All posts tagged Jan25

BE PREPARED

Be Prepared. If ever a motto was needed in this age of couch potatoedness (I just made this one up!), it has to be the Scout motto. Humanity has advanced so fast over the past five or six decades and has become very dependant on the latest of technologies and gadgets to make our lives even easier than it already is. There’s almost an App for everything! The more advanced (read higher standard of living) the society we live in is, the more complacent we become. We take things for granted, things that our great grandparents couldn’t even dream of, let alone experience.

Skills we learned and developed over thousands of years—turning them into instincts to live by, have now become skills that, we hope, our kids might learn in summer camps, only for some of them to forget after the first stint in front of the television. Read more…

WEDNESDAY NOSTALGIA: LANTERN SLIDES WEEK XVI

By Islam El Shazly

Less than 48 hours from now (Wednesday, January 23, 2013) Egypt will mark two years since the Jan25 2011 revolution, and looking at the state of affairs in Egypt it seems that it hasn’t really proceeded any further after the euphoria of the 18 days that toppled Mubarak and his horrid NDP and State Security forces (Amn Dawla).

Then again it all depends on one’s point of view and whether one is a glass-half-full-person or a glass-half-empty-person. Read more…

TOP 8 EGYPT TRAVEL GUIDES – PRINT

By Islam El Shazly

There is a multitude of guides, both online and in print dealing with Egypt. Some better than others, but only a few stand out in terms of the level of research and amount of useful information they involve. And with smartphones and tablets now being the latest human accessories, there are a zillion apps covering travel in Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.

Getting to the best ones is the trick. Here are the Top 8 Egypt Travel Guides—in our humble opinion—in printed form, ordered by publication date. If you are a fan of good old fashioned paper and ink, then make sure to grab one of them before your next trip to Egypt. Read more…

TOURISM AND THE REVOLUTION

By Islam El Shazly

It has been a little over 11 months since the January 25, 2011, ignited to culminate into the ouster of one of the worst rulers in the Arab world in modern history, Mohamed Hosni Mubarak, right on the heels of his brother-in-arms Bin Ali from Tunisia.

A lot has changed since then, some to the better, and some to the worst. We’re not going to get into either of them; they both have long lists.

What we’re going to be talking about is something that has managed somehow to divide the people, mostly triggered by a media that still plays by the pre-Mubarak days of divide and conquer for the sake of the person who is in charge at the time, SCAF (Supreme Council of Armed Forces) at the moment. That something is “Tourism”. Read more…

WALK PROUD. WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN.

Opposition supporters wave flags amid the crowd in Tahrir Square in Cairo February 9, 2011. Egyptians counted the economic cost of more than two weeks of turmoil on Wednesday as re-invigorated protesters flocked again to Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand President Hosni Mubarak quit immediately. REUTERS/Suhaib Salem

by Islam El Shazly

For the first time in history a revolution has been organized as a public event with an open invitation, more like a date between two lovers, the time and the place was known almost two weeks in advance. Without further confirmation, people from all over Greater Cairo started converging onto Midan Al-Tahrir – Tahrir Square – and it was not just left at that, people started gathering at major squares in every governorate in the country. A new day was dawning on Egypt. A new era that no one saw coming. The date was January 25, 2011. Read more…