Flickr

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Maalish

That's arabic for sorry.

I know my usual excuse for not blogging has always been 'There isn't anything going on to blog about.'

And a few of you (very few, the rest are happy that am not cluttering up the web apparently) have ribbed me that now that am in Cairo, and travellin to Dubai and wherever, I should have lots to talk about. So what explains my not posting for so long? Believe it or not, its because I have actually been busy. Busy working.

I have managed to post a few pix to Orkut though. And if you are a facebook user.... bite me...or bite yourself.

Fun Fact of the Day:
Did you know that the men in Cairo can be roughly categorized into two....categories.

1. Ahmeds
2. Mohammeds

and the way you call either of them is by yelling out "Hamma" (like how an Australian would pronounce a Hummer")

My Hotel - Pyramisa in Dokki

Finally

I got the comments system to work again. This had been bothering me for quite sometime and I must have gone through about a bazillion changes in templates and layout hoping that it will bring the comments back on my blog.

But what spurred me to *DO* something about it and fix it was that the indomitable Mr. Nerlekar himself left a comment on the blog. Now this was something I believe that even Divya's blog has not been graced with. The world had to see it to believe it. 

A asked blogger to 'reset all changes' and hoped that this process would apply only to the blog and not the space-time continuum. 

Ta Dah! The comments are back, and the world will be able to give their two cents (Or. 0.02 Egptian Piastres).

Modern Egyptian Architecture

Boy! This has got to be the most boring post title I have ever come up with.

Anyways, The place I am working in, in Cairo is called 'Smart Village' (or Akara Zakaiya locally). Think of it as the Egyptian equivalent of our own Hi-Tec City or Electronic City. Its just about the same, located a bit away from the city with leading brands displayed in impressive buildings. 

Except....

Unlike us, the Egyptians seem to have realized that they have a rich architectural style which can be reflected even in their modern buildings. We on the other hand, have chosen to blindly ape the American glass boxes. Granted, a few of our new buildings do look impressive, but are they Indian?

The Western buildings are probably designed to minimize heating costs by using a lot of glass. But our major cost is not heating, but cooling. And these mammoth greenhouses we are building for our software houses are certainly not helping keep the electricity bill low.

Coming back to the point,take a look at some of the buildings here at the Smart Village. I loved the way they have fused classical Egyptian architecture into these buildings. 

 

 

  

 

 

 

H2 Who?

What's the deal here? Are Indians the only people who still drink water?

The last time I saw a public place having access to drinking water was Hyderabad International Airport.  The folks here offer any beverage for hospitality, but water. Even the restaurants do not serve water. 

 I had to spend a day with a Pakistani in Bahrain (more on this later). Even he was surprized when I asked him where I could get water and pointed out that the fridge had loads of Diet Pepsi.


Whats wrong with everyone?

Cairo Chronicles

Y'know what the darndest thing about Cairo is? Everywhere you look around, the people you see are..... locals. That's right, the denizens of God's own country don't seem to have invaded Egypt yet.

In any case the sphinx has waited for 4000 years, it can wait for a little while more for the first Nayar sets up his chai stall.

5000 words