– Year 2 – Page 2 – Spoofy Randomness

Travel Destinations

My hints for a warm destination didn’t work so well. Her birthday, her rules, so I happily went along with it, and it was a great trip! It was really nice to be together again, and London had lots of cool things that Meagan lined up.

Somewhat ironically, it wasn’t horribly frigid there as they had unseasonably warm weather (I bundled up, but Meagan enjoyed the temps) and as I drew this comic back in Alex a cold front rolled in from the Med and temps dropped into the single digits Celsius–just below our London temps–and cold rain and wind.

January 9, 2019

Egypatman

Oh hey, looky. A new comic! It’s been a while. I don’t know that this will become a regular thing like before, but I’ve benefitted from the break and I have a few new ideas bouncing around. I think I will stick to Wednesday updates, though. Not likely going to update next week as I’ll be in London with Meagan!

I bought said shirt when Sarah, Moustafa, and I spent our fall break in Dahab. The reality of this comic is that I really needed no convincing. This should surprise no one.

The Superman shirt is one that I saw in Dubai last year and I regret not buying it. That’s the Arabic equivalent of our “S”.

December 26, 2018

Tram Sounds

At first I was getting annoyed at my inability to draw straight lines…then I realized that those trams are so old they don’t have any straight lines left.

The font in the final panel is Blambot’s ‘Catholic Schoolgirl’. That just adds to my amusement. Also, panel 1 is an understatement…and that’s not even including the motorbikes!

October 17, 2018

Water, Water, Everywhere (BUT DON’T DRINK IT!)

Water. Holy crap, all the water problems. And people, THEY AIN’T OVER YET.

My list of things that have broken in this apartment is up to 15, and almost all of them are water-related. This is a large part of why comics keep getting posted late; I’ve been here for almost six weeks now and I have not had a day where everything works. I have not had a week without someone coming to fix something. And blimey, that gets tiring. I’ll publish the list later.

The title is a homage to my roommate from college James (who is actually on my side of the world studying in Glasgow!), who did an interterm in Egypt and was VERY INSISTENT that I not drink the water here. It’s good advice, although I did buy a filter for my apartment so that I can cut back on plastic bottle waste and it has worked fine. I wouldn’t try it sans filter, though, ESPECIALLY NOT RIGHT NOW. My water has been chunky.

Marwan makes a very belated appearance here (he was supposed to appear in a comic about my water heater erupting last year, but I never made it). He is our supply man for AIA, but also is a quite skilled handyman and frequently helps out in the foreign teachers’ apartments. The poor man is VERY familiar with mine by now…

Once I realized I’d be drawing myself in my PJs, I couldn’t resist drawing my awful tan lines in this one. Additionally, I think this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to the comic webcomic trope of ‘fan service’ in NoaC. Given that this comic is somewhat narcissistically about me, let’s never speak of fan service again, okay? (Fun fact, at one point during OtOoSC, I considered drawing pinups of some of the characters. This never actually happened. Probably for the best.)

I don’t know that the next comic will be the ‘TO BE CONTINUED’ comic; I don’t want to constantly dwell on this as I do have other material that is a little happier, so I will post the second one once the problems are solved.

September 26, 2018

Time Zones

Meagan introduced me to this song, and oh man do I feel it some days: https://youtu.be/ntSBKPkk4m4

The weekend thing always throws me; there’s a double whammy there because the weekend in the Middle East is Friday-Saturday. Combine that with a 7 to 8 hour difference with Central Time Zone, and I’m leaving work on Thursdays while Meagan is heading to two more days. It makes finding time to video chat very difficult because we don’t share much of a weekend and weekdays are almost impossible since one of us is always at work or asleep. I think a 12 hour time difference would actually be easier to handle because of that.

Okay, so an eleven-thirty start to a game isn’t that early (unless you’re a college student), but for those that have to work those games (like the Scouts who volunteer for ushering, and the professionals like Will who get to help), it can become quite early. It takes a lot of effort to prepare for enough people for Memorial Stadium to become the third-largest ‘city’ in Nebraska! Trying to shunt that many people, sometimes in varying states of sobriety, can be quite ridiculous, especially at that hour.

And yes, Meagan does this every day. Silly. 🙂

Technical note: I changed where I draw to have better posture, but it turns out I’ve gotten into bad habits and drawing on a table suddenly means I can’t seem to draw a straight line. Ugh. I’ll keep working on that.

September 19, 2018

Let’s GO to Egypt

Ref: Not the first time Pokémon has been referenced | Or the second | And there was this whole arc

I’ve only ever seen three other people playing since I’ve been here (counting the boab with the two phones), even on Community Days. I know there’s other players because my gyms do get taken, but they are either really stealthy or spoof locations.

The hacker I allude to in panel 4 had a program that I would actually be very impressed by had it not involved, y’know, hacking. The program would actually have the character walk to each gym (or at least a time delay) as soon as it was taken and would automatically fight it and take it back, always depositing the exact same Pokémon per gym. This was really annoying as I had a hard time ranking up the gyms closest to my old apartment, but eventually he felt the wrath of the ban hammer.

In reference to panel 6, I had a hunch this was happening but I had never actually seen it until last weekend. Went for a level 3 raid (the highest I can do on my own) and noticed two other accounts joined me. Surprised, I looked around, and saw no one except the boab of the nearby apartment. Then I realized he was tapping away at two phones, and I realized to my amusement what was going on.

One thing I didn’t mention in this comic is my favorite feature of Pokémon GO: the map that tracks all the gyms you’ve been to. This has been quite fun for me (shocker, I know), and I’ve earned badges in six countries so far (USA, Canada, Egypt, UAE, Switzerland, Germany, but alas Turkey’s IST airport gyms are on the other side of security…). My favorite in Egypt is the gold gym I have from my trip to Siwa; it’s probably one of the most remote locations of any gym.

Also, Alex is about 20 miles too far north for Corsola to appear. 🙁 I did get one when I was in Abu Dhabi and a few more when I happened to be in Switzerland during day it was released across Europe, and they can be found along the Red Sea in Egypt, which is why I included it in this comic.

Don’t forget to support your favorite cartoonist in Egypt on Patreon!

September 12, 2018

Year 2

And we’re back! It’s time for Year 2 of my adventures to Egypt! Back in the country after a nice vacation in Switzerland and America, and plenty more wacky adventures in store this year, I’m sure!

And I did not end up chickening out of eye lasers, as I mentioned in that commentary that I might. Apparently I haven’t gotten used to drawing myself without glasses, as I actually drew them on when making this comic and had to erase them. Oops!

September 5, 2018

Chapter: – Year 2

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