I’ve neglected my baby

I am officially a bad father. My baby blog is only two months old… and this is the first thing I’ve published in over a month! I can feel cyber-social services breathing down my neck.

But it’s not because I’m on crack, in denial, or have lost interest. I’ve just been… busy. Pathetic, huh?

It’s been a bad-ass mad-ass month, with loads going on. When I started this blog, I never expected to be writing a post which included news about what I’m doing. Really, who – other than my mother on a good day – cares? Well, one of the things I’m learning is that people are behind blogs. And people read them. So perhaps an update on what’s been going on is an appropriate way to roundhouse kick my way back into the blogosphere.

So here’s my excuses for not updating my blog news:

Firstly, to help get out the latest issue of The Croc Cairo city guide, I’ve been reviewing restaurants, bars and films like they are going out of fashion. Sometimes, I wish they would: reviewing five restaurant-bars in two days can be… filling.

NileGuide recently launched a destination specific blog for Cairo (as well as all their other cities). This is intended to complement the main site, offering both timely and evergreen Cairo travel advice that doesn’t fit into the online guidebook format. Which is cool, because it means there’s now a dedicated space for me to write about service oriented stuff, and I can keep Delicious Chaos for snapshots, narratives and general musing.

Recent posts there include:
Three foods as Egyptian as the Pyramids
Top 10 Egyptian tout one-liners
How to enjoy your trip to the Pyramids.
Yep, Pyramids feature a lot in a blog about Cairo aimed at tourists.

Also, Leigh Shulman from the Matador Network invited me to intern with her at Matador Life. I accepted. This is a real honour, and I’m super-stoked. (Of course, being English, I should write that I am “exceedingly chuffed”. But the more time I spend working with American organisations, the more my vocabulary is corrupted expanded.)

I get to work with a load of wonderful people, and write articles that I would never normally have considered. Such as:
Five Superhero Powers That Can Be Yours
Brand Obama: Organizing T-Shirts For America.
Seems it’s not just my vocabulary which is expanding.

Lastly, I won the Editors’ Choice Award for the Trazzler City Flavor Contest! Really, really happy about this for a whole host of reasons. Not least of which is that I get to visit San Francisco for the first time (I’ve never even been to the US). If you’re interested in reading the trip that won, it was Rummaging Around Nooks and Crannies in Azbakiya Book Market.

And finally finally, I decided to take a leaf out of Mike Sowden‘s book, and kill my blog. So now we have a third thing in common, other than our lack of hair and love of Cyprus. I killed mine while trying to upgrade my theme. [Which is Thesis, just in case anyone a) cares, and b) can't read the footer.]

Luckily, I had backed it up. Problem was, I had no idea how to access that back-up! Big props to hostgator for their instantaneous, and saintly-patient, online support. They got me up and running again in next to no time. Even though they’re relatively expensive, I’d totally recommend them to anyone who wants to host their own site. It’s not the first time they’ve efficiently helped me out with dumb questions.

While I’m at it, I’d like to thank Philip Barron and girlie for responding to my desperate requests for help on Thesis forums, trying to work out what the hell I’d done wrong. I’m 99% sure they’ll never read this, but I feel better for thanking them anyway.

I’m going to leave it a few days, and then try to update the theme again. Fingers crossed!

And that’s it – trumpet-blowing and shamefaced-blushing over. Next post we’ll get back to the interesting stuff: the crazy-wonderful city in which I’m fortunate to live.

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