Just to let you know why things seem a bit odd around here lately, I am currently in the process of re-designing my website. All the content is still accessible as I didn’t want to completely remove the site so bare with me for a short while and the “new nomad-one†should be up and running full steam in a week or 2.
Category: Uncategorized
A reminder of a not-so-distant past
I found this in a local Cape Town newspaper which was commemorating Youth Day on June 16th. It reminds us of where we have come from and should warn us of the results of unchecked discrimination and where we could end up.
I’ve fixed my blog!
Ok, so I started this blog originally as a means to express myself with regard to personal topics of interest and after experimenting for a while and doing some research about blogging, developing blogs and the like I have decided to use wordpress technology to power my entire site. Upgrading was a bit of a pain, and I made a few mistakes unknowingly which I now know had something to do with my permalinks configuration.
Enough techno gobbeldy-gook, my intention is to create a site where I ill display my work, discuss topical issues, provide some helpful content and generally become much more interactive with the way I interact with all of you out there, and wordpress has provided an almost perfect platform with which do do exactly that.
The 38th International Book Fair Cairo
One of the highlights of my stay in Cairo has to be the The 38th International Book Fair which I attended a few days ago. 623 publishers from 32 Arabian and international countries are participating in the fair this year although due to my lack of Arabic knowledge I was limited to a few stores which offered some English books.
Hopping from store to store I quickly realized it may be a while before I found anything which would suite my taste as well as my language requirements. Each store was filled with Enthusiastic book fundis desperately sifting through the thousands of choices in as many subjects as you can imagine. The call to prayer sounded soon after we arrived and after meeting up with another Egyptian friend we prayed and then set about tracking down the English books. I love books and wish I would spend as much time reading my books as I spend searching for them. Unfortunately for me having being paid half of this months’ salary before the holidays I had a tight budget, but managed to get a healthy collection of Islamic books which is my primary choice of literature. I ended up paying for 8 excellent books what I might have paid for the most expensive one amongst the 8 back home and left feeling very satisfied. I was also given a precious gift of a beautifully printed English/Arabic Quran from the Saudi IIPH publishers tent with a few impatient locals not too happy that they were not given the same, and though I feel a little bad for that I am grateful as it’s exactly what I needed having left my own personal copy at home.
All in all it was an extremely satisfying day and made me feel much more comfortable knowing that my obesession with books can continue unhindered.
Life in Cairo
Can you believe it, I’m in Cairo, a city like no other, or at least like no other city I’ve ever seen. It’s big, densely packed, polluted, bussling, crazy. This is a place of many contrasts, ugliness & beauty, sacred and profane, nature and pollution, noise and stillness.
In a period of 3 months I have met some of the most sincere people I have known, some of the funiest people, some of the loudest people. It’s difficult to give a summary of this place. One of the most outstanding features is the driving. This I was told by many people before my arrival and I read many posts online warning potential visitors to take care of the traffic.
Cairenes have a, how shall I put it, organic manner of driving. The traffic is similar to a stampede in places. At first I could not make any sense of why they drive the way they do, stopping whenever and wherever they like, hooting(honking) every few seconds, making all kinds of “illegal” (if there is such a thing in Cairo) turns and movements, driving the wrong way up a one way street. I have been in taxi who would drive the wrong way up a busy main street facing oncoming traffic just take take a quick shortcut. (more…)
GDRC.org – excellent resource for all things eco/human-friendly
 This is the best resource I have come across whilst researching the topics of sustainability and eco-friendliness. In their own words:
“The Global Development Research Center is a virtual organization that carries out initiatives in education, research and practices, in the spheres of environment, urban, community and information, and at scales that are effective.”
