A Different Drummer

Update - Great 10 things posts from Snoskred, Aly, I'm Not Craig, Sveta , Mai and Injustice Gilganixon

Its sharing time.

On this list of ten things you probably don't know about me, I can imagine that a few readers of this blog would know 3 or 4 of them, and many wouldn't be surprised about the others. But I don't think anyone in the whole world knows all ten. So enjoy!

I'd love to see some other people posting something like this - leave a link to your post in comments if you do.

10 things you probably didnt know about Tom Gara, in no particular order

1. My neighbours' kitchen was once broken into and occupied by heroin addicted member(s) of an 80's Australian punk bank called Bastard Squad. They were eventually removed by an all-female group of police officers.

2. I have lost, destroyed or had stolen, 3 digital cameras, 11 mobile phones and a laptop.

3. I spent a night sleeping on the street homeless-style with the temperature at -3 degrees in a town called Dordrecht in the Netherlands. I started out trying to sleep in the train station, but was kicked out at around 2am.

4. My apartment in Cairo was once broken into, prompting my housemate to turn into an axe-weilding maniac. Really, axe-weilding and all...

5. My mum and dad arent married, and for my whole life I have called them by their first names. They are my role models for parenting and set a standard I know that I will struggle to meet.

6. My cooking skills and knowledge are heavily influenced by The Cooks Companion, a book given as a gift to me by an Aunt more than 10 years ago. This book is one of the few things that left Australia with me in 2003 and is still with me today.

7. I once lived in a house of 4 people, and I was the only "straight" one. There was a gay girl though, so at least I wasnt the only one who liked chicks.

8. In the 12 months between June 2005 and June 2006, I moved house 11 times.

9. I have lived in Cairo for a total of 15 months, and have never been to the Pyramids

10. I have a best friend from small-town Belarus, a best friend with Cerebral Palsy, and a best friend who spends their life in-between Libya, Sudan and Ethiopia. I would love to see the three of them meet.

Who's next? Tell me something I don't know about you.....

I had one of the best weeks of my life in August at the Sziget festival in Budapest, and one of the highlights of the whole 7 day festival was experiencing the amazing "Serbian Brass" music - hypnotic, frenetic, exhilirating, dizzyingly alive music, as evocative of the Balkan energy and passion as you can imagine. Boban Markovic was one of the opening acts of the festival, and he and his band were absolute madmen, and the huge crowd went absolutely nuts. A few days later was Goran Bregovic, who took the whole thing to a different level, with beautiful singing and hypnotic melodies, fast and slow. Two absolutely amazing performers, and I have to admit, I never would have imagined enjoying two concerts of Serbian trumpet music as much as I did.

At the time, someone there told me about a festival in Serbia where people from all over the country and region descend on a small country town, with all the great players and bands showing up and competing, over three days, to win the prize as the best brass band on earth. It sounded cool at the time, and I totally forgot about it.

Today, I was reading Nikola's blog, and he has a post up all about it - the Guca festival. He linked through to a trailer for a new film documentary about the whole thing - check it out, not only does the documentary look awesome, but the sound took me back to the concerts in the first moment of hearing it, and I doubt that anyone will not be hooked on the amazing sounds being played.

"Guca, a film by Milivojilic" (starring, among others, my man Boban Markovic). Click the "trailer" tab on the left to see the preview...

I can't wait to be there......

In terms of cutting edge experiences, some guy probably went skydiving today, and drove home in his Ferrari to a threesome that his attractive Lebanese girlfriend had spent all day organising. That dude is in the leading 5% of the good life.

And then, on the other end, there is this poor bastard, who was imprisoned and tortured by the Taliban in Afganistan, for being a suspected US sympathiser - and then when the Taliban guards fled his prison, the invading US forces imprisoned and tortured him all over again for being a suspected Al Qaida terrorist.

"Arrested by the Taliban in Afghanistan in January 2000, Rahim says al-Qaida leaders burned him with cigarettes, smashed his right hand, deprived him of sleep, nearly drowned him and hanged him from the ceiling until he "confessed" to spying for the United States.

U.S. forces took the young Kurd from Syria into custody in January 2002 after the Taliban fled his prison. Accusing him of being an al-Qaida terrorist, U.S. interrogators deprived him of sleep, threatened him with police dogs and kept him in stress positions for hours, he says. He's been held ever since as an enemy combatant....."

(ABC News)

Life can be great in ways many will never experience, but life can suck, harder than most of us can imagine. Being in the middle isn't so bad....

Aside from everything else, I am at least partly choosing Egypt as a country of choice for the climate. Europe is wonderful, but I seriously cannot make the choice to live my life in a place that is cold, windy and rainy for 6-9 months of the year. If you are a climate refugee, then the mediterranean is really the place to be - and the little weather sticker over on the right of this blog is a subtle boast of the niceness of the situation I am in.

Logging onto my website at just after 4am this morning, this is what I see:



Victory.

Its time for a roll call of the Cairo crew - I've limited it to those with blogs.

I'll start this with the Best Housemates Ever - our house, with minimal border control and generous amnesty for new migrants, is the perfect home for anyone looking for a judgement free, its-OK-sometimes-you-just-need-to-walk-around-in-you-underwear environment

Megan - kicks people when drunk, carries pepper spray (and I wouldnt want to be the next Egyptian to try and touch her up...)
Pam - Undescribable in words, probably the world's most relaxed and fundamentally happy person

The internationalista community. When we show up at a street restaurant, owners lick their lips and rub their wallets...

Liisi - Dont let the supermodel looks fool you, she has the Estonian stare of death that freezes hearts at 50 feet...
Kunt Kent - He's Canadian, which means cheerful, adventurous, at peace with the world and probably a closeted homosexual
Salman - Has two significan utilitarian values to me - can explain what the hell is going on in Pakistan better than anyone else I have met, and is an awesome photographer
Nisrin - Again, hard to describe in words. A great example of how much more interesting people get when their ethnicity and nationality gets complicated.
Dody - Will be the first guy I know to be a millionaire. Probably already is. My entire plans for how to succeed in life involve somehow borrowing a few million bucks from him after he sells out to Google.

Egyptians - Well, there are 78 million of them. I know far less than that number, and only a few have blogs. But here goes:

Tamer - Always carrying a shoulderbag weighing more than a large dog. I have no idea what is inside. Among the 5 smartest guys I know. Have seen him twice in the last two months but still consider him one of my best friends here.
Luly - I wish more Egyptian girls were like Luly.
Yasmine - Has 2 qualities that will remain in my heart forever - first, she is totally Egyptian, but speaks Malay at home with her family, due to their weird Singaporean background. Second, the introduced me to Omouda, the Yemeni restaurant here that does one of the best meals in Cairo.
Mai D- Ditto for Mai.
Alia - Fun, and militant, not in the destroy the infidels sense, but cetainly in the I-wouldnt-want-to-piss-her-off-if-she's-carrying-a-weapon sense.
Askoura - Turns bastard negativity into an art form. Its beautiful. The top posting on his blog right now is titled "Hatred Festival".
Mai K - Despite never ceasing to give me shit about my crappy Arabic, I love Mai to bits. I just wish the persecution would stop!

Some powerful images courtesy of Vanity Fair - some very Cairo style street scenes in there. The hyperactive editorialising on Vanity Fair's behalf - the into tells that they show images of a country "sowing the seeds of fundamentalism" and people "seething with resentment" seems a little bit extreme - but hey, you gotta sell magazines, and I guess an extreme lead sells these days when discussing anyhting Middle East related.

For me though the intro isn't really backed up by the beautiful pictures, with mainly show the Cairo that I know and love - plenty of people showing extreme mental and physical strength and dignity, despite the conditions of decay and abject poverty that often surround them.

Not simply Dada'ist ramblings - they are all words in English that actually come from the Arabic language - and this funky website visualises it all in a very interesting way....

I'm going to post my all time favourite video clips on my blog over the next few weeks. The miracle of YouTube means that it is just too easy, and I would be crazy NOT to do it. A really good music video can really stick in your head - and there is some great, great videos. Lets go....

To kick things off, Right Here, Right Now, by Fatboy Slim. I always thought this was an absolute ass-kicker of a song, but it wasnt until recently that I discovered its absolutely amazing video clip. All of Fatboy Slim's songs have great clips, and this is no exception - the images and the music go together perfectly, and its just a joy to watch...

One of my favourite places in Cairo is the Mosque and Madrassa of Qalawun, one of the biggest and oldest buildings in the Old City of Cairo. Its huge - huge on a scale of the huge things we are used to seeing today, so it must have been fucking gigantic when it was built 750 years ago. (look for the little ant-sized people walking on the street in the old timey photo to the left...)

Its an incredible building by any standards, but one of its special charms is that it is currently "closed for renovation", meaning that while the workmen are repairing it, the main entrance appears closed, guarded by a couple of policemen. However, what any good Cairene knows is that this actually means something much better - that for a little contribution to the guards' back pocket, you can enjoy a private tour of the place, at any time of the day or night, completely free of hassles, tourists, or other people at all.

It is one of the regulars on my standard Old City walk, and anyone who has visited me in Cairo has been to this place - most memorable for the incredible carved gold ceiling, that looks like a million dollars, and is probably worth far more.

This Friday night I went there with Luly, The Dode, Nisrin and Amr, and we got to experience the beauty of the place with both barrels. It was about midnight when the guards opened the doors up for us, and because of the repairs going on in another part of the building, there was no electricity at all, meaning no lighting. I will never forget pushing open the gigantic wood/iron doors, they weighed a ton and took all my effort to get them open. We went inside and for that moment, I was Indiana Jones. Feeling through the pitch blackness, navigating along stone hallways, searching for the sliver of moonlight that would guide us to the main courtyard....ahhh, I live for these moments.

We got into the cental, open courtyard, a giant marble floored square, opening outwards into the sky with high stone walls. It was a full moon, and courtyard, with the moonlight glowing against the marble and sandstone, was one of the most beautiful sights of my life. It was perfectly silent and we were all just in awe of the experience, and although I was trying to express it in words, I just couldnt explain how beautiful the whole thing was. Not as if I needed to though, because we were all just sharing this amazing place and soaking it in with all of our senses.

Just one more reason for you all to come to Cairo sometime - how many other places have stunning ancient masterpieces where you can bribe a dude for ten bucks and basically get given the keys to the place? At midnight? I'm all about it....

At a time when I really needed it, this incredible footage of Pete Doherty singing "Music when the lights go out" really has made my day, and I hope it can make the day of a few other people too...Check it out...



It was a great song as done by the Libertines, but it really shines this way. It's obvious that he really is one of a kind - pity that it seems he isnt long for this world....

I know my blog has been getting a little random of late (lusting for Romanian girls, in fascination with Pancakes and Sausage on a stick etc) but I just want to point out that Marta just posted some pictures of tiny little baby hedgehogs, and they might just be the cutest things I have ever seen....

Back to thoughful analysis of the world around me soon, I promise...

"Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick - Chocolate Chip flavour"

The most bizarrely awesome I'd-never-eat-it-but-am-somehow-facsinated junk food of the week, brought to you by the Junk Food Blog, via BoingBoing.

The US is a wonderful place - and yes, of course, they are microwavable....