I owe this blog and its readers — what’s left of you — a big apology for not updating since November, but it has been unseasonably busy until very recently. I’ll prove it. The below also serves as a memo to the future: What exactly was I up to late 2007-early 2008? I hope I’ll want to know in 30 years’ time.

Kom Firin: One fine Saturday in October I had the good fortune of accompanying my Egyptologist flatmate Ilona on a visit to an excavation in the Nile Delta: Kom Firin, a Ramesside period tell being excavated by a team from the British Museum, comprises Kom Firin was situated on the front lines with Ramesses II’s mortal enemy, the Libyans. The excavation team also thinks that the Nile once flowed past the site, and that the site possibly was an island.the remains of a fortified settlement and temple complex.

For me the trip was partly wish fulfilment (visiting a “real” archaeological dig) and partly an excuse to play with interesting geo technologies — as reported on Ogle Earth. Flickr photos are over here, and you can see a goereferenced subset on my Google Earth layer (KMZ file, opens in Google Earth).

After a lunch with the team on the porch of the Kom Firin magazine, we drove on to hunt for Kom El-Hisn, another little known site, this one an Old Kingdom settlement from around 3,100 BC. There was very little to see there — no standing structures and no current excavation work — but it was fascinating to see how the old and the new intertwine: there was a village on the edge of the site, and farmland on the other, while Kom El-Hisn itself felt like something of a no-man’s land.

A walk from Ibn Tulun to Zamalek On November 11, a Sunday, I visited Ibn Tulun mosque and the Gayer-Anderson museum, and then walked from there back to Zamalek through popular neighborhoods. Ibn Tulun is perhaps my favorite mosque in Cairo. It makes room for itself, avoids excessive ornamentation, and its minaret is whimsical, with a circular staircase snaking around the outside of the tower — a structure that would not feel out of place in an Esher print or Borges short story.

The Gayer-Anderson Museum, built against the walls of Ibn Tulun, is a wonderfully restored 17th-century house stuffed with the “Oriental” art collection of early 20th-century British Major Gayer-Anderson, whose residence this was.

From there, I ended up walking home. You can see images from the day on Flickr, but you can also see the walk in the Google Earth layer.

The November-February rapids Then came the rapids. Follow carefully now. Nov 20-28 I was in Stockholm for my work with the Swedish Institute. Nov 28 – Dec 1 I was in Berlin, attending the Online Educa education technology fair. While there I blogged a cool smart board on Ogle Earth:

I also gave a presentation at the Swedish Embassy entitled “Public Diplomacy, Web 2.0 & the 3D Web”. It was all about how we are using social web tools like Facebook and virtual worlds like Second Life to build brand awareness for Sweden:

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Then back to Cairo. From Dec 9 – 14 I was in Kuala Lumpur, attending the Global Knowledge III conference. I was invited there to be part of a panel discussion on virtual diplomacy. As it was simultaneously held in Second Life, you can see what it looked like on this YouTube video:

It just so happened that my 20th anniversary high school reunion was being held a few days later, so I found a cheap ticket and headed to Sydney from Dec 15-17. It was the first time in 19 years that I had been back to a city that held many formative experiences for me. My fellow students from Cranbrook School had aged, of course, and it is strange to be in a room with 70 people that are all exactly your own age.

There was also an opportunity to explore the school, and I also walked all around central Sydney, to our old house on Drumalbyn Road 11, to Bondi Beach (in the rain) to St. Paul’s College at Sydney University (where I boarded for a year), all around Double Bay… It’s as if I was urgently upgrading an outdated mental map of a region of the world I used to know well. I remembered some spots vividly, while often the bits in between had been forgotten, though they’d come racing back when I drove or walked past them.

Then came the long treck back to Cairo. First a night on the Gold Coast (cheap flight, remember?), then a long layover in Kuala Lumpur, and then another long layover in Dubai. In Dubai, however, I checked in to the emirate for the day, took a bus around the city, got off in a nondescript area and walked towards a long line of shimmering high-rises off in the distance. On the way there I stumbled onto a cricket match between Indian and Pakistani bus drivers on a parking lot. It was a surreal setting. Once I had landed on the high-rise strip, I hailed a taxi and asked him to drive me to the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building currently under construction. As the fare was cheap, I had the driver drive me around some more of the landmarks. Dubai is a very very strange place.

I was home again in Cairo Dec 20, but off to Belgium for Christmas with the family Dec 23-30. The highlight (at least for me) was playing with the lego train set I had bought for my niece. Friends Petra and Partrick from Sweden visited Cairo when I returned, and we spent New Year’s at a party on a balcony overlooking the Nile. Nice.

Jan 5-11 I was in Washington, DC, to help set up and inaugurate Virtu-Real, an exhibition that blends the Second House of Sweden in Second Life with the real-life House of Sweden. We got onto Fox News:

Flickr pictures here, taken with a brand new most excellent Nikon D300, courtesy of a strong euro. Washington DC was also a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends — a bunch happen to be living there at the moment.

Then back to Cairo. Jan 13-23 it was off to Ethiopia with egyptologist-flatmate Ilona. Finally, a real vacation, though the pace we set ourselves was a bit grueling. We “only” had 10 days, so we did a lot of flying. A compact itinerary follows:

Arrive in Addis Ababa. Explore the city. Fly north to Bihar Dar, see the Blue Nile, see monasteries on Lake Tana, take the bus north to Gonder, see the fort, take a 4WD north to the amazing Simien Mountains National Park, shoot some baboons (with a camera), back to Gonder, fly via Lalibela (but no stopping!) north to Aksum, see the Axumite stele, drive to Adwa and on to Yeha for an even older temple, then back to Aksum and Fly onto Addis Ababa. Take a bus to the Melka Kunture Prehistoric Site, bribe the guard to open it, see a crocodile, negotiate a private minibus to lake Ziway via the middle of nowhere, see a hippo, then head back to Addis (as they call it) and catch a flight back to Egypt. Phew. But worth it. The only regret is that a religious festival meant there was no way to visit Lalibela. Next time.

Here is the set on Flickr, though you can also see the photos via this Google Map:

Back in Cairo. Then Back in Stockholm Jan 28 – Feb 11, brainstorming this year’s plans for new media work at the Swedish Institute. Back to Cairo! Friend Niki came to visit from Stockholm, so for the weekend of Feb 16-18 we headed to Luxor. We’d been tipped off that the best way to see the west bank was to do the walk to the ridge over Queen Hatshepsut’s temple, and we did just that. Such wonderful views. Luxor can be quite trying — not so much the crowds and the hassle, but the fact that there is so much of it. One goes numb. Best to take it in small doses, so I’ll be visiting again soon.

Flickr pics are here. Here they are on a map.

And with that, we’re back in the present.