Will the Fesh lose his luggage?

For a long time I was contemplating whether to blog about this or not. It's simple, if I blog about it I am probably going to jinx it............hmm..........no risk no fun I guess? Okay, over may many travels I have never lost my luggage. And I don't mean lost as in it never got back to me, I mean lost as in I never waited at the belt and the luggage didn't come!

Yeah I guess I'm lucky, especially that I travel quite often. So, this time when I was coming to elCairo I chose to fly Austrian Airlines although it has only 30 min connection time in Vienna. Most of my colleagues who flew Austrian to Warsaw did lose their luggage! Against all warnings, I decided what the hell, if I am ever to lose my luggage I want to know about it! (I am messed up in the head).

So here I am sitting at the lounge at Cairo Airport after I checked in my luggage, and just in all honesty I did ask the hot chikita at the check-in counter to put a 'priority' tag on my bag. So what do you think, let's get the voting going will it be:

A. I will get my luggage normally at the belt in Warsaw.
B. I will lose my luggage, but it will come on the next flight.
C. I will lose my luggage for good?

Leaving elCairo...again

It's been almost a year and a half since I left elCairo for Warszawa. In hindsight, I think it's one of those decisions that changed me forever. Before heading of to Warszawa, my life was very classical. Born in elCairo and studied there, lived with my family, worked in elCairo and had fun with my friends...uh...here in elCairo. Now with the move, everything changed, I needed to get used to living alone, making new friends, getting accustomed to a new culture, language ...etc.

Off course I learned a lot of things, and I am still learning but the one thing that really amazed me and still does is how my home sickness grows, exponentially, every time I come back. Everytime I come back, I dread the day I'm going to leave. The day I leave my friends and family and go back to leaving in my 'spacious' apartment back in Warszawa. The day I stop doing random non-sensecal plans, like heading to elfishawy cafe at 4am and start planing to attend house parties 2 weeks in advance. The day I leave elCairo, that is today.

SPIDER PIG

SPIDER PIG

SPIDER PIG

Does whatever a SPIDER PIG does

Can he swing

From a web

No he cant

He's a pig

LOOK OOOUUUTTT!!!!

He is a SPIDER PIG!!

(I have it as an MP3 too)

My 100th Post!

It's my 100th post! very exciting! It's been a year since I started blogging already and I thought of celebrating my 100th post by awarding some fake awards to my previous posts, here goes:


Most worrying post co-awarded to: Be afraid & The Orwellian Side of Me
Most Polska-specific post awarded to: Itdependance
Most ego-centric post awarded to: The Feshfactor
Most post likely to be featured as a motion picture awarded to: Angry Demons
Most weird post awarded to: The B.E.F.
Most funny post awarded to: Inferior Teristial Beings
Best psychotic series awarded to: The Simpsons Countdown (T-10/T-9/T-8/T-7/T-6/T-5/T-4/T-3/T-2/T-1/T)
Best Dilbert-style post awarded to: Behold a new Species
Best collaborative post awarded to: Battle Plans

This year's Best post, by popular demand, is awarded to: My Bed


Thank you and pls stay tuned for 2008's awards to be announced August 2008.

I Have Never..

...worn a bra.
* all girls drink, eh.. I kinda take a sip too.

...paid for sex.
*I drink, no one else does (yeah right!)

Since we apply a strict 'no details' rule for this drinking game, it was alright to share since no one would ever know the details. The night took an interesting turn however when we switched to Spin the Bottle, oh man there's alot of dirt on everyone by that time. Me likey :)

Fesh, I am Your Father....

So a friend of mine got just got this uber home theater and we wanted to put it to the test. We kept thinking about the ULTIMATE movie marathon to initiate the home theater with. Lord of the Rings came up, but I objected seeing that I am in the middle of the second book right now and don't want to spoil it. I pushed for an ultimate Rocky marathon, but surprisingly the idea was shot down. Finally we agreed to watch Star Wars, or as the nerdy dude at the DVD store called it: The Holy Trilogy.

It was very interesting that after a couple of beers and midway thru The Empire Strikes Back we were intrigued by Darth Vader's ability to choke people using the "Force" yet without touching them. Seemed like a very kool way to kill someone. Later we were blown away by the fact that Darth Vader could do the same remotely! One of the guys wondered loudly if having such a capability "Remotely Choking to Death" as a nice colorful button on our internal Instant Messaging tool at work, was a good idea. Off course we can tone it down like maybe make it send a 3-second electric shock to the other person or something, but other than that sign me up.

hmmm.... maybe nerdy sci-fi movies and beer is not a good combination after all?

Feshtoid # 5269

Today I learned that 80% of all women in Egypt wear the hijab (i.e. cover their hair with the Islamic head scarf). Seeing that Christians are 10% of the population, this means that 50% of all women without hijab are statistically Christian. I found that very interesting, because as a teenager all my Muslim friends used to tease me that I have 1 in 10 chance of the girl being Christian, now with the hijab factor in I have 1 in 2 chance!

I don't know why I'm blogging about this, it's not like I meet random girls all the time and I have a need to determine their religion! It's just something that I was teased so much about while growing up and I was happy to hear this statistic. Yes, teenage Fesh is still alive in me.

But in all fairness I think my calculation is biased, seeing that this number is over total population and my guess is that the hijab penetration is much higher with certain socio-economic classes and also in specific areas. So probably if you factor that in, probably folks I mingle with would be more at 50% hijab penetration, which means statistically I have a 1 in 5 chances.... ah crap .......back to square one :S

Hail Our Googilian Overlords

Someone is telling you about a movie and you want to check the reviews, typically you'd do the following:
1. Type www.imdb.com in your browser address bar.
2. Wait for main page for IMDB to load.
3. Search for the location of the search box (they change it every few weeks to confuse us).
4. Type the movie name you're looking for.
5. Wait for results page (Did you notice that there's always multiple results?... and NO I don't mean the TV series form 1950's called Batman!)
6. Pick the movie you are looking for from list.
7. Wait for page to load.

I've stopped doing that a few months back, thanks to our overlords at Google. I discovered the ultimate trio: a. Google toolbar b. The colon operator c. The I'm Feeling Lucky button. Those 3 if used wisely can mean you do not need to navigate to any site anymore, here's how:
1. Type into the Google toolbar: website name : keyword
2. Hit I'm Feeling Lucky button
3. Wait for exact page you want to load.

For example, if you want to look something up on Wikipedia you simply need to type:
wiki: WWII
A movie on IMDB?
imdb: The Simpsons
Check the latest weather?
weather.com: Cairo

This is very kool specially if you are a fellow nerd who longs to the ugly, incompetent DOS command-line or the seductive, all-mighty Linux shell....*PING*.

The Iron Fesh

So I started going regularly to the Gym as of the beginning of the month. You know, one of those very late New Year resolutions. On my first day, I show up early ready for some serious gyming. The instructor gives me the whole routine: 30 mins running followed by some weightlifting. I finish the running part feeling on top of the world and then I go to the instructor who hands me two 5Kg dumbbells and asks me to do two sets of 20 counts. I do 5 counts. The instructor seems to understand that maybe I am not ready yet, so he replaces 5Kg dumbbells with 4KG ones, same drill 2x20. I do 10 counts......

The instructor clearly amused now with my incompetence waits for a girl, who is literally half my size, to finish exercising with 3Kg dumbbells and then hands them to me. I do 15 counts.

I should be ashamed of myself... I know.

The Simpsons

IT. IS. HERE.
*Mental Orgasm*
*Fesh dies



I'll get to see it next week GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

The Simpsons-1

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?


Answer: A hardcore fan would anticipate the release of the movie and attend the premier, a psychotic fan would instead start a creepy, serial-killerish-type countdown on his blog that would expose many dark secrets about him. In doing so the psychotic fan would lose both his self-respect and his tiny reader base.


Still, IT WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT... it begins tomorrow: 27.07.07

The Simpsons-2

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A hardcore fan would have seen all 400 episodes of The Simpsons, a psychotic fan would have seen all of them, at least 6 times each.

The Simpsons-3

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A hardcore fan would have some Simpsons merchandise, a psychotic fan will have his very own own Homer doll, even if this psychotic fan is a 26 years old homophobic dude.

The Simpsons-4

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A hardcore fan would be familiar with a Flaming Moe, a psychotic fan would have tried to mix it at home (liquor + cough syrup + cigarette ash) and -probably- been hospitalized after trying it.

The Simpsons-5

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A hardcore fan would be familiar with the 400+ different characters on the Simpsons, a psychotic fan would have his own. I give you: FeshFesh

courtesy of http://www.simpsonizeme.com (thanks Aku!)

The Simpsons-6

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A hardcore fan would know that Homer was made an honorary citizen of Winnipeg, Canada on May 30, 2003, a psychotic fan would know his social security number.

The Simpsons-7

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A hardcore fan would off course know Moleman's lesser known first name: Hans, a psychotic fan would be able to distinctively remember at least 10 different situations when Hans was killed off the show, Kenny-style.

The Simpsons-8

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A hardcore fan would know at least 15 of Homer's jobs, a psychotic fan would be able to recite all of Homer's jobs in alphabetical order in under 2 mins. All 118 of them.

The Simpsons-9

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A hardcore fan would have read The Gospel According to The Simpsons, a psychotic fan would consider it blasphemous to contradict it at church.

The Simpsons-10

Question: What's the difference between a hardcore Simpsons fan and a psychotic fan?

Answer: A psychotic fan is sexual aroused by the mere thought of The Simpsons Movie opening up in 10 days, while a hardcore fan is not.

The BEF's Secret Wish

We BEF brothers spend a great deal of our time in airports and specifically in security lines, last time I was in Frankfurt I had to:
1. Pass my check-in luggage thru an x-ray machine before I even got my boarding pass.
2. Pass a security point where my cabin baggage was x-rayed, my laptop sniffed and turned on.
3. Pass yet another security point on my way to the gate. This check-point didn't have a metal detector so the security guard had to ask each and every passenger to spread their hands and legs and he scanned them with a mobile metal detector.

I have to go thru this every time I am traveling, so technically I invest around 4-5 hours a month, each month in security lines. I do this gracefully and I never ask for anything in return. Yet deep inside me, and deep inside every Brother we all wish for this one time, just one time...

It's a crowded European Airport, crowded security line, it's raining outside. Appears like there is some disturbance at the front of the line, one passenger is refusing to take off his shoes. There is some yelling, can't make out what they are saying, suddenly the passenger hits the security guard with his carry-on bag and dashes to the nearest emergency exit. All at once the hall is flooded by security guards who are running after the alleged "shoe-bomb" terrorist, they are yelling something, seems they are giving him a waring ...*BANG* *BANG* the pursuit is over.

We BEF Brothers carry this dark and terrible wish within us every time we fly. Wishing that one day, all the time we invested in the security of the planes we fly in will pay out. The feeling that maybe today is the day this scenario unfolds keeps us going from Plane to Gate to Plane....everyday.

You've Been Tagged

I have recently begged my way into being tagged by nilegirl to complete this Sports Meme. Basically the way it works is that you answer those questions about yourself and then tag a few of your friends and they do the same. So here goes:
1. What is your sport?
This is a tough one, since I'm your standard issue couch potato. But in the Elder Days I used to play different sports:
School: Football
University: Badminton.
Work: Foosball.
2. Why do you like this one?
Well specifically for Badminton I think what I love about it is that it's very much like Tennis on slow motion. So whenever I watch those Wimbledon matches I am really amazed by how those dudes are running over and changing the ball direction and all that. Since in Tennis I can't do that, I opt to play badminton so that I CAN.
3. How long are you doing this for?
I played Badminton in University for around 2 years with my buddy: Pigeon. (I know, but that's another post).
4. Most painful experience.
This one is from my football-playing days, actually it's your typical football story: Free kick, not looking at the ball, ball approaches the speed of light and *BAM* .... sheer pain... and yeah it didn't hit me in the face if you were wondering...
5. Most memorable experience.
Well I guess the ball in the nuts is definitely memorable but on a more happier note 2 years ago I organized a Foosball Summer tournament at work. I had 14 teams participate, each composed of 2 players. My most memorable experience is that we made it to the FINAL game and the way we played it is that we played best out of 5 sets. So basically the team that got 3 sets won. So we lose the first set and then we have an amazing come-back winning two consecutive sets. So at the score of 2-1 the other team's captain called for a break and we never continued this game. Strange right? BUT if you consider that the other team's captain was my boss AND that after he called for the break he -probably- went to bathroom and cried like a 6-year old girl and later on avoided to continue the game at all costs it becomes very interesting :D
(6. Add tall tale or new question to Meme. So I guess I'll add a question)
6. Worst sport ever?
Wrestling, something about a dude in spandex trying to pin another spandex-claded dude to the ground in what seems like a popular sexual position is just not right. Yes I'm a homophob.
7. Tag 3 or 4 people.
hmmmm... okay so seeing I don't have a lot of readers here I'll start with tagging Forsooth and Munqy and anyone else who wants to be tagged just yell: I'm a little piggy oink oink.

How to Make a "Bomb"

Ingredients:
1 water melon
1 bottle of vodka
10 crazy straws
10 tea spoons

Instructions:
1. Slice off the top of the melon, just enough to have a hole 4cm in diameter.
2. Use a spoon to cut the reddish part of the melon into little pieces.
3. Empty vodka inside the melon, stir lightly.
4. Put sliced top back on.
5. Put back in fridge for a couple of hours.

Serving Recommendation:
Remove top, insert crazy straws and encourage guests to eat the melon pieces with the tea spoons. The "Bomb" is most potent if severed when everyone is already drunk.

Dose:
Adults are encouraged not to try the "Bomb". It's a Machiavellian device that first lures you to suckle on the sweet juices and the sugary melon pieces that have been dipped in the best vodka there is and then 15 mins later hits you.

Disclaimer:
If it's your birthday and your friends offer you a toast and you don't have a drink at hand... do not, I repeat do not pick up the "Bomb" and drink from all 5 straws. Serious hang-over...ugh...

Happy FeshDay

Historical speaking, The Day of the Fesh has been first celebrated by the ancient Egyptians in the year 5007 BC. Now, almost 7000 years later the whole world still celebrates the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year of every millennium, in pop culture it became known as: FeshDay.

If you ask me, I think the whole thing is just too much publicity. I don't need all that attention at the time being..... I know, I know... it's very flattering that the ancient Egyptians foresaw my coming and prophesied about it and kept on celebrating the day for thousands of years, but at the end of the day I'm just an ordinary man. Maybe with a very kool birthday (07.07.07).... but still an ordinary man just like the rest of you ordinary mortals.

Anyways Happy FeshDay.

The Culture of Busyiness

In any corporation right now, there's only one rule: If you ain't busy, you aint kool. So for you unkool people here's a quick 5-point guide:

1. Whenever someone is passing you in the corridor and says: Hey, how's everything? always answer: Busy, busy!
2. Don't answer mails on time, and when someone asks you about the mail they sent you, complain for 5 mins about the 700 mails you get daily. They don't know you get 10 messages half of which is spam.
3. Don't get back to voice mails, you will sound very needy if you answer back, and what are you going to say: I'm returning your call! That's just a reputation killer.
4. Always block your calendar even if you don't have meaningful stuff to do. For example: 9:00-10:00 stare at the screen mindlessly; 10:00-11:00 think about my happy place ...etc. Makes you seem very busy for people wanting to book you.
5. Most importantly, always, always show up late for meetings. Come in with a pill of papers and spend the first 5 mins explaining how today is a "crazy day".

But seriously, why do people do this? I can understand that as you go up the corporate ladder your responsibilities increase, but this does not mean you become less efficient at your basic time-management skills, right? I work with senior people and some of them are usually very prompt in: getting back to mail, answering calls or attending meetings, yet others are not. Some would argue that some positions attract a lot of mails or calls versus others, but again isn't the ability to filter thru and identify really important messages, calls and/or meetings a skill you need to acquire to climb the corporate ladder? The way I see it, we should be promoting people who can coupe with the increase amount of mails, calls and meetings and not we promote people and hope they could.

Finally, please feel free to do any of the above first 4 points with me, it's your choice. But please, please when I ask you: How's everything? spare me ANY statement that has "busy" in it. I get it the whole world is BUSY and I'm the last person on earth who has some spare time to say: Fine, how about you?

The Fesh: Defeated

You attend that many corporate trainings and this introduction piece (name, current assignment, hometown, expectations and one unique thing) becomes fairly easy. I have developed my standard answers for those and for the unique thing I usually say:

My passion is traveling...*pause for dramatic purposes*...so far I have visited 36 countries out of my personal target of visiting a 100.

It has always worked for me, usually I get some interesting comments... until today. The trainer, a dude in his early 50ies, looked at me and said: How many countries?

I smiled and said in a confident tone:
THIRTY-six

He replied in a cold tone:
FORTY-EIGHT.

.....I have been defeated in my own game.
*Fesh dies.

My 7-Minute Meditation

As a spin-off of my last post, here's an interesting habit that I developed due to my travels. I can now rate how easy/hard it is to get into a country (i.e. the immigration part). So on a scale of 1 to 10, here goes:

The Swiss (1/10)
They don't even look at my passport, they just look at my residency card and let me go, one of the few countries in the world that doesn't even stamp my passport. Me likey.

The Schiengen States (Germany, France, Italy ..etc) (3/10)
They usually ask one question: How long are you planing to stay? I always like to confuse them by answering: I'm leaving next Thursday. I then pause and watch the officer trying to do some quick math to understand how many days is Thursday from today. It's very entertaining.

The Americans (6/10)
Very detailed, lots of questions: Why are you here, how long, where are you staying...etc. They are however very professional and the whole process takes under 3 minutes. I don't joke there, not after 9-11.

The Polish (9/10)
The mother of them all, basically I live and work there but still anytime I am entering OR exiting Poland I go thru a 10-minute process. This is how it usually goes: after the initial exchange of documents and Good Mornings, the immigration officer would then type in EVERY single detail of my passport and residency card into the Communist-era computer system. Then comes the dreaded 7-minutes of awkward silence, during that time the immigration officer would be mindlessly tapping on the keyboard until the Orwellian Central System would blurp an ACCEPTED or REJECTED on the screen. I haven't seen the screen but I'm assuming they'd go with the cliche big red/green bold letters.

Initially (the first dozen or so times) I was extremely annoyed by this wait, but later I started to appreciate this wait, it started to be my own little time where I meditate. It's as close to an Out of Body experience as I have ever gotten. Every single time I am waiting I am imaging the different scenarios of how I'm gonna go koko on the one immigration officer's ass who's going to make the fatal mistake of stopping me from passing based on a glitch in this crappy Communist-era system. Oh I pity that fool.

99 Cities in 36 Countries

As the end of the Fiscal year approaches, I am restating my balance sheet of countries visited. Previously, I was using a list of all the countries that I got off a website and based on that I had visited 37 countries. Now I found this ultimate Facebook gadget from TripAdviser that uses Google Maps and let's you put little pins on the cities you've visited and then it automatically calculates how many cities/countries. Based on this one, I have 99 cities in 36 countries.

My personal target for countries visited by retirement stays as 100 (amazingly tough, I know :S) but the interesting thing is that I never either counted the cities or had a target for them. Statistically, I've visited 3 cities per country. But practically a lot of those cities are either in the bigger countries I've been to (e.g. US) or Egypt, where 2 years of working with our Distributor network took me to the final frontiers of Egypt. So I have decided to set my target for cities at 200.

This means 64 countries and 101 cities to go, which is 1.8 new countries and 2.9 new cities per year as of this year and till I'm 60...... and yes I have put a lot of thought into this.

My Name

So I have my "special deal" comedy club tickets, right? It's the same night I got booed, in case you're a die hard fan. Turns out those tickets basically make you sit in the first row, or as it later became known to me: The you'll-definitely-be-picked-on-doesn't-mater-how-hard-you-try row.

It all happened so quickly, suddenly the guy started to ask all the people siting in the first row about their names and what they do. He then picked out something and made fun of them. So here I'm sitting there waiting for my turn to be picked on, my mind racing on how not to give him any leads to pick on. This turned out to be harder than I expected:
1. I'm Big (shut up)
2. I'm Arab (...*ahm*....and proud of it?)

So I'm thinking: do I really want to tell him my full first name and add a 3rd reason for him to pick on me? .... too little time, he's approaching .. I panic... and I hear:

What's your name?
*I'm sweating..
ahh... Al...

... So he ignores the fact that I'm big (maybe it's not that noticeable :D) or that I'm Arab (who am I kidding :S) and he exactly knew what I was doing with my name .... damn those telepathic stand up comics, he went on and on on how I was giving a short name because I am thinking if I give my full name, no one will understand anything and the whole club was laughing at me.

You might have won this battle Random Stand Up Comic Guy, but your time will come.

Max Weight: 1000 KG

What's with the obnoxious "Maximum Weight" signs that are in every elevator? And why do they always mention the maximum KGs and then translate this to how many persons? Isn't this in a way the elevator telling me that to be counted as one person here you need to have an average weight of 76.9KG!

And why do we need the maximum number of persons on the sign? Did you ever see 2 people walk into an elevator that usually fits 8 people and the elevator's overweight buzzer went on? Doesn't the buzzer always go on as soon as one last person squeezes into the elevator? So maybe, just maybe that weight and volume are linked somehow? I know it's a crazy idea, but hear me out: if an elevator is designed to take the WEIGHT of 8 people then by the laws of Physics it's more likely to have enough VOLUME for 8 people, right? Because even if you have people who are taking more than their share of weight, they are doing the same to the volume!

That said, I hereby demand that all the evil elevator corporations increase their weight / volume ratio and therefore remove the offensive Max Weight signs from all elevators. Let's however keep the overweight buzzer, it can come in handy if you are transporting your Gold bars in the elevator.