Our favourite restaurant reopened a couple of months ago after being closed for two years due to licensing problems. Cuba Cabana is back - Hooray! Bacon and eggs, coffee and fresh mango juice with the mulberries falling softly all around.
Photography by Holly, aged nine.
It was Felicity's birthday on Tuesday and so I skipped my men's group meeting and took her out for a meal at the Mena House Oberoi Hotel. It sits right next to the pyramids and is an amazing place steeped in history. Famous royal personalities and notable politicians who stayed there include Sir Winston Churchill, General Montgomery, President Roosevelt, the Agha Khan and his Begum, King Mohammed, King Umberto, King Gustav, Presidents Nixon and Carter, General Moshe Dayan, Dr. Henry Kissinger and King Juan Carlos.
It was originally a royal lodge used by Khedive Ismail, the King of Egypt, as a house for himself and his guests while on hunting trips in the desert or during visits to the Pyramids of Giza. The state rooms have been turned into magnificent resaurants, andwhile the Moghul Room is one of the smaller ones, it is still very special.
They serve fantastic Indian food in a great setting, and Felicity and I had the most wonderful evening sitting right next to the the musicians (Tabla, Harmonium and Sitar) noodling away. We ordered a selection of dishes and ended up taking half of it home later. Truly outstanding!
Some people have called it "micro-blogging", some call it an ongoing conversation, kind of like Instant Messenger, but based around the World Wide Web augmented with SMS from mobile phones. I think this video sums it up nicely.
For me, it is a way to keep up with friends overseas who are too far away to telephone and in the wrong time zone at the wrong time when I want to talk to them.
By the way, in the previous post, when I said "follow me on twitter", I don't actually want you following me ok? That would be a little weird. Just let me know what you're doing and send me a tweet or something. That sounds much more civilised - no cyber-stalking :-)
Taking the blog experiment to a whole new level. I am now officially a twit(ter).
It's taken me a long time to try this out, and now all the big projects are out of the way (Christmas, leaving services, Senior Pastor candidate week, teaching at School of Worship, Easter, Graham Kendrick weekend) I have a little time for new stuff. Hooray!
If you also twitter, then follow me at my page on twitter.
I had my day in the desert with Graham Kendrick yesterday. It was a really nice time. I arrived as he was finishing up the first session with the students, and we had a coffee together and caught up a little. I got involved with the second session of classes (playing a little guitar) where Graham was teaching a technique he calls "Psalm Surfing".
Basically, you take a psalm, start to play a chord progression and improvise singing the words of the psalm over the top of the chords. The idea is to really wrap your heart around the words, let them sink in deep and allow God to speak to you. It's like meditation, worship, prayer and creative improv all wrapped up together, and you really feel that you are meeting with God. Many of the students had tears in their eyes as they sang out their worship in Arabic.
We stopped for lunch and I met the rest of the team who had arrived so far. Graham's Musical Director, Steve Thompson, is the Worship Director for a church in London, and he has brought his gospel choir along for the ride this year, including various family members, his Senior Pastor, and a couple of other staff members. They are joining Graham and the band in our worship services and the concert at MCC. Raoul, Graham's amazing trumpet and percussionist was also there. He brings an amazing Spiritual dynamic, and has endless wonderful stories.
After lunch, Graham and I spent a couple of hours, sitting on his balcony overlooking a lake and palm trees, chatting and talking over all the things that have been going on since he came last year, and working out a rough plan for the weekend. He played me three new songs to see if they felt suitable for this weekend, and, if the band can get a good arrangement going, we'll end up seeing the debut of some new material tomorrow at MCC.
Later that afternoon there was a big ceremony as many of the students were graduating from their classes, including the people I taught a few weeks ago. Graham led a couple of songs, Steve and the choir led a great worship set, and Raoul played a couple of pieces, singing and playing trumpet at the same time.
I got home at about 11:00pm after the long drive down the desert road, trying to avoid the speed bumps (difficult when you can't see them in the dark), the overloaded trucks wandering about their lanes, and the odd car with no lights at all, in the pitch black, doing 100kph (60mph)! It's just jazz, really.
Graham Kendrick is almost here!
Tomorrow I will drive a couple of hours out into the desert to a retreat centre where Graham is teaching a bunch of local worship leaders - the same bunch I taught a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to go and hang out with them for a day and play some music and plan our weekend services with Graham and just catch up on news.
This will be Graham's fourth visit to Maadi Community Church and over the years he's become somewhat of a mentor to me, which is a wonderful privilege. Living out here, I don't have much access to other worship leaders, let alone someone as experienced and respected as Graham, and so it's great just to sit down and talk about the craft and the calling of leading worship.
He's going to be leading all four of our weekend worship services, and will be performing a concert on Friday night. Then on Saturday we will put on some workshops for worshipers where we can offer some training in specific skills and an opportunity for people to spend more time with Graham and his team in a more relaxed setting.
This year, along with his regular band (Egypt lineup!), Graham is bring out a twenty-voice gospel choir, led by his Director of Music, Steve Thompson. It's going to be amazing!
I'll try and keep you up to date as the weekend progresses.
All you musicians out there have to watch this - it's mind-blowing!
If John Coltrane were alive today and piloting his saxophone around the streets of Cairo, this is what his driving would look like...
Amazing!
ht: honeyee
So, the weather.
It's a beautiful hot, sunny day here; 36 degrees Centigrade, that's 97 degrees Farenheit.
Back home in England, it's snowing.
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