It's been another big day with nooks, alleys, crowded streets, tasty food,

arguments, cool breezes, and so on. We woke up in the morning to go tackle

Carthage, after a quick check of the email. For reasons not yet fathomable

to me, Yahoo Mail is effectively completely inaccessible, while Gmail is

snappy and responsive. Pingtimes to Yahoo's servers seem a reasonable 150

milliseconds, but pages come back completely blank, finished. Even after

dozens of minutes waiting, nothing comes in. This is with and without

Google Accelerator and with both IE and FireFox. I'm puzzled. Incidentally,

after checkin at badging yesterday, there were five Internet kiosks for

attendees - a quick scan showed three being used for Yahoo Mail, one for

MSN Mail, and one for web surfing. While a statistically useless sample

size, I was still surprised by the results.

After taking a bus to the city center (becoming increasingly dominated by

the constant free WSIS buses and flocks of diplomats and represenatatives

marching around with badges flapping), we munched on Lebanese versions of

the harissa-shawerma wraps that we had had the prior night. Very tasty! I

think they threw some beet in, which added a really nice flavor. I also

am a big fan of the press-grilling of wraps and sandwiches, like the

Italians. I drank a beautiful pear-strawberry drink. So good!

Jamil and I went to a sort of shopping mall where nearly all of the stores

are piracy shops. That's right; this wasn't some shady street operation or

even a set of tents in a park. This was a MALL with permanent signage and

a dozen or so permanently established shops where pretty much all that

went on was copying of CD's, DVDs, and games. DivX is apparently the

format of choice for most folks who have nice computers and want to not

care about region encoding and associated issues. We walk into a shop

where Jamil knows the people. There are about seven thick binders of

flyers, each one a different category of material: DivX, MP3 collections,

Audio CDs, Computer CDs, Region 2 DVDs, PlayStation2 CDs, and other CDs.

A bank of burners busily chunks out bits in the background.

Jamil and I then set out to the train to Carthage, but are cheerfully

yelled at in the city center by one of Walid's aunts from the finacai,

who offers to save us the trouble of a five minute walk in her car, if

only we can wait for an hour while she goes to the bank. We thank her for

her generous offer but decline. ;)

The train is full, but not packed, and offers a good view of the WSIS

dome and the surrounding area. Some kids board and enjoy holding the doors

of the train open while the train is moving, jumping off to run on the

platforms next to the train then back on. We exit at Carthage, now a

lovely suburb of Tunis for the well-connected elites, and see some ruins.

Jamil and I hotly debate capitalism, Marxism, and the benefits of

globalization as we straddle the seawall of Carthage, the birthplace of

international trade. It seems fitting. We press onwards to Sidi Bou Said,

a set of white-walled, blue-doored villas that seems a cross between

Italian villas and Greek coloring. It is almost painfully adorable, with

winding, steep side streets and archways going every which what way. I

buy an indigo cup. There are beautiful views and a multi-stepped cafe

which looks out over the ocean. Jamil and I talk, argue, and discuss the

whole way. I swear to do whatever I can to make sure that Jamil has the

books he needs for his education; ideally I could some day help him

start a library in Tunisia for English books. Apparently none exists

today. We'll call it "La Bibliotheque Anglaise Hamzoui".

We grab dinner at an expensive French restaurant as my treat to Jamil;

he's never been in such a place before and tries to refuse. But I'm a

tough guest. The service is really painfully bad, which I think is

probably a direct consequence of there being no tipping at nice

restaurants. In the US, nicer restaurants yield much better service

(generally), not just because of higher standards and more training,

but because a small difference in a percentage tipped of a large bill

means that even small gestures on the part of the waiter can be very

profitable. Without a tipping incentive, there's no incentive to look

after customers, other that just not getting fired. Besides having to

wait forever for anything (when the waitstaff were just idling,

literally pacing) they tried to overcharge us by "confusing" our

shared glass of Muscat (a first for Jamil!) and a bottle of Muscat.

Oy. DO NOT GO TO "Restaurant Les Ombrelles" in Gammarth. Ever.

We stumble back on home as I nearly fall asleep on the train. We taxi

it back to Walid's and I'm just about to pass out when I realize I

should check my email, upload my photos from the day, and write about

what happened. For some very strange physiological reason that is

beyond my current ken, being in front of the computer seems to have

very much the same affect as caffeine; I'm wide awake as soon as I

hit the keyboard and lose all desire to sleep. I don't get me sometimes.

I'm trying to keep notes to remember all the stuff I ought to write

about but some days are just too much. Hopefully I will manage to go

back over these notes and expand / edit / relive them before long.

But it's 3:50am and the dogs are barking and the rooster is crowing and

damned if I don't need to at least pretend like I need to go to sleep.