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| Saturday, 19-Feb-2005 00:00 |
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hookah night
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everyone sucking hard at the hookah pipe to get the smoke going
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a pointing finger at james for sucking too hard!
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jp, toddy and uzi working hard
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first there were 4
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then there were 2
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then there left 1
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| Monday, 14-Feb-2005 00:00 |
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valentine's day
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view of the harbour bridge
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nicer view of the harbour bridge
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opera house peeking out
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close up of opera house
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facing north
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looking very pleased
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uzi surprised me today with two dozen electric pink roses and a lovely 2 hour dinner at the revolving restaurant called the summit off george street. we were really high up, about the 47th story, and in the 2 hours the restaurant made a 360 degrees revolution. dinner was very well presented and yummy, so i had no complaints. the sunset was just awesome and how lucky we were to be able to face the sun just as it slipped under the horizon. we hopped a cab home and hung out on my couch... which is red as you can tell by the last few pictures. i love my uziman! 
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| Monday, 24-Jan-2005 00:00 |
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that's ahmed and the buggy driver
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looking out of the buggy onto the market
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making faces as we got over a hump
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| Sunday, 23-Jan-2005 00:00 |
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colossi of memnon/valley of kings/hatshepsut and karnak temples
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in the dawn we saw aqueducts which ran alongside graveyards
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desert
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you know, it's a lot rockier than i imagined
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we woke up at like 4 today... madness. we had to get up and be ready by 430 and eat breakfast and meet ahmed our tour guide at 530 to catch the coach to the valley of kings. the bus ride took us about an hour and on the way, we saw the aqueducts constructed betweeb the squatters/ graveyard and the main road. it's so difficult for the poor to get housing and they are multiplying at too great a rate... so they share the graveyards with the dead. the valley of kings is located n the desert, where the climate is dry enough to help preserve the mummies in the tombs. they lay in a horseshoe shape (well... the discovered tombs anyways) and are carved into the granite hills. because we were cheapos... we went to the tombs of ramses III, VI and IX. the most nicely decorated ones lah. we weren't allowed to take pictures as the paintwork in the tombs were about 3000 years old preserved with egg white, and flash photography would just cause the colours to fall off like dust. but generally each tomb entrance is a rampway on a decline into the tomb that goes further and further in to the burial chamber. the walls were decorated with heiroglyphics and paintings of the book of the dead ad ascension into the other world. there were also little separate little rooms with offerings to the gods, and of course the usual paraphernelia that the pharoahs think they might need in the after life, for example... a golden chariot, like three of them. and day beds and beds... and jewellery and statues and all sorts of things. uzi and i had a tiff in the morning about him not wanting to bring his jacket, and it was blistering cold in the desert. thankfully, with the crazy diurnal ranges, the day started to warm up and he then was ok by the time we went to the mortuary temple of hatshepsut. now this woman... truly was the most male of all female rulers. the grandeur of her temple is unmatched.... she is the only one who built a mortuary temple on the other side of the valley of kings, which of course connected to her tomb in the valley of kings... she did not want to be burried in the valley of queens, a distance away. also in her necropolis, she paid homage to hathor the female goddess with a cow head. hatshepsut was depicted as a male ruler, with the royal head dress, the crowns of upper and lower egypt and had her arms crossed holding a staff and cipher. it's a grand temple and i was really enjoying it until we got stopped by a little arab man who took my scarf and twirled it over my head saying that i then looked like queen hatshepsut haw haw haw. i was sooooo annoyed because really, we was looking for a bit of tipping not just for being nice. asshole. but anyways, it made for peculiar stares and the local women pointed and laughed at me... which was just great. anyway... just when you thought that it was a long enough day, the group decided to go to karnak temple to have a look at it during the day....  i got some footage of that and some of our on deck lounging about.
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| Saturday, 22-Jan-2005 00:00 |
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Destination Luxor
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Today, we checked out of the hotel and went to a restaurant called andrea for lunch. It was in a like a complex of restaurants and a pond with flamingos and paddle boats. We had good egyptian food and then we went to Cairo Domestic to board Egypt Air to go to Luxor. We arrive at Luxor at about 4, and first stop was Luxor temple... quite an extravagant temple.The temple of Luxor took 2000 years to complete and bits and pieces were added on by kings of various dynasties. The greatest contributor being Ramses II. He makes a yearly pilgrimage between Luxor and Karnak temple with his 48 wives, 120 daughters and 90 sons during the anniversary of his coronation. There are 203 columns in this templs and there is a mixture od high and deep relief, indicating that there are stolen pieces from older temples to complete this one. Also there is a discontinuity in statues as Ramses is depicted in varying heights, which also supports this theory. Many of the taller statues are disfigured as the christians hacked into them, but the shorter ones were burried in silt from the floodings of the river Nile, so are protected from this fate. There is a difference in colour in the columns; the lower, darker colour corresponds to the bits burried in silt. A coptic church and mosque was built in situ. The church was much older so was built on the same level as the temple in the holy of holies, with faded frescoes of the last supper depicted on some of the temple walls. The mosque was built about 10-15 metres above ground as by that time, the river and had flooded over many many times and burried that much of the temple. The mid air mosque is still in operation today. After all of this, we went to Karnak temple for the sound and light show... which was very very boring. The storied were good but the light show was shit... no lasers.... hence I fell asleep on Uzi's shoulder.
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| Friday, 21-Jan-2005 00:00 |
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Today in Cairo
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Our first day on tour. We visited the citadel of Mohammad Ali, The Egyptian Museum and saw the Lights and Sounds show at the Giza pyramids.
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| Thursday, 20-Jan-2005 00:00 |
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Touchdown at Cairo
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Our first day in Cairo. We ate at a nearby cafe called Thomas, which was set up in the early 1900s by some french dude. Later we got bored and took random shots at the balcony.
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| Thursday, 13-Jan-2005 00:00 |
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our hens and bucks night
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we booked out 2 tables and a booth at rouge, a quaint yet saucy little night club at pernakan place off orchard road. friends old and new, and family of course, attended our little gathering and made merry. all in the name of celebration as uzi and i are to finally hold our wedding reception the coming sunday. much love to our sisters and brother, bridesmaids and groomsmen, treasured friends and acquaintences. in memory of mr james creffield, who will be in our thoughts, prayers and hearts.
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| Sunday, 9-Jan-2005 00:00 |
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WHY DONT YOU BRING YOUR DAD WITH YOU???????
nice pics... more pics... 
