Another Year, Another Set of Protests

Somehow, 2010 managed to pass without riots or wars in our lives. Well, someone must have been sleeping behind the wheel, because it looks like Murphy is trying to catch up. Its only January and already we have "some of the largest protests Egypt has seen, possibly since 1977. (NYTimes)" Overall, they appear to have been peaceful, just widespread. 60,000 people around a country of 20 million is only 0.3%, but its still quite a few.

Tuesday was a local holiday and had beautiful weather. (I went for a nice run in the desert.) The holiday probably helped people get out and do their thing. Today was a work day, and the police were out in larger force than on Tuesday. Nothing seemed to be going on when I left work, but would-be-protesters would probably be leaving about the same time too, so who knows what happens tonight. We'll see. If they're able to keep momentum going, then the weekend may be interesting, but momentum is hard to keep with stuff like this. People have lives to get back to, and the government starts getting more efficient at breaking things up.

Either way, so far, the protests are all 45 minutes or more of a subway ride away from home. The security forces are definitely out and about more. Meg is perfectly safe at home and work is fine too. Getting to and from work may become more challenging, but keeping your wits about you should keep us all out of trouble. The violence isn't aimed in our direction, so that also brings a reasonable amount of personal security.

Move along now. Nothing to see here.

Global Weirding Strikes Cairo

It has been raining for at least 30 minutes to an hour almost every day this week. Most days it seems it rains at least once during the day and again at night.

I'm not sure if this is normal for Cairo, but I know this didn't happen last year. In 2010 I think it spat on us a couple of times but only really poured once. These "showers" are more than a spit but also not a downpour. They are just a good soaking. If this happened for months or years, maybe the desert would eventually go away. (riiiiiiiiight)

When this all started, we discovered "mud" was a verb. Cars that hadn't moved were covered in mud. We assume the rain picked up some dirt in the air. But after a week now, the air seems to have a little less dirt in it. (Don't worry. It still has plenty of other particulates. )

Here are a few photos I snapped from my phone this morning as I got on the subway.



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