My new favorite way of getting dinner

It's been a long while since the last time I actually cooked - pretty much every day this semester, I've been eating dinner out. You see, some of the motivation of cooking for yourself disappears when you can eat out for the same price or less (not necessarily as good food, but I'm a student - I'm happy as long as I'm fueled).

My new way of getting food is pretty simple, really - and it means that I can get dinner from as low as four pounds Egyptian (omtrent en femmer). I merely go to the closest Koshari(http://www.touregypt.net/recipes/recipeweek03152004.htm) place and ask for a medium koshary to go, without the "macarona". Then I take the little plastic bucket of koshary to the closest streetfood spot and ask them to put some liver (kibda) on top. The liver and the koshary can cost as little as two pounds each (possibly less, I don't know). This gives me a meal that's healthy enough, pretty tasty and very cheap.

I usually sit down at a nearby cafè to eat the meal as well, which means I usually feel I have to order a glass of tea from them as well - wastefully bringing the total close to six pounds, like a true decadent westerner :p

It's going to be hard to start cooking again when I return to Norway - but I don't think Koshari is very difficult to make, and liver can't be too expensive even there.

Right, a quick and lazy effort to make the blog look slightly more presentable. It shouldn't directly stab out your eyes as it did before - though it's still very hacked together :p

Also, some crazy saudies:

Okay, it's still the day after the last post - even though I'm a tad late - so here goes:


New years is approaching, and for the first time in my life I'm thinking of making some new years promises. Here they are in order of difficulty:

3: Sugar and caffeine only one day per week (honey and decaf the others)

2: Some sort of exercise at least two times per week - three times if I don't have a good excuse

1: I shall meet up 10 minutes early for every appointment I make and spend the time waiting going through arabic or german flash cards

I am publishing these in order to amass the necessary social pressure for actually managing to go through with them. Anyway, those are the easy ones - there's also the issue of having my business succeede (www.fortelle.no - tell all your rich friends) and stuff of that kind - but I don't feel they fit the spirit of new years promising.

To the end of having my business succeed, and for making flashcards more enjoyable - I've been learning arabic calligraphy. The kind I'm learning is called diwani and is probably one of the more popular ones for logos and headlines and such. Some examples:

My name, written by my teacher, just to show how it's done:



A couple of words I wrote:




And then my favorite letter in this kind of calligraphy, the Kaf. Sorry about the bad image quality:


I've also, for no good reason really, been learning 3D modelling, using the free open source program blender (that's a link). This is the best I've done so far:



Bringing me to promise four: do some none-cutesy art. Less puppies and children, more guns and gore. At some point I'll have to draw a picture of the pope - wielding two flying v guitars and being flanked by barely dressed women armed with.. either battle axes or oversized sci-fi guns. Humanity needs this!

Speaking of humanities needs: new years promises are unfortunately jokingly refered to as fragile - and because of this, the true new years promise is becoming a thing of the past - one of those great things that people used to do in the old days. Like being polite, wanting to be a scientist when you grow up or wearing a hat.

In the last words of this post, I'll lift my cup of tea while typing (disregarding the risk!) - me keeping those promises won't merely be for my own well being, it will be striking a blow for all great things lost - and here's to that.

I've been missing home a lot more this semester than I did the last one - I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's the fact that this semester I left a beautiful summer in Norway for a boilingly horrible Cairo - while last semester I left sludge and winter for I-don't-even-need-to-wear-a-jacket-weather. Maybe it's the fact that I had so much to do last semester that I barely had time for anything else. Or part of the reason is that Cairo isn't as exotic and exiting as before.

The possibility that it could also be because I've been worse at keeping contact with people back home has also comme to mind. Which is partly why I'm writing this now - expect more soon, that is, check back tomorrow evening. I'll have a bigger update then, promise!

While the workload last semester kept me from travelling then, it's the finances that've kept me from doing so this semester - it's a shame, and I'll really have to find some way of making up for it in the future. I think I've found the perfect time to travel to muslim majority countries now, but I ain't tellin'



PS: I don't know if I mentioned it, but comments can be made in Norwegian - only I have to write in English