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!