Wednesday, April 28, 2004
And there's Claire!
Monday, April 26, 2004
The Interim Governing Council has unveiled what is supposed to be the new Iraqi flag. My initial reaction:
1. It's ugly.
2. Are they somehow unaware of the significance that the two horizontal blue bands has in the Arab world for alleged Zionist designs for an Israeli state stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates? They're just feeding conspiracy theorists easy material.
3. Really ugly. And not very inspiring if they're trying to encourage any kind of patriotism. They somehow avoided all the standard Arab flag colors, derived from the green, red, and black (well, I guess white too) Arab Revolt flag in WW I.
4. The yellow strip stands for the Kurdish minority? Why?
CASA just e-mailed me my itinerary: I'll be going back from Nashville to Cairo through Memphis (the Tennessean one) and Amsterdam, travelling from June 1st to very early the morning of June 3rd. Checkmytrip.net, which e-mailed me the itinerary, recommends that I visit Graceland and the W C Handy House Museum while in Memphis, then check out something called "Melkweg" and the Sex Museum in Amsterdam.
And if you didn't know, I'll be in the Philly area May 15th to 18th, then in Tennessee from May 18th to June 1st. I won't be making the alumni game or Alicia and BenBen's wedding.
1. It's ugly.
2. Are they somehow unaware of the significance that the two horizontal blue bands has in the Arab world for alleged Zionist designs for an Israeli state stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates? They're just feeding conspiracy theorists easy material.
3. Really ugly. And not very inspiring if they're trying to encourage any kind of patriotism. They somehow avoided all the standard Arab flag colors, derived from the green, red, and black (well, I guess white too) Arab Revolt flag in WW I.
4. The yellow strip stands for the Kurdish minority? Why?
CASA just e-mailed me my itinerary: I'll be going back from Nashville to Cairo through Memphis (the Tennessean one) and Amsterdam, travelling from June 1st to very early the morning of June 3rd. Checkmytrip.net, which e-mailed me the itinerary, recommends that I visit Graceland and the W C Handy House Museum while in Memphis, then check out something called "Melkweg" and the Sex Museum in Amsterdam.
And if you didn't know, I'll be in the Philly area May 15th to 18th, then in Tennessee from May 18th to June 1st. I won't be making the alumni game or Alicia and BenBen's wedding.
Thursday, April 15, 2004
I thought Joanna was going to post something more about how cute my family is and all, but it seems her reign of terror is over. She left Egypt two Saturdays ago, and I'm heading back to the States for two weeks a month from today. The CASA Arabic program I'll be doing next year starts June 1st, meaning I'm not going to be able to make the BenBen-Alicia wedding, sadly. Ryan and John are also scheduled to land in the Big Mango around June 1st.
For those of you that saw the article about Ukraine and Egypt being removed from the blacklist of countries that aren't sufficiently fighting money laundering, yes, this may be in large part due to the disappearance of a shady "Ukrainian steel dealer" from the Cairo scene. I'm been pure Norwegian, with the odd Tunisian, half-Lebanese, Estonian, and Japanese identity thrown in for kicks.
The heavy hand of state censorship has struck again in Egypt. For our lead story last week about the surge in Shi'ite violence lead by Muqtada Al-Sadr in southern Iraq, the politically acceptable headline was "Deeper into the quagmire". Not bad, but cliched. Every single week our articles say that violence is escalating, whether it's Palestine or Iraq, and the phrase "mounting death toll" is solemnly repeated. Not too many of those declining death tolls, "with total Palestinian casualties dropping by 15 soldiers this week". Anyway, my two related brilliant headlines were both put down by the man, M. Hosni: "Shi'ites happen" and "The Shi'ite hits the fan". Fascists.
Joanna really loved Abu Sir, which loved her back. As we were heading out to the airport, walking through the market to the microbus stop, a mule carrying a load of manure brushed against her backpack, leaving a goodish amount of rancid residue. Charming.
The kids, especially Ali (3) and Hasna' (8) have trouble understanding that when foreigners leave, they can't come back right away. They've been asking for months if Yahya/Sean is coming on Friday, though he was in the US (and is now in Morocco), and they similarly think that Joanna is within a couple hours of Abu Sir.
I was gonna post more, but this keyboard is terrible.
For those of you that saw the article about Ukraine and Egypt being removed from the blacklist of countries that aren't sufficiently fighting money laundering, yes, this may be in large part due to the disappearance of a shady "Ukrainian steel dealer" from the Cairo scene. I'm been pure Norwegian, with the odd Tunisian, half-Lebanese, Estonian, and Japanese identity thrown in for kicks.
The heavy hand of state censorship has struck again in Egypt. For our lead story last week about the surge in Shi'ite violence lead by Muqtada Al-Sadr in southern Iraq, the politically acceptable headline was "Deeper into the quagmire". Not bad, but cliched. Every single week our articles say that violence is escalating, whether it's Palestine or Iraq, and the phrase "mounting death toll" is solemnly repeated. Not too many of those declining death tolls, "with total Palestinian casualties dropping by 15 soldiers this week". Anyway, my two related brilliant headlines were both put down by the man, M. Hosni: "Shi'ites happen" and "The Shi'ite hits the fan". Fascists.
Joanna really loved Abu Sir, which loved her back. As we were heading out to the airport, walking through the market to the microbus stop, a mule carrying a load of manure brushed against her backpack, leaving a goodish amount of rancid residue. Charming.
The kids, especially Ali (3) and Hasna' (8) have trouble understanding that when foreigners leave, they can't come back right away. They've been asking for months if Yahya/Sean is coming on Friday, though he was in the US (and is now in Morocco), and they similarly think that Joanna is within a couple hours of Abu Sir.
I was gonna post more, but this keyboard is terrible.
