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Showing posts from September, 2006
It's my first weekend back in the country after a month and I should be out having fun on this sunny San Diego day! Instead I've spent the morning taking a final and writing a paper. 7 hours later I'm finally ready to go join my brothers for a Peru planning meeting which is really an excuse to go swimming, eat pizza, and drink beer! It sounds like a great afternoon to make up for the mind boggling boringness of Marketing!
I'm back home! The morning Starbucks is the best thing ever! Locals - Firkin Friday next week in Carlsbad. Mark it on your calendars because it's also Oktoberfest! Oct. 6th, Karl Strauss, Carlsbad. Meet there or at my place.
Almost home! I've been traveling for 18 hours now and I think I've been awake for about 36. I need to stay awake one more hour so I can get on the Carlsbad flight and then the flight attendant can wake me up when we land. Then I have to stay awake for another 10 minutes for the drive home and remember where I live!
Egypt is considering raising the legal age responsibility for children from 7 to 12. I’m not what I find stranger, the fact that the current age is 7 or that most of the world has an age of 12 or 13 for responsibility. At age 7 in Egypt, if a child commits a crime, it is presumed that by this time the child knows that he or she is doing something wrong. Well this is true, by that age most children have learned the rules of what’s what. There is no juvenile system in place. The debate in Egypt is that if the age is raised to 12, then crime professionals will take advantage of the law to employ the 7 to 12 age group as drug runners or prostitutes because they will be protected from prosecution as minors. Even with the age of 7 or 12, the parents are still responsible for their children up until, I don’t know when. Maybe when they leave the house, get married, or turn 18. That wasn’t clear in the paper. In Beijing, a Chinese history teacher beat an 11 year old student senseless and threw
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One of my goals on this trip was to take a dinner cruise on the Nile. The times for the cruise changed throughout the week due to demand and Ramadan. I was finally able to get on the second night of Ramadan. Officially, the cruise started at 5:30 but we weren't allowed to leave the dock and go into the restaurant portion until sunset. So the whopping 25 of us were wandering around the top deck for the first 30 minutes just waiting for the sun to fall below the horizon and the evening prayer to begin.
For some reason the photos aren't uploading tonight on Blogger. I'll try again on Tuesday. Life in Egypt passed by without excitement and that is the best thing that one can hope for over here. Today's front page news announced that the Minister of Information was going to ban all foreign newpapers with anti-Islamic content into Egypt. so far three papers have been banned, one each from Germany, France, and Britian. Also on the front page was the news that an Islamic philospophy professor who has been living in exile since 1993, is once again the target of the Islamic clerics' ire. The professor's words may or may not have compared the Quran text to a supermarket where people can pick and choose what they want to follow or not. We don't know if this is what he really said but the main cleric is making a deal of it and admitting that he doesn't know if the words are true or not. And an Egptian actress slashed her wrists in a suicide attempt after her televisi
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Christianity came to Cairo early in the 4th century. There are still 10 million Christians living in Egypt today. The old churches are still in use and the services are in the old Coptic dialect and today's Arabic. Sort of like having a service in Latin and English. Sunday is not the best day to go to these churches since they are closed due to services. This church was dedicated to Moses. Along the courtyard are bright tiled mosiacs of biblical scenes. The inside was dark with almost no light coming in. We weren't allowed to take photos inside.
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As a side note to earlier posts, I now have 3 fruit plates in my room! As I was blogging the fruit plate guy stopped by to stock me up yet again! So far I've eaten 2 bananas, 1 kiwi, and one plum. It's always a risk in Egypt so you can never eat the skins of the fruit and you just have to hope for the best with the rest. I was hungry and decided that the Hyatt didn't want to make me sick so I went for it.
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More of the Mohamed Ali Mosque - the entrance, inside windows, and interior decoration.
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This is citadel clock that never worked outside the mosque and inside is a view of the domed ceiling.
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Today I took the tour that almost wasn't. I had booked a tour of Old Cairo that was supposed to happen on Saturday afternoon but for whatever random reason, the bus never arrived and the tour was canceled. I rebooked for Sunday morning with low expectations that the tour wouldn't happen so I was pleasantly surprised when the bus showed up only 25 minutes late. There were 3 people on the tour, a couple from Melbourne and myself. It made for a perfect outing. The basics of this tour were to see something other than ancient Egypt. The tour began at the citadel or fortress that was built 1700 years ago to keep out the crusaders. Later a mosque was built inside the complex and named after Mohamed Ali who brought Islam to Cairo. The mosque was build in the 7th century and the inside is patterned after the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.
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Ramadan is here. The decorations are going up and all the liquor bottles have been removed from the shelves and locked away. Everyone is hung over from their last night of drinking and more people are wearing the traditional garb and robes. You'd think the traffic would let up but it gets only more crazy. The horns never stop honking and there is a constant mass of cars going over the bridges. Along the Nile, it's somewhat peaceful, if you can tune everything else out. Evening prayer has started and it looks like sunset to me so everyone can eat now.
As ususal in the Middle East, my morning routine is to go into the hotel lounge and read the local paper as I caffeinate for the day. The Egptian Mail English version caters to foreigners and has fairly generic offerings. Ther is a column that could be called Darwin Awards & laughs off of other's misfortune. Today we have a picture of palm trees, with the caption of "His last date" and the warning to be careful when climbing palms. A date picker fell to his death while picking dates. Other noteworthy deaths included the suicide of a man who hung himself with his belt when his family refused to let him marry his cousin. A carpenter died when he fell out of bed and cracked his skull. Another man was killed by his neighbor when they got into a fight over their children playing loudly in the street. Side topics included the unusual lax attitude of not cracking down on lover's holding hands at Lover's Lane at the Cairo University but there is still a ban on men and
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One more from the outside of the Egyptian Museum followed by my last beer before Ramadan starts. I went to the Hard Rock and asked for a beer menu. Sadly, the beer menu had already been put away and the stocks put away. All that was left was Meister, an 8% lager which was pretty hard to drink but I managed. Today, no more beer until I get home.
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Today I spent a few overwhelming hours going through the Egyptian Museum. There is so much to see there and it's presented in almost a warehouse fashion as if there are just too many artifacts to sort through and organize. No photos are allowed inside but there are some statues on the grounds so you get to leave with something.
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I've taken these photos before and I'm sure I'll take them again. It's the views of the Nile from my balcony of the Grand Hyatt Cairo.
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The energy of Cairo is a shock to the system after St. Petersburg. In the past few weeks, I'd forgotten what noise, chaos, and energy were like. Cairo seems like the most open city on the planet after the past couple of weeks in Russia. You can buy almost anything and at any time of the day. There are no rules and people stopping you, only people giving you a price and a bargaining point. It's a wonderful sound and sight! We'll leave Russia with Catherine the Great and all her lovers. It paid well to be a favored man of Catherine. Once she was bored of him, she set him up in a mansion with millions of dollars in what was almost an alimony type payment.
As usual, I woke up early in the morning and the next thing it was already 11:00 pm at night! I have to wake up in 4 hours to get to the airport for my 6:00 am flight. Tomorrow I'm off to Cairo. It's been a long 2.5 weeks in St. Pete but at the end of it, I feel almost like a local. I'm glad to leave before winter arrives but there is a lot that I never got to see on this trip. I'm sure I'll be back. It's a beautiful city and once you get to know the people who live here, you find that they are warm and friendly too!
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You turn a corner in St. Pete and have a wonderful view from almost any canal (on a sunny day). I've been sick most of this trip so one night I had the perfect meal of pasta and Guiness in my room. There are random beautiful churches that appear around nooks and crannies of the city. I like this small blue church because it is so unexpected.
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I had to put in some major long work days over the weekend and there was no time to blog. Even now, I'm at the end of the night just wanting to get some sleep but there is still homework to do. We found an Irish pub with good Guiness so that is always a good deal. The watermelon cage at the local market is pretty unique.
I've moved hotels and I am off the tourist path and on the downtown path. The local clientele has changed with the geography and I now face the full gauntlet of early morning drunks, street people, and pick pockets, as I walk to work. These must be the people that are run off of the high end streets either by the professional beggers/street performers, or the police. Yesterday I finally saw several 8 years old boys getting drunk right out in the open. No one cares or wants to care. Alcohol is sold to anyone. The smells of sewage are right out there and in some ways, you can imagine that life has not changed for many residents of Russia. The city's past and future are visible in the people. Anyone over the age of 40 is a product of the soviet era. If you look at people over the age of 60, you see a huge difference in height and health between the grandparents and grandchildren. The average height of the teen/twenty-something seems to be 5'8 for women and 6'0 for men. Mos
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I had the internet stolen from me for a few days but I have taken it back by changing hotels. Connections are so unreliable here that you have to take advantage of a connection everytime you find it. Nothing new in sightseeing, I've been working the past few days and nothing exciting has been going on. I'm halfway through the Russia stay and I expect the next week to go by fast now that the downtime is over. It takes so long to get the simplest things done here. Confirming a hotel reservation takes 15 minutes, finding a lost reservation takes another 15. Getting a coffee refill is a challenge since people here don't drink entire pots the way Americans do. Printing a document at the business center is yet another challenge. I have been doing office type work for the last 2 hours and at home all of these tasks would have only taken 45 minutes.
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The inside of the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral.
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The St. Peter and Paul Cathedral is where the czars are buried. Nicholas II and his family were reburied here in 1998. On September 26th, the family will be complete when the body of Peter's mother (who died in Denmark in 1928) will be returned to Russia for a reburial.
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There are no glamour views from my hotel window. I get to see the other side of the building and it's bleak. I still haven't found Baltica beer but we went to a brewpub and tried Tinkoff beer. Mine is a dark Czech style and it was good. Since the work load has been light, we checked out a local market. A couple of friends are shopping for Russian fur hats. The guy on the right was the seller and he was working hard to make the sale. They bought other stuff but passed on the hats.
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This is the Church of the Spilt Blood which was the place where Tsar Alexander II was murdered in 1881. During the Soviet times it was used to store potatoes. That's better than burning it down. It's now a museum. I didn't go in since the tour bus crowds were large and the place was packed.
Yesterday was a sunny day and by happy circumstances, everyone had the afternoon off. This is St. Issac's Cathedral and who could resist the 221 steps to the dome? You can't go to the top but there is a 360 walk-around at the dome level. The view was great and all of the sights of St. Petersburg could be spotted from the dome.
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For being such an advanced country when it comes to war games and space exploration, the daily internet operations in Russia are lagging. I had a better connection on the airplane than at this hotel. The city is full of tourists, I guess September is the peak travel month to St. Petersburg. I can't imagine why, it's already getting cold and rainy and the sky is grey. I haven't taken any pictures yet but I'll hopefully get some photo ops today.
And this post is from 36,000 feet thanks to Lufthansa and their wireless inflight service! The flight went by fairly fast since I was able to sleep. I don't know how I did it since I'm in coach and next to a small child but I'm sort of awake now. I'll be in Munich in about an hour and then on to Frankfurt, then St. Petersburg. I even was able to post some school stuff during the flight so instead of being a day behind while I travel, I'm ahead of schedule!
It took long enough but I finally had extra time on my hands. If you want to check out a totally different viewpoint in life, go to "In My Opinion" and check out Sheri's blog. She's a single mom, a lesbian, and has my total respect for pursuing her Masters Degree after a long hard run. Oh, and she's really outspoken too!
Part one of the long transit is done. I've made it from Carlsbad to LAX and now I have 3 more hours before I fly to Munich. Everyone else in my group gets to go straight to Frankfurt and then on to Russia. I get to go to Munich, then to Frankfurt, and finally on to Russia. LJ will appreciate that I am currently living on wine, cheese and cracker in the lounge. Sheri - I can 't believe you have such a huge paper to write! I am so not looking forward to the double work load of the Masters program. Other Sherry - See you in a month! To the beer group - Firking Friday in October, Karl Strauss Carlsbad! Mark it now and hold me to it! Photos from St. Petersburg later this week.
My grade has posted for advanced Finance and it's a glorius B! I was convinced that the best I could pull off would be a C+ but no, it's a B! I even dreamed about looking at a blackboard with a big letter C on it. What a relief. Now I can continue on with the last 6 classes without fear. I'm still not ready to leave for Russia. I managed to get the Final done for public relations, do the Sunday posts but I still have to complete one last paper to feel ready for the road. That and I still haven't quite finished packing.
36 hours before I hit the road. I've spent the last 18 panicking about school papers. There's nothing worse than being 10 hours off of the rest of the class and trying to keep up. Everytime that I begin a road trip, I spend the last few hours doing as many papers in advance as possible. I've written 4 this weekend, 2 that are due Monday, and 2 that are due next week. To really set myself up, I need to write 2 more papers on Sunday. The best thing about September is that I can now say I only have 6 months left in this program. That's a far better number than the 2 years that I faced in May 2005 when I began this crazy plan. I had no idea my weekends were to be spent hunting for quotes and correctly citing references. One more week of Public Relations, four more weeks of Marketing. At least when I go to Peru, I get a week of of school. I'm already looking forward to Thanksgiving!
My struggle with AT&T to remove the phone charge last month continues on. Three days ago, the utilities commission sent a letter to let me know they were investigating my complaint. I called them the next day and told them the status was resolved and that they didn't need to do any work on the case. I guess they weren't going to let it go so easily because today I had a call from AT&T from the same lady who had been so incredulously shocked that I would even try to reverse the charge. I actually felt sorry for her because no one wants to make that call to a customer who is pissed off at them and I'm sure she was still mad at me. Anyhow, she apologized and then went on to say that yes, this type of DSL confusion does happen. Whatever. I assumed the whole thing was a done deal as I hung up the phone. It never is. I went to the mailbox and there was a bill from AT&T for 87 cents. I guess when the charges were reversed, AT&T didn't calculate correctly. I thi