Cairo is The Re-incarnation of Hell

I have been to some bad places in my working career but Cairo is by far the worse place I have ever been to, travelling dwon side roads full of piles of rotting refuse and goats and chickens and Donkeys full of old cars and millions of people, just a vision of hell that i would never want to witness again. I have seen some of the ancient wonders fo the world and they are fantastic but to imagine a civilisation that could create such wonders and now to think it has come to this, the whole city looks like one nightmare movie about over-population and bad city design. The whole place is a constuction site with quarries for the materials everywhere, just horrific to think people have to live and work in this nightmare. I will never visit this place again just because of it, I loved the ancient pyramids and the temples of the Pharoas but this country is going to hell as fast as possible. I will post all the pics over the next couple of weeks but i am still in Madrid and trying to feel like going back to work.

The Metro Station Names, Come on and get a life Spain

We are using the metro to get about in Madrid and normally you expect the names to represent the streets that they emerge at, or something else suitable, but what about if they are all named after people, it doesn't really give you a clue to where you are, you need that route map and a wirelessly connected device to understand where your going. I was intrigued as to whom the stations are named after, Like Guzmen El Bueno, ( Translation, Guzmen the good) it appear that he was a commander of the king Phillip the 2nd, well he was put in chgarge of the Armada that attempted to conquere England, and spain now names a station after the largest naval failure in ancient history,

What about Gregorio Marañon, a doctor who wrote marital guides on sex.

Another great one is Duque De Pastrana, a portugese upstart who kiissed the ass of King Phillip for 30 years and married well, why name a station after him, just insane.

Garcia Noblejas another hopeless attempt at giving a station a name after an assinated nobody, why attempt to name stations after people who nobody will ever bother reading about or who just becasue they had connections with royal families had power and money but never di anything other than line their own pockets.

Spain get over the past get some real names and start living in the 21st Centuary

The Prado Musuem, Large Catholic Overdose

Well I have seen some of the best art museums in the world and the Prado was not in that class, the problem is that most of the wealth of spain was created 500 years ago and was lost before the Brotoish empire took over the world, so all the art here is from the 300-500 years ago , now I know that the Catholic church is big here but how many pictures of jesus on the cross can you look at in one day, and how many times can i look at Madonna and child, it was boring, very boring, There were a few highlights, the rubens room was OK, large fat rotund ladies mostly naked, how they got passed the catholic censors I dont know, and the picture of Madonna squirting milk into the mouth of some saint from 3 mters away was spectacular in its porn image.

The other museums were the Thyssen museum, that was fantastic, great quality and many world famous pictures,

The other was The Queen Siphia modern art, it was shite beyond belief, I have to blog more about that one alone, modern art is just a moneymaking con job, Pcasso was a con man of the highest order, just shite, cubism is bullshit, drug induced painting. nuff said

Off to Sunny Egypt

well the travel thing never ends, not that I am unhappy with going to Egypt, it is just the interminable constant tedious travel, last sunday I drove for 11 hours, this was really tedious driving through the miserable desert hinterland of central Spain. So Saturday we catch the bus to Malaga 1 hour travel, not really boring as it is through the mountains. The 4 hour wait in Malaga is tedious, the 4 hours to Madrid is OK as i like trains, far better than planes as you can walk about and entertain yourself more easily. Then we have two days of checking out Madrid, for me this is the first time as a tourist, I want to go to the Prado Art Museum, supposedly one of the best in the world supposedly. Well then after that we travel to Cairo Monday to do the typical tour of the Ancient sites thing. But have you all seen how big Egypt is, it is Gi-friggin-normous, we spend 112 hours one night on a train, this may actually be one of the highlights of the trip as I love trains, did I mention that. we are supposed to see the pyramids, the cairo musuem, Tutankahmun treasures and his burial place, Luxor and Karnak, aswan and elephant island, I will have to check out what is on Elephant island, then as a relaxer for 5 days we are going to the Red Sea to do some snorkelling and eating and drinking and no travelling. So this trip is a trial of endurance and to see who snaps first, me the kids or the wife, or all together at the same time, not to forget that when i get home I travel to Equatorial Guinea for work for a month. I will try and update when i am away but i cannot speak for the sort of connectivity I can expect in Egypt, my buddy Zac was complaining about speeds from the work site he is at but they have their own sat dish and a throttled link. So off from one hot and sweaty country to another even more hot and sweaty country.

The Leaving Party

Saturday night we all went out for a meal at a posh eatery, we ate bits and pieces of things and the wine was nice and i had a guest from a suppliers company who also came, he paid my bill, that was good of him. We met up at a hotel where a couple fo the guys were staying and then onto this converted watermill i think it was. we spent all night eating laughing and joking, it was probably the best work party I have had in 6 years I have been working with this company. It is unusual to get so many nice guys working on the same project and I think I will be hard pushed to get another group of guys as good. Well until the next project we will see how they are.

Outside the posh Hotel




Oscar Doing his impression of a Red Indian




Hubert and Gregory, who's mother is English




Myself and Emilio and Stefano




The Lowe Family with the tinker trying to look sweet and innocent

San Fermin is a Joke and Bull running is both dangerous and Animal Torture

I have seen almost the entire San Fermin Festival and it is clear this is nothing more than the spanish version of Oktoberfest, we went in on Sunday morning at 7am to see the streets awash with drunken people, mountains of trash and the stinking urine laden gutters, it was something i wasn't expecting, this has turned into a money making exercise and nothing else, this sort of activity was last spoken about in the Bible, Sodom and Gomorrah, people were sleeping on the grass verges of the roads in the centre of the city, the police are forced to accept this sort of behaviour just because the city survives on the money from it. We had been told that people start queueing up at the fence along the bull run at 4.30am so as to get the best spot, this is crazy, all for a 3 minute run of the bulls, we arrived at the fence about 7.20am and got to within 2 meters of the fence but could see nothing, as the time came closer we got to 1 meter but could still see nothing, as the bulls came and went we were not sure if they had actually gone as you can here nothing above the runners who were pounding down the street, we heard an Oooooohh, when someone got gored by a bull but it was nothing more than 20 seconds and a total anti-climax. This sort of spectacle of bulls being frightened half to death by 10,000 screaming idiots who think it is fun to run with a dangerous animal, then they are ritually killed in the bull ring by a man who thinks he is special after the bull has been brutalised to exhaustion. The people are primitive savages and this whole event is now a joke, This year there was one death o a runner and a runner who was gored and tossed about like some horror movie and the TV replayed it over and over again, I was sure he was going to die but he is alive I think, so my advice is if you want drinking go to a beach resort or the Oktoberfest, dont get ripped off in Pamplona, my hotel was tripling the room prices for the week of the event.

Dangerous Bulls, this guy was speared and then picked up and speared again on the ground, like a rag doll, he lived luckily




Us at the Fence, couldn't see anything





He sat there for at least an hour, just for 15 seconds of bulls running passed




Looking down the street where the bulls run, balconies are expensive to rent by the day

My New Unbelievably Expensive Watch

I bought a watch while visiting a friends house in Tarragona, a nice little condo style residence close to the beach. I saw this watch a divers watch with Kinetic movement. I am a gadget freak just like my buddy Zac, and when i saw this huge watch i had to have it irrespective of the price, this watch costs what most folks earn in a year,





Only thing is, it is a fake, I bought it off a beach seller, I like fake watches for two reasons, not to make people believe it is real, but to get a great looking watch at a price of a normal watch, and if i get it stolen or it breaks then i just throw it away, but if i had paid the $15,000 for a real one, i would cry for a month, my best ever watch i had was a fake Rolex, it ran perfect for 3 years and when i changed the battery it never worked again, but it looked great.

Death While Running With The Bulls

Today a runner with the bulls died and the race had only lasted 5 seconds, this crazy spectacle is insane, you have 9 or 10 bulls that can run very fast and a track with 5 or 10,000 crazy guys all wanting to prove how brave they are running with the bulls, the bulls can hardly see where they are running and at the beginning of the race one bulls got disorientated and ran into the fencing and crushed a spectator, maybe gored with a horn or more likely just crushed with the immense weight and momentum of the bull. Is this what all the people of Pamplona want, a dead runner to encourage more poeple to come next year, i am going to have a look myself sunday and hopefully not see a dead runner, I totally disagree with the event and detest the bullfighting afterwards and hope that all the bullfighters get gored to death but not the runners , this event is 200 years past when it should have been closed for being stupid and dangerous.

Far too Many People to see the bulls coming

San Fermin, Running of the Bulls, even more Beer

This Monday was the start of the San Fermin Fiesta, which to most non Spanish is all about running with the bulls, this is the most insane and stupid even anyone in their right mind wouldn't consider, these bulls weigh up to 600-800 Kgs, and run far faster than a human, why do it?, to prove your manhood, or just stupidity, I think the latter is more the reason, these bulls that run are chosen so not to be aggressive but most injuries occur with folks just falling over each other and getting run over by the bulls, The worst aspect of all this is the huge amount of alcohol being drunk, just insane, it is called the "Chupinatzo", translated it means sucking alcohol until you fall over, these people just go crazy, drinking from 12 noon and then for 24 hours basically, the streets run with rivers of urine. Then all the clowns want to start fighting, my colleagues were out taking a leisurely drink as most Italians do and found themselves confronted by a stinking drunk Spanish clown, he just wanted to fight but was too drunk to be a danger, he had been fighting many times and had a beating but still wanted to fight everyone.

Fighter




Drunkeness




Running with the bulls is Dangerous