A mishmash to get back into blogging habit

-Sony Ericsson announced their P990 today, I hope I can buy one eventually. I do have five months before it comes out to save up.

-Why did we have to draw with Cameroon? I know Cameroon wasn't playing that well and its not our fault that Wome couldn't aim. The dissapointment is that Tunisia is the only qualifying team from Africa to have played in the World Cup before and wasn't very good when it did. I sure hope Africa doesn't lose one of its qualifying seats for the next World Cup.

-I hope the coalition of opposition parties and movements does pay off. I sure hope at least 100 seats in the next parliment and that is not counting the non-NDP NDP butt kissers and the Sphinxes.

I couldn't believe my eyes

Today was a pretty good day. Actually it was all good except for one single scene, but boy dod my blood boil. I don't know the area's name, but somewhere on the Autostrad a few minutes before Nady Alsikah, I say a guy in the middle of the street. I don't know how he got there but the guy was standing their in his birthday suit to put it politely. Now the guy was obviousely sick and possibly crazy, yet no one seemed to care, no one had the sense or nerve to cover him up. And how he got there is the question I'd like answered. If you ask me, many have escaped from the mental hospital in 'Abassia but this time I think heads should roll. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

I'm not giving up

These elections were a disgrace to the word democracy. Sure some people got to vote but it mostly was a play. Ivoted this time and I will not stop. I will vote anytime there are elections in the future. The simple solution is; if we want real or semi-real results, we have to produce a big voting turnout. Usually the turnout in Egypt hovers around 12%, so what we really need is like an 80% turnout. The figures say this election had a 30% turnout. Considering all what the NDP has done, I'd put the real turnout at 20-22% which is an improvement. But we still need to learn a lot. We need to learn how not follow the guy with fake promisses just because his party is going to end up winning and the guy was also nice enough to to hand out money to the people.


Of course now we're going to start worrying about Mubarak's promises. He's promissed massive increases in wages. Since logic dictates Ahmad Nazif will remain prime minister its obvious how its going to happen, Nazif has been in favour of decreasing and even getting rid of subsidising. I expect to see everything go up in price and that these wage ingreases won't result in any real increse in income. I do think that the wages will get a month or two headstart though.

All I have to say is I hope people won't get to dicouraged. Elections will always be a play till the day comes when we show up in enough force and actually put our own choice into office. The more we show up, the more real the results. So please don't boycott again and make your voice heard.

Thank you, Thank you

I must give my thanks to the NDP for letting me feal good for 24 hours of my life. To bad all the hope and everything else, has worn of before the ink on my thumb. Now we've heard of all kinds of unfairness and election fixing. Thank you so very much for letting me be happy a lot less time than it takes to get my thumb clean. I hope you, who are responsible, burn in Hell for this.

I voted, hehehe

Exactly, hehehe. I left my house at about 11:45 to go to vote. I got there with in 2 minutes, the school is just around the corner. Now being a person born in 85 and still believing the government I looked for my name on the list. I looked twice in a long list of "Meem"s that were only sometimes in alphabetical order. I then looked at a list with less "Meem"s but in almost perfect alphabetical order, still not there. I was going to give up, having talked with one of the guys sitting at a box and discussing the thing about me supposed to be on the list. All I got was that if I didn't find my name I couldn't vote. I then found another list and I found a name that matched mine. Well not completely, it was only three names and the third name was only half of my third name (ex. alaa is half of alaa eldin) but the guy at the box didn't mind. I voted and actually felt extremely happy afterwards. My thumb is pink and I hope my vote counts.

I must say the ink is quite horrible and takes qite a long time to dry, and washing, as I've found out turns it pink.

All that is left for me to do is wait for the results. My guess it'll be something like 73.5% Mubarak, 17.5% Gomaa, 8.9% and 0.1% for everone else. I do hope Mubarak gets a lot less, but I doubt it'll happen.

A distant Forth?

The talk has been going on for ever on how the outcome of the elections will be. Of course its mostly about who's going to win and will it be fare? Of course if Gomaa or Nur win then it would prove that the elections were fair afterall and egptians do care. I highly doubt that will happen though.

Obviously they eyes have always been on the top three; Mubarak, Gomaa and Nur. Of course that's half because they're the only ones worth running, the rest of the pack is more made up of wackos and idiots. I mean they mostly have stupid and quite naive ideas. One of them did happen to make a mark though. Mamdouh Kenawy that is.

I must say a lot of his ideas are quite naive and like the others sometimes just downright silly. He has one idea that hit the mark and hit it hard. Rebuilding the Egyptian Person; that's it and boy is he right. I have no doubt that if the unthinkable happened and Kenawy won that he would fail to carry out most of what he promised to do mostly because of the fact that his party is so small and resouceless that it would be a impossible job to rule the country.

Rebuilding the Egyptian Person; might sound funny, wierd and maybe even crazy but I still think its needed. Egyptians are always said to be nice welcoming and genorous people. They are modest, simple and basically well mannered. I don't think that discription quite fits anymore. Egyptians, and I mostly talking about people in cities and supposedly educated, are really schizophrenic. You see them in Europe or America or anywhere for that matter, and you see nice people, well mannered, clean and just everything that makes a person good. Look a Cairo, which is a pretty good example of Egyptians seeing 20-25% of the population live in it, and you just lose that image. Clean? What do you call people dumping garbage in the street? And to make it worse its not just on educated or poor people, you could even see a person in a mercedes roll down his window and dump out his garbage. Good manners? Well all I've basically seen lately is people that are always in mood to fight and swear. Egyptians consider them selves as religious. My cousin told me that a friend of his now serving in Luxor found out that a lot of people didn't fast in Ramadan, why? Well the answer he got seemed to denote that they didn't know they were supposed to. Egyptian really need to get educated and learn to read, not just how to but to actually want to, some of my friends told me that a book is just a too big of a chore to tackle, one even said that sitting down to read a magazine like Mickey would be too much even. I can't deny that there are some bookworms but the overall average is that we don't read and that's one big problem we need to tackle. Of course a big contributing factor is we don't do much about public libraries. Our most beloved first lady loves openning new libraries, but the libraries themselves aren't very reader friendly, espesially for the kids and that's the main age we need to target. I also think that we should move to 5 day week days, maybe that would let people loosen up a little more and maybe well mannered. I know I've really wandered off from the main point but my pont remains Kenawy has a great idea that somebody should work on.

The Naked Chef

I watched 'The Naked Chef on 'one TV a while ago. I must say it bound to be one of the best cooking shows I've ever watched. I also liked him like opening jars and bags of stuff you'd actually have in your house. He also makes cooking look like a real fast deal. The only thing that wasn't that nice is that he would go out on his bike and go get stuff. First, he went and looked for the butcher, the butcher was mobile(in a truck), so found him bought a leg of lamb and had the guy drop him off somewhere he recognised because he got lost. Then after he marinated the lamb he went out again to buy vegtables, he acctually didn't go to a shop but actually went and picked the vegies out of the ground. Why I didn't like it is because I'd defiaitely never have the luxury of doing things like that, where am I going to be able to pick fresh carrots in this concrete jungle called Cairo? I also didn't catch the name of the chef. I'll just have to make sure I watch the show next Sunday. Yipiee!

Harry Potter

We just borrowed the latest HP, we are going to buy it. Looks like a fews hours of reading to be done in the coming day or two.

Politics again

I think Egyptians would be better off voting for Noamaan Gomaa. I know some people that think he's not very charismatic but I think he'd get the job done. I feel AlWafd is a strong enough party to rule and Noamaan Gomaa seems to be a good man. I defiaitely liked what he said about kicking the head of the worker uniouns, now that's something good to do. WTF is it with a unioun leader that is a millionaire anyways? Its also nice to see a guy that doesn't really like to be buttered up. While Mubarak usually seems quite happy when some one interupts his speechs and recites a poem or when some people start chanting for him, Gomaa has seemed quite intolerant of these kind of things. I would think some of the supporters would be a little dissapointed but I personally like that kind of man. Critisism s the kind of stuff you need to listen to, a pat on the back for doing something right is what you should look ahead to but buttering up I think is a no no.
While a lot think Ayman Nur is stronger than Gomaa, I don't really see it that way. Nur is obviousely more charismatic but would he make a better leader? Nur, I just read, was an hour and a half late for his conference in Alex. I think being punctual is a good personal trait that any candidate should show. I also don't believe AlGhad has the recourses yet to be a good strong ruling party.

So after the short memoried guys in the NDP forgot about it the papers talk about the guy Mubarak stopped to drink tea with in Behiera, turns out he isn't a regular peasant but an engineer. I kind of wondered because in the pictures with the president he looked too good to be a farmer, so I guess he just owns a farm.

I don't really see why some are calling for a boycott. Yeah, sure the gouvernment always tries to fix the results, but not voting gives them an even better chance to do it. Also, look at what happened with the referendum. The announced results were fictional but nobody did anything about but then there wasn't much to do. This time it does make a difference. If 10 million vote for anyone other than Mubarak and all the oposition runners get all of 7 million and nobodoy takes to the street in protest like Ukrain then we just deserve what happens to us. I want to vote but at the police office they gave me a weird reason on why I'm not listed. So come November 1st I'll go register and I'm not missing anymore elections.
Enough with being negative.

Now this is sounding more like a blog!

Yeah, here I am at home with nothing better to do other than complain that I don't have anything else I want to do. Get that? I didn't. I've even overcome my earlier depression and now am not really thinking about politics. Tomorrow Al-Ahly is playing so I'll have something to do. I probabl should do some kind of studying. I pobably have a choice of electronics, C, assembly code or English grammar. My English isn't really that bad, its just the grammar, or atleast I'm not good enough to be a copy editor, as I found out yesterday. I could also look into touch-typing lessons which I definaitely need.

I want to punch through a wall.

I really do. I also wish we had hollow walls thaen I could actually do it. But here we have brick walls, so I don't see myself as funching through a wall any time soon. Currently I just feel so depressed and I really need some good news. I also need a good movie. We're supposedly getting sattelit today so at least I can now watch something better than brain wash but still I'm depressed.
On Tuesday I had a glimpse at the demonstration. I would've stayed arround to watch for a couple minutes but I wasn't allowed. And what's with the squishing? Someday those same policemen will be kissing our butts I hope they can handle it although I really don't care.
There's actually a lot more I want to say but typing on an empty stomach isn't easy, espesially in the morning.

Mubarak's Banner

I just can't let this go by. I mean Mubarak's picture looks nice one the banner but their's something to it and I just can't put my hand on it. The look on his face is just priceless, I mean it just is funny. I can't put my finger on it but it just reminds me of something. I don't know, I just don't know. I sitting here and half laughing just thinking of his picture. I mean its not the kind of picture that would make you love him or anything. I don't really know. Maybe it makes him look silly but I don't know.

Professional Football(Soccer)

I just had to say it while it was still in my head. Why do we bother with professioal football if we don't have the mentality? All teams except Al-Ahly and Zamalek have the same sponsors, they wear the same design of gear although they have different colours. The only exception to that rule is teams owned by companies. I mean wouldn't it make sense if a local company in Portsaid for example would want to advertise on Al-Masry's shirt? The last couple years most teams had ads for Misr Bank, this year its McDonald's. Heck the national team has only two sponsors. And why the heck don't they have press confrences after the matches that get televised? That's where sponsors want to show up. When are we actually going to see real professional football? I sure hope it'll be this millinium.

A little science. An idea for OLEDs

OLEDs have been around for a while now. I know there's a long ways to go for OLEDs to reach the ultimate drem of being made on plastic eventually meaning having a 100" screen that you could roll up as a big sheet of paper. Now most development is done on RGB OLEDs, trying to give them longer lifes. So OLEDs currently get along as a second display on a clamshell phone and sometimes a camera's display or a flash MP3's but that's about it. Why not look into white OLEDs? They should be pretty good for lighting up LCD displays of all sizes. Since OLEDs can be made in a similar way as diplays it should provide way better backlighting for LCDs and maybe even enhance an LCDs performance in the sunlight. I would also think that it would make the displays thinner and enhance the battery life of the devices.

Let the campaigns(games) begin

So yesterday was the first day of campaigning for Egypts first presidential elections. Now I usually can't take Mubarak's crap so I saw all of 2 minutes of his campaign speech. And hating the crap we always get I couldn't stand reading the details in Al-Ahram. I do believe that I got a good idea of what it was all about. So here are a few points.

1. Mubarak and his guys couldn't care less about Egyptian citizens. They didn't tell us (as far as I know) where the speach was being held. So just picture all the frustrated people who have to cope with the traffic block up because his highness is giving a speech in Al-Azhar garden. I mean tell people ahead of time so they can plan ahead.

2. Mubarak's way of giving speeches just is so boring. 24 years and he can't learn how to give a speech that actuall makes it sound like its his words. We don't want to hear what your speech writer has for us, we want what you have to say, if there is anything.

3. The headlines in Al-Ahram were just silly. So you promise 4 million jobs. That's in your 6-year term? Well if we get a minimum of 600 thousand college graduates a year the number of unemployed people would drop by 400 thousand than the current numer. Seeing that not all unemployed people have college degrees, you could put a rough estimate that 800 thousand people are added to the unemployed list annually. That means you'd have 600 thousand more unemployed people in 2011 than now. Yes unemployment rate might stabalize but its already high.

4. We will build 1000 factories. Now that's a great statement. But what are those factories going to do. What about factories that are currently shut down? Maybe something more precise, like what kind of industries you're going to encourage and so, whould be a little more realistic.

5. We will cultivate 1 million faddans. Anywhere specific? But then we've already heard this so many times before, this is just a bag of gas.

6. We'll build 80 thousand appartments a year. Why build any at all? Mostly because you never have the for sight to see what's going to happen and if you don't build somewhere, people will come there and build in any old way just like alot of places in Cairo and other cities. When it's about housing, you always act after the problem explodes. Why are ther so many chaotic places in Egypt? Can't things be planned ahead? Or at least halted when a bad trend starts. I mean if you see these houses poppong up and the area isn't planned. Stop them, plan the area and then let them build. You end up trying to impove the area later anyways.

7. Can we really believe speach of reform? I mean how are you going to reform things that took more than fifty years to develop most of it under your own rule. The saying is, you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

8. If this were a genuine elections Mubarak would have no chance of winning. What's it with wanting it to look like G W Bush speech? What were those few dozen people behind Mubarak? It just looked silly. And were regular people allowed to attend. The size of attendance didn't seem to suggest that. It looked like an open air run-of-the-mill Mubarak speech not a presedential campaign.

9. Why can't people put up banners for canidates? Heck why can't the parties either. I'm not talking about the NDP of course.

Should I vote? Maybe I'll vote. Ok, I'm going to vote. I CAN'T VOTE

We should've figured the trick. There always is one. When Muubarak announced the intent to change the constitution, the time had passed to register to vote. They did announce however that anyone witha new ID card and born before 1986 would be automatically added to the voting lists and all you had to do was go pick your voting card up. Simple as that? This is Egypt so of course not. And that is exactly what I found out today. Actually its really simple, I ask the guy if this is the place to get my voting card. He asks when I was born, '85 so no problem. He asks was I born in Masr Al-kadimah, no but I live here and that is where my adress is. You have to be born here. "But I was born abroad", I say. "Come back in November to file an istimarah". I'm not the kind of person that gets angry and starts a scene. I should have asked him if I could get my voting card from the Egyptian councelate in LA, or maybe the Egyptian embessy in Washington. Heck to run for parliment you have to either live or work in the district where I want to run, so the same should go for voting. It should be by where you LIVE. I guess I should go and volenteer with a campaign or supervising the elections. Maybe that will help. REALLY?

Frustration

Yeah I'm frustrated. Why shouldn't I? I just hate the present times we're living in this country. We're run by a pack of theives, that's a fact and I'd like anyone just to try to prove the opposite with something a little more than words. Then there's the f**king elections. They've obviousely made up their mind that No'man Gom'a is the best guy to run against Mubarak and obviousely want to keep the lime light on him. I have nothing for Gom'a and I'll probably vote for him, its just they want sideline everyone else. While some canidates probably won't make much effort to win if not kiss Mubarak's ass its obvious they want to keep Ayman Nur out of the lime light as he's the most likely canidate to actually outright attack Mubarak. Why did they have to bother with these elections anyway? Waste of money? I doubt it> I mean when has the gouvernment or the NDP worried about money? They never pay anything out of their own pocket, they acctually usually manage to spend tax payer's money or any other state income while putting a little in their own pocket. Why the F**k did they have to bother changing the constitution? They go and change article 76 LMAO. What about the 2nd article which states we are a socialist country? And yet they have the face to talk about democracy? Its a f**king socialist dictatorship. What I really would like to know is how they can have the stamina to stay in office till now. I mean if you have a good defence plan you'll install somebody you've raised and taught someone you know is like you and couldn't take you to court. You install him and go somewhere to enjoy your retirement with the 20+ billion dollars you've saved up. Heck you'd be lucky to spend a measurable fraction before you die. But do they notice that they're going to die? I mean wether they do or not is none of my business but it seems they think they'll live on for ever. I can't wait for Judgment day that'll definaitely be payback time. What kills me is their stamina. I mean just look and see how fat most of these guys are, the amount of colestarol must be immense and yet they're sticking around.
Ok so now I've vented some frustration but not all and its bound to build up a lot. I'd like to go to a demonstration one time but I guess it won't happen soon. There is one today which I could go to but then I have a doctor appointment so my first demo will have to wait.

I have no Idea why I gave my blog this name

I really don't. Maybe the Egyptian whiner would've been better. And it is my intension to whine about everything that anoys me in thi country.

My first whine is why don't Egyptians have any self respect? I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Some politics

Manal and alaa had a nice description of the government rented thugs pointing their middle fingers at demonstrators. Their f**king the air because of too much viagra. Viagra has been the in bribe during election times. Heck every bribe keeps a couple happy.
I sometimes go for being a conspieracy theorist. So does the government want No'maan Gom'aa to be the strong canidate against Mubarak? Try to keep others like Ayman Nur sidelined? Nur is always more of a pain in the ass for the government, so you don't want him getting to popular. I meen just think of it Gom'aa was the only canidate that got a personal profile published in Alahram. Really is any reason to believe the upcoming elections will be fair?

I really don't have anything worth writing about. Or do I?

I thought M&Ms had something like melts in your mouth but not your hand or something. That's not what happened yesterday, unless the color doesn't count. And to add to that the m&ms showed sign of prevois melting. Now why that happened I'd like to know.

Ahly is leaving tonight for SA to meet AJAX Capetown. I hope they win and make top seat theirs for good. Almost every Egyptian hopes that Ahly and Zamalek meet in the final. While Ahly is in cruise control, Zamalek is in deep trouble. They're on top of their group having 3 points and are on top because all the draws were 1-1, all other teams have had at least one 0-0 draw. Zamalek has two of its final three games away from home, I think both are going to be in Tunisia. If the group continues its trend, qualifiers could be decided by a draw, and that would be a first.

I have a C project to work on so that's what I should do.

An Idea

Protest haven't really been working lately. The big guys are too afraid of us turning into Ukranians. Actually that's exactly what we need. We need their endurance. We need demonstrations that last for days not minutes-- hours if we're lucky. I also know that the situation is a little different, the Ukranians had a slight advantage, numbers and winter. Now of course their sheer numbers helped and that is something we have yet to attain. But winter, now that should help. An obvious way to avoid being beaten up and arrested is to stick together, but that's easier said than done in Cairo's summer, Marina demonstration anyone? Ukrain had the adantage of winter where people didn't mind sticking together because of the cold but how are you going to convince a bunch of smelly people to stick together, the ladies would definately faint. So do I have a solution? No.

Going somewhere, Egypt?

It really doesn't look like it. Were going nowhere with everything. Football, we're playing in an Arab friendly mini tournament in Switzerland, now days Arabs have to play on neutral land.
And we're stuck for the next 6 more years, minimum. 6 more years of the same political crap, same empty words, we never get promisises. If there had been any will of change we'd get governor elections first. Parties would be able to test their abilities on a smaller scale and people would get the chance to try different people and parties and see what their capable of. But since all this pollitical reform crap is just a facade it doesn't matter. Just have elections for the biggest chair and that's it. Of course we're going to give all our votes to our so beloved president and he's going to give us more crap on prosperity in the next 600 years just like the last 24.
While developed countries have been moving towards electronic voting, we've taken even larger strides in modernizing our electoral system. Now introducing Voting Home Delivery(VHD) v2.0; you think of who you want to vote for and we'll do the voting, no reciet provided-- you'll lose it anyways.Election results 100% fair, 100% accurate. We're no expanding, so any regime that wants our all new system can contact the egyptian NDP for prices. 25% discount if ordered in 2005.

I don't know. It's always going to be without a really correct title.

I really think I'm never going to do one idea per post.
K300 is here. Hope J300 follows soon.
The team's name is actually Enyimba, got it wrong due to transliteration of a transliterarion.
My mom tol me a funny quote yesterday;"Doing a good job is like wetting yourself when you're in a dark suit. It gives you a warm feeling but nobody notices it".

I'm freelancing at Cairo magazine and mainly doing web reviews until I find something better I can do. But the good news is that my first review should be published next Thursday, here [url=http://www.cairomagazine.com]Cairo[/url]

Really posting now: Egypt Economy and other stuff

First off yesterday Ahli beat Animba in Nigeria. Animba is the holder of the last two editions of the African champions league and they haven't lost on their home turf in two years. Ahli also kept their ongoing no loss streak.

Ok, economics. Egypt's economy has long been under a lot of stress and unemployment has just continued its everlasting trend of increasing. Another thing that severes the problem is that our univercities have the sole goal of giving students a degree without makiing sure they actually learned anything. Recently I listened to a conversation between my dad and a relative working for EFG Hermes( I think I got the name right) and my dad was trying to argue how bad the economy is our relative was talking about the economy improving but the reason we don't really feal it yet is its a top down process and it takes time. I'd really like to know who's right so I'll be waiting.

I have to go search for an MP3 player so this will be it for now.

First Post

At this moment I don't quite have any specific ideas to talk about but I'm sure they'll come soon enough.

I guess I should introduce myself. So my name is Mustafa. I'm an Egyptian American. Well maybe more like an American Egyptian.I'm a soccer/football fan of Alahli here in Egypt and also am a Liverpool fan. To add to that I'll watch almost any sport currently played on this planet. And on the American side of me I'm a Boston Red Sox fan. I like tech and gadgets and I have the brains to read about economics, politics and science although I do get lost on medical topics.

The only thing I have to say on current ongoigs in the world is I think terorism sucks. And most terorists are to brainwashed to see any real facts.