Blog moved!

This place is DEAD. Go to jacobsweb.wordpress.com now!

Back from Cairo

I was off to the Egyptian capital city of Cairo for the weekend, and at the same time recovering from the flu I caught last week. Now I'm back with tons of photos which I will upload here very soon, so stay tuned. But first I gotta take care of some work-related stuff!

Flu!

Can you catch the flu in tropical climate? Today I unfortunately found out you can...

Damn. My muscles hurt, I got sore throat, fever and I slept whole day. What's wrong with me? I thought that the illness in this part of year is related to the weather in Northern Europe where I usually live. Obviously it's not the weather cause it's still 35° C here and I somehow got influenza. Hate being sick!

Here are some pictures taken yesterday, before it all happened. Let them remind me of the good days. 

My aunt from Poland made a visit.

Whaddup y'all!

"Grrrr..!"

Mosquitoes were everywhere

Prof. Jake tells the story of the Mosque

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?

Could have been worse!

... =) 

Egyptian hospitality

Egypt is after all a nice country with nice people. Regardless of what some of the foreigners living here might say, it's good to be here. A sad but true fact I actually agree with having spent some time here is that unfortunately lot of people are not that smart. But that's the education probably, or as I heard people describing it - the social education. The society "teaches" you certain things and you keep doing that cause it's the "right" way. This includes playing stupid in certain occasions and later on blaming the stupidity on misunderstandings of English or saying that something "got lost in translation".. You know. So probably 90% of the people you will meet here are dumb (or play dumb, whatever it is it has the same effect - you think they're acting dumb). But regardles of the IQ, I find the vast majority to be very friendly to me. 

So now it's time to get back to work. I have some PR stuff to do. But first I have to eat up all the sweets Mr. Ahmed brought me. I asked for "a small cookie for tea, and oh..give me something traditional Egyptian". This is what I got:

Next time I'll ask specifically for ONE piece! And you better keep that sleek and smooth memory of me, cause next time you see me when I'm back from here, I might not be as sleek and smooth anymore... =P

Ciao!

Update: I'm feeling a little dizzy cause of all that sugar, but it turned out that the whole thing was a gift (they didn't accept any money) so I had to eat it up. All of that. E-V-E-R-Y   P-I-E-C-E. Not so LEGEN...wait for it ...DARY! (Season 4 of How I Met Your Mother started this week, go and grab it now!) See ya...

Housefly

I hate houseflies. I can't stand them. They can destroy any situation at any time no matter of your previous mood. Why the hell do they exist anyway? Is that just a proof that there are meaningless things in life? 

Shit they are everywhere. God help me! 

Why can't a smart scientist devote his or her life and invent a substance that efficiently kills all the houseflies in the world? HEEEELP!

Ridiculous thoughts on sleeping

Recently I noticed a change in my behavior, I became what you might call a late-sleeper. Not that I sleep really really long in the morning (or rather day, cause some might not consider the time I get up at as "morning" anymore). Back in the days (whaa?!) I was what Swedish people use to call "ein Morgen Menschen". Though that was a German translation (don't ask me why... it just sounds more cool in German this time, aka "show off some language skills!"). Whatever. The thing is: I sleep late. Occasionally even as late as 1-2 p.m.. And on a daily basis I usually get up at noon. Today I tried to "get up early" as you say... I was out in the kitchen at 10 am but decided I was way to tired, I had work to do later today and hence needed a "fresh" mind (good luck with that boy!), it is too hot outside anyway for going now and besides..it's Ramadan and nobody's gonna be in the offices until later anyway. So... I got back to bed... 

What's wrong with me? Am I dying? 

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! 

Egypt blocking Facebook?

Here's the first of hopefully no more posts about why Egypt actually is a third world country (unfortunately after the recent day's events, I have some more themes for blog posts about why sucks in Egypt).

I hope I'm wrong now, but it seems like the Egyptian government is blocking Facebook. Not a big deal, huh? Maybe not, but it's still narrowing an individuals options for communicating with the surrounding world. Seriously, it is a bigger issue, considering why the persumed block is taking place. According to LA Times:

The reason: In April, one group of young citizens mobilized 80,000 supporters to protest rising food prices. Facebook networking played a crucial role in broadening support and turnout for an April 6 textile workers' strike and protest.

OK, now it seems like an issue. Considering that I have found a few more evidences. All from the end of the summer of 2008, where people presumed it would happen. Now it seems like it has. For political reasons. Great... Hard to believe it but it seems like I'm living in a country where basic human rights are not respected. 

Right now I have been accessing the social network site via different proxy servers available, but it looks like the scripts essential for Facebook get blocked, so I can not even send any messages to people. 

Stay tuned for more reports on human rights in Egypt. Hell yeah... bye!

Update: Btw, I've been off for another reason - my hard drive suddenly decided to end our yearlong collaboration and leave my with a 5 days old Time Machine backup (thanks God for Time Machine!). But it took my a couple of days to find anything that I could replace my dead drive with in this part of world. More on this later! 

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...

It's great, isn't it?

Hey look what I just found in my inbox:

For those of you who didn't get the Swedish part in this, it is an ad which entitles for discount buying a jacket this fall season. The funny part goes something like this: "There's always something positive going on. Like now: it only gets darker, colder and more rainy, which gives you this fantastic opportunity to buy a jacket [bla bla]. It's great, isn't it?". Haha yeah, that sure makes my friends way more happy about the weather conditions in Scandinavia. =D But you know what is great? This!

WTF Microsoft?

The Redmond software giant have been airing their two new ads recently, certainly as a response to the long-running series of "I'm a Mac - I'm a PC"-ads from the Get a Mac campaign. I watched both and seriously, what are they talking about? Is it really a good idea to bore people out... I was hoping for something better when they announced Jerry Seinfeld would be featured in the ads, but this is not good. Check it out for yourself.

Can somebody explain to me, please? I feel confused... 

End of the world? Yeah whatever...

This is so funny. Some people seem really concerned about tomorrow's upcoming experiment at CERN with the Large Hadron Collider (yepp, it's the same CERN and the same LHC as described in Dan Brown's Angels & Demons – let's hope they'll create antimatter, just like in the book ;)). So what's their concern? Well, they think that during the experiment, except the particles the scientiets are looking for, they might as well incidentally create a black hole! Yeah right... that's what I'm saying. But they're serious. Just take a look at this apocalyptic video:

The scientists at CERN have replied with – what they believe is – a "cool" message. One of the most pathetic music videos ever, gotta love it! :D

Well, we'll see if we're still alive by tomorrow. Oh gosh I'm so worried right now... shit ;). Bye!

Why it's critical to put something into the right context

Good morning (yeah I know, but it's Ramadan and I like sleeping late nowadays)! Here's a random thought for you. Buying a computer is often seen as a huge expanse. Especially when it comes to a Mac. I don't know why but I hear it all the time from people that "oh those Macs, yeah they're sure nice but too expansive". Erm, well not so sure about it, take a look at the consumer MacBook or iMac and compare it with a Dell or something – and see what you get for the money, I'm talking about the build quality – and think again. And I haven't even mention that you get rid of the probably most irritating thing with new PCs: the Windows Operating System. But check out this story.

About 26 months ago (or 780 days if you count like 26*30) I bought a than brand-new MacBook. A year later or so I wanted to upgrade it a bit with bigger hard drive and more RAM, so I bought additional. Total cost for this 26 months is something like 12.000 SEK (that's about €1200). It's 12.000 SEK/780 days, that is something like 15 SEK a day, or €1,50! €1,50 a day for using an amazing machine every day in two years. Still think it's expansive? Think again!

Update: Oh yeah, almost forgot: the second season of Californication is out, get the two first episodes now! From Wikipedia: "The premiere of season two is set for September 28, 2008. The first and second episodes of season two leaked to the internet on September 8.". Sweet! 

Late night work

Living in Egypt (or probably any Arab country) may seem a little strange and off for Westerners. In my opinion the vast differences that appear at this time of year might depend on Ramadan (the most important month of the year for Muslims) and the practice of fasting during the day hours. 

When I'm about to eat something out of home, I can't stop thinking about that I'm eating and the people who work in the restaurant aren't and won't be, until about 6-7 p.m. (that's when the sunset is). When I'm downtown among people during the day, it feels unfair to take out my bottle of water, which I always bring with me, cause it feels like I'm offending the people around me by drinking (cause they can't). (And now, forgive me for this rough distinction between "us" and "them", but it will make this whole conversation a lot easier.) So these two example are when it feels like we make them feel bad (although, every Muslim I spoke to insist that they don't want to eat or drink and they don't think about it during the day, not even if they see someone else drinking – so I should not feel guilty about doing it – according to "them"). 

How about the opposite? Are there situations when "we" get disturbed by those who practice the holy month, and have to adjust their whole lives after it? Well hell yes! But let me get this clear first: I personally absolutely agree with the idea of "one should adapt after the local practice, conventions and rules". 

But.. there is this one thing that is different here. Something that is difficult to like, or even to accept, though you might fully understand the reasons of it. It's the practice of working at nights. It seems like every building worker in Sharm lives according to the New Zealand Standard Time (that is like +12 UTC folks...). I really understand that they want to work after the iftar (the first meal of day during the fast in Ramadan), but it doesn't make it easier to fall asleep when they're banging on your roof at 2.30 a.m.! Anyway, enjoy the pictures I just took since I couldn't sleep anyway.

But there's something else that "we" might like about Ramadan: the practice of decorating everything with colorful lights which is soooo familiar for "us" (if you have seen Christmas decoration in December, you know what I'm talking about ;)). Check out those pictures too! 

How to get things done NOW

So I found this quite amazing presentation tonight. If you feel like you're getting distracted and waste your time when you really should DO SOMETHING ELSE, take a look. It will take you a couple of minutes but it's well worth it. For real!

For more stuff like this, visit 43Folders.com.

Why planning is impossible in Egypt

The question could probably be something like "why planning is impossible in certain cultures?", which would be an incorrect way of asking, or like "are there differences between the concept of planning in different cultures?". The last one is at least possible to answer, and the answer is a clear: yes. Want to learn more about trying to do something as planned in Egypt, and hear some funny stories as well? Read on!

Nothing is as you've planned it in Egypt. There you go – my new motto for the time being. Those of you who know me a little have said that I'm pedantic. Those who know me well say that it's more like it seems like I am, but in reality I'm not. And for those of you who don't know me at all: I'm not pedantic, I just like having my stuff figured out in advance. 

And that is what I was trying to do with this day: have it figured out in advance. The plan was simple: go to bed early (not 3am which I'm used to down here), get up in time for breakfast (funny word, you know it's derived from "break the feast", i.e. the feast after having been sleeping – poor fellow Muslims, no breakfast for them till sunset this month!). After eating I wanted to devote the whole day for some writings I have to do. So that's the plan. Here's reality...

At 8pm last evening, a bunch of workers decide to start doing some work on the roof . Yeah I understand they do it after eating... I would prefer to rest during the day as well if I were them. Sooo hot outside, and they don't eat or drink. Damn. So they work during nights. Well, they stopped at 11pm so I could go to sleep. But by then I got too interested in studying renaissance art and the works of the Great Trinity of Renaissance: Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Some quite amazing works over there. Anyway, you know Wikipedia: one post takes you to another which takes you to a third and you end up at something that seems to have completely nothing to do with where you started (but it has, since you got there someway by just clicking the links!). So there goes my "go and sleep early tonight"...

One part of my plan succeeded: I got up at 6.30. Though I wanted to sleep, but couldn't. They started the work on the roof again. I guess they ate just before sunrise and with the stomachs full it was easier to get back to work. Plus that the sun isn't that hot in the morning either. I'm sure they planned it all – too bad it wasn't in line with my planning. So there you go, the longer explanation to the problem of planning in Egypt: it's not that they don't plan here at all. The planning is just different from mine for at least one big big reason: cultural differences. So when you go on holiday somewhere, don't blame the locals for spoiling your day. You might as well be spoiling their'. 

3pm, and I just got up from bed for the second time today. No more planning today, just start work! 

Ehm.. after I've eaten something first. And oh. I still gotta do the laundry. Oops. 

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!

Three obvious revelations

I spend the last night in the cozy flat of my good friend "oh-I-really-love-Microsoft-but-they-still-haven't-came-up-with-anything-as-good-as-the-iPhone-so-that's-why-I-use-an-Apple-product"-Viktor. That made me realize a few things:

Revelation no. 1: Watching TV can be fun

Alright, this headline might sound bloody obvious, but let me explain. Those of you who know me somehow well must have noticed my - what should I say - ignorance of television. I don't like to watch it, and I almost never do - except the news in the morning, for a short period during my second college year. In fact, I don't even have a TV in my apartment anymore. And I'm good with it! This morning however, I zapped a bit between Discovery Channel, National Geographic (both in HD!) and VH1 and got kinda stuck... I really felt like I wanted to watch more and more, and couldn't help myself checking those three channels (which just happened to match my expectations of what I wanted to see and hear that morning). It got worse: I couldn't get away and do what I really wanted to do (and that was to eat breakfast - those of you who know me at least a little know how important that is to me). So here's the strange conclusion, which might be obvious to pretty much anybody except me (till this morning): watching TV can be fun! But hey, I noticed something else: it's really easy to get stuck, not realizing the time going by and end up with nothing done! Have you noticed that?

Revelation no. 2: Music videos may have an impact on the song's popularity

As I watched VH1, they played a lot of familiar songs, among them Amy Winehouse's "I'm no good for you" and Coldplay's "Viva la vida", both of which are on records I recently enjoyed. The funny thing was that the music video kind of exaggerated my reception of the music - it seemed even better than what I expected it to be. Yeah.. sure, I know that people since 1639 say "seeing is believing"...

What I realized through my own experience led me to an thought-provoking conclusion: music videos may have an impact on a song's popularity. That might explain why it is so important for artists to get air-time on MTV, Viva or VH1, but also why popular music aired on those channels gains so much popularity! Now, this is of course just one of many other reasons, among which social impact of the music video's air-time might be crucial (that is when you - or your subconsciousness - go like: "hey, since it's aired on the TV, many others must think it's good, and if other's like it, I might as well give it a go and listen to it"). So that might be the solution to the mystery of popular music. Or... perhaps I'm just over-analyzing it a little...? ;-)

N.B. Even now, I can hear "Viva La Vida" playing at a party somewhere nearby. Guess they watched VH1 this morning too...

Revelation no. 3: Sofas can be comfortable

Yes, they can. 

Well that was it, three damn obvious facts, for your reading pleasure. Something you never thought about. But I did. And I wrote it down. And that's the difference between me and you! Peace out ;-)

Coming up next: A "new" ocean

This is something we already knew, you could hear it throughout the summer: the ice in the Arctics is melting and reaching new, record-low levels. This has led to some political dispute, when Russia about a year ago claimed a vast territory of the Arctic as Russian, and also placed their flag below the North Pole. If somebody back then - in 2007 - doubted the Russian imperialistic ambitions, I guess they can stop hesitate now: just take a look at the development in Georgia recently (English BBC, Swedish Dagens Nyheter and Polish Gazeta Wyborcza all have special service about the on-going conflict). 

This development on it's own is of course a great storyboard for blogs like this, but it's not what I was intending to talk about in this post. Something else is a big issue, and as I said, I'm sure that pretty much everybody have heard about the melting Arctics. Well, hearing about something and seeing it are two different things, cause - as they say - a picture is worth a thousand words. So here are the pictures I wanted to show you in the first place: the world with an ice-free Arctic Ocean. Scientist say we can expect this somewhere between 2030 and 2050. But than again, remember how they underestimated the melting so far? So this 2030-2050 looks to me as a conservative calculation. But hey, let us hope we're all wrong!

Hello, again!

It's been over a year since the last post (which by the way happen to cover the original iPhone launch) and a lot has changed since - although I still don't own an iPhone, when it seems like the whole world does. For example, my friend Viktor - who btw makes living by being an excellent Microsoft .NET coder and isn't really known for being an Apple fanboy - recently picked up his second one (3G this time) of those all-in-one devices. Beside this I've seen people everywhere - from Palestine to Poland and from Sweden to Sharm el Sheikh - using these phones and I was just about to get one this fall, when something changed.

I was looking for interesting opportunities for job, as well as for collecting some data for my upcoming master thesis, when I got stuck in Egypt where I found both - and even more. One funny thing I can say about this guys is: read The Secret. 

When the summer of 2008 came to a rainy end (at least in the northern parts of Europe) I returned to Sweden to move out of my apartment and say a "see-you-soon" to my friends (I don't believe in good-byes for some reason). I got out of the flat two days ago, spend a night at bullshit-Mackan's house and finally got picked up by my family and went to visit them. So this weekend I'm gonna be in the charming city of Göteborg (or, technically, just outside) visiting my family. I'm also planing on using this new DSLR of mine and shoot some pictures while I'm here. Talking about pictures, don't forget to check out my Flickr account, where you can see some of the better shots from around here. I'm also working on adding some photos from Egypt, and these will come continuously, as I shoot new when I get back there soon!

So what can you expect from this blog from now on? Well... more frequent updates - that's for sure (shouldn't be too hard to achieve since the last update was something like 400 days ago). Besides, I will of course talk something about the life in Sharm el Sheikh - what, where, when and how - and illustrate everything with knife-sharp photographs. Furthermore, you can expect the usual crap about tech, geeky stuff (such as the world politics, travels and weather) and of course, music. 

That's it for tonight! Thanks for reading and stay tuned (preferably by adding this blog to your RSS reader of choice - I recommend Google's web-based solution). Ciao!