Glossary

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61. mustashfa

(moo stash fah) - مستشفى - hospital, sometimes clinic.

62. nadeef

(na deef) - نظيف - clean.

63. neek

(neek) - نيك - fuck. Only say it around your friends.

64. nerdery

1. the state of being a nerd 2. the activities of nerds

65. NLP

(en el pee) - acronym - Neuro-Linguistic Programming. A comprehensive communications method used in business, time-management, life-coaching, interpersonal communication and some forms of therapy. This definition is a bit limiting, however. The scope of NLP is still relatively unexplored. Uses are found for it in every field to which a practitioner attempts to apply it.

66. Om al-Dunya

(oam ad dun yah) - أم الدنيا - lit. "The Mother of the World." This is a common way of referring to Egypt.

67. podcast

tech - a portmanteau of "iPod" and "broadcast" which refers to the beautiful child of blog syndication and audio. There are now podcasts all over the internet, which run the gamut as far as topics, sources, content. For more information, check this term at Wikipedia.

68. Ramadan

(ra ma daan) - رمضان - the ninth month of the Islamic calendar in which Muslims fast from dawn until dusk. The fast entails abstaining from eating, drinking (anything), smoking, and having sex. In addition, swearing oaths and escalating to anger is supposed to be abstained from. This month ends in Eid ul-Fitr, in which there is a huge feast.

69. Ring Road

the highway that encircles Cairo, beginning and ending in Giza. It would be a loop but threatened to encroach upon the Pyramids, so a loop-like beltway was built instead. a.k.a. - Cairo Ring Road. For more information, check this term on Wikipedia.

70. sada

(say da) - سادة - plain, unadorned. This is how you order ahwa or shai if you want it black.

71. samsar

(sam saar) - سمسار - agent, middle-man. This is the guy, or woman, who sets up prospective renters with property owners. He usually also deals with tenants as a proxy to the landlord. This guy, like the "bawab" is an important one to make sure that you befriend and can trust or you may get taken for a ride when it comes to prices.

72. Second Cup

Canadian corporate coffee chain established in 1975 as a shopping mall kiosk. Now they are a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dinecorp, Intl. and have branches all over the world, including Mohandessin, Giza, where I live. Somehow, I always have two cups of coffee there. I wonder why... Link

73. sestina

(ses tee nah) - a poetic form consisting of six stanzas of six lines each which use six words in rotation at the end of each line, and then a single stanza of three lines using the end-words two-per-line. The stanza form goes like this:

A B C D E F (6 lines)
F A E B D C (6 lines)
C F D A B E (6 lines)
E C B F A D (6 lines)
D E A C F B (6 lines)
B D F E C A (6 lines)
BE DC FA (3 lines)

Whereas the capital letters represent the words used at the ends of lines. It is permissible, indeed recommended, to use words which can be used in grammatically different ways (noun, verb, adjective/participle, i.e.: lead, lead, led) or homophones (read/reed, read/red would all be considered the same end-word).

74. shawarma

(sha war maa) - شاورمة - spit roasted, sliced meat or poultry. Lahma or farakh, it's delicious.

75. sheesha

(shee shah) - شيشة - water pipe for smoking tobacco, hookah, nargile. This is the water pipe that you sit and smoke for hours while drinking coffee and playing backgammon. No drugs, only flavored tobacco.

76. shukran

(shook raan - شكراً - thanks, thank you.

77. SLUG

The name for a Linksys NSLU2 or other storage link device which has been flashed with open source/GNU/Linux-based firmware, which effectively changes them from being simply a network attached storage (NAS) device into a fully functioning headless server.