Hi, I am in Italy until January 3 when I return to Cairo. On Janaury 4 I fly to Damascus. On the night of January 7 I return to Cairo. Without leaving the airport, I then fly to Istanbul in the wee hours of January 8, have lunch there, then fly to Sofia, where I stay doing a business writing assignment until Janaury 22. I'm then back to my new apartment in downtown Cairo, and in February I'm going to Ukraine. That's all for now.

Today I went to a rustic place in the Sicilian hinterland and ate some rustic food. The meat course consisted of something akin to a super-thick slab of bacon, about 50% fat, which is then deep fried in lard and then doused in olive oil, served with two lamb chops on the side treated about the same way, and big honking sausage, too.