Is This Egypt's Biggest Asian Supermarket?
Aug 09, 2025
If you've ever found yourself in a ramen aisle wondering why Egypt's selection stops at 'spicy chicken,' Singarea answers the call—with a megaphone. The Maadi-based Asian supermarket is massive, fluorescent, and deeply committed to your snack-based survival. Korean instant noodles? They've got flavours you didn't know existed. (Carbonara? Jjajang? Cheese-stuffed kimchi meltdown? Yes.) The store's glowing green storefront is aggressively unmissable—lit like a club at 10 a.m.—and once inside, the shelves don't let up. One wall is just ramen. Another is devoted to chips, sauces, frozen dumplings, and enough white rice to fuel a K-drama family saga. You'll spot familiar cult items—Shin Ramyun, honey butter chips, bottled bubble tea—and enough pre-cooked rice to get through a week of fake cooking. There's even panko, if you're suddenly overcome with the urge to breadcrumb something.
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CairoScene
09-08-2025
- CairoScene
Is This Egypt's Biggest Asian Supermarket?
Singarea is specifically for our Korean food lovers, a one-stop shop for your ramen cravings in every flavor you could possibly imagine. Aug 09, 2025 If you've ever found yourself in a ramen aisle wondering why Egypt's selection stops at 'spicy chicken,' Singarea answers the call—with a megaphone. The Maadi-based Asian supermarket is massive, fluorescent, and deeply committed to your snack-based survival. Korean instant noodles? They've got flavours you didn't know existed. (Carbonara? Jjajang? Cheese-stuffed kimchi meltdown? Yes.) The store's glowing green storefront is aggressively unmissable—lit like a club at 10 a.m.—and once inside, the shelves don't let up. One wall is just ramen. Another is devoted to chips, sauces, frozen dumplings, and enough white rice to fuel a K-drama family saga. You'll spot familiar cult items—Shin Ramyun, honey butter chips, bottled bubble tea—and enough pre-cooked rice to get through a week of fake cooking. There's even panko, if you're suddenly overcome with the urge to breadcrumb something.
Mada
31-07-2025
- Mada
Dozens of Egyptians still missing after migrant boat sinks off Tobruk coast
Dozens of Egyptian migrants remain missing after a Europe-bound boat capsized off the Libyan coast in the early hours of July 24. Some of the migrants' families told Mada Masr that identifying and obtaining information about their relatives' whereabouts has been difficult to navigate and that the official response has been slow. Omar Fathy, who buried one of his cousins on Tuesday and is still searching for another, described the process of identifying victims and repatriating their bodies to Egypt as 'haphazard.' The boat, which carried 81 migrants, sank off the coast of Tobruk in Libya on July 24, the city's Maritime Search and Rescue Office announced. Ten people were rescued — including eight Egyptian nationals. A total of 18 bodies were retrieved over the course of the ensuing days, of whom only six have been identified, according to the office's statement. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement on Tuesday that roughly 50 people are still missing. 'Three of the six were from our hometown in Badary, Assiut, two were from Sharqiya and one was from Minya,' Fathy said. The Egyptian vice consul told Fathy that three identified bodies — including that of his cousin — were to be repatriated via the land crossing between Libya and Egypt on Sunday. But on his way to Salloum, the official contacted Fathy again to say that there had been a mistake and that his cousin's body had been sent with a dozen unidentified bodies to the morgue in the Libyan city of Derna. The family completed the required procedures — including a National Security Agency interrogation of the victim's brother at the Salloum border crossing — before their relative's body was shipped the following day. Throughout the process, most of the information the families have received came via the Tobruk-based Abereen Foundation and the Tobruk search and rescue office rather than from Egyptian authorities, according to Fathy. The two entities were responsible for informing families when bodies were identified. Relatives then travelled independently to the western border city of Salloum to retrieve their loved ones. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued its first statement on the matter on Wednesday, a week after the incident, stating that it is following up on the survivors' cases in preparation for their repatriation from Libya. The statement did not mention the number of fatalities or survivors, but said the ministry is overseeing the transfer of the identified bodies and is participating in efforts to identify the remaining victims. But with around a dozen bodies still unidentified, Fathy believes that Egyptian authorities' delayed and sparse communication with the families has contributed to the ongoing confusion. Families only began on Tuesday to submit DNA samples to the Cairo forensic authority to assist in the identification process, a source at the Egyptian agency told Mada Masr on condition of anonymity. This was after substantial confusion had already taken place. At one point, the Tobruk search and rescue office mistakenly stated it had found and identified the body of Fathy's other cousin, only to retract their announcement after one of the survivors recognized the body in question. A similar mistake was repeated with another body, according to the office's statements. To try and find Fathy's missing cousin, his family submitted a DNA sample at Cairo's central labs on Wednesday. The families first had to obtain a letter from the Foreign Ministry before having samples taken at the Cairo forensic authority, which then coordinates the delivery of the results to the Libyan forensic authorities, the agency source said. The eight Egyptian survivors were held by Libyan authorities until Wednesday, but were later released by the western Tobruk prosecution. They are set to be handed over to Egyptian authorities once deportation procedures are complete. Mostafa Nassir, a relative of three Egyptians who are still missing, told Mada Masr that Libyan authorities rely on survivors to help identify the recovered bodies, which is why they are being held until search and recovery operations conclude. Egyptian authorities could hold them in custody for a few additional days while they file illegal migration reports before releasing them, Nassir explained, citing his past experience having attempted irregular migration himself. According to Nassir, one of the survivors rescued in the afternoon of July 24 said the boat they departed in was in very poor condition, capsizing around eight kilometers into the voyage. The survivor said most of those on board were from the governorates of Assiut, Minya and Sharqia, along with South Sudanese nationals, according to Nassir. Nassir said that five people from Assiut's Badary are thought to be missing, while Ibrahim Mohamed, who is searching for his two nephews, told Mada Masr that 22 young men from his hometown of Bilbeis in Sharqiya are still missing. The bodies of another three Bilbeis residents have been identified. Like many other families who spoke to Mada Masr, the Bilbeis families have been unable to reach the Egyptian intermediaries who convinced their sons to make the journey. Brokers tell the young men that they will be going to a good place with decent housing, the families say, but that is seldom the case. 'Once they arrive in Libya, they're met with humiliation and torture at the hands of smugglers,' Nassir said. 'And when they die, the brokers turn off their phones and disappear.' The IOM described the tragedy as 'a stark reminder of the deadly risks people are forced to take in search of safety and opportunity.' The organization also stressed that Libya continues to serve as a key transit point for migrants and refugees, who face 'exploitation, abuse and life-threatening journeys.' It renewed its call for greater regional cooperation to establish 'safe, regular and dignified migration pathways.' According to the IOM's latest Libya migrant report, covering data from March to April, Egyptian nationals now account for 19 percent of all migrants attempting to reach Europe via Libya. The total number of migrants in Libya has risen to over 867,000, representing 44 nationalities — a 20 percent increase compared to the same period last year, in an upward trend that has continued since December 2023, according to the report. Just this month, weekly reports documented intercepted boats carrying a total of 1,717 migrants.
CairoScene
22-07-2025
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Dubai-Based Abdalla Almulla is a Cartographer of Cultural Resonance
Dubai-Based Abdalla Almulla is a Cartographer of Cultural Resonance Dubai's skyline pulses with audacious shapes, but UAE designer Abdalla Almulla's most resonant designs often touch the earth. Walk through The Palm Pavilion - a structure of woven palm fronds, trunk columns, and parametric ceilings - and you feel the ghost of Sheikh Zayed himself, who once sat on such mats under palm canopies. "We used one tree to create everything," Almulla, founder of MULA Design Practice, tells SceneHome. 'Flooring, structure, shade, even the furniture inside. It's about less resources creating more meaning." This pavilion, born for COP28, later migrated across the Emirates - a nomadic testament to design that honours roots while embracing reinvention. For Almulla, the blank page is an invitation to wrestle with the unspoken. "Pavilions demand you ask a radical question," he reflects, his voice alive with the energy of a solver, fuelled by challenges. "Not how to build, but why." Where commercial architecture often prioritises safety and convention, the pavilion becomes his laboratory; a space where constraints ignite invention, not inhibit it, giving him the license to flirt with the improbable whilst unburdened by permanent occupancy codes or rigid client mandates. To understand how such a structure came to be, you have to rewind to the quiet obsessions and turning points that shaped Almulla's trajectory. The designer's path defies the archetype of the architect-hero. He didn't build Lego empires as a child; graphic design tutorials captivated him first. Architecture emerged as a bridge between engineering pragmatism and creative yearning. His pivotal moment arrived in revelation during his thesis: an 800-metre musala (prayer space) suspended above Dubai. "I realised I wasn't just designing for the divine, but with it," he shares. "That shifted everything. Now, every project begins with a feeling - sacredness, earthiness, reflection - and materials follow." This ethos demands profound humility. He speaks of "putting ego aside" when a client requests something "instagrammable," or when a cherished design element obstructs function. "You must understand why you are attached to something as a designer," he insists, "then reapplying its essence more truthfully." He opened his studio, MULA Design Practice, in 2018. It operates as a design practice - rather than an architecture studio - to maintain fluidity across scales. "A building, a chair, a fork - they're all designed experiences. The ability to go all the way through from exteriors to interiors allows you to create the experience in a much deeper way." Almulla's designs span pavilions, houses, exhibitions, interventions - but what he's building, more broadly, is a practice of care. His spaces are minimal, but not mute. He'll pare things back until only the meaningful remains: a brass hinge, a cut of local stone, a shadow that lands just right on a textured wall. The restraint is a mode of respect for the place, for the craft, for the people who'll eventually inhabit it. In his hands, repetition becomes ritual. Fascinated with motifs and repetitions, probably due to his previous flirtations with graphic design, patterns ripple across ceilings, fractal-like screens filter desert light. "Geometry is our cultural mathematics, it's not ornamentation. It's identity made tactile - a rhythm that guides the eye and soul." Where minimalism risks sterility, Abdalla's geometries pulse with contextual memory. He selects materials like a poet choosing words: polished stone for serenity, raw clay for groundedness, always attuned to Dubai's searing heat and light, always attuned to what the space needs, for him material comes second, feeling always comes first. He designs frameworks, allowing the moments to follow. "You can't design the moment a child slides down a handrail or hides under stairs to cry," he says, recalling a professor's wisdom. "Spaces must breathe, allowing people to imprint them with their own memories." This acceptance of the unexpected fuels his critique of soulless urban sprawl. "When districts lose identity, they lose timelessness. Sustainability is cultural endurance, being able to withstand the test of time." At the heart of Almulla's practice is a deep comfort with contrast: past and future, digital and tactile, individual and collaborative. This is someone who speaks just as reverently about the potential of CNC machines as he does about the inherited logic of a traditional fishing net. He talks about sustainability, not as a posture but as a material instinct. Iteration is something he returns to often. 'You don't always get it right on the first go,' he says. 'But you learn something. Maybe even learn what you meant to say all along.' He sketches by hand. He builds models. He renders in 3D. He 3D-prints test pieces. And sometimes, he scraps it all and begins again. There's grace in his willingness to let the idea be smarter than the ego—in a real willingness to let the idea be smarter than the ego. To let the project win. Abdalla wields technology not as a disruptor, but as a translator of heritage. Digital fabrication allows palm wood to span 14-metre cantilevers. 3D printing prototypes complex joints inspired by historic crafts. He recounts a project he admired, where sensors captured a carpet maker's net-weaving gestures, transmuting them into robotic ink drawings on carpet: "That's the alchemy, honouring the hand's wisdom through the machine's precision." For Abdalla, tools like CNC routers or projection-mapped floor plans are collaborators, expanding possibility while demanding rigor. "Iterations exhaust solutions. You see 10 paths, then choose the one that serves the feeling best." Though private residences fill his portfolio, Almulla's gaze shifts toward the communal. He dreams of museums, hospitals, fire stations - spaces where his ethos of emotional clarity and cultural resonance can touch multitudes. "Public projects leave imprints on the civic soul," he muses. In a world racing toward the new, Almulla walks patiently between eras; his designs quiet bridges where heritage and innovation, precision and humanity, find uncommon harmony.
