Author: Adam Koppeser

Sochi week 1 recap: The good, the bad, and the weird

TOPSHOTSNetherlands’ Ronald Mulder competes during the Men’s Speed Skating 500 m at the Adler Arena during the Sochi Winter Olympics on February 10, 2014.
(AFP PHOTO / ANDREJ ISAKOVIC)

On Friday, 7 February, a grandiose opening ceremony kicked off the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia under the watchful gaze of Russian President Vladmir Putin. At the time of print and after four days of games, Norway leads the medal count with 4 gold, 3 silver and 4 bronze, followed by Canada (4 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze) and Germany (4 gold, 1 silver, no bronze).

The first days of competition have offered their fair share of thrills and spills, as well as some rather bizarre sights. We take a look at the good, the bad, and the weird at the first week of the winter sports fest.

The good

The host nation secured its first gold medal on at the hands (and skates) of Russian figure skating prodigy, Yulia Lipnitskaya, whose extreme flexibility and tight rotations wowed audiences and judges. At 15 years old, she is Russia’s youngest figure skating champion, earning a measure of redemption for a country traditionally known as a figure skating powerhouse, but whose last two Olympics showings were lacking.

Elsewhere, traditional dominance was keenly on display, as perennial cross country skiing champs Norway snagged the gold in both the men and women’s cross country skiing sprint. Meanwhile, their compatriot Ole Bjoerndalen, known as the “Biathlon King” in Norway, won the 10km sprint on Saturday to match the record for most career Winter Olympic medals over all sports, at 12. (Colourfully, Bjoerndalen also goes by “Cannibal”, for his hunger for success).

As for downhill, Canada’s Alex Bilodeau defended his title in freestyle moguls Monday, making him the first Olympic freestyle skier to win multiple gold medals. At the finish line, Bilodeau immediately dedicated the win to his disabled brother, Frederic, who has cerebral palsey, pulling him over the barrier so they could celebrate together. More brotherly love was on display after Dutch twins Michel Mulder and Ronald Mulder won the men’s 500-metre speed-skating gold and bronze, respectively.

The bad

Speed skating did see its share of spills, including Australian racer Daniel Greig, who wiped out during the men’s 500-metre semifinals, while a spill by two Korean skaters actually was a lucky break for US skater JR Celski, as it helped usher him into the finals. Such crashes can, however, be very dangerous, as South Korean skater Kim Jun Ho had a near miss with a skate blade during his fall.

Meanwhile, some old favourites underperformed, as the US’s 36 year-old Olympic veteran and former gold medalist Bode Miller was prematurely showing his age in alpine downhill on Sunday, only managing to place 8^th.

The weird

As is often the case, much of the spotlight at the games has been beyond the rinks and slopes; the international press has paid significant attention to the shortcomings of their own accommodations at the games, with gripes ranging from peach colored tap-water to hallways inexplicably crammed full of coat-hangers, and the infamously alleged “double toilets” in restrooms – side by side with no barrier between.

The athletes themselves, meanwhile, have found creative ways of entertaining themselves in and out of their events, with Canadian citizens offering up a beer fridge (that only opens to Canadian passports), Norway and Russia sporting raucously patterned trousers for their curling matches, and the Finnish snowboarding coach spotted knitting at the top of the slope.

Not a bad idea, to be fair – it’s cold out there.

February 12, 2014
Mirai: Hot fusion, cool venue

Mirai boasts a variety of Asian dishes, with focus on Thai-based concoctions
(Photo from Mirai)

As much with food as with physics, fusion can be a tricky business. When done right, it can offer a crisply complementary sampling of the best flavours of several regions. When done wrong, it’s little more than an excuse to flail about through watered-down versions of several cuisines while looking as hip as possible. If its opening night on Friday was any indication, however, Zamalek’s new pan-Asian restaurant, Mirai, seems to be the former.

Snugly nestled between the ever-popular Sequoia restaurant and brunch destination Left Bank, Mirai manages to carve – or elbow – its own niche into what is becoming some rather crowded riverside real estate.

The opening was auspiciously timed with the Chinese New Year – the Year of the Horse – and the hostess was quick to offer us stylised red cards emblazoned with our birth years’ Chinese zodiac symbols. Each offered a detailed fortune for the year ahead, conveniently tallying each sign’s predicted “favourable” and “unfavourable” life events for the coming year – useful for all manner of premature gloating over Miso soup.

Zodiacs aside, the establishment does go to efforts to create a stylishly modern, pan-Asian vibe. White Buddha statues greet guests on the boardwalk outside, and white shaded lanterns provide the low, warm lighting inside, where floor to ceiling windows showcase a prized Nile view while freshly lit incense and pan-Asian lounge music add to the atmosphere.

The glass-encased beech tree growing through the middle of the room is another interesting touch, though it’s unclear if it’s intentional feng-shui at work, or just an eccentricity of the building code. Trees notwithstanding, other wood accents lend to the room’s earthy tones, set pleasantly against deep red hues. In China, red symbolises good fortune; so, too, in the restaurant business, because it’s said to stimulate the parts of the brain associated with appetite.

So what of the meal?

Service was attentive, providing us with cool washcloths – a Thai tradition, I’m told – and starting us off with hot (and sweet) lemongrass tea served in small tulip glasses. This was followed swiftly by prawn crackers and Thai sweet chili sauce, which together formed a nice crisp palette cleanser. The Miso soup came next, a traditional Japanese dish with tofu and scallions; it was nicely savoury but not over-salty.

The appetisers pleased across the board. The spring rolls were among some of the better I’ve had; the batter was light and flaky rather than deep-fried-cookie-crunchy as is sometimes the case. Like many of the dishes, they had a Thai spin to them, filled with chicken and peanut sauce, a welcome change from the usual cabbage and carrot, and refreshingly complemented by apricot and berry sauces. The dumplings, too, were finer than average fare, but this reviewer’s personal favourite was the satay, delicious in its chicken and beef incarnations but particularly tender and flavourful in the latter.

The main courses also impressed, but were somewhat less consistent.

The strips of Guy beef teriyaki, while somewhat chewy, provided a nice mix of salty and sweet – though not cloyingly so. Another popular dish was the green Thai curry; much creamier than usual but with a nice bite, it was an appreciated new take on the dish. Their unique take on Pad Thai was decidedly less welcome, as it seemed to eschew the usual peanut-based sauce in favour of an odd smoky barbeque concoction and over-slippery noodles.

That said, the shrimp with tamarind, with its unique blend of a light Japanese tempura batter and an Indian sauce, was a prime example of Mirai’s successful culinary fusion, and quite a treat.

For those with stamina, dessert was rewarding, too; both the fried banana balls with honey and vanilla ice cream, as well as the tapioca cantaloupe pudding were a refreshing epilogue to it all, and likely light enough for a warm summer evening.

Having enjoyed Mirai’s mix of new spins on Asian cuisine and refined presentation, I may have to test out this theory soon enough.

February 2, 2014
In Pictures: Clashes erupt in Cairo

Rival demonstrations led to violent clashes throughout Egypt on Sunday amid celebrations of the 40^th anniversary of the October War. The Ministry of Interior had reported 94 injuries and 28 killed nationwide.

In Cairo’s Tahrir Square, face-painted revelers gathered to celebrate the anniversary, waving Egyptian flags and posters of Defence Minister Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi as jets roared overhead, trailing patriotic colours.

Not far outside this show of support for the military, however, the picture could not be more different, as the day was marred by widespread violence between marchers supporting former president Mohamed Morsi, local residents, and security forces.

In the capital’s Ramsis and Dokki neighbourhoods, security forces made wide use of teargas to disperse protesters, as clashes saw fires break out at major intersections amid unconfirmed reports of live ammunition and birdshot. Roadblocks have since been erected throughout the flashpoints.

Photos by Mohamed Omar and Ahmed AlMalky

October 6, 2013
Children’s art rises from tragedy

This moving image of a crying mother holding her injured child with faceless soldiers in the background was part of the original 1956 exhibition
(Photo Courtsey of Yasmine El-Dorghamy)

Port Said is a city often viewed through the lens of its own turmoil. No doubt, from bombings to football massacres, the Mediterranean’s gateway to the Suez Canal has certainly seen its share of suffering over the last half century, but this has usually been seen through headlines and newsreels. With roots in the Suez War of 1956, a new exhibit organised by RAWI magazine, Ganna Gallery and the Labib Family features paintings chronicling the last two turbulent years, but viewed through children’s eyes.

Yasmine El-Dorghamy, who also publishes the Egyptian culture and heritage quarterly RAWI, has played a key role in organising the exhibit. Its inspiration, she explained, came from echoes of a much older one found while visiting the house of architect Tarek Labib.

“There, I saw some printed photographs of paintings that looked like they were painted by children. But the images in them were not of gardens and seesaws and other kids stuff. They were images of guns, bodies scattered on the streets, or a mother holding her dead child. The images were very powerful, yet very childlike at the same time, which was very strange,” she said.

The paintings, it turned out, were born of conflict.

Labib’s parents, Mohamed Labib and Seddika Hassanein, had both been art teachers at the time of the Suez War of 1956, when British, French, and Israeli forces had bombed targets in Egypt in response to then president Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal, leading to scores of civilian deaths in the ensuing ground campaign. Labib’s parents were among the first to enter the city after its liberation, alongside Egyptian security forces.

The pair, El-Dorghamy said, had “packed up their supplies – paint, big pieces of paper and everything,” and once in Port Said, had “gathered as many kids as they could, and started this art workshop with them, for therapy. They asked them to draw images from what they’d just witnessed- and just get it out.”

El-Dorghamy agreed this sort of “art therapy” was fairly progressive for the 1950s, even if such labels did not exist at the time. Mid-century semantics notwithstanding, the results were tougher to argue with. “Amazing paintings came out of it, and they did an exhibition of it at the time in Port Said, and then they took it to Cairo,” she said. “Later they traveled all around Europe. They went to Vienna, they went to Budapest, and now the originals are in Rome.”

“I just went gaga over these paintings,” El-Dorghamy said. “And I thought, I have to tell this story.”

But El-Dorghamy and Labib decided to take it a step further. In light of the hardships Port Said has seen since the 25 January Revolution, the organisers felt the city’s children could benefit from a similar project today. Starting in the spring of this year and in cooperation with Port Said’s Ganna Gallery, they launched a competition for paintings and kept the guidelines intentionally loose. “We didn’t direct them to paint about their hardships,” said El-Dorghamy. “We didn’t direct them at all, really; we just told them to paint about their lives in their city over the past few years.”

Once the new contributions came rolling in, however, the results were again powerful, documenting many of the events from the past few years, from the football massacre of February 2012, to images of masked gunmen shooting at funerals. Other paintings depicted queues for bread and petrol, and one scene which El-Dorghamy found particularly amusing.

This drawing showing the violence, teargas, injured citizens, bullets, a funeral, and the president admonishing the nation was drawn in 2013
(Photo Courtsey of Yasmine El-Dorghamy)

“It had Morsi on the TV screen, with ‘On Air’ written in the frame, and he’s shaking his finger at the people who are out after curfew,” El-Dorghamy said, referring to the curfew the former president had threatened following the violence at the abovementioned funerals.

Meanwhile, a visit to Port Fouad’s rowing club yielded another exciting discovery. Going through the club’s register for names of older members, the organisers were able to find one of the original children from 1956. Hoda El Bani is now a grandmother, and has become an art teacher, also working with children.

“It was so amazing when we found her,” El-Dorghamy said. “And she’s so excited about this whole thing.” El Bani, who was 13 at the time of the first workshop, still has a gift Hassanein gave her in 1957: a box of colours with her name on it. Still brimming with enthusiasm for the original project, El Bani will speak at the opening of the exhibition on Thursday.

El-Dorghamy said Port Said is unique in its history as a source of inspiration for the artwork. “Had it been any other city there might not have been much to say now. Port Said has suffered more than any other, and that is why there were lots of very eerie parallels, and similar images, between the 1956 paintings and the ones we have now.”

There are plans to bring the exhibition to Cairo after its premiere. For now, however, the paintings will be displayed in the city that inspired them. “The Children of Port Said 1956-2013” will be staged at the Misr Public Library in Port Said on Thursday 19 September at 7pm.

September 19, 2013