Cyrus Farivar

As if five weeks and eight countries (Morocco, Senegal, Mauritania, France, UK, Estonia, Germany, Switzerland) weren’t enough, I just got word that The World (PRI/BBC/WGBH) is sending me to Riga, Latvia for a story tomorrow. Veljo and I will hop the bus to Riga (it’s five hours to the south), doing interviews Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. I’ll catch my flight onto Berlin on Sunday afternoon, and Veljo will return home that evening. Now at least this time, I can…

Yes, Tallinn is very cold. But it sure has its moments.

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NYT: The central bank’s latest response to these problems, announced this week, was to declare inflation illegal.

PC World: Cyrus Farivar, PC World Monday, February 05, 2007 01:00 AM PST Right before your eyes, your cell phone has morphed into a portable computer. Whether you’re searching Google via text messages, using Short Message Service (SMS) to make international calls, or e-mailing a voice message, these tips will help jump-start your cell phone’s inner PC–and make your life easier to boot. Text Your Google Search For the price of sending a text message, you can unleash the power…

Once again, I find myself sitting on Veljo‘s couch, using the plentiful WiFi. London was fine, albeit brief (and expensive! Good Lord that place is expensive. Basically one pound has the same purchasing power as a dollar, but it’s actually two dollars.) I had lunch with Tom Standage, my editor at The Economist, at a place near the office (25 St. James’ St. — Tube: Green Park), and we discussed tech sorts of things and my book that I’m working…

Well, I’m in Paris (again), while transiting from one part of the world to another. My return trip from Dakar was uneventful, save four boring hours in the Casablanca airport, and being frustrated that their WiFi didn’t work. More accurately, it did work, but for some reason their portal page where they wanted me to pay 100 dirhams ($12 — which I was willing to pay) for one hour’s worth of internet access, told me that Mozilla doesn’t have SSL…

Yep, someone’s taken up the task yet again. Seriously guys, didn’t we settle this, I don’t know, three times in the last 22 months?

Dan says: Sometimes I get so caught up in Rosso that I start to think Rosso is Mauritania. What I’m trying to say is, sometimes I think the rest of Mauritania is just like Rosso. That, of course, is completely false. Rosso is the San Diego/Tijuana of West Africa. Unlike the rest of Arab Mauritania, the population here is predominantly black (Pulaar, Wolof). No matter what happens in Rosso, authority always comes from an Arab guy in Nouakchott. Therefore, somethings…

I just uploaded a bunch more pictures to my Flickr account. Go check ’em out. This one here is my name written in chalk on the wall next to my old bedroom door at UGB. I’m amazed that it’s survived five years.