially at 9 in the morning after going to bed at 4am - after a tired, crowded metro ride, it is good to have someone letting you know that you are loved. And today I was thinking, I should really do something nice for this lady just to show my appreciation for her sentiments.

On the materialistic level, I am assuming that she is poor - you dont see middle class ladies sitting on the ground selling tissues very often. She could definitely use a little extra cash, I am sure - so my materialistic side tells me just to walk past one day, tell her I love her in arabic, and pay her 50LE for a packet of tissues, which is a whole shitload of money for her, and nothing for me. But then I realise this is kind of cheapening her, and it isnt very imaginative or interesting, and its kind of arrogant and belittling, especially seeing she has never even looked like she wanted my money.

So my other idea was to bring her a big bunch of flowers. This is cooler on the fun side, I'm sure it doesnt happen to her often, and I am sure it would bring a big smile to her face for the rest of the day. But I have two main concerns - firstly, the cost of the flowers would probably pay for something much more valued in her life otherwise, so it is a bit wasteful. And secondly, I am worried that her husband might be around the station somewhere as well, or that word might get out, and the last thing I need on the way to work is an old-timey ass-beating from a bunch of random Egyptian men.

I brought some awesome belgian chocolate with me to Egypt. Should I just give her a box of that? It is incredible chocolate, the 80% cacao type where a tiny bite fills your mouth with an explosion of chocolcateyness for hours....Maybe she would appreciate a box of fine Euro-styling chocolate? I cant see a downside to this one.

Any suggestions? And no, I do not want to have sex with her. She is too old, and she is Egyptian, and I am always in a hurry to get to work so it would just mess up my schedule. And sometimes you just have to keep things on the platonic level.

Fire away in the comments with your ideas on what to do....

So sometimes, it rocks to be an only child. It also rocks to be sane.

Remember the craziness from Zidane in the final minutes of the World Cup final, headbutting the Italian player? There was a lot of speculation that the player must have said something very provocative, and possibly racist, to provoke such a crazy reaction from such an experienced player.

Well, it turns out that he didnt say much at all:

"Zidane was sent off for the attack and later claimed he was provoked after Materazzi had insulted his mother.

But Materazzi told Gazzetta dello Sport that Zidane's sister was the subject.

He said: "I was tugging his shirt, he said to me 'if you want my shirt so much I'll give it to you afterwards,' I answered that I'd prefer his sister."

Materazzi added: "It's not a particularly nice thing to say, I recognise that. But loads of players say worse things.

"I didn't even know he had a sister before all this happened."

Lame. I would hate to see what would happen if Zidane got a job in the AI office.....Either there's more to this story (previous/ongoing provocation), or Zidane just couldnt handle all the stress and lost his cool at the first opportunity.

That comment wouldn't even make a cricket player blink twice, let alone start throwing headbutts....Check this out to see the standard of trash talk that we enjoy in the gentlemans game....

"Glenn McGrath (bowling to portly Zimbabwean chicken farmer Eddo
Brandes): “Hey Eddo, why are you so fuckng fat?”

Eddo Brandes replies: “Because everytime I fuck your mother, she throws me a biscuit”

Zidane wouldn't last 5 minutes on a cricket field.....

Ahh, Crocodile Hunter, we hardly knew ye.....

He was an awesome dude. I hardly ever watched his show, but from seeing some interviews and TV clips, it was pretty clear that he was just a great human being, living as exactly who he was and who he wanted to be. His popularity, especially in the US, was quite clearly a symptom of how much demand there is these days for real genuine characters, instead of the ironic metrosexual sissies, political hacks and tryhards of all persuasions who seem to stain our collective unconciousness at every opportunity.

He did a wonderful interview on Andrew Denton's "Enough Rope" TV show in Australia. For non-Australians, Andrew Denton is sort of like Australias intelligent male version of Oprah - his interviews tend to get the best, and deepest, out of his guests. Check out the whole interview, and try and tell me that we havent lost something special today....

"Andrew Denton: Do you ever get down? You talked about being frightened by human behaviour. What gets you down?

Steve Irwin: Um, I've been down, mate, I've been down, I've been way down. I've been down...I've been down as far as anyone can go down, mate. I lost my mum in a car crash. I went down, I went right down. I watched my dad suffer. I watched my whole family suffer. And I have never felt pain like that in my entire life, my friend. And what it did for me was it actually hammered home the whole family value thing and what it's like to have a family and you're all...everybody's someone's mum, you know? And I was down, I was down for the count. I was down for...two years I was down. Way down.

Andrew Denton: You...

Steve Irwin: Pain.

Andrew Denton: You truly adore your parents, don't you?

Steve Irwin: I love my parents just so much, mate. You know, like my mum... How'd you be, you know? I was born on her birthday, and all she ever did was just love me and prop me up and get me back out in there. And my dad - just the legend of the universe. When I was the tiniest little kid, Andrew, I'd look up at my dad and he was larger than life, he was just like this action hero. He was everything I wanted to be. And all I've done in my life is follow in his footsteps, mimic him and try to be him. And nowadays I just try to make him proud, mate. Yeah, I love my parents like nothing else. It's just... They are everything to me - absolutely everything. And the day that my mum went was the day I lost something. I lost something. I lost something really big.....................

Andrew Denton: What's your philosophy of fatherhood?

Steve Irwin: Um...my philosophy of fatherhood? You know, I just treat her exactly the same way as I would want to be treated. And, you know, the funny thing is, Andy, I treat my wildlife the same, you know? Like, if there was a croc there, I'd treat that croc like I'd treat my daughter, like I'd treat you, like I'd treat my wife, like I'd treat anyone. I treat things how I, in turn, would want to be treated. So my little kid, I just treat her how I want to be treated. You know how... My mum said, "You can't have ice-cream for breakfast." (Pretends to hand bowl to daughter) "Here, sweetheart, have it."

AUDIENCE GIGGLES

Steve Irwin: "Go hard." And, you know... Yeah. Absolutely. "You want to catch that snake? Sure, it's venomous, but we'll do it and I'll show you how," and we did it. "