Are at all the tourist destinations. And you don’t need an ISIC card. Your standard authentic-looking laminated student ID will do.
The discounts are substantial too. For example, the Pyramids are pretty typical:
That last one isn’t advertised in English. You need an Egyptian residency card to get it.
Just as much a wonder of the world as the Pyramids, IMHO.
Wrong Way
one way street you say?
I don’t see any one coming
honk once, flash twice, go
There are a handful of traffic lights in Cairo. They are ignored by everybody including the traffic cops.
Red Light
I see it, it’s red
nobody in my way… why stop?
it must be broken
Lanes painted on the surface of the road have literally, nearly no meaning whatsoever. A small fender bender is not reason enough to actually stop and pull over.
Making Lanes
ou, can I squeeze in?
flash twice, ok let’s do it
ack opps tag! you’re it
There are no left turns in Egypt. I had no idea left turns were superfluous until traveling Egypt.
Left Turn
follow recipe
straight, then u-turn, then go right
or just make three rights
I don’t understand why, but people use their parking lights not their headlights at night. You use your headlights as a second horn – to flash them at other drivers or pedestrians when the honking isn’t working.
Headlights
from dusk till the dawn
it is dark and I can’t see
headlights? nah, I’m fine
I want to give a quick shout out to two blogs I’ve been following about High Speed Rail in California, and more specifically, its impacts to my commute, SF <-> Palo Alto (cause I’m going to be still doing it in 2018 and all). Both are a great read.
The first is the California High Speed Rail blog. Written and run by Robert Cruickshank, it played an important role in the Prop 1A campaign by providing both a place for discussion and a source of good information about the benefits of the project, statewide and local. It’s now moved on to ensuring HSR in CA keeps moving forward – passing the bond was only the first step.
The second is blog is rather new. The Caltrain HSR Compatibility blog focuses on the integration of HSR into the existing Caltrain right-of-way on the peninsula. So far, it’s taken the form of a series of case studies on particular sections or stations of interest. There’s a ton of good information there. The author, ‘Clem’, is clearly very knowledgeable about the Caltrain right-of-way, its stations, and the operational requirements of HSR.
Over the last week, I’ve spent some 40 hours traveling over 2,000 km (so is that 2 Mm??) across Egypt on various buses. Seven rides, three of them overnight.
Just like in Mexico, buses (along with mini-buses too – private vans that follow predefined routes but leave only once adequately full) are the de facto method of long-distance travel Egypt. Every time, me, and every other person (90% men, women are always either accompanied by children or men) on the bus are hoping to double our fun by getting a full half-row to ourselves. I got rejected six of seven times. Six random Egyptian men I got my shoulder snuggle on with for 3-10 hours. It’s kinda like getting your shoulder snuggle on with somebody on Muni or BART – but Egyptians don’t wiggle so much or get awkward about it. They’re old pros at the shoulder snuggle.
I got to say, the Internet, as a singular invention, just keeps climbing up that list of the ‘most important’ inventions of all time. I expect in about 15 years time it’ll pass up electricity, the internal combustion engine and the printing press to take the number one spot. Right about when some 90% of the earth’s population has high-speed wireless access (via your ‘phone’ more so than your laptop, though it’ll be a semi-hybrid of the two anyway) to the internet.
What will change when we hit that point? Well, consider that:
Methinks that while I don’t know what change that last one will bring, I’m confident it’ll be solidly redonkulous.
This all makes a key assumption: that we’ll get to 90% global penetration of the Internet, in a form that’s still a relatively free, simple, and open communication, many-to-many style. So are we really moving that way? Well, this photo was taken last week in Siwa, an oasis some 300km out a not-entirely paved two lane dead-end road into the Egyptian Sahara desert by Libya.
It’s a little hard to see in between all the crumbling rubble – but the sign on that building in the lower left says (in arabic and english but not siwi) “Cafe” and “Net”. Yup, free wifi with your foul. We are definetely pushing those edges, we are pushing the Internet out to the edges of our civilization harder and faster than clean water or basic shelter. And while that might not make a ton of sense – it sure is damn exciting.
Is here. Not where some other guidebooks and search engines might lead you to believe.
If you’re looking to get an Egyptian visa, bring 65 shekels with you, your passport, and a passport photo. In the low season it takes about 30 minutes. If you’ve got a good wireless card, you can catch some random free wireless from their outdoor waiting area.
(As of December 2008.)
This last month, blog.fogel.ca turned one. Oh, how far we’ve came since we became self-aware in that basement internet cafe in La Paz, Mexico with an annoying international keyboard, a credit card, and a copy of putty. We’ve now upgraded all the way to a regular cafe up in Menlo Park, 2nd biggest train-hating community in CA. Oh boy!
So, I’d like to pay a quick salute to a year of full of travel and tech, cycling and cars, mexico and europe, rights and riots, stanford and cal, rants and rail, politics, oil, gay marriage, howto’s and whatever else was on the mind when the keyboard was dangerously near. I hope it’s been as fun reading my electronic spewage as it has been expelling it.
And for better or for worse, a good stylesheet and some solid blogging software seems to give you a little assumed legitimacy in the internets these days. blog.fogel.ca has seen approx. 30x growth over the past year. Weekday traffic these days surpasses that of the first few months. Now if we can keep those trends up for just two more years….
A few musings about the past year and blog.fogel.ca:
Happy b-day blog!