Cassondra and I tagged on a couple of days at the end of our climbing trip to see the Wave and a couple of nearby sites in Southern Utah and Arizona. The Nautilus and Buckskin Gulch in Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area are unique and spectacular sites well worth a visit in their own right, [...]
What are these files? They are bilingual texts with original texts and their translations aligned side-by-side. Most of the files are of classic novels no longer copyrighted. In the United States, copyright expires after life of the author plus 70 years. See Copyright Term Extension Act for more details. Most files are in Microsoft Word [...]
Aswat concert celebrating the work of Egyptian musical genius, prolific composer, and innovator Mohammed Abdel Wahab (1899-1991). Aswat is a premier Arab music ensemble. For more information visit their website at Zawaya.org Click here to view photos in Picasa ASWAT Mohammed Abdel Wahab Concert at College of San Mateo 38 photos ASWAT concert celebrating the [...]
I went up to Mt. Hamilton Observatory with Alex to take pictures of the partial solar eclipse. We could’ve driven up to Tahoe area to see the full annular eclipse, but neither of us planned it ahead enough to make the trip. I happened to have a B+W 110 ND 3.0 filter, a 10-stop filter [...]
I took a short trip to Shabwa (or Shabwah) with a friend to see her family. The province borders Marib, Abyan and Hadramaut, and has been the wild wild west of Yemen long before the recent conflicts began. Northern Shabwa is dry and mountainous while the southern part is dominated by volcanic landscape and beautiful beaches.
Nowadays the government still controls the provincial capital Ataq, but five minutes outside the city the army is conveniently absent until the coastal town of Balhaf five hours down south. In between the land falls under the control of Ansar Al Sharia, an offshoot of Al Qaeda, Hirak Independence movement, and various tribes and villages.
Every Friday, the opposition organizes the noon prayer on 60-Meter Road outside the University of Science and Technology Hospital. The number of participants various widely depending on the political situation. Friday, April 13th is one of the lighter days with festival-like atmosphere. Even the soldiers were relaxed enough to pose for pictures with kids. The day was named Friday of “Loyalty to Abyan”, the province that has seen the heaviest fighting between the Yemeni army and militants calling themselves Ansar al-Sharia – Partisans of Sharia Law.
By now you probably have read about the armed conflicts and persistent power outages in Yemen, but to Sana’a residents, the most pressing problem at the moment is the mounting garbage due to the strike by garbage collectors and street cleaners who are demanding salaried positions instead of daily wages. I saw one garbage truck on Hadda Street today, does it mean the strike is about to end?
This was how my friend described yesterday. We had no electricity and it pretty much rained all day yesterday. In the years past I had always enjoyed the rain because it kept the temperature cool and presented interesting skies for photography, but this year with all the depressing news coming out of Yemen, the gloomy sky just added another layer of melancholy.
The following table compares prices of common products and services in Yemen between August 2010 and March 2012. Fuel and imported food items saw the most increase while locally grown food pretty much stayed the same. “Luxury” food such as meat was already priced out of the range of average consumers thus didn’t increase much. Qat and internet prices are lower than when I was here last time.
Last week I took a short trip to Ramlat as Saba’tayn in Marib just southeast of Safir. See photos from my earlier post. The desert area is part of the Empty Quarter, but it is not as desolate as one might think. In addition to Bedouin settlements there are numerous oil and electricity facilities dotting the region. At night, their lights can be seen glowing over the sand dunes from miles away.
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