Spoofy Randomness

Location: Borg El Arab

  • I’d Like to Buy a Vowel

    I’d Like to Buy a Vowel

    Ref: Borg El Arab

    Just throwing this out there: vocalizing the written word in a written comic is HARD.

    Also throwing this out there: porgs are adorable. As soon as I saw the sign for Porg El Arab, I knew what I had to do.

    You may have noticed that I’ve been putting more panels in recent comics.  While it started by accident because I wanted to cram two strips into one to finish before Ramadan, I’ve been happier with the look this way. It may not be around for all comics, but for this one it works.

    The street signs in Panel 4 do exist (slightly further apart, as there’s a tram line between them). Yes, it’s the same street name.  That is also what the new Egyptian street signs look like, if you were curious. They have Arabic on them as well, but it turns out ClipStudio does NOT like Arabic (which is problematic for a strip like this one).

    The narrator of my comic has been getting a lot of work done. Just don’t tell him I noticed or I’ll have to give him a raise. (You should give him a raise on my Patreon.)  And don’t have him ask me how my Arabic lessons are going!

  • Sister Visit II

    Sister Visit II

    Happy New Year! Okay, done with fog comics. But it did help me get caught back up! End of term was a little more hectic than I would have liked (partly due to razzum frazzum grade report issues and partly due to Turkey issues).

    Moustafa gets all the awesome points for putting up with this chaos without complaint.  It got further complicated by the fact that both of our phones died (weak cell signal at the airport…) and he also had to bring his fiancée to the airport (and should have been spending the day with her instead of stuck at an airport with me), so when we realized that those waiting to depart had been taken to a hotel, we figured we should have some time to run back to Alex, get Sarah and power, and head back hopefully before Wendy landed. Moustafa took Sarah to the arrivals and I ran over to the departures just as people started coming out of the airport. Success!

  • Sister Visit I

    Sister Visit I

    Merry Christmas!

    In case it’s a little foggy (ahem), my speech bubbles are on the left and Moustafa’s are on the right.

    This marks the first of a series of strips showing my sister’s Christmas visit to Egypt.  Our whole trip will not be documented in comic form, but there are a few moments that were ‘comic worthy’. I’ll comment more on this particular situation in next week’s comic.  Suffice to say that I had not seen fog like this in Alexandria until that day, go figure.  I’m just glad I was not going home that morning like some of the foreign teachers did.  And it had to happen on the first trip someone made to Egypt; I had bought Wendy a SIM card, but she obviously did not have it yet. She will be passing it off and I’ll put money on the account when someone comes so that we don’t have this situation again, but I didn’t have a non-$50-shipping way to pass it off to her to start with.

    Because of Borg El Arab’s distance and remote location (the airport in Alex is closed for an indefinite time for renovations; it was supposed to reopen in 2014 but then the revolution happened), I’ve discovered that flying in and out of Cairo is almost as convenient. A little longer to get home, but it’s MUCH cheaper to fly there and the train system between Alex and Cairo is cheap and comfortable. Wendy and I also discovered that domestic flights in Cairo have almost no lines and that part of the airport is nice and quiet; it was an enjoyable experience.

    Speaking of the revolution, one side effect of it was that you cannot go into the airport unless you have a ticket.  This was confusing to me when I first arrived, as my driver was not able to greet me at the gate and it took a bit to figure out that I had to LEAVE the airport.  This also meant that Moustafa and I couldn’t go into the warm building and find a comfy seat next to an arrivals screen, so we had to sleep in his car.  (The lack of an arrivals screen is REALLY annoying.)

    The Arabic in the comic should give my Egyptian friends a chuckle. I apologize for poor translations. Also, apparently ClipStudio does not like Arabic (or I don’t know how to make it like Arabic, which is equally likely) because it goes from right to left, so I had to screenshot Arabic text from Google Translate and bring the image in.  This is the gripping behind-the-scenes stuff y’all come for, I know.