Archive for June 2nd, 2006
Weekly Post
I posted pictures from my first day in Cairo (5/25), but have had a terrible time with network connections here recently. We frequently have outages here, the last of which occurred in October. A ship sank in the Indian Ocean and happened to cut the fiber between here and southeast asia. It took weeks to get the bandwidth back. Unfortunately, I went to the Pyramids, Sphinx, etc. on the second day. I’ll post those … uhh … whenever.
Three Days in Cairo
Last evening I returned from Cairo. No other city in the Middle East (except possibly Baghdad) differs more from Abu Dhabi. The oldest building in Abu Dhabi was erected 30 years ago; the Pyramids have dominated the Cairene skyline for five millenia. 4.5 million people live in the Emirates; 20 million live in Cairo alone, though no one is really sure because the government is a mess. Egypt has the Nile; the UAE has desal. Egyptians work, while Emiratis hire Hindustanis to work for them. Emirati women cover, while Egyptians wear the latest European fashions. Culture, history, economy, society, government. Everything is different, except Islam, but the realization of that aspect differs as well. This was a tourist trip and everything that I saw is well-documented in more reliable sources than this one. I have included some factual information with the pictures. Instead of an exhaustive description, I will comment on the impression that Cairo left on me.
