Julia, my mom, and I have decided not to go to Alexandria today. Instead, we are relaxing for a while followed by walking on our own time through some of the more foreigner-friendly parts of Cairo.
Monthly Archive for June, 2008
In all the excitement over the last few days, we forgot to mention that we left June 26th for Egypt and Jordan, where we will be spending the next two weeks.
We are traveling with my mother and brother on a trip organized by our good friends Scott and Laura. Laura and her daughter Aubrey are here along with another 15 people or so. I generally hate “group tours,” but Scott and Laura have consistently arranged good trips in the past (Galapagos, Cayman Brac, Australia) so we decided to come along.
Since we weren’t able to get online to post yesterday, here are two days in a row:
Egypt – Day 1 – Cairo
Our flight here was fairly smooth and took 10 hours, though there was a screaming baby nearby. Upon landing in Cairo, we were greeted by +100ºF heat and a painfully long wait for our luggage.
Our guide for the next few days, Manal, greeted us at the airport and she immediately whisked us away to the Citadel of Salah al-Din, a landmark mosque in honor of Muhammad Ali (not the boxer). The mosque itself was beautiful, with high, circular ceilings and intricate decoration.
After about an hour, we were brought to the Egyptian Museum, home of many of the famous mummies and artifacts from the tombs of the pharaohs. We spent about two hours walking through the overcrowded, under-climate-controlled building, which was at once awe inspiring and discouraging. The artifacts housed there are often over 4,000 years old, but they show many signs of mistreatment and poor storage conditions, including some sarcophaguses completely exposed to the public in high-traffic areas where they can be and are touched, defaced and destroyed.
Though the museum was stunning, everyone in our group was hot and exhausted, so we went to our hotel, the Marriott Cairo Hotel & Omar Khayyam Casino, around 5:30 p.m. and had a group dinner before checking into our rooms. I generally am not impressed by lentil soup, but we had some at the hotel that was incredibly good. Now that we have a chance to relax and prepare for an early bedtime, here are some first impressions of Cairo:
- It’s really hot.
- Most of this city is a slum.
- Many of the relics and ancient monuments in this historic city have been mistreated in one way or another and are covered in garbage.
- Tourists have no respect for other cultures – particularly regarding conservative dress for women.
- Egyptians are always in a hurry and will shove you around to get where they want to go.
- Every tourist attraction has dozens of people shoving cheap garbage in your face when you try to leave.
- Group tours are pretty much the exact opposite of what I enjoy in a vacation.
Tomorrow, we are going to wake up early and take the obligatory tour of the Pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx along with some other sightseeing. It will be hot and “orchestrated,” but I’m sure we’ll have a great time.
Egypt – Day 2 – Cairo
We woke up around 7 a.m. feeling remarkably rested after a solid 10 hours of sleep. After a large breakfast buffet, we piled into our bus at 8:30 a.m. and began our day with a trip to the ancient city of Memphis, the first capital of a unified Egypt. There were more booths filled with trinkets sold by pushy men than there were artifacts of the ancient civilization, but the standout pieces of sculpture were quite impressive.
Our next stop was Saqqara, home of some of the oldest pyramids in the world. We were able to examine the intricate wall detailing in one of the tombs and go beneath a pyramid so old it resembled little more than a pile of sand and rock.
From there, we were taken to a rug-making school, where young students assembled intricate rugs that, when finished, would be sold on the next floor up for a LOT of money. One rug that Julia liked (and was maybe 2′x3′) was $1,300 – after haggling.
Since we had a very busy schedule (are group tours ever any other way?), we grabbed lunch from a restaurant in Giza before visiting the famous pyramids nearby. We spent some time exporing them from the outside to gain a sense of perspective (they are huge) before some of the group went into one of the pyramids while others relaxed in the bus. I went for a walk to find a better angle for a photo and quickly found myself approached by numerous men on camels and horses offering to give me a good price on a ride. After our group explored the pyramids, we went to a spot overlooking the pyramids where we took some photos and most of us rode camels. The kid leading my camel around couldn’t have been more than 10 years old and kept asking me if I wanted him to take my picture. “Sentimental.”
We visited the nearby Great Sphinx afterward, which was unfortunately entirely backlit, making photography miserable. By the time we left, everyone was extremely hot and tired, so we went to a restaurant housed on a boat on the Nile before returning to the hotel. Theoretically, we should have been able to go to sleep relatively early, but I insist (sometimes to my own detriment) on adjusting photos and (when possible) posting on the same day, so I am still awake at after 2 a.m. trying to finish this stuff. Julia went to bed a while ago, which is good.
Here are a few more thoughts on Cairo:
- Julia is tall and blond. Needless to say, she gets borderline harassed. A lot.
- Let me elaborate on why I say this place is a slum.
- There is raw sewage being pumped directly into the Nile and its tributaries.
- There are landfill-caliber piles of garbage, including dead animals, all over the place – the street, the riverbanks, empty lots and even at landmarks like Memphis and the pyramids.
- Many buildings either are or appear to be unfinished, giving large swaths of Cairo the appearance of a housing project.
- It’s really hot and it’s not a “dry heat”. It’s just humid enough to make the dust that hangs in the air stick to my skin.
- It’s unbelievable to me that people are allowed to do some of the things they do in and around sites like the pyramids. If you ask me, it should be illegal to even touch them at this point, but people are constantly climbing all over them, writing on them, etching things into them, taking souvenirs, and so on.
Tomorrow, the group is headed for Alexandria. My mom and I are considering staying behind and doing our own thing (Julia may join us as well), but we won’t know for sure until breakfast.
Here are photos from the last two days. Click “there’s more to…” to see them all or visit my SmugMug.
Julia at the pyramids.
Brett and I are engaged!!!
We’ve been talking about the possibility of getting married for a while now, but it wasn’t until about a month or so ago that we actually started discussing it with seriousness. We did some ring browsing and investigated the different options that we both like. I knew that Brett and I had basically decided on a ring, but I was under the impression that we would be waiting until after returning home from Egypt and Jordan before making the final decision and purchase. Instead, I had a wonderful surprise this evening!
After a long and stressful day at work, Brett picked me up and we decided to go to Four Brothers, a very good pizza and pasta restaurant, in Darien. After a satisfying dinner, Brett wanted to go somewhere where we could see the rise of the solstice moon, which is apparently supposed to be a beautiful sight. He asked where I thought we could best see both the sun set and the moon rise. I suggested we go to Bailey Beach, in Rowayton, because of the pretty and mostly unobstructed view. When we arrived at the beach, it became almost immediately clear that it would basically be impossible to see the moon rise, although we could still see a partial sunset. Brett thought that we might have been able to walk out on to the “point” area on the beach, but the tide was not low enough to do so. I suggested that we leave to find a better location for viewing the rising moon, but Brett suggested we stay and relax because it would have been too late to get back in the car and find a better location. So, instead, we sat at a picnic table in a gazebo / porch area and watched the sunset and just had a chance to enjoy each other’s company. After a VERY busy couple of days, it was a really nice way to unwind.
We knew that the beach closed at 9pm, and as it neared this time most people began to leave the area. At 8:50pm, the beach gate guard made his rounds to tell lingering people like us that the beach would be closing in 10 minutes. Once he left, and Brett and I were virtually the only two people still at the beach, he revealed to me that it was no coincidence that we came to Bailey Beach – he knew me well enough to know that I would have suggested it as the best place to go to “view the moon rise,” which I soon found out was not our reason for visiting the beach. We discussed the fact that we had some really nice memories at Bailey Beach, especially with Data, as it was the site of his first beach and water experience.
It was at this time that Brett got off of the bench where we had been cuddling together, got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him. It was such a beautiful and wonderful surprise – and of course, I said yes.
Well, there it is! I couldn’t be more excited right now; we’re engaged, and tomorrow we will be going on an exciting two week vacation through Egypt and Jordan. I only wish that my parents and sister were here, and not in Europe, to celebrate with us. However, there will be plenty of time for celebration (and planning) when we return from what I expect will be an amazing vacation.
So, without further ado, the ring:
There have been a number of new developments in the geek realm lately, so I figure now is as good a time as any to plug some of my favorites.
TinEye is a new photo-specific search engine that holds a lot of promise for photographers interested in tracking the use of their work. Still in private testing, the idea is that by uploading, entering the address of, or right-clicking on (in Firefox) a photo, TinEye will scan the internet and present any matches it finds for that photo. The technology does not just return similar items, but only (theoretically) the same exact photo. It is also smart enough to return results for photos that have been cropped, resized, edited, and altered. At this time, the number of photos indexed is extremely small relative to the total number out there, but the technology shows promise. Personally, I would love to see TinEye adopt a Google Alerts type of system in which a photographer could have TinEye monitor their website and automatically notify them if their photos are being used elsewhere.
DropBox provides extremely simple synchronization between one or more computers and the internet. The premise here is to be as completely seamless as possible and, in that, DropBox succeeds. For me, I don’t know that it’s something I will use. It only has two gigabytes of available space, so it’s not practical as a backup tool, which is what I would ideally use this type of technology for. Nevertheless, for anyone who regularly transfers files from one computer to another, this may be a lifesaver.
I don’t need to say much about the recent release of Firefox 3 that hasn’t been said many times already, so I will simply say that I’ve been using it since release day (during which the browser was downloaded over 8 million times) and it’s great. Two of my favorite add-ons weren’t supported at first, but both FxIF and Sirius Player were updated within 24 hours. I also discovered the excellent FireNES add-on, which embeds thousands of Nintendo games into Firefox.
SmugMug just released SmugVault, a partnership with Amazon’s S3 data storage technology that allows SmugMug users to upload files of any type. This is a much more backup-oriented data solution that I will have to look into as it develops. If only this type of storage were available with the simplicity and automation of DropBox.
Last, but not least, I bought tickets for the opening day of The Dark Knight in IMAX!
It’s after 5 a.m. and I just got home from work. Needless to say, this was a rough night.
First, I made a big mistake Monday night while doing Tuesday’s front page. Late in the night, I had to switch the entire basic template on the page due to a problem with the original page. I pulled Wednesday’s template and forgot to change the date, causing Tuesday’s paper to run with Wednesday’s date. Needless to say, people noticed.
Other snags popped up throughout the night as well. The obituaries page had to be recreated four times, our entire photo workflow is being reworked, everyone was behind deadline, and I had to make an images page to run Thursday AFTER finishing my normal pages.
I’m not complaining. All things considered, the day could have been much worse, but it was certainly the worst I’ve had since starting at The News-Times.
Luckily, I have today (Wednesday) off and tomorrow we leave for Egypt and Jordan for two weeks!
Here is the front page in question and a Healthy Life page I did. Click on each to see a PDF.
I hate it when I feel like I need to yawn and/or take a deep breath and it just won’t happen.
Tonight Julia and I went to see Blues Traveler at Alive At Five, a free concert series in Stamford. The crowd was pretty ridiculous (a lot of “Fairfield County” type people), but the show was good. We ducked out early to grab always-delicious pizza from Colony Grill. Here are some photos from the concert. Click “there’s more to…” to see them all.
Last night I encountered two separate problems in my design process. First, I re-learned a lesson I hadn’t thought about in years: trying to blend black text on top of a “black” area of CMYK color photo does not work. Why? Because black text will print using just the K (black) channel. The black background of a CMYK photo, however, will print 100% of all four colors, including the black, resulting in a slightly lighter print. I resolved that issue by converting the image to black and white, which was fine since it was nearly there anyway. My second problem occurred when it was decided that my initial design looked too much like a “mistake” and had to be changed. Here are a few examples.
Before:
Detail of the (fixed) headline “fused” to the photo:
After:
What do you think?
While at Dunkin Donuts a little while ago, a leak in the roof saturated a ceiling panel to point that it collapsed under its own weight, spraying customers with water and debris. Some of the more uptight customers started freaking out implying there was some sort of negligence or ignorance involved, stopping just short of threatening to sue. People with that sort of response to such a trivial problem should be permanently supplanted to a colony at the bottom of the ocean.