21st century schizoid man

You know, i think i've finally got the answer i was looking for. I was really struggling between love and spirituality but i think right now in this present moment and time my feeling is towards spirituality. I don't know man, i just feel....too blue for a relationship man - my head is too messed for that BS. Fuck wasting my time on it, i seriously don't have the mental patience to deal with that. I need to figure out how to build that strength i've always seeked out for now. Thats important - dealing with my confidence issues and inner strength as a person. I think thats why i kind of developed some of my internal masochistic tendencies because in all honesty, im a believer in experiencing some pain to get stronger and i feel that to be tempted by things in this world that should be more controlled and to learn to control those things more and more will do me wonders. I can't ignore those feelings because i don't believe thats strength....im more of a look it in the eyes and grab it by the balls type.

Its kind of strange....these freaky moments always come to me when im at my most frantic of mind states. Maybe im not thinking straight right now, who the fuck knows, but right now thats what i feel. I have this feeling that i'll change my path for spirituality as soon as i get some sleep and mull over these things. but i really don't want to. Maybe by choosing spirituality i can sort of feel a stronger sort of temptation that i can resist. I want to stand up and say no when i want and not be a slave to superficiality. I really don't know at this moment, its sort of scattered in a thousand places like a cherry blossom with streaks of violent violet indecision.

Just don't make fun of me, i don't know what to do. Im indecisive about who i am still. My franticity is sort of haywire and loose....loose enough to start making me think im losing a few screws LOL....only when im tired :P. 

Egypt Strut part 3

The next day was, in my opinion the best day of the trip. Everything about the day just flowed together nicely. We had this checklist of things to do on that day, but we ended up doing more than planned for which was brilliant. That morning i remember getting up and aasim telling me about the crazy cleaner woman that was to torment us during our stay in cairo! she was so useless - only fixing the bed and asking for 100 egyptian pounds! bloody cow. After that she had the nerve to ask for 30 egyptian pounds for toiletries which she didn't even need since we came back and she did it without us paying for it.

I remember us getting some foool (not a typo mind you) and egg sandiwiches in the morning. It was really cheap you know, around 6 egyptian pounds for a sandwich which was totally worth eating. After a light breakfast, we went and got into a taxi and made our way towards the cairo tower. The taxi drive was awesome - i remember seeing the Nile and and the sun and thinking "wow man, this is it! im in Egypt - after a 7 year hiatus of going abroad, i've now ended up going to egypt and i went on my own!" it was a big thing for me to do it alone. We got out of the taxi and i think we prayed before anything. We stayed in the mosque for a little while before we went out and started to walk around. Aasim took me to this bridge where the breeze is amazing at night time; we took some pics and i told Aasim about how i couldn't believe i was actually in egypt. We took some pictures with the Nile behind us on the bridge and we walked on pass the bridge onto the other side. The city has this really lively and busy atmosphere where it's never sleeping. The buildings have that yellow/brown tinge to them and the sun sort of glows and glares at the city below without the veil of clouds. It is truly desert country. We were to come back to the Nile again that night, but before that we had a large day ahead of us. We went up the cairo tower. At the entrance we're all these guards with machine guns and i got a little worried looking at it LOL. but it was cool after a while, we took the steps up and entered the lift which took us up god knows how many floors. As soon as the lift doors pinged open there was this cool AC breeze that came in. However there was this pseudo looking westernised restaurant in front of us and i felt kind of bummed out looking at something so out of place with the rest of the city i'd seen. We had to take the flight of steps up to the top until we got this beautiful view of the city. My god, what a view too! you could see practically all of Cairo! i could even see the pyramids in the misty distance (caused by the smog!). Although there was alot of pollution, it was kind of cool to see the pyramids before we went to them - it gave me this feeling of grandeur associated with the pyramids and was heightened by the fact we could see them even though they were so far out of the city - and the city is bigger than London so thats saying something. I remember us spending like an hour up there before we headed off towards the muesuem. Now that Musuem was kind of funny because we were knackered walking around and we were talking about feeling high LOL. It was nice to see tutankhamun's golden mask - it has this really eerie look to it. Sort of similar to the Mona Lisa where you feel it's staring right at you from all angles. However, there seemed to be something really omnious about its look, something penetrating....Regardless, we got to see how many tombs were built for the pharoah and see the accesories he and his wife had - they had some really nice furniture - pure gold! Its amazing looking at the intricate detail involved at the sarcophogus - the artwork on it is truly spectacular especially considering this was done thousands of years ago with dyes that they invented at the time - pretty remarkable for their achievments. After the museum we were pretty hungry so we went out to Al Tahrir square where we got this really nice munch with these freshly squeezed juices (awesome juices - some of the best are out there - no joke). Now you see, at this point we were unsure what to do, so we just started walking around. For me, this was my favourite part of the trip because we just to get this real vibe of what the city was like and not in the touristy way. We just walked on and bought this 2gb memory stick that'd be needed for Aasim's camera. After that we walked on until we reached the old kings palace. Word has it that he was killed off in a coup de tat by the people and that sovereignity was killed off too and now it's a parliament involved. It was beautiful though, this really European design so juxtaposed with the city around it - children playing football in front of the palace - it was symbolic of the demise of regality and the uprise of the people - however these days the government is pretty corrupt :(, but the sight of children playing football in front of something so grand was kind of nice, sort of removed the strictness that you'd normally get in London. It was sunset too, so we took some pictures of the sun past the buildings - ah i remember it well - it was a really buff sunset too, setting on the city that never sleeps :).

We went back to the bridge that we started off after that and waited by the corniche (nile bank) for aasim's cousin to come along for a boat ride along the nile. This place was really funny - we were watching these poncy guys trying to serenade these arab women with their acoustic guitars - pretty hilarious watching it because they looked so gay. Once we met up with Aasim's cousin we got onto the boats and just took in the breeze coming up the Nile. Aasim's cousin is such a joker - giving me this gyal's number at his work place and getting me to try and chirps her up! he asked me what i thought of egyptian women but i couldn't speak any arabic. So i gave him the perfect sign =D where he started cracking up LOOOL!.

it was a brill first night out there.

The second day - my god, that was the most tiring day. We got up and trekked it to Giza on a microbus and walked it up to the pyramids. While we were there we got pestered by this lout who got me to jump on a horse! i paid the guy like 5 egyptian pounds and we were on our way. Now im going to try and keep this short because we actually trekked our way up in the desert to this spot where you could see all 3 pyramids. My god, that was the knackering thing ever. LOL we tried to get these horse shoes on the way, but the bloody bag we had kept breaking :( so we ended up with no horse shoes and water that was so warm it was disgusting. The only thing we could do with it was splash it on ourselves to cool ourselves down. It got so bad i was starting to see purple! and that was a cool day in cairo :S. we got so knackered we didn't even go right up to the sphyinx we just sort of stood on the outskirts and blagged the pics LMAO.

at the end of that, we just took this taxi and went to the zoo - still completely knackered and were walking around aimlessly feeding gorillas and pelicans. we took some funny pics and videos (one of me looking like im pissing into a body of water and watching this gorilla go schizo coz i was teasing it with food - which i do feel bad about but was funny :P). Man we walked for like 2 hours looking for these lions to which nobody could give reliable directions! once we got to see the damn lions they were in their cages with a couple looking agitated at the people looking back at them. Once we managed to find the exit (which once again no-one could provide a decent answer) we met up with Aasim's uncle and jammed at cairo university for a little while. Man what a fecking campus! lushious palm trees, lots of buildings and er...lots of sights for a guy LMAO. Its nothing like in the UK, you get this really nice and chilled out looking place on the outskirts of cairo. Now after the university what did we do.....we got onto a train and i think we went back but i can't remember exactly :S. I think we might have gone to a mosque at this point since it was on the way and just chilled til night time than went and got a munch and went back to yard to watch some MELODY HITS AND THE SOFTCORE PORN CREW.

3rd day and the rest of the time in cairo was alot of mosques. Now for this i think the pictures tell a better story than me describing it + i've written quite a bit so i might save writing about it another time.

Egypt Strut part 2

It was nice speaking urdu you know, surprisingly refreshing. funnily enough, we met those turkish guys again and i got to learn a new game! backgammon is awesome man, the name always made it feel like some hardcore gamblers game but it's this mixture of logic and luck - its different to chess where it's pure logic. The idea of the game is to get your pieces to your side and then remove them from the board. Its sort of two games in one because the first half involves a frantic rush to get your pieces onto your side and the second half involves the quick removal of your pieces. The luck involved comes from the roll of the dices. If you roll a hard number (e.g. a hard 2 - so two 1s for each dice) you get to move four moves, but if you roll two different numbers than you only move twice. Its fun trying to trap your opponent in your half so they have a large task to move away from your side and onto their side. I loved it so much i went and bought a real wood board as memorabilia and perhaps for a game. It doubles up as a chess board too which is quite nice.

So what do i think of egypt? Man im already missing it - ramadan there is wicked - everything is accomodated for you as a muslim and not visa versa in London. As for the country - its desert country but theres so much to do and see that it's amazing. Im gonna go again definitely, i really want to see Sinai and the red sea that i've heard so much about. I got to coast the northern coast so it'd be nice to do a southern coast tour. Luxor and Aswan would be awesome too, so next year maybe it'll be in the works.

I remember when arriving, the humidity of the air hit me like a wet fish! at around two in the morning i was knackered but surprised at how humid it was. Aasim was waving to me as soon as i got past customs and he, his cousin and the taxi driver escorted me back to the taxi. Man i still remember what Aasim told me about Cairo - "remember this journey - cairo will never be this empty again" and sure as hell he was right. That drive was brilliant - the air breezing through the windows as within the span of 20 minutes i got to see a number of mosques, the nile and a small slice of the feel for the city. I was most surprised by the sheer number of mosques on the same roads; its definitely alot more than the number of churches on the same road. Like you'd see around 5 mosques within a 5 minute walking distance - and half of those mosques were well designed and large. Driving through, you get this feel of islam throughout the city, but oddly enough it doesn't feel as intense as saudi arabia, it just feels like religion is part of the city and country; ingrained in it's rich heritage which is a mixture of the ancient, old islamic and modern. I had the feeling that this was going to be good.

When we arrived back at the apartment and going up the clunky elevator to get there i was just excited enough to not really be talking - i was just taking and soaking in the atmosphere. Upon walking in the apartment i felt it was pretty nice and cosy - we had a tv, air conditioning and 2 bedrooms with a relatively clean bathroom. I remember sitting down in the living room listening to amir (egyptian dialect of arabic) being bandied around. Although i did feel a little lost in translation, it was interesting enough to hear the rather rough yet boisterous sound of arabic being spoken again. After a while i was told to sign a contract for the apartment which cost us 1600 egyptian pounds (160 quid - 80 split between two people). Aasim was not amused LOL with the pricing and the insistence to pay as soon as came into the apartment. Soon after, the crazy landlord looking woman and the friendly taxi driver with aasim's cousin left me and aasim just looked at each other taking in the apartment and assessing it. Since it was pretty late, i remember just crashing out since it'd been a long journey. (Aitalia = no go)

Egypt Strut Part 1

Im in Egypt at the moment and have been for what - the last 2 weeks now. My time here has been eventful - from going to all over cairo to alexandria, back to cairo and now im just jamming right now in an internet cafe listening to red house by hendrix with thoughts of shisha and meeting new people bubbling over in my mind. Last night was awesome - we didn't go too far or near the corniche (the nile bank - been there on my first night in cairo =D) we just jammed at this shisha place with a couple of Hamza's turkish friends and Hakim. It got more interesting though when another turkish man came along and sat down with us. What was most surprising was his good grasp of urdu! It was refreshing to talk in urdu after so long; it made me realise my desire to visit pakistan again. You see, my time here has made me some echoes of my time in pakistan. Its strange, because back in England i never really want to speak urdu at all, but being surrounded by egyptians who speak a variant of arabic made me really want to speak urdu out. Its being lost in translation and feeling like the only exotic form of communication you can muster is something no-one would understand.