Chronicles of Alexandria,Episode 3 – Sex and the City

Done, we have the name for the blog: NewsLab. I know, I know, it’s not very girlish, but you can’t imagine the effort the ladies did to sort out something that didn’t sound like the pay-off of some nouvelle cuisine fanatics sorority. Moreover, most of the organizers belong to the male side of the moon ( but I promise you it’s not their fault), and that didn’t help very much because, despite the best intentions – in the end the workshop was their idea , so I assume they’re not permanently gone yet – during the brainstorm they came out with some foolish suggestion like “Blah blah blah”, “Drifting women” etc etc… you judge by yourself. Anyway, these episode made me think about the differences between men and women and also about Egyptian men wooing strategies. So, here’s another little handbook to get along with Egyptian men: 1)  The Egyptian male not necessarily court women in person. They have in fact developed a complex and imaginative set of activities to let the female understand he’s kind of interested: a) Horn Concert: if the well known beep beep  in Egyptian means: get out of my way or I’ll run you down , and the beeep means: Fancy a ride? , Luciano, who is half Egyptian, told me that the bebebeep beep beep means: I remark your beauty, my sweet and charming lady. Lazy people. 2)       When they unfortunately don’t have a horn to blare nearby, they replace it with a range of charming sounds like whistles, yahoos, and some more onomatopoeias that I use to chase my cat away or when I feed chickens ( well, if I had chickens I’d use them for sure). 3)       If the female is strong enough to resist to such charming courtship, it could happen to her to be thrown some contusing  object such as lighters or even little stones ( a six year old kid threw on to me this morning). Don’t interpret that in a wrong way, they didn’t really mean to hurt you ( I hope) …here a little video made by the photographer Vince who, without knowing about this post, realized a Love according to Vince” slideshow, that clearly demonstrates his capability of adaptation to Egyptian context.  

Chronicles of Alexandria, Episode 2: The Weekend, the sunshine, the brush.

Someone says that there is some kind of curse that follows people abroad and my colleague Paola must be one of them. In the exact moment she left Alexandria the sun has begun to shine again, wind and rain are miles away (waiting for her in Rome, I guess), birds sing, deers couple and the male organizers have walked into the breakfast room wearing their best suites with a children-the-day-of-Christmas-like-smile , suddenly realizing they are living among the most charming, smart and beautiful group of ladies ever and that, since they’re actually stuck here, they can’t escape from relating with them.    Although it’s Friday (which is like weekend here) everything is very nice and calm at the Bibliotheca and we are the only people working. Now, this is democracy: since the organizers couldn’t decide whether having a break following the European calendar or the Egyptian one, we ended up not having a break at all.  Which was kind of cool, though, since it gave me the chance to observe the few Egyptian at work during the weekend and get some elements to figure out how life works here. First of all, it must be said that Alexandria isn’t the cleanest town ever, it looks more like the International Open-air Gathering of Garbage ( I’m waiting for the mayor of Naples to show up as the special-guest lecturer). For this reasons, it really surprises me that in the perimeter of Bibliotheca, people never stop doing cleanup no matter what. So, if you happen to be at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on Fridays, you’d better keep in mind that, because of this cleansing fervor, it can happen to you’d be washed away by some smiling guy with a water cannon. I also believe that all this cleaning could help archeological research: I’m afraid that, if they brush a little more, they will end up digging the floor and bringing to light some super cool find, like Alexander the Great’s toilet brush or stuff like that. Anyway, the ladies are starting to get along, the workshop is really interesting and if you pass by, you can see a bunch of people who look, live and speak different but, in the deep, are much more alike than I expected.

la vie en bleu

 

lumière tamisée, concentration maximale, c’est que le début,

d”accord d’accord, et ça continuera encore et encore