You Can't Make Mistakes

Hi guys,

I just wanted to let our families and close friends know that we are alright in case you had caught the news and were worried about us.

There were widespread protest demonstrations in Cairo yesterday and in about 10 other cities as well. They have continued tonight, but on a smaller scale. There was a good deal of violence at one point late in the evening yesterday when the police finally decided to clear out the occupied areas. Tear-gas, water cannons and rubber bullets were all used. There were no live rounds fired. There have been several deaths and in Cairo about 250 people were injured and are now hospitalized. This could well be the beginning of something huge here, not unlike what happened in Tunisia. There are reports of rumors coming in that the son of the President (and his perceived successor) has left the country and is presently in London. It is rumored that the First Lady has also left. These reports have been vehemently denied by the American Embassy and should probably be considered unlikely to have actually occurred.

It will be interesting to watch how the situation progresses, but it will be unlikely to cause any problems for us. This seems so far to be a primarily secular popular revolt instead of one lead by the Muslim Brotherhood or other politico-religious groups. It is unclear where exactly the organization is coming from though. The protesters are regular, working-class people seeking governmental reform and measures to relieve the grinding poverty that Egypt is experiencing.

Social media sites and some news sites are being blocked variously throughout the country. Twitter confirmed earlier that they were in fact blocked yesterday. People are using external proxies in order to circumvent the internet blockades and communicate with each other. This will likely lead to stronger measures undertaken to control the flow of information both to news outlets and to those involved in the demonstrations. There are rumors that mobile phone service is being cut off for known activists. There were reports last evening that mobile services were cut off in Tahrir Square in central Cairo.

We are quite safe at present in Maadi (a southern suburb/district of Cairo). The part of the city we live in is far from the action, and the likelihood of anything happening in this particular suburb/district is low considering that it is inhabited primarily by wealthier folks and expatriates. Regardless, we’re keeping our eyes and ears open and making only leaving the house when absolutely necessary. Some of our more foolhardy friends are headed downtown regularly to scope out what is happening. They are brave, but perhaps a little foolish. It is understandable though. This is an exciting time here.

I am paying pretty close attention to what is happening and I will keep all of you informed in the case that the situation changes, possibly necessitating our evacuation. In that extremely unlikely scenario, our plan is to catch whatever flight is available to somewhere in Europe and then regroup and figure out what to do next. We will be extremely grateful to our friends in the EU if they will be willing to take in refugees at such a time as it becomes a necessity.

A DISCLAIMER: None of the information contained in this letter is original research or journalism. All of this has been gleaned from online news sources over the last two days. This is a letter to friends and family who are concerned about my safety and the safety of my friends in Cairo. I have been told that the international news reports on the situation here are confusing and convoluted. This digest is meant to clarify the situation for my loved ones back home. Please do not regard this as some sort of news report, which it is not.

Love, JM

I’m going to be writing satire for an online UK (British, for the rest of you) magazine called Intuition in the coming months.

For those who don’t know satire is, you can find a satirical definition here. For a no less accurate—but certainly less amusing—definition, click here.

You can find my first piece published there by clicking below:

Check my underwear? Funny you ask… – John Martin | Intuition

Enjoy.

A Mosque on Every Corner.

While Nigel and Johnny were in from Taiwan, Megan and I decided to take them Mosque-walking from the Sayyida Zeinab Mosque to very near the Citadel in Islamic Cairo. We swiftly coined the term “Mosqueing” to refer to this activity. Check Webster’s in a few years, it will be there.

There are unfortunately no photos of Sayyida Zeinab in this collection. They wouldn’t let Megan in at all and the doorman was everything but friendly. I will try to go back soon and grab a few snaps of the outside at the very least.

The walk then proceeded down ‘Abd al-Magīd al-Libān St. and turned onto Ṣulayba St. near Ibn Tulūn Mosque. It was a fun afternoon and we got some decent snaps out of it. We ended up catching a cab—quite thirsty and exhausted—from in front of the Sultan Hassan Mosque to Falaki Square near Bab el-Louq. Those of you in the know know that this is also the location of everyone’s favorite dive/watering-hole Horreya. Cold Stella actually tastes good after a long hot walk through the dusty backstreets.

Enjoy the photos.

God’s Country.

A couple of friends and I decided that it would be a good idea to get out of Cairo and breathe some clean air, swim in the sea and relax at the beach. So, we got a car, loaded up the cooler and drove across Sinai to a little coastal town called Nuweiba and chilled on the beach for a few days.

Driving through Sinai definitely gives one a sense of why nomadic folks often went there to talk to their god. It makes one feel small and alone. I can’t imagine taking the same journey on foot or camel-back. I got to drive back as well, which was pretty superb. I am most certainly in love with driving through the desert.

It was an absolute blast. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

Well, I’m shocked.

This article in the Washington Times week takes a whimsical look at a new piece of technology which is of interest to our very own Department of Homeland Security.

Briefly, this device would replace the boarding pass with a simple bracelet worn around the wrist, including the following:

1. Your personal information
2. GPS capability to track your movement and the movement of your luggage throughout your flight.
3. A high voltage shock device to shock the wearer into immobilized submission, should it be necessary.

Seriously. Look into it.

Don’t forget to check out the video.

Look into it and then write your congressman, your dog-catcher and any other public official you can think of.

I for one would rather die in a fiery plane crash than slapped with a shock collar every time I get on an airplane. Terrifying. Looks like I will have to start looking more seriously into transport on freight ships for overseas travel.

Hopefully DHS is reading this and bumps me up on the list.

Any thoughts?

[Update: This made the Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me news quiz this weekend. 12. July 2008]

Not as bad as it looks

So, the wedding was fine, and it didn’t rain at all. At least not after we arrived there.

Late.

Oh yeah, remember how I was officiating the wedding. Yeah.

We left Kalamazoo in plenty of time to arrive at our wedding destination several hours in advance. Moments after leaving the house, there was a wall of traffic—outside Kalamazoo! So, we stopped, moved 3 meters, stopped, rinse, repeat.

Then the car started to overheat.

There was steam billowing out of the hood one side. We pulled off onto the shoulder. I opened the hood and noticed that the fans weren’t running. This was a problem that I have had with the car before. The fan relays went out in the past and then the fans wouldn’t run and the coolant doesn’t get cooled. This is not a problem as long as the car is moving continuously, streaming air through the radiator.

So I pulled the fuse panel open and sure enough, there was corrosion on the contacts for the relays.

Then it started pouring rain.

So I was frantically searching for something so that I could just fuse the connections across the relay contact and let the fans run continuously, but I had no wire in the car anywhere.

Then, in a MacGyvery moment of brilliance, I spotted the top of what appeared to be a broken dry-cell battery with spring contacts. I tore it apart with a pair of pliers and fashioned jumpers, jammed them in the fuse panel, and we were off.

We still had to wait another hour and a half before we were able to leave the highway to take the back-roads the rest of the way, but at least the car wasn’t blowing piping hot coolant all over the place. It worked until later when the car wouldn’t start, but a little wiggling of fuses solved that eventually.

Now I just have to sort this all out so that the car will live until the end of the summer when we move out of the country. At that time, I am giving her to some friends who refurb cars just enough so that they can have impromptu demolition derby races on a dirt-track in Holly, MI. It is a really good time apparently.

Don’t worry, I’ll post some pictures of that.

Here we come…

I just got word from the American University in Cairo that I was admitted to their graduate school today. So, it’s back to Cairo in a few months to do an MA in Arabic with a specialization in Islamic Studies.

Now I am just trying to revel in congratulating myself before beginning to panic about how much this is about to cost.

Then again, money isn’t everything. Not to mention the logistics of completely uprooting myself. This will be a little different than last time: I still had a sort-of home-base in the States last year. Now my home base will be my backpack.

Exploring the world, one taxi-ride at a time, I guess. Wish me luck.

Back in the Saddle

Sorry for the recent hiatus in posting. I have been a bit lazy and let-lagged this week. 10 in the evening in Kalamazoo feels like what I have been calling 5 in the morning for the past year. It has been as rough transition, but getting better every day. The best part about this, as I sit and write at 7:50am on a Saturday, is that my increasingly late wake up time in Cairo is nice and early here. I have reclaimed the best part of the day, and I usually have it all to myself.

It’s good to be back… at least for a while.

I suppose that this is why I left in the first place, after all. I could have stayed here in the States and written my thesis. I would have had access to a great many more resources—the university library, easy access to the internet, face time with professors, and much more—but I would have likely been bored stiff, trudged on, written, worked some shitty part-time job: you get the picture.

Had I stayed here for the last year, I would not be writing now about how much I enjoy the air, the trees, the cool 10°C mornings, Taco Bell, Miller Lite, American Chinese food, walking barefoot in the grass: so many things. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate these things before, it is just that I didn’t appreciate them that much. I won’t gush or wax poetic about the joy of mundane things, but I will say that living in a place where everything is difficult makes me appreciate living in a place where everything is easy.

It also makes cake out of those things which before seemed difficult: as in “piece of.”

Regardless of all of that, I am having a blast. It is also stunning to take note of the things that I have learned in the past year. For instance: I went to seen Iron Man last weekend. It was great. I love comic-book movies, I love movie theaters. I didn’t go to the cinema nearly enough while in Cairo. Something to think about for the future. The best part of the film, though, was not the popcorn and bucket of soda that I was endowed with upon stepping into the joint, but that the film had loads of Arabic in it: and I understood every word. Obviously, it wasn’t very sophisticated dialog—certainly no more than the dialog in the primary language of the film—but I got it. I didn’t even notice at first: then I realized that I wasn’t looking at the subtitles when I laughed at some little quip or joke. Suffice it to say that I was very pleased with myself.

Same thing when I noticed what an easy time I was having understanding Ayad—dear friend and former roommate—when he showed up late one night before leaving for Saudi Arabia for the summer. We could always talk before, but it is certainly easier now.

I continue to reflect thus as I sit here and wait for the installer to finish on my new low-energy, headless Linux server. A year ago, I didn’t know what a headless server was. In the past year in learning how to use Linux on my laptop for data analysis, I accidentally learned loads about how it works and how to use it. So, now, rather than just having a slab running Windows crap factory, I have a laptop running a scalable set of software which is tailored to my needs. I was particularly pleased when Jeff asked me to put Ubuntu on his laptop to replace the Windows Vista that it shipped with. It went from being a relatively slow, unresponsive, one-year-old system to being a blindingly fast, extensible, little mobile monster. He was/is very pleased by the improvement. He is still gushing about it, in fact.

But, to think, a year ago I attempted an install of Ubuntu on my old laptop—I have since upgraded in a very serious way—and ended up with a command-line laptop for a month. That was cool and all, but it must be noted that it is very difficult to browse the internet using the command-line terminal. Kind of fun though.

Incidentally, I just converted that laptop back into a command-line laptop, just for kicks.

All in all, though, this year was a complete success: I learned a great deal. Had I stayed home, I might not have. Or, I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself nearly as much while doing it.

Anyone else learn anything this year?

We ask all the wrong questions

I read these two articles this week:

The Future of Space Games

The Physics of Zero-G Whipped Cream

I realize that when presented in this manner, the two articles seem a little bit more tawdry than they were probably intended.

Or are they?

My question after reading these, and following up with a bit more research, is this:

“Has anyone—or, more appropriately, “Have any two (or more)—ever had sex in space?

If you tell me that you haven’t wondered this, or even at least thought about it for a second, then you are lying to me. You can’t tell me that you can think about what it would be like to float through 0-gravity attached to a makeshift medicine ball of your own design without thinking: I wonder if it would be difficult to stay engaged while copulating at 0-G’s.

Or maybe that is just what I think about when people start talking about “games” aboard the International Space Station and “whipped cream in space.”

Come on people. Lighten up. We went through the whole “space toilet: everybody poops” scenario about 15 years ago. I think that it is high time that we discuss the realities of performing “the deed” while floating, unencumbered through the void.

And, if none of the ISS crew nor any Soyuz or space shuttle crew from the USA was ever done it, I will eat my words. But, if this is the case, then we have a whole new—and really fascinating—set of experiments to carry out, don’t we?

Nightmare night

Since you last heard from me, I have been lost in the bellies of various airplanes and then was delivered into the hungry maw of homeland security.extra It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.

Our flight out of Heathrow was delayed, which I somehow knew instinctively. Something always has to go wrong at Heathrow. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be Heathrow. What I wasn’t banking on, though, was “scheduled maintenance” which would delay us for 3 and a half hours.

Now, I would think that if you were going to schedule maintenance on a plane, you would schedule it for a time when said plane wasn’t about to taxi. This is not how it is done, however. Once we all boarded the flight, it was really quite pleasant. There was really no one on the plane: it was mostly empty, which meant that each passenger got at least two seats and loads of leg-room. Sweet. The crew was funny too. They didn’t give a shit since there were so few of us, so it was very laid back. I got some much needed sleep finally.

When we arrived at Dulles, however, it was a different story entirely.

We were first ushered onto the weird Dulles airport shuttle thing. It’s like a really uncomfortable waiting room, with tightly packed seats, except that the whole thing moves and changes levels depending on where it is and where it needs to go. It is a creepy prelude to the nightmare that Homeland Security/Customs and Border Patrol will then inflict.

You can imagine that I was really looking forward to the body cavity searches that I would be receiving, having just lived in North Africa for 8 months. I have to say, they took it easy on me. I think that the guy who questioned me was a rookie though, he didn’t really know what to ask and just seemed kind of nervous.

I did get extra-special service though—not the ultra-special, wait in a room for hours and hours and then be body-cavity searched version though. They just wrote in huge letters all over my form and then sent me off to a special line with all of the Latinos, Arabs, and anyone else who was brown. I was the only white guy. It was nice. Made me feel at home again, like in Cairo.

So I get to the front of the line finally and the guy that got stuck with me was alright. He was a little green, but friendly—and thorough. He aksed me question after question about my program, my teachers, how I met my tutors. My favorite was when he caught a glance of the load of Quranic studies books and asked me if any of my studies were of a religious. He was, of course, hoping that I would slip up and admit to having been drafted into the ranks of some extremist group.

I haven’t, by the way.

I said “Yes, I’m a religionist by training, so I study the religious texts as well.”

Then finally, after having decided that I was not going to be a threat to our great nation. I was allowed through, back onto American soil.

Thankfully it was really late, so my plans were shot, and I decided to just wait for my flight to come up in wee hours—now swiftly approaching.

I tried to find someone to take my bags off me again, but no one was at any of the desks for Northwest Airlines, so I had to schlep around the airport with 60 kg of luggage, desperate for a coffee.

I thought that was bad, until the time came when I could check in for the connecting flight to Detroit and woman decided to charge me for my bags. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Apparently,even though I had just come 10,000 miles with these heavy bags, now I had to pay $50 to get them another 500 miles home. She said she couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t been charged in the first place as she had never heard of an airline with a 30 kg weight limit before (both Virgin and British Airways have a 30 kg weight limit, FYI). Bastards. It’s just an example of a sinking American carrier scheme to get a few more nickels and dimes.

It’s amazing how I didn’t have any troubles with airline employees until I landed in the United States. Surprise, surprise.

But I’m better now, I just found Vitamin Water in the airport while waiting for the flight. It went well with the rest of my Xanax. I’ll have a nice relaxing nap on the plane.