Just two folks living abroad in the land down under…

We live on a street that is still undergoing fairly heavy construction. Many buildings are not close to completion, some are still empty lots and most of the street is paved right up to our building where it becomes dirt.

This is actually quite enjoyable, really. Because of all the construction we have a lot of Egyptian laborers living on the street, in the unfinished buildings. In other parts of our neighborhood the streets are practically devoid of Egyptian life, except for the bowabs and security guards. But we have something extra - roaming vendors who cater specifically to the working folks.

Much like the food vendors at a sporting event, each has their distinctive call. After much deliberation, we can tell exactly who is coming down the street by their particular call. Sometimes it's the lemon guy, sometimes the steel wool guy, sometimes someone else. But they're part of the regular cast of characters on our street, and after talking to people who live in other areas I couldn't think to want to live on a street without them.

So today you get to guess what some guy is selling. Attached to the bottom of this post is a link to a short video I shot off our balcony that captures their call, and because of the zoom, a better view of them than I get from the balcony. But it's the call that's important.

But I'll make it easy on you and make it multiple choice (they're all real options):

1. Lemon guy
2. Steel wool guy
3. Beggar
4. Beans guy
5. Security guy
6. Tool sharpener guy
7. Gas tank guy
8. Electric bill guy

Leave your guess in the comments, along with a why you think that.

First to guess the correct answer gets, um, something. Maybe. Probably just fame.

We did something that we don't often do when we walk around out neighborhood, we took a cab. Now, it's not that we don't like taxis or that it's difficult to find one, we just like to walk. It's just good exercise. It's also nice that we feel safe walking everywhere.

But, it was almost 1am after dinner and we were exhausted, so we split a 4 EGP cab ride with a friend of ours. The guy had no idea where he was going to I had to walk him in: "yemel" (right) "shemean" (left) "alatool" (straight) and so forth. It's kinda fun actually.

So we get out of the cab, he drives down just a bit to make a u-turn at the intersection and drives back past us on his way out. Just that moment, Tanya reaches into her pocket and realizes her phone is missing. With a look of mild panic she tears off down the street after the taxi yelling "Bas!" "Bas!" (stop!) in a pretty close foot race. It's not that she's fast, the cabs are actually pretty slow. But 50 horsepower is better than none and he was getting farther away.

And then the street came to life.

The guy at the vegetable stand down the road took off after him. A guard at the end of the street started chasing. A taxi that was picking someone up left his fare standing there and drove off after the other cab. Someone at the far end actually stepped out into the road in front of the cab.

Yes, he stopped.

A few moments search in the cab found the phone in the back seat just between the cushions where it fell out of her pocket. Then the cabbie apologized to us. He apologized to us because our phone fell out of our pocket. It was in arabic, and I could just pick out the word for sorry, but I knew what he was saying. I replied with "mish mushkela" (no problem) and Tanya was pointing at herself saying "anna" "anna" (I). We don't know "my fault" so pointing at yourself saying "I" seems to do the trick.

Of course on our way back everyone that was chasing was laughing too, tis the price you pay. But it was a fun laugh, not mocking.

As for that cab that went chasing? He turned around, picked up his fare, and went on his way.

I'm still floored.

Update on the concrete air situation, so you can all stop messaging me asking how it is…  The wind picked up later that night and blew out the especially choking portions of it.  The next day didn't smell or taste of concrete at all - it was back to the standard lung burning pollution.

Goodie.

The smell and taste of concrete is everywhere. It's all I can smell. It's all I can taste. It's almost all I can see. Looking out the window, one is confronted with a light gray haze as far as you can see - which isn't very far at all. Buildings across the street are slightly obscured, more than two or three blocks is completely gone. It's like a fog. A really bad tasting, bad smelling fog.

That fog is concrete dust from the factories in Helwan, which is somewhat south of us. Apparently they kicked up production, and the result is a haze over everything, everywhere. It's inescapable. All of Cairo is in a giant concrete dust cloud. Even out by her school, kilometers the other way, the dust is there.

There is no wind to blow it away, so it just lingers. Even though this is the khamseen (windy) season, it's eerily still.

I sat around today with a towel over my mouth and nose so I could breathe without smelling it for a little while. Aside from the truly unpleasant sensation it brings, it's also exhausing. Something about being in it makes you want to do nothing, go no where. Sleep is tough; we both feel like we haven't been to bed in two days.

We're a good distance away from these factories; I can't imagine, don't want to imagine, what the guys working there must be breathing in.

There are a sounds that are tough to miss. Sounds that instantly make you take notice. Squealing tires followed by a dull thud are one of those. If you've never heard it, I assure you, it gets your attention.

"Something happened in the street" I called to Tanya and we both quickly made our way to the balcony.

About two doors down, a crowd was gathering in the street in front of a small red car. It had it's lights on, the door was open, but the driver was obviously out in the crowd. The car didn't look damaged and it was parked in the middle of the road.

"I think he hit someone." I mentioned. "Yea, but I don't see anything" came the reply.

The crowd was thick and probably about 20 strong at this point. There was a lot of pointing, a lot of yelling, and a dramatic re-enactment of someone going out in front of the car from the side of the street.

"I think I see something" she mentioned. "On the ground, in front of the car."

And as the crowd began to trickle away you could see someone sitting on the ground holding something to their head. As the crowd continued to thin out, the person was pulled to their feet and checked for stability.

"That's a kid"

"Probably ran out in front of the car"

The kids play in that area all the time, random games that usually involve darting in and out of the street. Our guess is that someone darted out as the car came, and that was the subject of the dramatic re-enactment.

As the kid was picked up, the stability test was passed, and everyone finally dispersed - including the driver who just drove off.

Let that sink in for a moment.

A car hits a kid. Kid is clearly injured in some way, though not severely enough that they can't get going again. Everyone gathers to figure out what happened and apparently the kid was at fault.

Instead of getting the police and lawyers involved, playing pass the blame and sue for more money, they just go on about their lives and the kid takes responsibility for their actions.

Imagine that. Someone took responsibility for their actions.

Sad state when I had to go half way around the world to see that.

What amazes me every time we go out to the pyramids at Giza are all the people who think you're there to do one of three things:

1. Buy cheap trinkets
2. Buy a camel ride
3. Buy a horse ride

One would hardly believe that you actually went there to view the impressive 4500 years of vertically stacked history immovably placed there in the desert. You're viewing the pyramids, why on earth would you not want to purchase a cheap plaster Sphinx with a clock for a face?

But this time, we fooled them. We actually went there to buy a horse ride hoping they would try to sell us a pyramid.

Along the outside boundary of the Giza plateau are literally dozens of stables. That's a pretty loose use of the word, most of the establishments renting horseback rides by the hour are little more the ground floor of someone's flat turned into saddle storage. If you're wondering where the horses go, that would be out front, in the street, tied up to the wall.

I'm not going to sugar coat this. The way the majority of these places treat their animals is truly horrific. Even by my can't-tell-a-horse-from-a-donkey eye these animals are abused. They are poorly fed, ribs and hip bones are clearly showing, teeth are missing, open sores and barely healed over older ones are clearly visible. Saddles that look like they're made from sheets of plywood are thrown onto backs that curve more than their horseshoes. Many animals are clearly well past their prime and will be ridden into their grave. Their food is dropped on the ground in front of them, on top of the pile of manure they stand in.

Not all are like this, some of the stables are actual stables where the animals are clearly much better taken care of. They're no where near grazing happily in the rolling fields status, but they're not terribly neglected either.

The difference between the two levels of stable is very clear, and really the only thing that you can do is not do business with the ones that clearly abuse their animals. Unfortunately this means that the current ones in the "stable" aren't going to do well, but at least they won't be able to afford to buy any more to abuse in the future. That's really the only way to make any of it stop. By exclusively doing business with the ones that treat their animals well they'll be able to take better care of their animals. It's unfortunate, but true.

Some of her coworkers had identified the best stable they could several months ago and ride there exclusively. The two of them have horses back in the States and know what to look for, so we just went with their recommendation. As I had never ridden a horse before, I was given one that had two speeds. Alive and dead. It was on the alive setting, which was enough to get around. Tanya's horse had an extra setting, solitary. If another horse got near her, she would freak out and run away. One of the other teachers had Satan itself, apparently snapping halfway through the ride and attempting to throw her by going back on two legs and taking off.

But all in all, it was rather entertaining.

I didn't take any photos of the terribly abused horses, it was a combination of I couldn't bear to and I had the wrong equipment with me, so you'll have to make do with these that I managed to take while riding. Taking photos while riding is just not an easy thing to do.

Last night one of the apartments across the street from us began stringing lights from their balcony to the lamp post across the street.  Decorations were going up and preparations were clearly being made for something festive.  We kind of assumed that it was a wedding celebration as those are the only ones we see people pulling out all the stops for.

Their little shindig was a bit slow to get going, by midnight only a handful of people had shown up to sit on the balcony - mostly teenage kids, guys and girls.  Everyone was dressed up nice, the guys in suits and girls in fancy wear.  The music was blasting and everyone was having a good time.

Then for no apparent reason what-so-ever one of the guys walks out into the middle of the street, reaches to the back of his pants, pulls out a gun and fires off eight rounds into the air.  A round of high-fives go around and they all scramble to pick up the brass.  The gun is handed to someone else to points skyward and lets eight fly.  They all scrambled to pick up the brass again, but apparently only found seven.

A little fit of panic ensues as the girls come out to help look for the spent casings along with the guys.  Some are pacing slowly, some start pushing a car out of the way to look under it, all are visibly nervous.  See, in a country where guns are very illegal, the police have their own sense of justice, and in a very heavy foreigner neighborhood where they're a bit ancy, extra casings lying around would be a wee bit bad.

We realized though that if this guy had let eight fly only one block over from us, he would have taken eight to the chest from the rather bored and heavily armed guards that are posted through the rest of our neighborhood.  But because we appear to live on the most non-foreigner street in our area, it was no big deal. 

Our street is heavily under construction so we see a lot of what you would consider traditional Egyptian things.  The fuul (beans) guy walks by every morning, the lemon guy sells lemons, and random other services make their way up and down for the hundreds of construction guys that live in the unfinished buildings with their families.  Just one street over, none of this happens, and frankly it would be a bit boring without it all.

I've received a few emails regarding the clocks in Vista.  Yes, there are different ones you can select from - eight of them to be precise.  For your viewing pleasure, here they are.  These are all actual size, cropped right off my desktop.  As you can see, some are a little better regarding being able to tell the time.  Some are much worse.  Some the designer should be dragged out to the parking lot for.

Clear dialogues to the user are key element of a good experience.  It’s where you find out what’s going on and what you can do about.  Cryptic messages do nothing except make you angry, frustrated, and potentially make a bad situation worse.  On the plus side, it does help keep me employed by figuring out just how to fix something.

As Vista is supposed to deliver a great user experience, one would guess they would have really nailed the system dialogue issue.  Let’s take a look.

Here is one of the better dialogues from Vista:

The header is asking me what to do, and telling me why it’s asking.  Then I get a pair of options with the implications for each (well, one of them at least) listed.  It’s short and to the point.  I can understand this and get on with things.

I would probably switch the header and explanations around to say what’s going on first then ask me what to do.  Something like this:

There might be a problem with some files on this device or disc.

This can happen if…

Do you want to scan and fix 2GB FLASH (G:)?

  ->  Scan and fix (recommended)
         This will prevent…

  ->  Continue without scanning

However, it’s not incomprehensible.

Something like this example on the other hand:

I’m not really sure where to start with this one.  

First of all, the problem that brought about this dialogue was not that my modem or router was not available - so it was wrong to begin with.  The actual problem is that I had not yet entered the wireless encryption code for my router, but it was certainly available.

Let’s start at the bottom, the two that are options for the system – get new settings or reset the adapter.  That’s fine, I’m telling the system what to do.  The first is just a mess.   The action is an explanation, the actions are for me, or someone else, and it’s just confusing.  And none of these would have solved anything.  By making it an option am I telling myself to do something when I click it?

Turning up the confusing meter a bit, let’s see what happens when you try to copy a file to a destination that already has a file of the same name.

So we’ve moved from the gray/black copy to web link blue copy for no apparent reason.  How many designers did we have on this again?

The instructions tell me to click the file I want to keep, but my options are “Copy and Replace” or “Don’t Copy” or “Copy, but keep both files”.  Just to add some flavor, we have a “Skip” and “Cancel” button down there.

I know what I’m doing and this confuses me every time that I see it.  It hurts me just to talk about it.  I’m still not sure which file is the one I’m copying.  Is the first one listed the one that I’m copying to somewhere, or is it the one I might overwrite?  You sure?  You want to bet all the changes that you just made on that?

Be prepared to re-interpret this screen every time you see it.

Another one of my favorites:

How exactly will my audio files speed up my system with Windows ReadyBoost?  I suppose if I had some Nine Inch Nails on there it could get it going in an angry sort of way, but what if I have The Smiths on there?  Will it crawl to a stop in a depressed little heap?

There are plenty more examples, don’t think that things will be clearer for you coming from another version of Windows.

You've heard it time and time again, security is Vista's strong point. Sitting in the middle of all this security is something called UAC - User Account Control. Much has been written on the topic . How it is supposed to protect the user and the computer, how it separates tasks into regular user and administrator type activities, how it will reduce support calls and costs…

What doesn't seem to have been written on it is what it's like to live with every day, what it's like to interact with when you're renaming or deleting files, moving folders around, the basic things that one does with their computer.

Here is a simple example. Renaming a folder.

Right click on the folder and select Rename.

The folder name becomes editable, as it always has. Enter the new name.

You'll be asked to confirm that you do, in fact, want to change the folder name.

And then you'll be asked permission to do what you just confirmed you wanted to do.

This doesn't seem to bad if you just describe that the system is asking to protect itself. Now, the next folder you'll rename does the same thing. And the one after that, and after that, and after that.

Deleting a file does the same thing. Moving folders around does it. Rearranging things in the Start Menu does it. Two, three extra clicks for everything. It's tough to imagine how anything could have been intentionally designed to be so irritating.

This is not increased security, it's putting the responsibility on the user. If you install spyware, it's your fault. You told it to. If you get a virus, it's your fault, you allowed it to.

Now you get to tell Grandma' that yes, it really is her fault and she broke it.

Microsoft says they dramatically rearchitected the OS to provide this level of protection. Why bother? That's right, so you could blame the users and not the company when systems get infected.

I was working on someone's PC the other day, trying to get rid of a nasty trojan on her system. I was in the Windows folder deleting files the trojan left behind. Have you ever gone into the Windows folder? There's all sorts of stuff in there, random programs just get to write there if they feel like it's necessary.

Why? Why on earth does an OS allow anything to be written to it's system folder? Why isn't this protected, held sacred? Why not rearchitect the OS to tell programs to keep hands off the system folder? "No, you can't touch that. That's the system. Sorry." How many infections could be prevented if things were not allowed to just modify the system folder, permission or not?

A few months ago Symantec and McAfee were complaining they couldn't get kernel level, the lowest level there is, access to the system for their programs. They claimed that Microsoft was pushing them out of the market. I can't say that I would be sad to see them go if the operating system was inherently secure, if things were held sacred - like where the OS lives. But instead we have to live with terribly bloated programs drilling their way into base levels of the system to "protect" us on the most secure OS that Microsoft has ever produced and having the onus of dictating our own security.

And yes, UAC has been turned off of my system since last night. Less secure? I don't care, I'm going back to XP anyway.