Back from Damascus

I'm a man who lives on the edge....who dices with unstable counties and visiting toppling regimes like most people go to the local shops. I am back from my little visit to Damascus and lived to tell the tale. Well actually it was not bad at all. In fact it was quite pleseant, being the calm before the storm the airport was surprisingly quiet. What was disconcerting was the normally surly immigration officials were actually trying to be nice and chatty, "first time in Syria? did you enjoy it last time?" etc. spooky, when your used to the american style stern faced inefficiency. The trip into town was pretty normal, the only difference being a large numbwer of flags around and even more photos of El Presidente then normal plaster over cars and taxis. Some microbuses has some many posters on their windows it looked like Assad was driving a bus load of clones around, how the driver could see out was impressive - perhaps he cut a couple of Scooby Doo like eyeholes in the poster at the front. Security said I should stay around the hotel, so popped out to haggle with my little chap in the watch shop and finally after 3 visits got an agreeable price on a IWC watch I have been keen to purchase....but at my price....a small but worthwhile victory and the watch does still work. From about 10-2am traffic jams of horn-blarring pro-government traffic jams made their way up and down the main street creating a large noise, it was hard to see how many there were or whether it was the same 50 cars and trucks going around and around. saw nothing anti-government. At around 2.30am i heard some celebratory gunshoots being fired in the air - or whats my interpretation anyhow. Next day nothing much different and all quite unlike the south and north of the country, there were a lot of not so secret plain cloths (read 1970s leather jackets) police standing around in groups at the main roundabout where there was suppose to be a demo. Quite a celebratory feeling on the way home as El Presidente said he was going to repeal emergency rule and sack the government (where have we seen this script before). All the drivers I had, who normal talk of nothing but the weather and traffic were happy to dicuss the current situation, I get the feeling like Qaboos in Oman, people quite like Assad, and beleive the problem is all the advisors and hangers on. In Egypt everyone inclided Mubarak in this! Not sure what the ture picture is but there you go. So filled up on arabic sweets, DVDs, wine and made it home without any evacuation......

I am the Passenger.....

Day 1 of my photo-essay "from the passenger seat". Well actually me just sitting taking a few snaps whilst on my way to work of anything interesting, or for that matter normal.

Here 6 images from my travels.....

Before the revolution speed camera started to sprout like mushrooms along the ring road, causing great amounts of screeching and slowing down to 90km/hr for 50 metres before everyone accelerated away. They were actually making a positive difference. Unfortunately clearly now nobody takes any notice whatsoever of the camera, and they are obviously not in us. The only blind flash these days are the regular crashes of two more more cars. This camera looks like it has been hit, or maybe vandalised. In the background is Festival shopping centre rising from the sands.

IKEA, Toys R Us, Carrefour, rumours of Marks and Spenser......its more excitment than the ladies of Kattameya can take.....

Mubarak Police Academy (Im resisting obvious jokes) now renamed.

Many cars have two number plates now (and many have none!) The red one in window says 25th January (day of the revolution) and these are sold as stickers that many cars now have..

A "typical" car in Cairo - not that there is such a thing, but this has many characteristics, lack of fully working lights, a slight damage, no hubs, sticker in the back window, a collection of ecletic stickers over the body work, in this case spongebob, play girl and apple!

My favourite photo of the day. I have seen this image many times and want to photograph it properly one day however many of the times I see it occuring at military fences where photography is not a good idea. Vast "herds" of plastic bags get blown by the wind around the city and end up flattend against the fences. Heres one I took as the sun went down.

Hope you like em, Ill post some more later as I might be going off to Damascus next week to attempt a double evacuation :-[

HSE Starts at home and the not so new deal

Came home the other day and was greeted with a whole jungle of bushes and tree branches piled up on the road outside the house. Seems the gardeners were having a serious spring clean in the garden. Came across this typical Egyptian scene when I came out in to the garden - if I had a STOP card I would have written one. The gave the tree a fairly severe cut - and managed not to kill themselves.

On the english language Nile Radio (although some of the accents are thick and strange you wonder if it is english) I heard an article by a chap who went down to Tahrir Square and helped sell Revolution T Shirts. The T shirt seller was excited that they were selling the merchandise for the same price to locals as expats and tourists - proclaiming it to be a "new deal". They certainly understand they have to bring the tourists back and being gouged/scammed is one of the great pains of visiting Egypt (although paying over is ok in moderation as many of these guys are really struggling).

Ahmed Da Driver and I saw the "new deal' the next morning. As we were setting off for work we met the rubbish guys and negotiated a deal to take away the truck load of vegetation for 150

egp. When I returned home the jungle was gone, however mrs T told us the gardeners had charged 400egp (about 40 British pounds), which is a lot of money here. Ahmed bless him was outraged, how could someone do this! and went straight to complain to the boss man and got our deal sorted out - he is a star. So much for the new deal and good will to all in Egypt.

Not been able to start my photography properly yet as many of the areas i wanted to

photograph are still off limits. So have been continuing to play around and learn how to use the macro lens in the garden. Think I am going to do a series called "From the passenger seat - a week on the Cairo Ring Road" - starting next week.

I like this image- we now have it as our screen saver.

Rumourville and a Egyptian TV shenanigans

Cairo without any police on the street, coming out of 30 years of repressive control and a state media that told a controlled story is a city that is a hive of rumours and speculation. Imagine if any news story you heard on TV or radio was known to be only half true at best you would start to interpret everything. Well we can see that in egypt at the moment. The street do have a sense of normality (minus the odd tank) but there are no police and criminality is bubbling just under the surface - whether it is instigated by the currently unemployed secret police or not is up for debate.

So whilst we are told Maadi is fine, city Stars and Heliopolis are safe, and generally I believe they are, crimes against the person, relatively unheard of before are on the rise, muggings, car jackings, just taxi-driver fisty-cuffs. Let see how the next few weeks pan out as the votes for the new consitution ramp up.

A typically egyptian affair is happening with our TV coverage. In short, Showtime/Orbit sold TV rights to football to ADMC. AMDC say you need new satellite box and card to recieve - this was two weeks before season started (Sept). No new boxes in the country and the season is almost over. In addition the slightly illegal "dreambox", a unit over dragging signal from internet, was taking Showitmes remaining programming (CSI, Bones, Sky news, etc), so Showtime decide to bring in new HD box to screw up all the dreambox users stealing their signal. So Showtime switch off access to showtime users, and tell people to get new box and card - and again - none in the country. Leaving legal Showtime subscribers with no progamming and dreambox viewers happily watching everything!! Luckily we stocked up on DVDs when back in the UK.....should all be sorted out soon - yeah!

Other news been playing a lot of golf (had a 315m drive on the 15th at Kattameya), not many holes you can do that on. Although took young J out the day before and he beat all the men - so he is banned. With the lack of shopping activities even Mrs T is getting better at golf. Lots of parties around anyway.

Life in Macro

Back at homeI decided to treat myself to a new lens. I have always wanted a Macro lens - one specially designed to zoom in real close, great for nature, portraits and arty images. It takes some getting used to and you realise taking close-up images of any quality a special skill that need to be learned. Heres my first attempts from the garden.

Yellow Crysanthiemums (how do you spell that??)

Sunlight through a geranium leaf

Snail

Banana leaf

Fern

Thorns of the big palm tree

more thorns

Yellow arachnid on the crysanths

Bud

Fireflower (not sure what the proper name is for this plant)

Little white flower (vinca?)

Back in New, New Cairo

On my way shopping.....

Some lesser folks maybe a bit worried of a soldier "having a laugh" pointing his gun a you!

We finally made it back home to Cairo! Warm weather hurrah!

We flew back Egypt-scare (Egyptair) which was it usual self, trying ever so hard to be professional. On landing the company had arranged meet and greet and we were helped through passports (something we had done 30x before, but nice anyway). There were a few locals from Tripoli who had just arrived so it was a little busy.

We, and our bags of good english food were waved through immigration and out into the merry throng that is Cairo international airport - merrier than our last visit! The first thing we noticed that was different was the scrum of cars parking outside, previously moved on or ticketed by policemen who were now absent. A short drive and we were in our looter-free home, although it was hard to tell whether the boys rooms were ransacked or not. The furniture we had order several weeks before from Ahmed the furniture maker in Damietta had arrived, some of which was great (wine rack, mirrors), and some obviously had

instructions that had been garbled a little in translation from my poor arabic-ahmeds poor english. We now have a could or garden loungers that would suit a couple of undersized midgets - I laughed remembering the Stonehenge in Spinal Tap. We also have a nicely made garden table however the slats are so widely spaced you would loose a plate between them! Mafish Mushkilla (no probs) as they say here, a couple of pieces of glass over the to

p and all good.

Boys shot off to friends and we have not seen hide nor hair of them. P went out shopping to the local supermarket. You know things are not normal when you can pose in front of tanks and APCs when going to pick up some fruit and veg! Soldiers were really friendly, a bit bored I think with people having their photos taken I think.