Visa stuph

We will file my visa renewal paperwork tomorrow, the expected delay is over 2 months so I am starting to make plans for august. The best option seems to go to work in Barcelona while waiting for the thing to be approved. Seems I'm gonna have some extended vacations in Europe, yay !

Turtle day

Why was this day a turtle day ? Well, we (bunch of french) met a cute little turtle on our way to Sahne this morning and we spent our day eating fruits, sunbathing (under the shade of olive trees obviously, nobody's staying outside of the shade here) and swimming in an everhot river (28°C all year round - 82°F) in semi-natural pools. What do you think the turtle we met in the morning did all day ? Sleep under an olive tree and eat some yummie stuff and eventually have a bath so that was definitely a turtle day.

Justice and CIA

Finaly some democratic country's justice is looking at CIA illegal actions on their territory, like abducting people they do suspect of terrorism. Come on, couldn't they just ask Italy for their cooperation if they were real terrorists ? What would the US say if the french secret services were abducting some of their residants without notice ? Oh maybe it is just because countries like Italy wouldn't let them handle their prisoniers like they wanted (read torture). Or maybe because since the GI's killed the Italian secret agent that was freeing their journalist in Iraq, the Italians are pissed off and want to hit on something.

Google maps

Google started to have high resolution satellites pictures of all Europe, as far as Israel. I live here (in the middle).

If you know where to search you can find Dimona (Israeli nuclear plant) as well as all the territory pretty detailed (even Nezarim, Gush Katiff and co...). I am surprised as in the US they tend to blur sensitive spots...

Tension Raising 3 ...

Well, with Israel resuming targeted assassinations on Islamic Jihad members, the suicide bombing attempt intercepted at Eretz , massive arrestations in the west bank and communication between the two parties not really being bidirectionnal, I think I can say that the tension is raising again :(.

Only good thing left is that Sharon still plans to disengage from Gaza in august, but the days of peace hope seem to move farther away.

Maybe I'm just too tired, worked for too long today and partied too late yesterday but I have hard time seeing anything positive in the past few days local news.

Some bad news

The visa that allows me to work in israel is expiring on July the 30th and it seems my employer didn't take the required steps to renew it, so I have just initiated the process. It might take up to 3 months to get the renewal so I will eventually be kicked out of this country (this is absolutely not due to the israeli immigration services, outside of their standard administration slowlyness) in 38 days, and will have to work from another place until my visa get renewed. I'll keep you updated on that, but I don't know much besides I've filled lots of forms in the past 2 days.

Sand sculptures

Last weekend there was a sand sculpture competition on Haifa beach, we only saw it on tuesday night but it was pretty neat. They bring giant boxes with compressed sands and then sculpt it and get pretty nice results. These sculptures can resist wind and rain for over a year supposedly, and are guarded day and night for now so there is no man-induced wear. This sculpture ranked second on the competition but is in my opinion the best, plus it is my best picture of that night to :).

Little Game III

What's this ? Again 100% unphotoshoped picture. Price is a free beer next time you meet me (or any other non-alcoholic drink).

Casino Bar

During our trip in Egypt we found what I think is probably one of the nicest place to hang around in Cairo. This bar was called the "Casino bar" and is situated along the Nile waterfront on the Giza side (not far from the Zoo on Nile Street). We just entered there by luck the first evening and then we came back every single evening we spent in Cairo. Waiters were very nice, drinks excellent, food very good and abundant and all was quite cheap. So we just spent hours chatting, smoking narguile and watching the young egyptian crowd that was having fun here as we were the only tourists (or it seemed like it). One nice and original thing was that they were using jeans as seat covers, Jyby loved it and took a few pictures of it. More pictures in my flickr.

Road trip to Cairo

Back from Egypt ! Here is a quick summary of our trip.

We left last tuesday with my car and drove to Eilat where we parked. We passed the border to Sinai at the Taba crossing, and everything went pretty smooth, actually too smooth. Once in Sinaï we start to ask for our visa to Cairo (no need for any Visa when going to Sinaï fro Israël) and they answer us that they don't deliver any visa for Egypt and that we have to go back to the Egyptian consulat in Eilat in Israël... So we spent one night in a nice Sinaï hotel with a view on Salah El Din fortress, and the next day we went back to Israël to get those stupid visas. This is the sunrise on the fort:


We almost got kicked out of the consulat when they saw Jeremy juggling to pass time while waiting for the stamp but we got it in a few hours. We passed the border again and took a taxi for Cairo. We loved that 5 hour trip through mountains, desert, a tunnel under Suez canal and finally Cairo. Here is one of our encounters on the road :


We stayed in a cheap Hotel right by the Giza Zoo and we were lucky to have a view on some green which is pretty rare in Cairo. Our next days are probably close to every (not really organized beforehand) tourist tour excepted our long evenings spent in a nice cafe along the Nil river drinking fresh juices and smoking chicha.

So I got pics of Pyramids taken during our 25km Camel back riding hike (I lost a few vertebras in this story :) :


Mosqs (in the Cairo citadel):


and Churches (In Old coptic Cairo):


For the trip back we took a bus from Cairo to Taba (5x cheaper than the taxi that was already not too bad). We woke up at 5 to wait for a late bus that happened to break after 20km... So we changed bus at the depot and the new bus lost air conditioning like 5 minutes out of the depot. We were the only non arabic speakers in the bus, but seeing the bus reliability I wasn't too suprised to see no other western countries tourists in it :). It took us over 8 hours to arrive in Taba, where we waited over 2 hours at the border because we came back at the end of a 4 days long israeli weekend (monday 13). After 5 more hours driving through all Israel and an automatic gearbox attempting multiple suicides (made in France obviously) we finally arrived to the term of a 17.5 hour travel.

Jeremy flew to France today so you might meet him pretty soon if you're near Paris (a dragon-clown carrying a unycicle in the airplane).

Vacation to Egypt

Jeremy and myself are leaving for Egypt this morning. See you next week.

ABC Fire breathing

I have seen a few tutorials on the net about fire breathing (fire blowing?) but none really satisfies me so I'm going to try to share my experience in this area. I'll start with the usual disclaimers, do not do this alone, do not do this if you are not confident in your reflexes, you can have all sorts of bad things happening to you ranging from irritation, to burns and irremediable lung destruction. However if done properly this can be quite fun and low risk.

I have been doing this for over 10 years now, but not professionally nor on a regular basis (unless you call few times a year regular), so all I say apply only to this kind of use. I strongly disencourage anybody to do that on a regular basis and for long periods of time in a row. In those 10 years I have introduced over a dozen of persons to it, and none of us ever had a single accident not even a single light burn (crossing fingers).

First thing to do is to buy an appropriate flamable product, this is probably the most important part as a wrongly chosen product can be extremly dangerous.

Flammable Liquid are usually sorted by their flashpoint temperature (at which they ignite in contact with a flame) :
a. Class 1 flammable liquid shall include those having flash point below 100° F (38° C). Some examples are: gasoline, naphtha gas, jet fuel JP-4, alcohol, etc. (100° F - 38° C); and
b. Class 2 flammable liquid shall include those liquids having a flash point above 100° F (38° C). Some examples are: varsol, some cleaning solvents, diesel fuel oil No. 2-D or 4-D.

You want to use a class 2 product and not a class 1, even attempting anything with a class 1 product is somewhere between irresponsible and suicidal. The main reason is that those products will not burn at body temperature unless they are vaporised. I have successfully used Kerdane (metal degreasing product found in supermarkets in France), Kerosene (parafine derivate, it is not jet-fuel, found in some US groceries), Petrole desaromatise (Car oriented shop in Quebec, Canada), lamp oil (various sports shop in the US), neft (found at the gas station in Israel, this is NOT naphta). These products traditional uses are cleaning metal pieces, lighting camping/garden lamps, you need to know that unless you want to explain in every shop that you are searching for a product to breath fire. You will pay for those under 2US$/l.

I have never used specifically designed products, nor white spirit nor diesel even if some people claim they are usable. Specifically designed "fire water" is usually expensive and makes small flames, diesel supposedly makes enormous flames and tastes extremely bad as white spirit does. Try to use products as pure as possible and stay away from lamp oils with additives.

Once you bought a few litters of a flamable liquid ( 1-2 litters per person is fine unless you are planning a long session), you need to test it before playing with it. Put some in a cup and try to light it up with matches, if it does light up, you need to pick up another product. Taste it, after going through 2 litters I sometimes get a light nausea feeling but nothing bad, so if it tastes really bad you probably should find something else. It should be a little oily. Last test is to pour some on your arm (or any other part of the body you don't mind to burn :) and try to light it up, it shouldn't light up and should reinsure you quite a bit (obviously be prepared to the worse). Check if the product irritated your arm, i have seen a few people having light alergies, do not proceed farther if it itches. If it did pass all the tests you are ready to go and can call your friends for a night party.

You'll need to bring some form of torch, which can be made with any 50+cm stick and a piece of coton cloth (t-shirt) wrapped around (on which you poured some of your flamable liquid). Bring a big blanket (to stop an unwanted fire), a few bottles of water for practice, rincing your mouth, body and wetting the spots you fear to burn.

I suggest doing this before the start of the party, and not letting the persons already under the influence of alcool or drugs to get anywhere close to the fire. Head outside. Remove your t-shirt, pour some water on your face, attach your hair (beard and long hair has never been a problem for me), grab a bottle of water and practice a few times. Take your mouth full of water, a deep breath and vaporize the water (making a heart with your mouth like if you were going to do a big kiss). Water drops should go as far as 3 or 4 meters depending on the wind, always do it with the wind blowing from your back. After spraying all your friends with water, when you feel reasonably confident grab the torch, have someone hand you the bottle of flamable product and fill up your mouth. Give the bottle back, make sure there is noone within 10 meters in front of you, put the torch in front of your mouth (arm extended), take a deep breath and vaporize. You can remove the torch quite fast to avoid any burn risks on your arm (or alternatively have someone hold the torch like on Haggai's pic), the flame will light up progressively the vapors towards your mouth. Thebackfire speed depends upon the wind, how strong you breathed and the product but it is usually 1 to 5 seconds. Close your mouth and stop breathing when you want to stop the flame. You will get 2 to 6m flames depending on the wind, your breath and the product.

Do not swallow the product, nor breath vapors, even if not inflamated this is supposedly the biggest source of injuries. Clean your mouth and the spills with water and a cloth regularly, and have a big shower afterwise.

I suggest you to have a camera handy, this makes beautyfull pictures (remember to disable the flash). You can do combinations with several persons and one torch, but at 3 the temperature of the air start to be so high that it becomes really unsafe (but it is extremely spectacular to have a 5m fireball).

Other ressources on the net in french here or in english here and here that I suggest you also read. Obviously, I do not recommand doing this based solely on informations gathered on the web, but some did before and are still in good shape.

Dragons !

Here is what we did yesterday on the beach, we had quite some success there. On the picture you can see me lighting Haggai's flame (one of his first ever).

Jyby's here

Jeremy arrived yesterday, I had him taste some local tabouleh and "nefles", he seems already addicted to those :). We spent the night smoking narguile and rethinking the world, as usual. Tonight we're headed to Haifa beach with some other friends and are going to blow fire, ride Jeremy's unicycle and use various other juggling devices.

See ya, unless I play the torchman ;).