In the past few months I have been getting requests from Arabs all around the world, some from Egypt some from UAE and many from Europe, in countries such as UK, Germany and even Finland.
All sending in emails asking me to resume my coverage of Qalam Rasas, you see few months ago I used to talk about each episode and provide some videos of the episode too. There was one reason why I stopped doing that, its because I am lazy, who knows me knows this scary fact Anyway, I will try my best to cover each and every episode from now on, that means starting from the episode of the 13th of June 2008.
The reason why I started the coverage is because I felt that Hamdi Qandeel was not given the same interest as other political shows, lets say such as Alqahera Alyaum with Amr Adeeb, I watch all kind of shows, but I see a huge coverage for Alqahera Alyaum, 10 O’clock and those kind of shows.
Forums, Yahoo Groups and many many Facebook Groups cover and discuss and upload videos of those shows, except of Qalam Rasas, although Qalam Rasas is the most daring show of them all, no one, I REPEAT, NO ONE can say on their shows what Hamdi Qandeel says on Qalam Rasas.
I can’t even find the words to describe my feelings while watching this segment on Alqahera Alyaum (Cairo Today). This video shows what happened when a big famous supermarket in Egypt, most probably “Carrefour”, puts Cooking Oil and Sugar on SALE in special prices.
Yes, I know we saw those kind of scenes in USA and other countries but I never saw them for “Food Products”, the matter is that the products being food related just adds a sad side to the story.
Watch the video and I promise, you will laugh and cry both at the same time.
While I was searching around for different stuff for facebook, I found a website that makes it easy to create FaceBook applications, and yes you guessed it, no need to know programming!, Although I knew couple of other websites that has sort of this kind of service, but it does not come as simple and straightforward as this.
Dapper is not only for creating facebook applications, nope, it has a number of other uses, but I will fully review it soon in a new post. Dapper basically allows you to create facebook applications by using content from the web. So I wanted to try it out, I created this new application that now around 40 people use it in facebook, it is “Amr Adeeb Videos” application.
Pretty simple, I made this application search on youtube for the latest videos for Amr Adeeb, he is a famous Arab talk show host in Egypt, anyway it was simple, I made the settings, created the application, went to Facebook and submitted my new application.
The application basically shows you 3 clickable titles of the latest 3 videos on youtube for Amr Adeeb, you can see more links by clicking the “See All” link to see more videos.
The applications is very small and simple, and the way it was done is also simple. If you want to add “Amr Adeeb Videos” application, just Click Here.
Khairy Ramadan, a very well known Egyptian journalist, until last week he was a co-host of “Cairo Today” or “Alqahera Alyaum” talk show, although lately was a co-host he started by just presenting the journalism segment were he reads the next day’s newspapers with a guest who is usually either a journalist, a poet, a writer or even sometimes an actor.
“Alqahera Alyaum” originally had two co-hosts, Amr Adeeb and Nirvana. Nirvana was fired from the show because of public demand. She was too much defensive of the Egyptian government, in each and every situation. Anyway, later Amr was in sort of a problem, who would be co-hosting with him?, but in the end the chair of the second host was not fixed on one person, and we started seeing a pattern, although a lot of actors and actresses started co-hosting, there are few names that recurred a lot. It was Ezzat Abu 3of, Ahmed Mousa and Khairy Ramadan.
The program usually have a one hour intro, where Amr and the co-host that day will discuss current news and current happenings in Cairo and Egypt in general. The most strongest intro’s were when Amr and Khairy were together, because both of them are journalists and loose they were more fun to watch.
Now I come to the main issue, Khairy Ramadan got a very interesting offer, “Assaa” or “Assa3a” channel offered him to co-host a new show which is sort of a clone of “Cairo Today”, actually there are enough clones already, Mehwer channel has “90 Minutes” and Dream Channel has “Al3ashera Masa’an” or “10 O’clock”, and the official Egyptian satellite channel has “Elbeit Baitak”, but still it seems each and every channel want to have a piece of the pie. Anyway, the program is called “Sa3a B Sa3a” “Hour by Hour”, the other co-host will be Mai Elsherbeeny, who left “90 Minutes” from Mehwer channel.
So Khairy will be a solid part of the program, I don’t think khairy left for the money, Orbit would have paid him what he wants, I am sure of it, but he left because of the chance of being part of something he has more control in and can better contribute to, which is his right, everybody should grab the chance for a better thing in his life, but I will really miss the kind of chemistry that was between him and Amr.
Mei Elsherbeny was ok in “90 Minutes”, but not great thou, I am not sure was that because of her co-host there Mo3taz Eldemerdash?!, I wish khairy will get the best out of her, and I advise him to keep using the tone he had on “Cairo Today”, that is speaking simple Arabic, and not choosing so big and difficult words which most writers prefer to use, because most of your audience are either not educated or had middle education, and with those kind of programs you would want to reach to everybody.
I had a chance to have a very tiny chat with Khairy in his group in FaceBook, he said that he left Orbit in a very professional friendly way and he has no issues with either the program’s administration nor with Amr Adeeb, which is good to hear, he said that his new show in “Assaa” channel is not totally a clone of those kind of shows like “Cairo Today”, he said that parts of it is actually like that, but a lot of parts are new and original.
In the end all what I have to say is good luck in the new show.
The Interview was really interesting, although she did not really say anything we didn’t already know, but it was still interesting to see how she is living now and how the history was through her eyes.
Amr Adib did alright, but not great. I was waiting for some real questions he was so shallow, but yet again maybe she refused to answer a bit more serious questions.
Amr Adib seemed so happy to score this interview, my advice to him would be, try to play it cool next time, he seemed very anxious and as if he didn’t believe that he is having this interview!
Here is the interview playlist on youtube, the videos uploaded by the "AlqaheraAlyoum" channel on youtube, the playlist make it easier to watch all the 8 parts one after another. Enjoy!
Amr Adib was able to make an hour and a half interview with princess ferial in Switzerland. The interview will air tonight the 5th of December 2007 on Alqahira Alyaum (Cairo Today) show.
Amr Adib always looks for the unusual. On the 20th of November 2007, he started the episode by entering the studio in a toktok (a bike revamped to a tiny taxi). He sat in the back seat with Ahmed Mousa and when he reached his desk, he started discussing the issue of the toktok in Egypt.
How the government first allowed the importing of this vehicle and allowed it to be used as a mini taxi, and then after a while collected them and slapped fees on their drivers who can not get their “toktok’s” back. The real drama is that most of those poor guys is that they have bought this vehicle by taking bank loans, so they will still have to pay those monthly payments without working on the vehicle to get the money in the first place. The show continued to discuss how safe this vehicle is, and where it should be allowed to function and so on.
Although am not an Egyptian but I still watch the daily talk-show “Al-Qahira Alyawm” (Cairo Today) on ORBIT. To be honest I watch it most of the time because I like the way Amr Adeeb presents the show, where he talks like any normal person in the street, doe not use difficult Arabic words and doesn’t try to showoff how sophisticated he is, Although he is really a good journalist and if he wanted to do it that way he easily can.
On Saturday 3rd of November 2007, we were shocked to realize that Amr Adib was not presenting and that Khairy Ramadan and the beautiful Rania Farid Shawqy were going to co-host the show for today and Kairy announced that Amr Adib is out of the country and that he will be back tomorrow (Sunday 4th of November 2007). But still the next day Amr didn’t appeare and Kairy co-hosted the show with Ahmed Mousa and re-announced that Amr is out of the country and that he will be back the next day (Monday 5th of November 2007).
I started wondering if Amr Adib actually got fired or was eliminated or thousands of other possibilities, because I remember that Nirvana Idris who left the show couple of years ago, Amr Adib came on for several episodes and he gave different reasons every-time why she is not there with him, in the end after few days he announced that she left the show. So I got that exact feeling, but he showed up yesterday 5th of November and hosted the show.
So what was the reason for not showing up the first 2 days of this week?, If you watch the show from start to the end of each episode you would realize that those 2 episodes had important guests from “The Egyptian National Democratic Party” (El7ezb Elwatany), and as we know Amr Adib is outspoken and does not care what is the rank of the person he is interviewing, he asks the questions without caring what the result would be. So maybe those guests demanded that the only way they would be in the show if Amr Adib does not host those 2 episodes.
This is just my own understanding to what really happened.
In the past few months I have been getting requests from Arabs all around the world, some from Egypt some from UAE and many from Europe, in countries such as UK, Germany and even Finland.
Anyway, I will try my best to cover each and every episode from now on, that means starting from the episode of the 13th of June 2008.
Khairy Ramadan, a very well known Egyptian journalist, until last week he was a co-host of “Cairo Today” or “Alqahera Alyaum” talk show, although lately was a co-host he started by just presenting the journalism segment were he reads the next day’s newspapers with a guest who is usually either a journalist, a poet, a writer or even sometimes an actor.
Now I come to the main issue, Khairy Ramadan got a very interesting offer, “Assaa” or “Assa3a” channel offered him to co-host a new show which is sort of a clone of “Cairo Today”, actually there are enough clones already, Mehwer channel has “90 Minutes” and Dream Channel has “Al3ashera Masa’an” or “10 O’clock”, and the official Egyptian satellite channel has “Elbeit Baitak”, but still it seems each and every channel want to have a piece of the pie. Anyway, the program is called “Sa3a B Sa3a” “Hour by Hour”, the other co-host will be Mai Elsherbeeny, who left “90 Minutes” from Mehwer channel.
The Interview was really interesting, although she did not really say anything we didn’t already know, but it was still interesting to see how she is living now and how the history was through her eyes.
Although am not an Egyptian but I still watch the daily talk-show “Al-Qahira Alyawm” (Cairo Today) on ORBIT. To be honest I watch it most of the time because I like the way Amr Adeeb presents the show, where he talks like any normal person in the street, doe not use difficult Arabic words and doesn’t try to showoff how sophisticated he is, Although he is really a good journalist and if he wanted to do it that way he easily can.