Religion. Algerians. Election.

These days I am feeling great, for various reasons.

I have a plan for the next 3-4 years and that is very exciting. I think having a positive and well defined vision brings the best out of people and hopefully of me as well in the years to come. I will not share it yet here as it is still under construction, I can only tell that it is really empowering!

I had a great trip a week ago going through Sinai, one day I was on top of a 2285m peak at 0 degrees Celsius, the next I was relaxing by the beach and snorkeling for colored fish in the coral reefs. Life is so simple and beautiful! I was on Mount Sinai, a holy place for 3 religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.



This trip and a few other findings while in Egypt changed my perspective on religion; I am more at peace with it now. I even went to see a movie about Islam and then a Q&A, it was quite revealing. At one point the speaker gave the example of a person in a hotel:

Q: Why is he there?
A: Let’s say his company asked him to go on a business trip and booked him a room in that hotel. Or he is working there. Or he came there to meet someone who is staying at the hotel … or other explanations.

then

Q: Why is a person on this Planet?
A: the answer is much more complicated than the one with the hotel. Many people don’t know the answer to this question; usually each person finds its own answer. But some people don’t find answers and they are just floating through life, receiving what life offers. They guy almost said it: “for those who don’t have an answer there is God to guide them” …

I would also add “Do you know what you should and shouldn’t do in a hotel?”… “How about on this Planet?” …


Some other very interesting things happened.

One of them is the Egypt-Algeria football dispute which deteriorated the relations between the two countries. Now many Egyptians feel that Algerians have something against Egyptians so they also hold anger against Algerians … Inside Egypt this led to an interesting rise of patriotism, now many of the billboards on my way to work are with Egyptian flags and nationalistic slogans like “Proud to be Egyptian!” … For me this is a confirmation of the “common enemy” theory which says that if people have something against the same individual/group they become much more united themselves.

Another one is the presidential election in Romania. It proved to me how powerful this democratic tool really is, how much it can mobilize people and politicians. The good news for me is that this is a really good sign for Romania, that democracy is working, people express their opinions, are heard and I feel politicians start respecting people’s vote much more than until now. When you win or lose by 70,000 votes then you really come to appreciate each vote, each person, each decision you take and each thing you do, as a politician. I am very optimistic for Romania, I think we are getting better and better, we are maturing though we are still norming and storming as a nation. But we will get to the performing phase as well. I am very motivated to return to Romania after some years.

Pictures from Sinai trip you can find here.

Garbage, Al Gore and the Russians

I had an amazing last week, gifted with great and unique events! It is for sure the most interesting so far in Egypt and one of the most enriching I ever had.

To start with, going to the event “Towards a Culture of Sustainable Communities, Economies and Environment” brought me face to face with a totally alien group of people – waste pickers aka garbage collectors. More on this topic in the previous post.
Part of this event I also got to see Annie Leonard – the producer of the “Story of Stuff” video, she was a great speaker.

I also saw Al Gore talk on climate change. It was the best live speech I’ve ever seen. Amazing ice-breaking jokes, dramatic tone, change of mood, high energy …
I will remember the one with “I used to be the next president of the US”; cannot stop thinking how the US and the world would be if he actually won against George W. Bush.
He mentioned a very shocking fact: US had used in 10 years cans worth the Aluminum quantity enough to build 25 times the world’s aviation fleet.
In his opinion, Egypt’s chance to grow economically and to become green at the same time is to engage and be the main hub for the Desertec project initiated by the Germans.
He ended with “political will is a renewable resource” which is very relevant for Egypt’s reality.
The guy sitting next to me was the manager of a private equity company. Before the speech he told me that he invests in dairy and other consumer goods business. After the speech I told him “you should invest in green energy”, he answered “I will” … that sounds promising …

I ended the week in Hurghada, one the most popular tourist destinations in Egypt on the Red Sea coast. Not really my type of place but I enjoyed it anyways once I found a very good beach, swam a bit, saw some fish, had great sea food and pharaoh massage: D
I have to mention that this place is dominated by Russians, I bet there a few oligarchs around, there was a lot of writing in Russian on the streets and many waiters and staff were talking Russian. One of them told me he learned after taking a 2 months course in town and by practicing a lot with the tourists, he even changed his name, Max!

The Hurghada experience came just 24h hours after walking around in the slum so I felt like being on a different planet … after all, this is what Egypt is for me …

The poorest poor

Going to the event “Towards a Culture of Sustainable Communities, Economies and Environment” brought me face to face with a totally alien group of people – waste pickers aka garbage collectors. It was an international meeting of activists dealing with issues of waste picking, people in poverty trying to make a living from collecting and recycling/sorting garbage.

I got to learn about it as it happens in South Africa, India and Egypt. In India banning them to go with their carriages on the streets dramatically worsened their situation. By privatizing garbage collection, it became property of the company collecting it so waster pickers lost their “raw material”. In Egypt, Christians used to eat pork meat. Because they ate it, they grew pigs and to feed them they were collecting garbage and feeding them with what was edible. So this is how they became garbage collectors and then they went on separating the garbage and become part of the recycling process. So in Egypt this is a job Christians do – from 60 to 90 %% depending on the slum. In the slum I was in, about 100 000 people were doing this. Then the swine flu came and the Egyptian government decided to kill all pigs in the country thinking those pigs can play a role in the further expansion of the flu. So they did! That had a devastating effect on the people from Mokattam as their main source of income and meat was gone. That deepened the poverty of the poorest people in Cairo. Now they are left with garbage collection/recycling, trying to make a living from that. If you’ve seen an industrial park with factories next to each other, then you can imagine how this neighborhood looks like. But instead of factory buildings you find buildings filled with trash, paper, glass, plastic, cardboard, cans, PVC etc. And at the upper floors of those same buildings or just next to them people are living. I was shocked by this image of this 2-3 years old child sitting in a trash bin and eating something from his hand … A lot of child labor in this “garbage” industry, other kids like them go to school and watch TV or play computer games after school. These were helping their family earn a living. In the slum I saw 3 recycling schools, one for boys on shampoo recipients and 2 for girls, one on e-waste and one on textile and recycled paper production. The concept of the schools was “learn and earn” …

Something I will remember for a long time is the people separating broken glass with bare hands and the recycling lines for plastic, the black, the blue, the green …
Our guide thinks that 2 things played a huge role in the development of this community. First was religion and the fact that they build a complex of 7 churches in the neighborhood which are very impressive, carved in the mountain and to which even rich people come in pilgrimage. The second was technology which allowed them to become more productive so earn more.

As an individual there is something very simple I can do to help this people – separate the trash when I put it into bags. One simple rule is to put the dry with dry and wet with wet, this way it will be much easier for them to separate it. Or even better, separate plastic, paper, metal, organic …

please watch this video to get a better view of what i am talking about.

2nd impressions on Egypt

So I am back in Egypt and this time there is more to it. I had 2 offers from Microsoft, one from Egypt office and the other from the office in Dubai and I decided to go for Egypt, a decision I took on my second trip here ... finally!

Until summer 2010 I will be in Egypt working on CSR advancing and delivering public-private partnerships aka PPPs to serve the interests of Egypt, Microsoft and the other stakeholders. A very interesting assignment and will hopefully bring me closer to an area which I currently have a keen interest on, socio-economic development in the context of poorly developed or developing countries.

I will post more impressions about the job once I get into it.

Being in Egypt now is so much more different than it was 3 weeks ago due to Ramadan. In a nutshell being Muslim requires a person to do 5 things:
- recite "I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God and i Testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God"
- pray 5 times a day
- giving based on accumulated wealth
- pilgrimage to Mecca and
- fasting during Ramadan

So now since we are in the month of Ramadan people are fasting from sunrise to sunset. Because of this daily life is totally changed. The working hours are less, many restaurants are of course closed, people are said to be better etc. Traffic is totally crazy at night especially in the few hours after iftar, the dinner to break the fast; it is hard to imagine how much traffic there is with millions of people moving at the same time from one place to another. So around 6-6.30 they have a first meal and then many stay awake until 3-4 am when they have another meal.
I went out last night with some Egyptians. We met at 2 am and went for a tea, after we looked around for a place to eat which was actually hard as there were hips of people everywhere wanting to eat. So at 3-30 we ate and at 4 we headed home and went to sleep. Today I am fasting as well being of course still full from the 3-4 am meal i had last night. That is the trick!!! :)
And a third things which really made an impression on me was people "dancing" in the mosque. After the call to prayer after iftar I saw in the huge mosque in El Hussein a bunch of some 200 men making dancing like moves and chanting, they were standing up and moving from left to right on a rithm, waving their hands and chanting ... wow!


One more thing to mention on Egypt, Friday and Saturday which is of course not my normal routine and last Sunday I was telling myself "This is Monday! This is Monday!" so I can get my act together for work.

on the 9th I am back in Romania, where i will handle documents for coming to Egypt, attend a wedding, a music festival and also meet relatives and friends.

Trip to Egypt

Last week I’ve been to Egypt for a business trip. Fortunately I stayed for the weekend as well. A fascinating country and my time there was full of new and interesting experiences. Here are a few:
- I visited the Egyptian Museum where thousdands of objects are displayed, especially from the time of the Pharaohs. I was particularly impressed by Tutankhamun’s room and horrified by how ugly the mummies are, especially the one with broken skull. In Coptic Cairo I found fascinating the existence itself of churches and synagogues
- The famous Giza pyramids are just on the outskirts of the city. They are very impressive and next to them, humans look like ants. For some reason, the Sphinx made a huge impression on me.

- In Cairo, my hotel room was at the 16th floor and in the first night at the 17th floor there was a traditional Egyptian party – that kept me awake for a while …
- Dahab on the Read Sea is one of the most peaceful and relaxing places I’ve been to. Amazing sunrise over the Saudi Mountains and the Gulf, clear and warm water, coral reefs accessible within seconds after getting in the water with amazing water life – great place for snorkeling and diving to see thousands of aquatic beautiful creatures. One of the most interesting for me was seeing Nemo and a black long fish attacking a weak octopus and then she spread the brown ink and the fish left …
- Food portions are huge and besides that on the house they can bring a lot of appetizers. Since coming back I constantly feel my stomach full though it is time to eat :) I got to eat filled pigeons, rabbit, quail, lots of fish and sea fruits; the most disgusting thing was the veal marrow soup … beee!
- Smoking shisha is a national sport and is very cheap, from 0.5 to 3-4 EUR the most expensive one. I even saw someone with a shisha in the car, on the right seat
- Many buildings are almost finalized but not totally. There is some law that if they finalize it, including exterior they need to pay taxes. Because of that many people don’t finalize them and the color of the house is that of the bricks. Altogether looks like a brown city, especially when looking at it from the plane ... but people dont pay taxes and save some pounds
- Cairo is very crowded, full of old cars which pollute a lot. Since streets weren’t conceived for so many cars they build streets on top of the streets :) ... also it is not rare that you can find camels and donkey on the streets
- Being an oil producing country (they don't export much), petrol is very cheap and so are taxis. For the high quality cab I took to airport I paid some 6-7 EUR for 20 km or so.
- Until recently there was a law saying that the landlord of a flat needs to rent the place to many generations of the successors of the rentees in case they die, recently they reduced it to one generation only. This law produced a lot of chaos since people didn’t want to rent their place anymore, rent was also fixed post first generation so one of my colleagues is paying for a flat in a very good area, 3 EUR a month …
- On the way back to Cairo the bus driver was smoking and since I was in the first row I told him I am allergic to smoke. He said “driver works, driver smokes! I arrange a place for you somewhere else!” So he went took a guy, sent him to the front seat and I took his seat … problem solved! At 3.30 am somewhere in the desert the bus stopped working; for 1.5 hours it was quiet, I could only hear cars passing by from time to time and the Qur'an playing loudly on the phone of one of the passenger. Finally another bus came and picked us up and made it to Cairo
- On the plane from Cairo to Istanbul, with Egypt Air, the flight started with a prayer in Arabic on the screen and ended with Tom & Jerry :)

Enjoy more photos on my facebook album Cairo & Dahab

Trip to Batumi, Georgia

Last week I came back from a 5 day trip to Batumi Georgia. First words coming to my mind: WOW! What a country!? What a culture and what a reality!? I am very impressed and was inspired by the place to share my impressions. At the end you also find some very useful tips in case you want to go there. Totally recommend it!

Let me start with giving some short facts about the country
- Situated in the Caucasus region of Europe, 4.4 million people, quite resource rich – not necessarily oil or gas
- Has its own language and alphabet which are world’s on its own - I am not aware of a language similar to it
- It was the second Christian country in the world after Armenia
- In The Second World War Georgia lost the biggest number of people as a country, in correlation to the number of entire country population – 800 000 people.
- It was part of the Soviet Union until 1991, after independence the economy collapsed under the impact of civil war and the loss of both preferential access to Former Soviet Union (FSU) markets and large budget transfers from Moscow. Output fell by 70 percent and exports by 90 percent, the worst decline suffered by any transition economy
- Strong reforms generated rapid growth from 2004 through mid-2008, reaching over 9% GDP growth and ranking 15th out of 181 economies rated by the Doing Business report 2009, 4 years back being ranked 112th - the only country to achieve such progress in a short term.

The place I visited, Batumi is a beautiful place, some of the best sights being:
- The Botanical garden – we were lucky to go in spring when everything was green and blossoming. It has South & North American, Australia, Mediterranean, South-East Asian sections and it was a huge relaxation to just be there and walk around it. A very beautiful place which I would visit over and over again.
- The boulevard – is the 1.5 km alley along the sea coast with palm trees, cafes , beach on one side and a park on the other side, passing by some great fountains. Sunset was breathtaking.
- Dancing fountains – as we were walking on the boulevard around 8 pm we heard classical music coming from the park. As we approached we saw it was coming from a fountain which was dancing on the music changing colors. We watched and listened for over an hour when the show finished, it passed as if it was 2 minutes. It was so intense and beautiful. The next day we learned about another one even bigger and more spectacular. And it was –this one was even projecting belly dancers on the water while playing oriental music or ballet during classical music
- In the same park there are 2 yards with birds. One with ducks, pelican, swans, pheasant, guinea fowls, quails and a few others. The other is with peacocks and pigeons. For bird lovers :)
- The local market is a place which speaks clearly about the local reality. On the local food market we discovered a lot of homemade cooked pork meat, butter, cheese, local sweets... Also, the market had domestic beef, pork, chicken, lamb meet. Its vegetables are imported from neighboring Turkey. You can find different kinds of honey for a good price (4 GEL for 0.4 l)
- The church place on the top of the hill, cannot remember its name but once you are in Batumi you will see what I am talking about. On the way up we went through the village and see how houses are organized and how life is like there. Once on the top of the hill the view is rewarding – a 360 view of the city, the Black Sea, hills, mountains and villages as far as 20-30 km. A good place to just take a deep breath, think of nothing, unplug yourself from daily life and enjoy the beauty in front of you – one of those moments when you want time to stop.
Besides these places there are quite a few we didn’t visit. For 5 days we were well entertained and felt like there is more to do.

The culture, the place, the reality – of course I will talk about the tip of the iceberg as I didn’t have time to penetrate the culture deeper
- People – amazingly warm, friendly and hospitable. True souls! It reminded me Rwandans somehow and their un-touched human goodness. Genuine characters! I wish I would interact more with them but language was a huge barrier. I could tell from the short conversations we had, their behavior and what was translated to me. There is also some sadness I could read – they weren’t smiling or laughing too much and they were wearing mainly grey or black. It is a country which had enough traumas just in the last 20 years and that I guess explains it.
- The food – loved it!! Shashlik which is fried marinated meat is delicious. Khinkali is Georgian dish also very delicious, the ones with cheese were my favorites. Also, I ate trout, my favorite fish!!! Khachapuri is another traditional food of bread and cheese, nothing complicated but some of them are very good. But the best things were the boiled and smoked fish (mackerel) and smoked cheese – they were truly delicious. The average price for a dinner in a restaurant – 10 GEL including tips without drinks.
- Development –I had the impression that Romania would have looked similar if we didn’t start re-developing our economy some 10 years ago. They started in 2004 so they are behind but the difference is much bigger than 5 years. Comparing to Turkey I can tell the difference is huge – in terms of infrastructure is easily noticeable, I didn’t see any factories and most of products in supermarkets are imported from Turkey, Ukraine mainly but also I’ve seen products from Belgium, France or olives from Italy …
- Wine – very very good especially after living in Poland and Turkey. They have hundreds of wines and they recognized as one the oldest producers of wine, they might even be the first ones to. The ones we tried and were very good: Khvanchkara, Tsinandali. Every day we bought a bottle of wine and poured it in our travelers bottle and were drinking from it the whole day, sip by sip J. You can easily find homemade wine at a fraction of the price in many stores or in the market – interesting ones to try. Prices for bottled wine vary from 5 to 20 GEL, domestic wine – 2,5 GEL for a 1l.

I feel this place has a fantastic potential for tourism first of all. It has so much to offer. I haven’t even been to Tbilisi, the mountains or the wine yards. They will need to improve infrastructure, services and their English. I will go back for sure and wonder around the country, it is a joy to be there.

Some useful things in case you are planning to go to Georgia and especially to Batumi:
- Transportation – you can get cheap flight from Pegasus, Onur Air or Sunexpress to Trabzon, from there take a bus to Hopa and then 1 or 2 dolmus to the border at Sarpi. You cross the border on foot and from the Georgian side take bus 101 to Batumi. In Batumi if you want to go to the church on the hill take marshrutka 140 or 155 and point to them that you want to go to church
- Accommodation – there are many places to stay in Batumi as it is a very popular touristic destination. We stayed at Hotel “Prestige” and we negotiated the price. If we would have told from the beginning that we will stay 5 days we would get an even bigger discount, like 30% off. This hotel is new and is very decent – would recommend it and is on the street on which bus 101 comes and goes to the border. The address is 26 May str., 62 (+995 222 7 71 19). It is 10-15 walk from the center. Average prices for hotels 40-70 GEL per night. I heard there is the option to stay with families which host tourists and is very cheap and you get to experience better the culture - next time I will try it but don’t know exactly how to look it up. I think they call them guest houses. Generally Batumi is full with hotels.
- Language – strongly preferred that you have a Russian speaker with you J
- Currency – called Lari and division called tetra. At the time I traveled 1 EUR = 2 GEL. There are exchange offices all over the city

Some useful websites
World Bank country brief
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/
photos on facebook Batumi Botanical Garden & Batumi, Georgia

riots on MY street

11.09.2001 – I was at home with my family enjoying last days of the summer vacation. We then saw on TV a news about a hijacked plane crashing in the WTC in NY. Minutes later news about another one ... from there on everybody knows what happened. I was shocked and couldn’t believe it was happening. But I felt safe in my home in a small city in Romania in our apartment.

In the years to come other events happened in London, Madrid, India, Pakistan etc. In the meanwhile I moved to Istanbul and since I moved here 2 terrorist attacks ocured, one at a mall and one at the British embassy. 23 people died and over 100 were injured. I was either out of Istanbul or the place of the attack was far from were I was so I felt safe. As if it happened somewhere thousands of kms from me ...

At the beginning of this week I was in Georgia while “police carried out more than 60 raids in İstanbul overnight against Islamist and lefitst militants suspected of planning "sensational attacks"”. 2 people died and 7 were injured in a shoot-out; a passing by teenager was one of the victims. Details

Some of the headlines in Turkey these days:
1915 events among Turks and Armenians branded by Obama as “great atrocities”, avoiding the g-word. Details
Ergenekon - an alleged clandestine, secular ultra-nationalist organization in Turkey with ties to members of the country's military and security forces which is accused of terrorism.

On top of all these May 1st came. In Turkey this a very special and delicate day as in 1977 over 30 people died, details
Since then May 1st was not an official day off in Turkey until this year when government decided to make it so. The trade unions, as usual wanted to make demonstrations so they did; it all ended up with molotov coktails being used, tear gas, water canons and stones. Details Zaman & Hurriyet.

Since I live close to Taksim where all these things happened MY street was also part of the events. Demonstrators, bricks form the pavements, men with sticks, broken windows, tear gas, water canons – I was watching all these from my terrase at the 6th floor. After a while I couldn’t stand as the pepper gas used by police was hurting my eyes and had to go inside. One of the active parties was called "Kurtulus Partisi", Kurtulus is also the name of my street which ends in Ergenekon street ...
21 police officers were injured and over 100 people were detained during May Day events in Istanbul.
Please see some of the pictures I took from MY house!!!

All these happened while we were preparing for a great Moroccan cous cous lunch on our terrase which we actually had after tear gas effect was gone :)

why worry? ...