I think I'm addicted to podcasts. I mean, I don't have a ton of spare time... my commute is only 10 minutes, my evenings typically filled with squash or golf or something, I get one day off a week which is usually spent somewhere not conducive to listening to podcasts. So basically I don't have a lot of opportunity to listen to podcasts... I can squeeze one or two episodes an evening, maybe while I'm cooking dinner or possibly one as I'm going to bed.
But I still subscribe to and download like 20 different podcasts... programs that are 30-60 minutes... ranging from music, CBC programs, Ricky Gervais, Peter Mansbridge, Bill Mahr, and my current favourite This American Life...
I can't possibly listen to them though. And yet I subscribe and d/l. Strange.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Streaking down the wing...
The story from 2002, still a gooder. I've got $200 to any of my friends that repeats this during the playoffs, but not during play please... maybe right when the period ends.
Before:
After:
Before:
After:
Go Flames!
Stop yelling at me
Here's an article from the NYT on the noise in Cairo. Where I am in Ain Sukhna it's not nearly as bad, but the incessant honking, trucks, music, etc. is evident even in the "5-star" resort where we live... I think it's because most of the people there come from Cairo...
Cairo Journal
A City Where You Can’t Hear Yourself Scream
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
CAIRO — Egyptians in this capital city say it is harder and harder to be heard and to have a voice, but they are not talking politics. Well, not only politics.
What they are talking about, or rather yelling about, is noise, the incredible background noise of a city crammed with 18 million people, and millions of drivers who always have one hand on the horn and a rules-free way of thinking.
“Whenever I talk to people, they always say, ‘Why are you screaming?’ ” said Salah Abdul Hamid, 56, a barber whose two-chair shop is on the corner of a busy street on the north side.
Mr. Hamid was, of course, screaming.
It was 4 p.m. in Rhode al Farag, a typical Cairo neighborhood teeming with people and shops and cars and trucks and buses and horse-drawn carts. From his shop, the landscape of sound revealed a chorus of people struggling to make a living, trying to assert themselves in a city, and in a country, where they often feel invisible.
Noise — outrageous, unceasing, pounding noise — is the unnerving backdrop to a tense time in Egypt, as inflation and low wages have people worried about basic survival, prompting strikes and protests. We’re not just talking typical city noise, but what scientists here say is more like living inside a factory.
“It’s not enough to make you crazy, but it is very tiring,” said Essam Muhammad Hussein, as he sat in a cracked plastic chair outside the corner food shop his family has owned for 50 years. He was shouting as he talked about the noise, though he did not seem to realize it.
“What are we going to do?” he asked. “Where is the way out?”
This is not like London or New York, or even Tehran, another car-clogged Middle Eastern capital. It is literally like living day in and day out with a lawn mower running next to your head, according to scientists with the National Research Center. They spent five years studying noise levels across the city and concluded in a report issued this year that the average noise from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. is 85 decibels, a bit louder than a freight train 15 feet away, said Mustafa el Sayyid, an engineer who helped carry out the study.
But that 85 decibels, while “clearly unacceptable,” is only the average across the day and across the city. At other locations, it is far worse, he said. In Tahrir Square, or Ramsis Square, or the road leading to the pyramids, the noise often reaches 95 decibels, he said, which is only slightly quieter than standing next to a jackhammer.
“All of greater Cairo is in the range of unacceptable noise levels from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.,” Mr. Sayyid said.
By comparison, normal conversation ranges from 45 to 60 decibels, a chain saw registers 100 decibels and a gunshot 140. Because the decibel scale is logarithmic, every 10 decibels equals a tenfold increase in intensity.
Noise at the levels commonly found in Cairo affects the body. It can cause elevated blood pressure and other stress-related diseases. It can interfere with sleep, which almost always makes people more irritable. “People need a chance to sleep, to have a chance to think, in quiet,” said Dr. Nagat Amer, a physician and researcher with the national center.
But quiet is in short supply, especially in densely packed neighborhoods like Rhode al Farag, where the streets are alive 24 hours a day with people struggling with one another to eke out a living. In the last six weeks, 11 people have been killed in fights in lines to buy some of the cheap subsidized bread many rely on to feed their families.
While noise is never cited as a reason for the spasms of violence, it is a silent enemy that makes the pressures of life that much harder to cope with, people on the streets here said.
“The noise bothers me and I know it bothers people,” said Abdel Khaleq, driver of a battered black and white taxi, as he paused from honking his horn to stop for passengers.
“So why do you do it?” he was asked.
“Well, to tell you I’m here,” he said. “There is no such thing as logic in this country.”
And then he drove off, honking.
In general terms, the noise is a symptom of an increasingly unmanageable city, crowded far beyond its original capacity, officials at the National Research Center said. The main culprit is the two million cars, and drivers who jam the city roads every day.
But Egyptians also like to live loud, preferring community to private space, mourning a death and celebrating a wedding with a good dose of noise. Muezzins’ calls to prayer wail from loudspeakers in the minarets of thousands of mosques in the city. The problem is there are more people now, more cars, more competition for a sale, more jockeying for a spot on the road. And with that much more, there is less consideration for the person behind or next door, social commentators said.
“We like to live our life with people around us — there is no privacy,” said Ahmed El-Kholei, a professor of urban planning at Monufiya University in the Nile Delta north of the city. “This is not a bad thing in itself, but the way it is expressed is wrong. Before, when someone held a funeral, the neighbors would postpone a wedding out of consideration. Today, you see the funeral and the wedding all howling in the microphones at the same time.”
Still, Egyptians do not, as a rule, complain about noise.
“What noise?” asked Madbouly Omran, who has run a small nut stand on Rhode al Farag Street since 1970.
The trucks rumbled by. A pickup truck hit its air horn. Taxis honked.
Moustafa Abdel Aleem, who works in the booth with Mr. Omran, said, “The noise is not something I want, but I can’t do anything about it; it’s forced on me.” So he turned on the radio in search of a song he liked, and of course, turned the volume up.
In a nation where about 40 percent of the population survives on about $2 a day, people understand the struggle to feed a family. In Rhode al Farag, men worked on cars in the street, butchered meat in the street, blasted radios and turned up television sets. Like shellshocked war veterans, residents sat out on the street, sipping tea, oblivious to the cacophony.
Even when it came to the shop run by Mahmoud Faheem, people did not complain. Mr. Faheem rents out concert-sized speakers, and he displayed his speakers on the street, offering the entire block a never ending thump-thump of dance music. “Let him eat bread,” said Atef Ali, 45, the owner of a food shop next door, using an Arabic phrase to explain why he did not complain, even while he detested the music.
And so the people shout, and shrug.
They shout to be heard, and shrug because they say there is nothing they can do but join in, honking, banging, screaming, whatever they need to do to make it through the day — or the intersection. The noise is the cause and the reaction, they say.
“Life is like this,” said Ahmed Muhammad, 23, who makes his living delivering metal tanks of propane to homes. He hangs four tanks off the back of a rusted bicycle, then rides with one hand on the handlebars, the other slamming a wrench into one of the tanks to announce his arrival to the neighborhood. “Making money is like this,” he said. “What am I going to do? This is how it is.”
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.
Cairo Journal
A City Where You Can’t Hear Yourself Scream
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN
CAIRO — Egyptians in this capital city say it is harder and harder to be heard and to have a voice, but they are not talking politics. Well, not only politics.
What they are talking about, or rather yelling about, is noise, the incredible background noise of a city crammed with 18 million people, and millions of drivers who always have one hand on the horn and a rules-free way of thinking.
“Whenever I talk to people, they always say, ‘Why are you screaming?’ ” said Salah Abdul Hamid, 56, a barber whose two-chair shop is on the corner of a busy street on the north side.
Mr. Hamid was, of course, screaming.
It was 4 p.m. in Rhode al Farag, a typical Cairo neighborhood teeming with people and shops and cars and trucks and buses and horse-drawn carts. From his shop, the landscape of sound revealed a chorus of people struggling to make a living, trying to assert themselves in a city, and in a country, where they often feel invisible.
Noise — outrageous, unceasing, pounding noise — is the unnerving backdrop to a tense time in Egypt, as inflation and low wages have people worried about basic survival, prompting strikes and protests. We’re not just talking typical city noise, but what scientists here say is more like living inside a factory.
“It’s not enough to make you crazy, but it is very tiring,” said Essam Muhammad Hussein, as he sat in a cracked plastic chair outside the corner food shop his family has owned for 50 years. He was shouting as he talked about the noise, though he did not seem to realize it.
“What are we going to do?” he asked. “Where is the way out?”
This is not like London or New York, or even Tehran, another car-clogged Middle Eastern capital. It is literally like living day in and day out with a lawn mower running next to your head, according to scientists with the National Research Center. They spent five years studying noise levels across the city and concluded in a report issued this year that the average noise from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. is 85 decibels, a bit louder than a freight train 15 feet away, said Mustafa el Sayyid, an engineer who helped carry out the study.
But that 85 decibels, while “clearly unacceptable,” is only the average across the day and across the city. At other locations, it is far worse, he said. In Tahrir Square, or Ramsis Square, or the road leading to the pyramids, the noise often reaches 95 decibels, he said, which is only slightly quieter than standing next to a jackhammer.
“All of greater Cairo is in the range of unacceptable noise levels from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.,” Mr. Sayyid said.
By comparison, normal conversation ranges from 45 to 60 decibels, a chain saw registers 100 decibels and a gunshot 140. Because the decibel scale is logarithmic, every 10 decibels equals a tenfold increase in intensity.
Noise at the levels commonly found in Cairo affects the body. It can cause elevated blood pressure and other stress-related diseases. It can interfere with sleep, which almost always makes people more irritable. “People need a chance to sleep, to have a chance to think, in quiet,” said Dr. Nagat Amer, a physician and researcher with the national center.
But quiet is in short supply, especially in densely packed neighborhoods like Rhode al Farag, where the streets are alive 24 hours a day with people struggling with one another to eke out a living. In the last six weeks, 11 people have been killed in fights in lines to buy some of the cheap subsidized bread many rely on to feed their families.
While noise is never cited as a reason for the spasms of violence, it is a silent enemy that makes the pressures of life that much harder to cope with, people on the streets here said.
“The noise bothers me and I know it bothers people,” said Abdel Khaleq, driver of a battered black and white taxi, as he paused from honking his horn to stop for passengers.
“So why do you do it?” he was asked.
“Well, to tell you I’m here,” he said. “There is no such thing as logic in this country.”
And then he drove off, honking.
In general terms, the noise is a symptom of an increasingly unmanageable city, crowded far beyond its original capacity, officials at the National Research Center said. The main culprit is the two million cars, and drivers who jam the city roads every day.
But Egyptians also like to live loud, preferring community to private space, mourning a death and celebrating a wedding with a good dose of noise. Muezzins’ calls to prayer wail from loudspeakers in the minarets of thousands of mosques in the city. The problem is there are more people now, more cars, more competition for a sale, more jockeying for a spot on the road. And with that much more, there is less consideration for the person behind or next door, social commentators said.
“We like to live our life with people around us — there is no privacy,” said Ahmed El-Kholei, a professor of urban planning at Monufiya University in the Nile Delta north of the city. “This is not a bad thing in itself, but the way it is expressed is wrong. Before, when someone held a funeral, the neighbors would postpone a wedding out of consideration. Today, you see the funeral and the wedding all howling in the microphones at the same time.”
Still, Egyptians do not, as a rule, complain about noise.
“What noise?” asked Madbouly Omran, who has run a small nut stand on Rhode al Farag Street since 1970.
The trucks rumbled by. A pickup truck hit its air horn. Taxis honked.
Moustafa Abdel Aleem, who works in the booth with Mr. Omran, said, “The noise is not something I want, but I can’t do anything about it; it’s forced on me.” So he turned on the radio in search of a song he liked, and of course, turned the volume up.
In a nation where about 40 percent of the population survives on about $2 a day, people understand the struggle to feed a family. In Rhode al Farag, men worked on cars in the street, butchered meat in the street, blasted radios and turned up television sets. Like shellshocked war veterans, residents sat out on the street, sipping tea, oblivious to the cacophony.
Even when it came to the shop run by Mahmoud Faheem, people did not complain. Mr. Faheem rents out concert-sized speakers, and he displayed his speakers on the street, offering the entire block a never ending thump-thump of dance music. “Let him eat bread,” said Atef Ali, 45, the owner of a food shop next door, using an Arabic phrase to explain why he did not complain, even while he detested the music.
And so the people shout, and shrug.
They shout to be heard, and shrug because they say there is nothing they can do but join in, honking, banging, screaming, whatever they need to do to make it through the day — or the intersection. The noise is the cause and the reaction, they say.
“Life is like this,” said Ahmed Muhammad, 23, who makes his living delivering metal tanks of propane to homes. He hangs four tanks off the back of a rusted bicycle, then rides with one hand on the handlebars, the other slamming a wrench into one of the tanks to announce his arrival to the neighborhood. “Making money is like this,” he said. “What am I going to do? This is how it is.”
Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Donkeys!
Last week camels, this week donkeys. Did you know the plural of donkey is donkeys and not donkies? That's our cooling tower in the background of this one:
And that's our Ammonia Synthesis Converter in the background of this one:
And that's our Ammonia Synthesis Converter in the background of this one:
Sunday, April 13, 2008
New hat
More golf pictures! I know you love it. These are mostly to show off my new hat. Stylin'!
From L to R: Jim, Ben, Greg (relaxing), and John.
From L to R: Jim, Ben, Greg (relaxing), and John.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Hmmphf.
I'm going to have to kick up the intellect level here, I'm embarrassed. But I checked my friend Mike's blog and he was rated Elementary too, so now I don't feel bad. He reads lots and is way gooder at spelling than me.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
"CAMELS!"
"CAMELS!" is what Frank would say if he was on a roadtrip in Egypt. I took these today on the way back to work from lunch:
Saturday, April 05, 2008
PNG LNG Update
Everyone's favourite project is still kicking around downunder. The project I was on in Australia has almost revived itself in the form of an LNG plant instead of a pipeline from PNG to Australia... so we'll see what happens. Read this article if you're interested... No word yet on when/if they'd have me back, but KBR knows its my #1 choice for a project after Egypt.
Mirage
Had a great weekend... Left on Thursday and caught a ride with a co-worker to the JW Marriott in Cairo. A friend who used to be the golf director here at Stella Di Mare is now working as the Golf Manager at the Marriott in Cairo, so he invited me down there to play. It is also the last weekend for one of the Swedes I've been hanging around with (Jocke) and he's been chilling out at the Marriott for a few days, so it was a good opportunity to see him off as well.
We played an executive 9 on Thursday afternoon because I didn't get there until 3'ish, which was fun. Golfing with two potential professionals is somewhat intimidating, but also a great way to pick up some tips. They were both helpful. That night we went for dinner at the Birdcage... no, not the cross dressing cabaret bar from the movies, but the Asian fusion restaurant in the Intercontinental hotel in Cairo. From there we hit the casino for a couple hours (-$100 on roulette, +$75 at blackjack, free drinks, good times) before ending up at Mojito, which is on the rooftop of the Nile Hilton. That was good time, chilling out with Calle, Jocke, and a few of Calle's expat co-workers... We made trails around 3:30, slept in 'till 10am, then Jocke took me to practice some more. He was like a personal golf coach that Friday morning, but once our game started it was all business. We played for 50 LE the front, 50 LE for the back, and 50 LE overall in a game of Copenhagen (some Swedish game) which was fun. I ended up +150LE on the day between Jocke and one other guy. I guess the lessons paid off (or I'm a sandbagger).
Hope everyone else is having a good weekend!
We played an executive 9 on Thursday afternoon because I didn't get there until 3'ish, which was fun. Golfing with two potential professionals is somewhat intimidating, but also a great way to pick up some tips. They were both helpful. That night we went for dinner at the Birdcage... no, not the cross dressing cabaret bar from the movies, but the Asian fusion restaurant in the Intercontinental hotel in Cairo. From there we hit the casino for a couple hours (-$100 on roulette, +$75 at blackjack, free drinks, good times) before ending up at Mojito, which is on the rooftop of the Nile Hilton. That was good time, chilling out with Calle, Jocke, and a few of Calle's expat co-workers... We made trails around 3:30, slept in 'till 10am, then Jocke took me to practice some more. He was like a personal golf coach that Friday morning, but once our game started it was all business. We played for 50 LE the front, 50 LE for the back, and 50 LE overall in a game of Copenhagen (some Swedish game) which was fun. I ended up +150LE on the day between Jocke and one other guy. I guess the lessons paid off (or I'm a sandbagger).
Hope everyone else is having a good weekend!
Berlin Tourny
Anyone who is interested, here is a link to more photos of the Berlin tournament. This site is the firefighters who put together the tournament and invited us there.
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Sun Sketches
Anyone out there listen to CBC's Vinyl Cafe? Ya, I do, I'm a CBC dork. Whatev.
Here are some pictures from Peck's camera on the trip, I think he has more to come.
The Fab Four at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The Nazi's used the Gate as their symbol, and it was also part of the Berlin Wall, cut off from East Berliner's by the death strip.
Here it is during the fall of the wall:
During the walking tour in Berlin, note the unrestored buildings around, still waiting for the united Berlin to get to them after decades of neglect by the Communists:
The Sony Center in Berlin, pretty cool building, a piece of modern goodness:
After a hockey game, why can't we get beers like this in dressing rooms in Canada? Oh ya, we're, we're influenced by the overbearing rules of the police state to the south of us. Loosen up Canada.
Team Canada and the Berlin police team, after an exhibition game. Jared and I (left back row) donned the Berlin jersies for this one:
Well earned:
Outdoor rink in Berlin... had the ice cooling system and everything... great idea. But it doesn't get that cold in Berlin, so I'm not sure this would be utilized in Calgary where it gets to -30...??
After a hockey game, why can't we get beers like this in dressing rooms in Canada? Oh ya, we're, we're influenced by the overbearing rules of the police state to the south of us. Loosen up Canada.
Team Canada and the Berlin police team, after an exhibition game. Jared and I (left back row) donned the Berlin jersies for this one:
Well earned:
Outdoor rink in Berlin... had the ice cooling system and everything... great idea. But it doesn't get that cold in Berlin, so I'm not sure this would be utilized in Calgary where it gets to -30...??
Amsterdam, local hangout. It was closed at the time we visited, but still posed for a pic:
Giant Dutch shoe. Boo ya:
German countryside:
The van in Berlin:
Graffiti in Berlin. Everywhere you went there was some, and it worked...
Giant Dutch shoe. Boo ya:
German countryside:
The van in Berlin:
Graffiti in Berlin. Everywhere you went there was some, and it worked...
Striking it:
Mad Dog line in the Netherlands:
1-litre beers, ya that's how you do it when on a hockey roadtrip to Europe:
Let's cheers our one litre beers:
Cafe Momfer De Mol in Den Haag. We were there every night, keeping our tab open for the whole stay. That's the owner Joep in the background... He was a great host, as usual... 3 years running we've here:
Mad Dog line in the Netherlands:
1-litre beers, ya that's how you do it when on a hockey roadtrip to Europe:
Let's cheers our one litre beers:
Cafe Momfer De Mol in Den Haag. We were there every night, keeping our tab open for the whole stay. That's the owner Joep in the background... He was a great host, as usual... 3 years running we've here:
Muxtape
Apparently the kids are going crazy for this thing. Consider the bandwagon jumped.
http://ryeandcoke.muxtape.com/
http://ryeandcoke.muxtape.com/
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