A day of rest

I ran off to Dr. Paul's for breakfast today and that was lovely. I hooked up with the gang from the guest house last night and ended up at a very nice restaurant not far from Meskel square.

We had BBQ chicken, telapia, plantain, cous-cous and some red wine. Aftwerwards we went to a club called Tam Tam that was very dark and noisy. I did not stay long and grabbed a lift back to Deker with 2 gentlemen in the party I had just met.

We were on a long road that was under construction. It seems that they do everything at once here to the roads rather than piece-by-piece say over a 2-3 year period. There were giant piles of gravel and sand everywhere, and navigating for a pedestrian was a treat. There were piles of boulders the size of footballs as well as idle machinery of every shape and size. One sees so many sites littered with this type of paraphernalia all over Addis, as crews work at a ferverish pace to get the streets closed up and paved by the time the rainy season returns in March/April.

I met a guy from Cote D'Ivoire named Youssef who organized the outing. He asked me to take him to the jazz club that Melaku and I have been to a few times and we will do that tomorrow night.

I am hoping that finally one of my schemes here will work out ... the one where Yoftahe is going to buy me a Macbook Pro in Dubai this week and bring it back here for 2,000 birr duty. I am watching BladeRunner this afernoon, and still chuckle at the fact that it is my favourite movie, the main character's name is Deckert, and I am staying at Deker Inn in Addis ... a coincidence? I think not.

I will devour some Barclays premier league football hopefully this evening at Blue Drops. When I wear the Fly Emirates (Arsenal) or Carlsberg (Liverpool) shirts the locals give me thumbs up (or down) when I pass by. I spoke to Carl Dudley a few times via email and he wondered what took me so long to start watching football. He has an answer for all my football questions and should impart his wisdom to the Liverpool fans as to why their team is so bad this year.