funnyfun’s blog

On the last night that we were in Egypt, my traveling companion and I experienced one of the nicest nights of the entire 5-day trip. We were originally concerned about the weather - I had heard from a friend who had been in Cairo not long before that the weather was going to be brutal; it is, after all, June, and we were, after all, further into the Middle Eastern deserts than where we normally live.

However, we got quite lucky. The days were no hotter than we expected, and at night there was a pleasant breeze off of the Nile which made the entire night perfectly comfortable.

And now to the point: on that last night, my friend and I decided to go for dinner at TGI Friday's (yes, they have TGI Friday's and we were extremely careful the entire time about what we ate). TGI Friday's in Cairo is a restaurant on a mock large boat that sits on the edge of the river next to all of the various tour boats and cruise boats that take people out for one-hour or two-hour trips.The restaurant also has a terrace which is outside on a deck-type thing, right on the riverbank.

We got there probably around 8 or maybe 8:30 PM. As I mentioned previously, the nights at the time were quite breezy and comfortable and we elected to sit outside on the terrace. When we got there - after a few minutes' walk along the Nile from our hotel - I noticed that peope were also smoking shisha (again, this is just flavored tobacco, nothing worse). I asked how much a narghila was, and was told a decent price, considering, so I asked for one. And we spent the rest of the night - until 11 PM - enjoying the atmosphere and the river.

In truth, the Nile is highly polluted and if you drink from it, you'll get very sick. Nonetheless, potential travelers to Egypt should not be put off by the advisory not to drink the water (though drink the water they definitely should not).

The Egypt trip was one of those truly last-minute adventures. A friend called on Thursday afternoon, claiming to want to travel before starting a new job in a week and a half. Essentially, that meant that from the first talk of the trip to the time that we got on the bus from our city to Cairo, only about three days passed. We were on the bus by 10 AM on Sunday. It's a $15 trip, 14 hours across some of the most boring strip of desert that you can imagine. South-central Sinai isn't so interesting, it turns out and you pass none of the interesting landmarks such as St. Catherine's Monastery.

Nonetheless, apart from the dull trips back and forth, Egypt itself is an experience that I recommend to anyone with a healthy interest in history. Whether it's a visit to the Pyramids or the Egyptian Museum (or, ideally, both) or a slow evening smoking shisha (which is just flavored tobacco, nothing more) out on the Nile, Egypt is an incredibly fun place to visit.

On top of that, Cairo is one of the most modern, urban, and international cities that I have ever had the pleasure of visiting. Almost every American brand I remember from childhood is there - McDonalds, KFC, Gold's Gym, T.G.I Friday's, Chili's...if you can name it, it's probably there. This makes Cairo a very interesting cross between what one might call "traditional" and "modern." These, of course, are imperfect terms, but I use them for lack of more appropriate ones.

A month or so ago, I decided that I did not get enough regular exercise, so I started going out for walks regularly. At first, the distances were relatively short, but after a week or so, I decided to stretch them out so that each walk lasts about 2.5 hours and travels somewhere between 3 and 4 miles (I'm estimating on this one; I haven't actually measured the distance).

It's odd how it works - and it comes about really automatically. After a few weeks of doing this regularly ("regularly" meaning somewhere between three and five times a week) your legs get used to it in a very odd way: if you skip enough days in a row between walks, your legs almost beg you to go back out and walk. I'm still not entirely sure how it works; I've heard that the body can come to crave regular exercise, that exercise improves one's psychological state, and there are some theories that exercising may release endorphins, the same as doing something like eating chocolate. (And eating chocolate, of course, kind of cancels out the benefits of the exercise).

I've always been slightly ADHD (I suspect; it has never been diagnosed officially); I've always had a difficult time paying attention to something for more than a specific amount of time and I've always had trouble sitting still for longer than a certain period of time. The more that I walk, the more that this becomes a problem. And as a graduate student, the time that I spend in front of the computer is obviously quite a lot. But after an hour or two of sitting in front of the computer, I  simply cannot take it anymore and I have to put on athletic shoes (or Crocs or sandals) and go out and walk a few miles. It's odd how it happens - I used to hike plenty and this never happened to me then.

Believe it or not, though, I find that I actually rather enjoy it. 

Before anyone goes crazy on me, let me say this: I'm all for womens' lib. I am a woman, after all, how could I not be?

But I will admit: I am a woman who enjoys things like cooking and decorating. So sue me. When IKEA sent me (without my having asked for it) a 2009 catalog, I spent several hours looking at all the room set-ups and deciding what I liked and what I did not like. I'm all about bright colors and natural light; I never understood peoples' insistence on lighting rooms with dozens of fluorescent lights when you can simply open the windows - or even have windows. And then there are rooms which are decorated with all manner of furniture and rugs in very dark colors; burgundy and brown, and so on and so forth. I don't really understand that, either. Okay, it might pass for what one calls "classic" but it doesn't really make good use of whatever light the room gets - dark colors like this don't reflect light. Now, burgundy can still be a great color, if used in combination with walls that are bright and sun-splashed during the daylight hours. That, to me, is another kind of classic, mature look - albeit with an entirely different intent.

But these, of course, are just my opinions.  

As for cooking, I think that this ought to be a skill required for both men and women. I don't think that it is anti-feminist at all to be able to cook. To declaim these elements of home life simply for the purpose of declaiming anything that might be associated with what is often called "traditional roles" is simply ridiculous. I used to experiment with all kinds of things in high school and college; I used to try and make shawarma and falafel on my own (the former came out better than the latter) and I used to try to mimic my mother's Latin American recipes that she grew up with. It's kind of fun to be able to say "see? I made this." Perhaps it's just another form of "creating." Perhaps both of these are.

Some would argue that it isn't smart for a graduate student to waste an entire day watching Harry Potter movies. Well, this is exactly what I did yesterday. Think that you can't watch three Harry Potter movies in one day? Oh yes, my dears, you most certainly can. Everyone needs a day off (or ten), right? And what could be more comfortable than relaxing under covers and just watching movies all day?

I went through Harry Potter 4 (Goblet of Fire), Harry Potter 2 (Chamber of Secrets) and Harry Potter 1 (Sorcerer's Stone) - in that order. For those doing the math, that is a minimum of about six hours of movies, if not more (some of the Harry Potter films are quite long). But what could be better than imagining oneself able to do magic? It's kind of like reading, except instead of taking in words and letting your imagination run, you're taking in images and letting your imagination run. For those who enjoy an occasional day of solitude and quiet (which can be a surprisingly restful thing), such a day might be what they might call a "mental health day." Not that everyone's job allows these - but there are always weekends.

And maybe some of it is a way to distract those of us quieter types from the fact that we are quieter types. It isn't really socially acceptable to have such a personality (at least, not in the United States) and in a way, it can be like living in some kind of underground subculture.  And some of us spend much of our young years chasing after things that can be done quietly and alone. This doesn't mean that social interaction becomes taboo or looked down on; not at all. It is simply a way for those of us to be able to "recharge" as some call it.

I never know the names of the flowering plants that I see on the streets, on trees, and on peoples' balconies. I live in a country that seems nearly obsessed with using natural things as decorations (something which I admit that I love) and as such, I see a lot of different kinds of flowers all over the place...and I never know any of their names. I would keep plants in my own apartment, if there was any space in which they would get enough sunlight. The problem is that I know what I like, but I don't know the names of any of the different kinds of flowers - and especially not in a language which is not my own native language.

This afternoon, I was sitting with a friend on her rooftop as the sun was beginning to set. I turned around and saw an opening in a roof...kind of like a window but less formal and with no glass. Splayed across this "window" were some of the most beautiful flowers I had yet seen - which I had seen before and to this day still am not sure of the name. Someone once called something similar bouganvillea - pinkish-purple flowers that grow almost vine-like over walls and across windows.

I got out my camera and took a few shots of these across the window, half looking out on the city beyond. I have yet to attempt to edit them in Photoshop but when I saw the image, I knew that it just screamed to be photographed. It has this sort of old-world style charm and quiet; an indescribable quality which denotes peace and happiness (hippie-like, in a way, if you will).  This is one of my favorite things about photography - the ability to take something that is very every-day and very normal and turn it into something else.

He's the least-known musician that you deserve to know. His name is Jonathan Coulton (and his website is Jonathan Coulton dot com) and he is a geek rocker.

Yes, a geek rocker. What does that mean, you ask? It means that he is a geek who makes music. And he has quite a following though he doesn't get a lot of publicity. But his following is what one might consider a subculture. They are mostly people who are geeks or nerds, often tech people or science fiction fans (or both) because he writes for them.

I'll give you an example of a geek rock song: "I'm Your Moon," in which one of recently-deplanet-ed Pluto's moons sings to the planet. Or how about "The Future Soon" in which he sings "'cause it's gonna be the future soon/and I won't always be this way/when the things that make me weak and strange/get engineered away." Or "Code Monkey" about the computer programmer who gets tired of being jerked around by his boss and just wants to live his own happy life. Or "Re: Your Brains" about the zombie who wants to make a zombie of his coworkers and attempts to convince them to be bitten.

It's underground, the culture of the most intelligent people that you never paid attention to. It's music that celebrates that segment of the population; one that is often ignored.

Jonathan Coulton often plays live with comedy music duo Paul & Storm (paul and storm dot com). I went to a show a few months ago, and had the time of my life. I was there until 1 AM helping them to clean up after the show and separate the stuffed animals from the money that had been attached to them and thrown from the stage. 

Some of the most fun that I ever had in my life was on my first visit to a friend in New York City. Now, I had been to New York City before, because as a child, I had relatives in Long Island. But only this time did I actually get out and explore some of the more interesting sides of New York City.

Greenwich Village was my absolute favorite. Nowhere else in the world have I seen people feel as free to express themselves as they are. I grew up in Washington, DC, and not until this moment did I realize just how conservative the city of my birth actually is. Never had I seen more color, more fun, and more unique fashion than I did in the Village.

It was a hot summer day in June and we spent the afternoon simply walking through the Village's streets and admiring the variety of people and of scenery. We passed all kinds of small shops selling just about anything you can imagine: from ethnic designs to mod fashion to instruments from all over the world and more. We stopped in one of the instrument shops and I admired several instruments - mostly Middle Eastern - that I had always wanted to learn to play.

We had lunch at a wacky restaurant called Jekyll and Hyde's in which the wait staff play all kinds of tricks and riddles on customers. After that, we explored the neighborhood - in which the Gay Rights movement had originated.

It was...well...liberating to see so many people being themselves out in the bright daylight - certainly something not visible in Washington, DC where the culture is one of elitist snobbery - the wrong kind. 

It can be said that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who are interested in where they come from and own it culturally, and those who do not care at all.

On a spring day more than a year ago, I decided that if I didn't attempt to do the genealogical work on my father's family, then no one else would do it for me. I have an aunt on my mother's side who has done all of that work, so that made my job much easier.

All I knew was that my father's father had emigrated from Hungary to the United States and my father had an idea of what his grandfather's name might have been in Hungary. I started with the Ellis Island immigration records, found his, and worked from there. I came up with 7 names in one night, and thought that the rest was going to be easy - but the further back you attempt to go, especially in another country, the more difficult the job gets.

But at any rate, the point is to learn something about yourself because you can't (or, at least, shouldn't) separate yourself from where your family came from. I wanted to discover this Eastern European Jewish side of me, and was hoping that this work would open up names and places and get me better acquainted with the "old country" as it were. I was also hoping that it would reveal names of living relatives all over the world, giving me more places and people to connect with. So far, I have two names of cities in Hungary and am hoping eventually to get there, discover the Jewish communities, ask around, and connect with people. In other words, to take my place in a family with more than one branch.

The last piece of advice that my ninth-grade biology teacher gave us was "don't be a sun worshipper!" Apparently, his wife was what he referred to as a "sun worshipper" (a term that I had never heard of prior to that day) and he, as a biologist, could not sanction a practice that could eventually be harmful to one's health.

I have a confession to make: I am a sun worshipper, against my biology teacher's advice. Last week, a friend and I traveled to Eilat, on Israel's southern borders with Egypt, Jordan, and the Red Sea. It was the final fun-trip that we wanted to take prior to the start of our last semester (theoretically, anyway) as graduate students, even if it only lasted about 24 hours. Most of Israel was covered in clouds and rain at the time; when we left Tel Aviv, it was gray, cold, windy, and wet. Six hours or so later, when we arrived in Eilat, we found nothing but warm sunshine. However, it was already mid-afternoon, so there wasn't much sunshine left in the day by that point.

The next morning when we woke up, we found an even more beautiful day. The hours between 10 AM and 2 PM or so were spent sitting outside enjoying the weather and enjoying the incredible aquamarine color of the Red Sea, even in February. As you may have guessed by now, these are the high hours of the day, in which the sun reaches its zenith. As a sun-worshipper, I am at a concrete disadvantage: I never remember to wear sunscreen! I never feel like I'm getting sunburned as it is happening. However, later that afternoon at one of the rest stops on the long bus trip north, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and my chest and arms were bright red. I couldn't believe it - it hadn't felt that bad until that very moment.

Nonetheless, the thrill of sitting out in the sun in a tank top in February was amazing. I wished that I could call my friends in Virginia to brag about it. I might have, except for the 7-hour time difference.