Alexandria Day Trip – Part 8 | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 1 (Part 13)

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Bibliotheca Alexandrina | Alexandria Library

At present day, The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a revival of the legendary ancient library, which was the largest library in the ancient world. The original Alexandria Library, destroyed in a huge fire around 2000 years ago, contained works by Homer, Plato, Socrates, and many others, and used to be the centre of learning in the ancient world.  

The Bibliotheca Alexandrina is an 11-story library that sits along the ancient harbour in Alexandria. The library has 4 million volumes of books and can accommodate eight million books and 2500 readers. I saw carved letters, pictograms, hieroglyphs and 120 different human scripts on the granite exterior walls.

The Alexandria Library is also home to four permanent museums, a planetarium, a conference centre, lots of exhibitions, a children's library, a multimedia library, a library for the blind, and possibly many others.

The library building is a feast of architectural marvel combining ancient and modern styles. It spans 160 meters in diameter, 32 meters in height, and 12 meters into the ground in its circular, tilting form.

The timeless and bold circular design represents cyclical fluid knowledge throughout time and its tilting, glistering roof represents the ancient Alexandrian lighthouse providing Alexandria the light of knowledge.

I saw a reflecting pool and an open plaza surrounding the building. I also noticed something like a footbridge or overpass linking it to the nearby University of Alexandria.

The construction started in 1989 and completed in 2001. The Bibliotheca Alexandrina project was made possible by the global cooperation of 18 countries, oversighted by UNESCO. The architecture was completed by Norwegian Snøhetta, consisting of ten members from six different countries, who won the contract among 1400 entries.

A funny thing that makes me laugh to this day is that inside the museum I was so immersed in taking pictures and videos that I lost my group and had to complete the tour alone. I was able to meet them after the tour at the exit gate.

In Copenhagen And Closer To Home, Carbon Is The Priority

Keep Green Issues Simple

First Published Date: Sep 9, 2009.

For those of us who have an environmentalist outlook on things, there is often a problem with the size of the issue. Yes, the environment is a matter for concern – no-one could possibly deny that and retain a modicum of credibility – but which part of it do we look at first? Taken as a whole, the environment itself covers such a broad range of topics that it is difficult to pin down. This is perhaps where the movement has failed in the past – as much goodwill as there is for green issues, it has been difficult to nail down a list of priorities which will allow the problems to be dealt with on their merits. As a result, from the outside the green movement looks like a disorganised rabble squabbling about which issue should take precedence. As time goes on, it is hoped that this will become a thing of the past.

As we await the December conference on the Environment in Copenhagen, Denmark, the environmental movement does seem to be shaking its priorities into some sort of order. Top among them seems to be the issue of carbon and its related problems. Carbon deposits in our atmosphere have all sorts of effects that we would be well advised to avoid, but we as a global population have been slow to stop them from increasing. Although most of the world’s nations have a Green party which participates in national elections, in no major country has such a party been elected to form the basis of a government. Parties of government tend to offer more vocal support than logistic solutions where the environment is concerned, and thus the will to do something is often frustrated by issues such as the economy or defence.

The hope is that the conference in December, set to be the focus of a previously unseen level of media and public interest (for an environmental issue), will galvanise governments into actually doing something cogent to improve the state of the environment. After the Kyoto protocol were decided in 1997, the plan laid out to reduce carbon emissions by a significant level over the following twenty years slowly unravelled, as the United States refused to ratify the arrangement and other nations which had ratified showed little thirst to stick to their guns. Copenhagen is seen as a chance to move on from the disappointment of the aftermath.

Already, however, we are hearing that Copenhagen may not herald the signing of any new deal on carbon emissions – or at any rate, any deal which will mean much globally. For those of us with an eye on a greener future, it could be a frustrating fortnight. In order to ensure that something is at least done, the best bet may be to do it yourself. We as individuals may not be able to deliver the kind of results the governments could, but this is no reason to back off from your own plans. A lot of small steps can make up a long journey, and it is worth remembering that.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Sep 9, 2009.

Simple Tips For A Greener Life

Live Green Simply

Published Date: March 1, 2009

Whether you have concluded yourself, whether a friend or family member has badgered you, or you have finally been guilt-tripped by the constant streams of information, it would seem likely that you have decided that greener living is a necessity for a better future, and you are not alone. As we live in a world of finite resources, the fact is that we are all going to have to make some changes, some of which may take more effort than others. If you can get ahead of the curve and make some of these changes now, so much the better, because the older a habit gets the harder it is to kick it.

Some simple tips on living a greener life can make a big difference to how energy- and resource-efficient you are – and they can start with the ridiculously simple ones. For example, re-using things that can still be useful. Have you seen a landfill recently? Not only do they take up a lot of space, but half the things that are there may well have still had some use left in them. Now, no-one is saying you need to hang out old tea bags to give them a second use, or that hygiene products can be used longer than the convention suggests, but other things can make a difference.

Just for example, re-using the bags you get at the supermarket or the shops is something that many people are doing. You can take it further, though. Think of the amount of old receptacles that you throw out. Putting them to another use – old jars to keep loose change in, old margarine tubs for leftover food – can not only save you money, but can make a difference ecologically. Recycling is not all about leaving stuff out for the garbage men, after all.

Another simple household tip is one that you can follow while cooking. Chances are that your hob features four rings of differing sizes. Are you using the correct sized pan on the correct ring? It may sound like a stupid question, but so many people put a tiny pan – for heating milk, say – on a larger ring, with the upshot being that as well as heating the pan, the ring is heating a bunch of air around it, to no good effect. Match pans to rings, and save energy.

Staying in the kitchen, you have the refrigerator. Are you making it do too much work? Yes, its job is to keep things cold, but that job is harder if the refrigerator is constantly lying open, or is being opened and closed with great regularity. If you are going to need a bunch of stuff from there over a period of time, get it all out before you start whatever you are doing. Keeping the temperature constant wastes a lot less energy.

Additionally, instead of putting warm food into the refrigerator, leave it to cool first. This is a good idea for two reasons – firstly, a sharp drop in temperature can cause bacteria to thrive in the food and secondly, the warmer the item going in there, the harder the appliance has to work to get it to the correct temperature. Wasting energy happens so easily, but these are just a few ways you can reduce your burden.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on March 1, 2009

Global Warming Worse Then First Thought

Green House Gas Emissions Rapidly Increased

First Published Date: Feb 16, 2009.

In a revelation that will come as a surprise to Northern Ireland’s minister for the environment Sammy Wilson, it has been suggested that rather than having little effect, the curse of global warming is set to turn out worse than scientists had first said. Leading climatologist Chris Field says that over the coming century, the severity of the crisis is only going to get worse, and that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has actually underestimated the rate at which the climate is set to change.

Professor Field made his remarks while speaking to an American Science conference in Chicago. In his speech he revealed that recently revealed data shows that greenhouse gas emissions in the eight-year period from 2000 to 2007 actually increased a good deal more rapidly than had been expected. The result of this is that the climate will change far more severely over the course of this century than anyone had previously forecast. The associated dangers to the global environment are set to be much more dire than anything that has previously been seriously mooted.

The IPCC report of 2007 forecast that climate change would see a rise in temperatures between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius, but according to Prof Field this seriously underestimates just how bad things will get. The higher level of emissions, says the Professor, is largely down to the increase in use of coal for electric power in the emerging superpowers, India and China. Without immediate, effective action we could be in for a very troublesome future. Field added that while the overall impact on temperatures is as yet impossible to forecast accurately, the change is likely to accelerate much faster than predicted.

As a result of the change in temperatures, forests in tropical areas will dry out and become more prone to wildfires, and the world’s permafrost is also likely to melt at a higher speed – resulting in a huge increase to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. The knock-on effects of this mean that the problem, far from having been overstated, is likely to snowball in a way that no-one has foreseen.

This latest release on the extent of the problem comes in the aftermath of a controversy in Northern Ireland, where the Minister for the Environment recently blocked the transmissions of advertisements from the environmental campaign Act on CO2, saying that they were “unwelcome”.

Wilson’s previous public pronouncements on the issue have marked him out as a Climate Change skeptic, amounting to suggestions that the problem was natural rather than man made, and in his latest controversial statements he has referred to global warming as a “hysterical pseudo-religion.” The latest controversy has seen Wilson subject to a vote of no confidence from within the Northern Ireland Executive, with a view on climate change that differs from most people’s. As we write, Wilson holds on to his position, but it seems that his credibility as Environment Minister must have suffered wounds that, if not lethal, will prove deeply detrimental to his ability to discharge his future duties.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Feb 16, 2009.

Alexandria Day Trip – Part 7 | Egypt Travel Blog: Day 1 (Part 12)

Qaitbay Citadel | The Fort Qaitbay Castle

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

The Citadel of Qaitbay in Alexandria sits on the northern tip of Pharos Island on the Mediterranean Sea coast and was built in 1477 AD by Sultan Qaitbay. The purpose of this fort was to defend Alexandria from the Ottoman Empire, but it didn’t work out when the Ottomans took over Egypt in 1512.

The fortress was heavily bombarded and damaged by the British fleet in 1882 and later reconstructed in the early 19th century by Muhammad Ali Pasha – the father and founder of modern Egypt.

The Citadel of Qaitbay was erected on the exact location of the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Citadel was built with stone salvaged from the lighthouse.

The Citadel has three floors. There is a huge mosque on the first floor. The second floor has an octagonal corridor and halls, and the third floor was where the king used to sit.

I found that the 2nd floor looked like a maze with lots of cubbyhole-like mini tunnels for the guards to watch the sea outside for approaching enemy ships. It’s easy to get lost looking for exits, but my guide was there to maneuver us through the castle. 

At present, the Citadel is a popular tourist spot and also has a small naval museum. I noticed lots of couples also enjoying the solitude by the Mediterranean Sea, away from the city’s hustle and bustle.

Another thing I noticed was that young Egyptians like to take pictures with tourists, especially if you are a girl with blond hair and blue eyes. One of my blond tour mates has been getting stopped for pictures every minute. Eventually, she just couldn’t keep up and had to refuse to strike a pose.

Our next stop will be Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the Alexandria Library.