I made it to Egypt this month. My employer, Microwize Technology, now has a team working in Cairo, and our CEO promised the rest of the management team and me late last year that if we hit a particular milestone in sales this year, he'd take us to Egypt (well, those of us who don't already live there). We did, and he did!
It was great to meet in person many of my Egyptian colleagues, and to check out the gorgeous office space we have in a modern area in Cairo. We got to see some incredible beaches, from El Alamein and Alexandria on the Mediterranean to Sharm El Sheikh on the Red Sea. We admired the exhibits and the mummies at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. We also cruised down the Nile River and visited several ancient temples and the Valley of the Kings along the way, with time for a hot air balloon ride in Luxor (what a view!) and a sailboat ride from Aswan to lunch at BenBen Hotel. And of course we went to the Giza pyramid complex, where I got to ride a camel.
I enjoyed all of it, the amazing views and the terrific food and the fantastic weather (16 sunny days with no rain? yes, please... and yes, I did return to the US with a tan), the camaraderie, the chance to run my fingers across hieroglyphs carved over 3,000 years ago and to dip those same fingers in the waters of the Nile. I've always been interested in ancient history, and to set foot in places that were so pivotal to Egyptian, Greek, and Roman history, to Amenhotep III and Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, left me feeling awestruck.
Modern Egypt is quite the marvel itself. There is a lot of construction going on, with infrastructure and improved transit a goal of the government. (Traffic in Cairo and Alexandria is, it's, well...) The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP27, is taking place in Sharm El Sheikh next month. Don't worry, guys, I turned off all the lights and water faucets before I left. Of course, none of this really masks the fact that the country's human rights record and freedom of expression leave a lot to be desired, or the fact that its president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is a retired military officer autocrat intolerant of dissent.
Speaking of retired military officer autocrats intolerant of dissent, Brazil's version, Jair Bolsonaro, will hopefully have his grip finally peeled away from the country's neck in tomorrow's election. His mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, his disinterest in the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous population, and his ignorant yet inflammatory rhetoric have led him to be nicknamed the "Trump of the Tropics." I don't know that his opponent, Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva (no relation), can right the ship, but I have much more faith in him as a leader and as a human being. Yes, he was found guilty of corruption and money laundering, but the convictions were later annulled and the Supreme Court ruled that the judge who oversaw his corruption trial was biased. Even with that recent history, he's the preferable candidate to someone who admires Brazil's former military dictatorship. #ForaBolsonaro!
The reports of Twitter's becoming a free-for-all hellscape have been greatly exaggerated. I am wary, to be sure; Elon Musk is capricious and prickly. But all the pearl-clutching and running for the exits is just silly, and even if he did want to burn it to the ground, that doesn't mean that he'd be able to do so. I'm not deleting my account(s) anytime soon. Let's just wait it out and see what happens, shall we?
So bummed to hear about Jerry Lee Lewis' passing yesterday. We shared a birthdate, and I actually got to see him do a show at B.B. King Blues Club & Grill on our mutual birthday in 2017. The Killer was another prickly man, and hardly a hero, but few could rock a piano, or embody rock 'n roll, like Jerry Lee.
Time flies when you're doing whatever it is I do. Actually, what I'm doing (professionally) these days is different from what I was doing six months ago. Back then, I was managing a technical support team; nowadays, I'm immersed in data, from both clients (repairing and exporting/importing medical billing software and electronic medical records software databases) and from us (I update Microwize Technology's 'blog and maintain its Web site and user forum), and I do a bit of marketing work on the side as well.
While I need to get crackin' on creating some more of my own music, I was inspired to record a cover of Willie Nile's "One Guitar" this past weekend. I'd already learned the song three months ago when I marched with the Occupy Guitarmy on May Day, and then last week I heard about the One Guitar Collaborative Charity Initiative, which hopes to both raise money for the TJ Martell Foundation and break the Guinness Book World Record for the most recorded song in history. Sounded good to me, so I plugged in one guitar (the Danelectro) and came up with my own quick version; I even convinced Laura to help out with backing vocals!
On Monday morning, as I was approaching the office, I encountered a bird sleeping in front of the garage entrance! I bent down and ruffled the feathers on the top of its head, and it opened an eye to look at me, then buried its head under a wing and went back to sleep. Since it obviously wasn't interested in moving on its own, I elected to pick it up, carry it in my palm a few feet, and put it down in some bushes, where it wouldn't run the risk of being run over. The bird didn't seem injured or sick, just sleepy. Heh... When I checked back a few hours later, it was gone, so hopefully that means it eventually woke up and realized it had an angry spouse waiting for it at home.
Within the past few weeks, I've joined the Internet Defense League ("Protecting the Free Internet Since 2012"), RebelMouse ("your social front page"), and Vizify ("one definitive, multidimensional, graphical biography"). I didn't have nearly enough of a social presence on the Web before. I mean, I was making do with only Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, MySpace (yeah, still got that), MyOuterSpace (something else entirely), YouTube, Orkut, and the music-related sites like ReverbNation and Google Play and SoundCloud and Bandcamp and... Anyway, the latter two new sites, RebelMouse and Vizify, basically take content you've already posted to social networks and make them more visually appealing; Vizify is more about turning that content into a visual bio, and it has a lot of potential, I think, but I've already run into a bug with the locations (I do not live in Nutley anymore). The first one, the IDL, is so my Web site (well, one of them, anyway) can automatically join in broadcasting a message when the open Web is threatened again, by SOPA or PIPA or CISPA or DOMA or whatever ridiculous act Congress cooks up next. If they're really interested in protecting copyright holders and content creators, let them do so with legislation that's as narrowly focused as possible and can't be used to shut down Web sites willy-nilly. I'll give you my site when you pry it from my cold, dead hands! If you come for mine, you better bring yours. Web sites don't kill people, people with guns kill people. Et cetera, et cetera...
"Free Pussy Riot!" sounds like an advertisement for a really bangin' party (pun unreservedly intended), but it's actually a movement to try to obtain some justice for three young women arrested in Russia and charged with hooliganism for protesting in a Moscow cathedral against Russian president Vladimir Putin and the relationship he seems to have with the Russian Orthodox Church's leadership. Pussy Riot is a punk band / feminist performance art group that has given voices to the anti-Putin movement, and the arrest of three of their members in March resulted from a one-minute "punk prayer" ("Virgin Mary, Send Putin Away") at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and could result in seven-year sentences. It seems that Vlad the Repealer is trying to unravel Russia's already fragile democracy and make an example of these girls.
Laura, a punk girl much closer to my heart, is getting ready to run another 5K, this time in Asbury Park in two and a half weeks. There's a 10K in September she's got her eye on, too, and she's been training; in fact, the poor girl got soaked this morning by a sudden, powerful downpour (which I mostly avoided on my way to work twenty minutes later). We've recently celebrated a milestone by completing our 26th weekly installment of Slime, the Web comic (half a year's worth, and none of them have been published late). Slime merchandise is a very real possibility; anything you'd like to see/purchase? No, there probably won't be any Slime knitwear. I'm just not very good at knitting yet.
In addition to the race, our plans for this month including seeing the glorious gals of Goli again at Caffe Vivaldi (Friday the 17th, if you're interested), going to the Renaissance Faire in Sterling Forest, weather permitting, and visiting the Grange Fair in Centre Hall, PA. Perhaps we can sneak in another visit to the Met, as well. What are you up to this month, voiceless anonymous readers?
