Staying on the safe side

I've been living here in Sharm on and off for over three months now, and taken lots of photos (some of which you might see here, and other on Facebook and - most important - my Flickr account). My favourite motive has been the sunsets over the beautiful mountains of South Sinai. Once I also managed to shot the mountains at the sunrise (couldn't sleep at 6 am), but that's nothing I'm doing on a daily basis. So. 

The mountains are cool from the distance. But I think it would be even cooler to get there and maybe climbe a little. (Nothing like Kebnekajse or Galdhöppigen! ;)). But there might be problems...

According to pretty much everyone I've spoke to, it's rather dangerous to go there. For various reasons. Some say the police are there and won't let anyone in. That might be because they really are there or they just say it so the tourists don't go there and get harmed by the real dangerous things waiting there. What might that be? Here's a (pretty serious) list of dangerous "stuff" waiting arount the corner in the mountains of South Sinai.

1) Mines - Remains from the various wars in the area in the 60's. I've heard that both Israeli and Egyptians have mined the area. Then as the time went on the land was once in Egyptian and another time in Israeli hands, and both sides added more enforcements, so now nobody really knows where it's safe to go.

2) The animals - according to locals it's best not to go alone in the desert as one might meet some wild animals. Most dangerous are the arabian wolfs they say. They are hungry preditors living in the desert, so better watch out. They look a lot like wild dogs but they're said to be not exacly "human's best friend". 

3) Police/military forces - they're said to be here to protect us (the foreingers in Sharm). But who knows what they actually do when they sit in the middle of the desert 24 hours a day and stare at the sun, sand and dust all around them? Also they're of course fully armed so you might not want to get into trouble with them. 

Anyway. I've also heard that from the point where I'm living (at the edge of the city, so to say) it's only 10 minutes walk to the Ring Road (also called Desert Road). After that road there's nothing there, except the three things I've mentioned above. If I continue I should get to the foot of the mountains in about 1 hour of walk through the desert (not exactly the 40 years Moses and his followers are said to have been walking in the area in the bibilal times). So, one day I'm planning a little walk, with my camera of course. It can't be that dangerous right.. It's just sand?

Screwdrivers and Israel

Egypt is not Europe. I knew it before I came here. But I had no idea how frustrating it can be to leave the Old Continent. 

My hard drive "died" last week. Surprising, cause I put it in only 10 months ago when I installed Leopard, back in November. The reason is probably burned electronics on the drive - something that might have been cause by the damn electric sockets which are not grounded! That would be nice to have here since they turn the electricity on and off all the time (I literally mean like 10 times a day!). Furthermore, I guess that the current isn't really stable and I can see the sudden peaks and falls of the voltage just by having the lights on in the evening. Anyway, my disk died and I needed a new one.

Before I could change the drive however, I needed screw drivers. More specifically a Philips #00 and Torx T8 which are necessary for changing the hard drive in MacBooks. My first guess after speaking with some natives was that I won't get it in Sharm. So I took a trip to Israel. Thought that would be nice. They are civilized, after all..right? 

Maybe they are. Maybe not. I don't know. But I had no luck with finding the screwdrivers in neither Jerusalem or Bethlehem. Probably I just don't know how to look. All the time I ended up in the Arabic parts of the cities by the way... Where are the Jews?!

So no luck here. But the visit in Israel gave me at least some nice photos...

On the Mt. of Olives a mix of tourists and Israeli land forces. Fully equipped... Shit. 

Oh it was soooo bright!

These children reminded me that the summer's over and it's time for school for some! Too bad...

Meat. Lots of meat. Old City in Jerusalem. Wonder if it's kosher?

Something similar in the background.. you see? Must be dangerous to live so close to lots of gold...
Old City in Jerusalem

I found some Jews in the Old City after all. Turned out the city is divided in four quarters: Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Jewish. At least that's the traditional division.  
No in Bethlehem. Looking for screw drivers. 
Bethlehem is a part of the Palestinian Autonomy. No Jews on the streets here. No screw drivers either..unfortunately.

A view from somewhere in Bethlehem.
And the panorama over Old City in Jerusalem from the Mt. of Olives. 

So that's it. Got back to Sharm. Found the screw drivers (at Radio Shack...). Bought an exactly identical hard drive in a computer shop. I got it for 80 euro last year in Sweden. Now I payed 100 euro... Today the same costs about 55 euro in Europe (checked it on the Net). But hell.. what was I supposed to do?

Now thanks to Time Machine (love you!) I'm back and running just where I was! Egypt and technology are however still two very different and incompatible concepts. No Internet at home, cause somebody somehow messed up the telephone cables for the DSL line. And it's Ramadan, so they can't promise it will be fixed anytime soon. 

But still it's 35 degrees and sunshine... At least the life is wonderful! 

Bad bad bad bad bad bad news

This won't be a happy post. It won't be long neither. All I will say is that today I was working on a PR thing for the company when my Mac suddenly froze so I had to kill it by shutting it off. Now I see how some of you laugh: "haha there you go, even your fantastic Apple computer died!". Yeah, maybe it did, cause when I reboot all I see is a pretty neat icon with a blinking question mark, which represents "I can't find any disk to boot from". And that's true, my hard drive appears to be dead. Damn..great timing. Just for your information, the hard drive isn't original Apple, it's a 250Gb Toshiba drive I put in two years ago, and I knew it would die some day. Luckily I have Time Machine backup, which means it will be easy to get up and running again. Badly though, the last backup is 5 days old...

So tonight I'm going to Jerusalem to look for a) a new hard drive and b) some screw drivers cause I left my set back home in Sweden. Great. Sweet. Fantastic. I love this. Pray for me.

And I will pray. I'm a bit confused to whom I should pray though, considering I'm European, currently stay in Egypt and hope to find everything I need to fix this in Israel...

Back in Sharm!

After 26 hours of travel, and over 5000 km later, I'm back in Egypt. I'm not going to bore you with a detailed description of this "fantastic" trip – still I'd like to share some thoughts. Let's start chronologically. 

First of all, don't complain about the railways in Sweden. It's a fast, convenient and pleasant way for traveling short to mid-long distances. The standard in Sweden is really good (I'm talking from the experience of having spent the last summer vacation on Europe's trains in 11 different countries - so for once, I know what I'm talking about ;)). Speaking of which, I can really recommend an InterRail vacation, it probably is the best way to experience different countries and cultures (as you see more and meet more people, compared with e.g. going by car or just simply flying to your destination). But let's move on now to my recent journey...

I wouldn't recommend sleeping at the Copenhagen Airport (CPH), unless necessary. I've heard something about a sleeping lounge, but it turned out it's after the check-in. Which really isn't of any use if you're flight is in the morning as the check-in usually opens like 2h before the departure. So what I did was spending 6h on a bench. Reading, listing to music, trying to use the Internet (but they demanded astronomical amounts of money, like 60DKK (about €8) for 30 minutes!), talking to people... But no sleep at all. It just wasn't dark and quiet enough (or I wasn't tired enough). 

When I thought that CPH was big and noisy, I had no idea what London Gatwick (LGW) would be like. It felt like it was 5 times bigger and 50 times more crowded than the first airport! I had to spend about 7 hours there, so I found a place to lay down and get some sleep. Seems like it doesn't matter how bright or crowded it is when you're really tired... 

And in fact, the waiting room at LGW's North Terminal (yes, there's a South Terminal and they're connected with... a railway) was way better than anything I could find at CPH. I can especially recommend the "beds" on the ground level, opposite to the WH Smith store in the departures terminal. And oh, one more thing: no free WiFi at Gatwick either! What's wrong with supplying people with that for free? You get pretty much all the basic stuff - warming/air condition, water, even electricity and news from all these randomly placed TV screens - for free at the airports. I really hope that they're soon realize that taking money for such an elementary thing as Internet access is highly immoral! If you know any airports that give away WiFi, let us know in the comments. Next time I'll plan my trips to go via does...

The airlines I flew with (Sterling and easyJet) are pretty much okay, perhaps as good as it gets when it comes to the low-cost airlines (that's a nicer term for basically "cheap airlines", I assume). The planes were new and fresh, there was no problem whatsoever with luggage – not even with the 3 extra kilos of my check-in luggage. A smile and a "come on, it's just 3 kilos... do you want me to take my boots out and carry them as hand luggage really?" was enough to not having to pay the ridiculous €15 for each extra kilogram. 

So now I'm back, just in time for the holy month, Ramadan. I noticed immidietly that something was going on – there are lights and decorations everywhere, pretty much like Christmas in the Western civilization. Back to sun, back to warmth and back to work. As long as it's fun, and as long as one enjoys it, everything is just the way it's supposed to be!

Pictures from Poland

I have one more photo blog post for you this evening. It containts a selection of pictures from Poland. Scenery, family and friends, buildings... You can click on any photo to view a larger version.

Pictures from Borlänge

This week I returned from Poland, and as I promised in my earlier posts, I publish pictures from my recent trip to Borlänge today.

I'm trying out the new, embedded photo album from Picasa (as it simplifies the process of publishing, since I have a "export to Picasa" option directly in Aperture, check out the new plugin ).

You should easily see the pictures as a slide show (Flash player needed!), but you can also click on the yellow icon in the bottom-left corner and select "View Jacob's gallery" to go to my Picasa gallery and view bigger versions of the photos!

A short vacation

Today I'm leaving for Poland for some time (rather short than long visit). That most probably means no updates, as I will be busy visiting family and such. I'll post the pictures from Borlänge when I'm back. Maybe something else as well...

Meanwhile, Apple has released new, Santa Rosa based, Macbook Pros. If you happen to have too much cash, OR if you just need a really really good notebook computer, check them out at Apple. Speaking of which, I guess we'll see some Apple related news during this and next week as the WWDC is approaching, with a feature-complete demo of Mac OS X Leopard. Stay tuned!

Finally, an update!

I'm alive and all good, folks. I've been really busy lately, mostly school-related stuff (kind of a mid-term exams, projects deadlines, and so on...). Just a couple of days ago I had an opportunity to go out and shoot. Here are some of the results!

Halmstad is a nice city to live in, even if you have high aesthetic demands on the surrounding environment. Some examples:


Some nice, new apartments


The Halmstad Library



Today, me and some friends from the class (as well as a couple of others from the school) went to Göteborg for an exhibition about future IT-related job opportunities. The best part was probably the free bus trip... (So much for Gösta...damn!) Anyways, here are some pics:


Going with the Älvsnabben across the Göta river.


Tourists... ;)


A view upstream the Göta River, toward the Göta Älv Bridge


Famous "Barken Viking" with its hotel on board


The Opera House


Somebody's weirdo...


Somebody's cool-o... ;)