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View From Arada

Jan 15 , 2022

Don't Surrender the Streets to Vehicles, Give Walking A Chance

Close to my neighbourhood, there is a wide street. A decade ago, with my friends, we used to joke that it was an expressway. Taken up largely by the Addis Abeba Light Rail now, the pedestrian walkways...

Jan 7 , 2022

Serve Like the Street Vendors, with Care

It was two weeks ago or last year, in the last days of December 2021. A day with a gusty yet sunny, cool afternoon, I arrived close to five o'clock at my house. Strange these days, I was away from my...

Jan 1 , 2022

The Tyranny of Mathematics: the In-equaliser of Students

Over a cup of coffee with a friend, I had a “mathematical” talk. It all started with her elation after her young daughter's success, a student of medicine now. This was enough to make her elated,...

Dec 25 , 2021

Cognitive Dissonance's Not the Enemy. It's People

It was several days ago. I argued with a long time friend, which seemed to go on for forever. It is about numbers. He was perturbed and frustrated with the near-total absence of applying numbers in th...

Dec 19 , 2021

The Humbly Competent Shall Inherit the Earth

Amy Dardin's case is the symbolic equivalent of the word procrastination. The Virginian Amy tendered to Congress for the reimbursement of a horse that belonged to her and had been used by soldiers dur...

Dec 11 , 2021

Pedestrian Safety's No Storm in Teacup

As usual, a few days ago, I was out for a walk. The sun was dipping beneath the horizon. I strolled over a quite cobblestoned alleyway just for a while and turned right to an asphalt road, complete wi...

Dec 4 , 2021

Economical with Words, Pays in Spades

I sat with a long time friend for a conversation. Curiously, our topic was “conversation.” We reminisced about the things we used to talk about ages ago, most of the time over the few available b...

Nov 27 , 2021

To Think Outside the Box's Overrated

Aground breaking practice in its early days, ”tooth jumping” was once a common toothache remedy. It was the extraction of a tooth by holding a chisel at an angle against it and striking it with a...

Nov 20 , 2021

Hygiene: It's Not a Dangerous Japanese Dish

The Japanese dish fugu, which is prepared from the pufferfish, hosts a deadly poison in its ovaries and liver, and if prepared the wrong way, it can claim a life. It kills quite a number of people a y...

Nov 13 , 2021

The Age of Computers Nears. Etye Debres Still Relevant

Recently, I met an old colleague I had not seen for ages. Instantly, we went back to the irksome journey we had working in a government enterprise as young “professionals.” In those old days, w...

Nov 6 , 2021

Lost in Terminology, Found in Hemingway

Recently, I had a word with an old friend. We reminisced about what cost him a position he sought at a company after a job interview. Aside from the lack of success, he was more angered by the manner...

Oct 30 , 2021

With Proper Appraisal, Potato Chips become Reality

While having a chat with a friend recently, we appraised some of the people we worked with in various institutions. Throughout the years, the colleagues who left their work and stayed seemed to be arb...

Oct 23 , 2021

Interactive Reading Sows Readers, Reaps Writers

I have a German friend who is my age. She lived in Addis Abeba in the early years of the Ethiopian revolution with her family, the 1970s. Thanks to her family's enthusiasm for literature and art, she...

Oct 16 , 2021

For Every 'Aha,' Society Moves Forward

Aha! It is a palindrome referred to by William Safire as a triumphant cry of discovery. It is “one of the great, unappreciated and deliciously nuanced words in the English language,” he says. ...

Oct 9 , 2021

Good Employers Don't Let Employees Go the 'Wrong Way' on Safety

Last week, it was after the bugle call rang out, which signalled the bi-weekly refuse collection in our neighbourhood, and as soon as the ensuing crowd commotion faded, that I went out with my bags of...

Oct 2 , 2021

Training: the Answer to Every Siege Against One's Profession

The Greek mathematician Euclid's Elements, written in the third century BC, was a collection of theorems and problems that formed the basis for geometry. Yet, much of it owes a great debt to the work...

Columns

Commentaries | Oct 11,2025

The Human Flight a Failure of Political Imagination, Not a Mere Economic Policy

Ladislas Farago, a roving Associated Press (AP) correspondent, arrived in Ethiopia in 193...

Editorial | Oct 11 , 2025

TRADITION THRIVES AS COSTS CLIMB

As dawn broke over Addis Abeba last week, the city's arteries pulsed not with the usual we...

Featured | Oct 5 , 2025 . By REDIET YARED

TOMATOES TASTE OF INFLATION

Tomato prices in Addis Abeba have surged to unprecedented levels, with retail stands charg...

Agenda | Oct 12 , 2025

Ministry Shifts Gears as Number Plate Change Fuels Debate

A sweeping change in the vehicle licensing system has tilted the scales in favour of elect...

Fortune News | Oct 12 , 2025 . By BEZAWIT HULUAGER