Happy New Year (well, in China)

I just came back from the Chinese New Year Celebrations in London (supposedly second to China's celebrations). Well, as the picture attest, there certainly were a lot of people in Trafalgar square for the event but the stage was a bit small so we couldn't see much of the action. We did peruse the square though and saw some hallmarks of Chinese culture such as Chinese food and cheap Chinese imports.

The weather is cold today but very sunny. There is a biting wind coming from the North which keeps us on our toes. This is the year of the dog and I wish every good fortune in 2006!

This is for my little cousin Gabriel

My cousin Gabriel got angry at me for not writing a blog in over two weeks. I agree with him! Life seems to move either too quickly or too slowly some times. Since our arrival in London, life has been extremely busy with school. I now realized the amount of work it takes to be a student with the non-existence of weekends (although the breaks between sessions are very nice).

I am taking four university courses: Strategic Management, Corporate Assets and Financial Markets, Applied Corporate Finance and International Markets. It seems like we have something to hand in or complete every week but that is good because it builds discipline into the students (something I desperately need sometimes).

I have been in London over the course of the month of January, getting used to living alone again (for those of you just joining my blog, my girlfriend Jessica was here on visit for 10 weeks and left for Canada on January 10th). It was very nice to have her over and extremely hard to see her leave but it was for the best as this blog will attest.

You see, she was still having stomach problems. She ran a series of test in Ottawa and the preliminary test showed e.coli in her system. A refinement to the original diagnostic showed she did not have e.coli (but was never told). She eventually had to go to the emergency room in Waterloo last week because of the pain. The emergency doctor did an ultrasound and found a strange mass over her ovaries and putting pressure on her pancreas (which inflammed it and made the pain worse). She is scheduled for a catscan this Wednesday to understand what this mass is (cancerous or benign) but it has both of us very worried. I will let you know what comes of it next week.

Other than that, I have helped organize a LSE microfinance event on Wednesday, January 25th which was very successful (53 participants). Our next scheduled event is February 8th. And my cousin, my aunt and my mother are going to arrive in about a month!

Pictures, pictures, everywhere...

Well, I think this deserves a post just by itself. In case you are curious about the trip and want to see some of them, click away (we took over 500 pictures during our trip. This is only a flavour of them... You can thank me later).

Egypt Pictures (December 10th to December 21st)

Tunisia Pictures (December 22nd to December 24th)

Morocco Pictures (December 25th to January 3rd)

Spain Pictures (January 4th to January 6th)

Enjoy!

Back in London...

Well, if you thought Spain is nice in January, you are up to a rude surprise. But it was a great lead-in to our return to London. Sevilla was nice and sunny but chilly. Barcelona was just plain wet and cold.

We arrived in Algeciras after our boat left Tanger 2 hours late because the previous boat couldn't leave (for unknown reasons). This made us miss the last bus to Granada (and subsequently where charged 50% of the room fare for our hotel in Granada given we called to cancel the day of the booking... tip: never give the correct credit card number to confirm reservations.)

We decided to make our way directly to Sevilla. It was a good choice given the city is just so beautiful. Although we missed the culture and the amazing history in North Africa, it was so nice to be in a beautiful european city once again (and have a McDonalds in walking distance). Our hotel was great (with hot water all the time and toilet paper! Yes, these things were priceless. There wasn't even a smell in the room. Closest thing to paradise in a while!)

We visited the city the next day and tried to change our reservation in Barcelona from one night to three nights given we had changed our plans (wanted to spend some extra time in London before Jessica's departure from London on the 10th of January). We unfortunately had not chosen the right hotel in Barcelona. Hotel Mari-Luz (not to be recommended to anyone) had a clever policy. If you modified your booking less than 48 hours before the beginning of your stay, you were automatically billed for 2 nights. This was in the fine print in the four-page e-mail sent to us to confirm the reservation (and not mentioned in the phone call made to confirm the reservation). We were blatantly told this on the telephone. Not wanting to carry out a dispute over the payphone (especially when the euros were ticking away on my card), we decided to fight this more appropriately on their turf.

While in Sevilla, I also discovered that my Spanish was not only lacking in vocabulary but it was not being very well understood. I blame the many dialects in Spain but I must admit that people were hurtfully rude when you tried to speak Spanish. It was like I was spitting on them. I decided to speak English, faking an American accent and received much better results. Mind you, not a bloody Sevillian spoke more than 5 or 6 words of English but they pointed, smiled and made wild gestures to explain things when I spoke English. Strange, eh? It's like they didn't want me to speak Spanish. Much different from my experience in Mexico.

Once we arrived in Barcelona, we intelligently avoided a fight with the management of the hotel by explaining we were both tired (it was past 10pm). We had to wait till the next morning to argue our way out of paying for 2 nights. Not that the price per night was that much (40 euros per night or 50 CAD) but because in principle, given I had called a day in advance of our arrival to modify my reservation when every other hotel would have gladly made the change free of charge and because they were so rude about it, I decided to fight it for 30 minutes until the guy gave in, gave me back my passport and relinquised his threat to bill us. Jess was very proud of me and said I did great (you could hear our argument accross the hostel given the walls were paper thin).

We flew out of Spain on the 6th arriving in London and greatly releaved to hear the Shakespearing tongue again (even if they call underwear, pants). We spent the next 2 days resting (i.e. watching a lot of TV and movies... we were entertainment deprived for 26 days!). And yesterday, we saw Brokeback Mountain at the movies (a real movie!). We also walked on the Thames, had a pint of Guiness and ate at Wetherspoons (fish and chips, baby!). Isn't it great to be back?

Last day in Morocco

Well, we are finally arriving at the end of North African tour. Having spent the last 23 days in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, we can honestly say we have a greater appreciation of the area, the arab, berber and bedouine cultures and muslim faith although we have so much more to learn.

Our stay in Fès was both strange and interesting. The city is beautiful and its old Medina is very impressive (feels like we went back to the 12th century... especially the fruit and vegetable market). However, Jess and I felt stares in the new city of Fès and felt very unwelcome at some places. The good news was finally having taxis with meters (i.e. we were not getting overcharged. We now use the taxi to get everywhere because it is so convinient).

What Fès has to offer above all else is its role as the artistic capital of Morocco. It is the center of manufacturing of many artistic pieces including rugs, silver, metal, leather and pottery products. Jess made some purchases and I kind of wish I had (although we did make some more purchases in Meknès). Our hotel was very cold and the hot water could only be used between 7:00 and 9:00 AM which was akward (plus it was not that hot). Our hotel in Meknès is the absolute opposite (friendly staff, heater in the room, hot, steamy showers). You end up appreciating these little pleasures while travelling.

We do miss television and entertainment. We tried to find a cinema in Meknès that plays movies (mostly dubbed in French) at a reasonable time but most movies started past 9:00 PM and we need to take an early train tomorrow. We'll have to wait till London!

The last leg of our trip is in Spain. Tomorrow, we will see a remake of bus, trains and boats (but no automobiles!). We will be taking a train early tomorrow for about 6 hours until we arrive in Tanger. There, we will be taking the boat over to Algeciras (without too much hassle we hope!). Then we have to take a 4 hour bus ride to Granada where we will stay the night. We then hope on another bus to Sevilla (about a 3 hour bus ride). Finally, we will fly to Barcelona and stay one day before flying into London on January 6th. We cut our trip short by two days to appreciate a few more peaceful days in London before Jessica flies back to London.