Sunday, March 29, 2009

Climbing the Tower

Frustrated from not being able to get on top of a building in Zamalek, I packed my camera into my bag for work and set a plan in motion for January 8. After work, I traversed the ongoing construction site that is AUC's sports facility and made my way to Mobinil Tower (seen below).



Flashing my staff/faculty ID at anyone who raised an eyebrow, I reached the tower and began the slow climb up the spiraling stairs to the top. Upon reaching the top of the stairs, I was confronted with a locked door and a sketchy ladder of tiny metal rungs (seen below).


Looking down the sketchy ladder


Not one to give up after all that effort, I grasped the first rung and started to pull myself up. At the top I had to stretch to reach the next landing, and I only had the briefest moment where I was hanging above a whole lot of nothing before I was back on solid ground. After that it was a few more metal rungs and I found myself above the highest part of the wall. The aerial view of the campus was certainly worth it.



The colorful outdoor recreational courts


Looking down on the central part of campus




Great view of the soccer field


Looking out on still very much undeveloped New Cairo

Descending required a little bit of cleverness (Mom, stop reading and skip to the next part), as I had to hover over the gap and blindly reach for the ladder with my foot, but other than that, it was smooth sailing. There was no brilliant sky or sunset to capture but it was great to see my workplace from a different perspective.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Zamalek at Sunset

By special request (and the fact that these were the first set of pictures I had not yet posted) here are some more pictures of Zamalek, the residential area where I live.

A few months back, I had gone about ten days (since the Dahab trip) without taking a single picture, so I was starting to get a little restless. On January 7th, a friend and I set out just before sunset to try and sneak up to the roof of an apartment building or another high point in Zamalek to get a better angle during the fading light. Unfortunately the bowaabs (doormen) were not having any of it and so we were confined to ground level.


Taken from the bridge connecting Zamalek and Agouza/Doqqi, looking South down (technically up!) the Nile.



"Let's go down to the waterline..."



This is actually looking from Zamalek across to Doqqi/Mohandessin on the other side of the Nile.



This...is probably a dead body. I'm just saying...



My favorite picture from this photo expedition.

More to come soon.

Back in Action - New Macbook

Two weeks ago, my dad came to visit and with him came my brand new MacBook Pro.



Specs include a very fast processor, lots of RAM, a built-in camera, the ability to run both mac os x and windows through boot camp, and not having to store said computer in the fridge when not using it (which I actually had to do for my old computer!).

Now that I've got the tools, I'll start putting up the backlog of pictures that's been building up since January.


P.S. Unrelated but awesome - for all the Daft Punk fans out there, you will be addicted to this site - http://www.najle.com/idaft/ - for an unnecessarily long time.