| Friday, Dec. 19, 2003 Hi all, after about 2 and a half years of using this site I decided that it is way to clumsy for my blogging needs. It has some nice features, but updating it is way too much hassle to do it often. I have been shopping around for a while to find a diary or blogging site I like and after trying out different ones finally settled for LiveJournal. Please come around and visit my new weblog..... It is a work in progress, so bear with me.... Please sign my guestbook, guestmap or leave a comment, so I know you have been!!!!! Sunday, Dec. 14, 2003 Today was another really frantic day. Running around again all day like a headless chicken. Tomorrow is a visit from one of our big bosses from Israel and the day after we have another one, this time from our customer. Argh. 9 more days till the christmas holidays. I am ready. A lot! Not much going on today otherwise. Came home late, had an update meeting with my boss. Did not go shopping and my fridge is very, very empty. Too lazy, too tired. The tube of my telly is going. Red in the top left corner, green at the bottom. So I guess I will have to buy a new one. Too lazy for that, too. Will have to wait until after the hols. Will now dare and check the contents of my fridge. Hopefully nothing in there has evolved enough yet to have developed the power of speech. Saw in the news that they captured Saddam. One of my colleagues is already in the "concerned expat"-mood. "What will the locals do?" Well, most likely nothing. I have been here now for 3 and a half years and had the opportunity to carry my shopping bags past demonstrations and visit McDonalds while it was guarded by policemen with pumpguns. And not to forget that guy collapsing outside of my office, because the police had shot at him with teargas the night before. So far nobody has had any issues with me yet. Saturday, Dec. 13, 2003 Yesterday was the christmas market at CAC (Cairo American School). First obstacle: Finding Sheri with the tickets. There was about 3 gazillion people cueing at 3 different entrances. “I’m at the main entrance!” ….. “Which one is that, I don’t know!!!” ….. “The one with the policemen in front!” …. “There is police everywhere!” …. This went on for about 15 minutes, by which time I had circeled the whole '*'*#+!!+''*+ school and the others had reached the end of the cue. By the time Sheri and I found each other I was foaming from the mouth…. Again…. So they are standing at the entrance, next to the cue, waiting for me. Here I come, I give them the tickets, we turn towards the door and obviously everybody goes “Hold on, go to the end of the cue!” …. 5 people scream “But we did cue!”. I think everybody figured that they didn’t want to mess with us, especially looking at me…. I think by now the whole of Cairo knows that I have a slight temper problem. Thursday, Dec. 11, 2003 Had some heavy rain last week. That’s very unusual in Cairo. Last winter it drizzled twice, that was it. Not a drop of rain for the rest of the year. Back home in Europe I would get up in the morning and peek out of the window to evaluate if I needed to put on raingear or possibly a wetsuit (while living in London, what miserable winters!). Similarly in Alex, it rains a lot in winter, so before you go out, you check…. Not so here. It never rains, why bother. You throw on something with short sleeves in summer and long sleeves in winter, done. Or so I thought. Flashback, earlier this week. Our heroine steps out of her front door into a puddle of water, raises her eyes and says “What the fuck? You gotta be kidding me!”, turns around, goes upstairs and grabs her brolly. Because of the rain I was late for the bus. But so was the bus… Every time it rains here, total anarchy breaks loose. As opposed to the usual anarchy that rules the traffic, just busier…. That day, by the way, was when we went up to Alex for that party. We grabbed a cab in Zamalek to go to the station and it took us ONE hour. We barely made the train. We could have flipping walked it faster! Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2003 Ok, I just knocked over an almost full glass of wine – some quick and frantic shoving of computer equipment ensued, moderate swearing and rapid flipping of switches and pulling of cables out of sockets. Most of it landed on top of the paper tray of my printer. Picture woman standing with printer tilted downwards in her left arm, while pushing things out of the way of an ever extending puddle of wine in the middle of the table… What a waste of cheap red plonk…. Everything still seems to be working…. **************************************** Tell an expat in Cairo that you otlobbed , ninety percent of the time they will say “Ah, ok, where from?”. People are known to have given up cooking altogether. What a cool idea. One website that unites all the food places that deliver. You just say where you are, what you want and, voila, a list of restaurants, click, choose, done… How much lazier can I get? I have even been known for ordering a loaf of bread from the Marriott Bakery through Otlob , because I was too bloody lazy to leave the house…. *Burp*. Couldn’t be asked to make dinner tonight… Sunday, Dec. 07, 2003 Tonight was Tarek’s wedding. He is someone working in my office. I was invited. Oh joy. First of all the driver from work was 20 minutes late, i.e. we were 20 minutes late. Not that that makes much of a difference for an Egyptian wedding. Nothing in this country is on time, except for the trains. Go figure. Anyway, after 2 false attempts we pull up in front of the right building, only to find out that it is some kind of military club and they will only let in Egyptians. All four of us conveniently left the wedding invitations on our desks in the office. Lots of palaver. Guard calls someone for advice and reinforcements. Three other guys in uniform show up. More palaver. Ibrahim shows up. Thank god, someone can say his 2 cents in Arabic. We can get in, if we deposit our passports. Tough, haven’t got any on us. Gerry has his actually in his jacket pocket, but doesn’t want to show it. He is quite enjoying himself. We are hoping that they will send us away and we can bugger off home. Some other guys, that belong to Tarek’s family, show up. More palaver. Egyptian guys arguing with each other over letting us in or not – 11! Gerry meanwhile is calling one of our Israeli colleagues, to give him a warning. Apparently he is bursting something from laughing so hard at the other end of the phone. I am wandering off looking for our car. When I come back from the other end of the car park, we are actually going in. Crap. Needless to say, all the Israelis waltz in without a problem, because they have the right kind of tan. Isn’t that just taking the piss! Finally we are inside. We walk into the ballroom and about a hundred Egyptians stare. Great. I love it. We walk along the whole length of the ballroom to sit down. Table for eight. One bottle of water. I sit and my eyes glaze over. Tarek and Naglaa have just signed the contracts and are now dancing, surrounded by tons of people clapping. Happy frenzy sets in. Guy with video camera walks around – immediate display on two screens up at the other end. He stands at our table and aims a camera plus about 500 watts of spotlight into my eyes. Spiffing great. He comes back twice in the following hour. Just shoot me. They finally cut the cake. We finish our bottle of water. Meir arrives from the airport, we grab his car and go home. What a joyful event. We are invited for another wedding tomorrow night. I think I am going to be sick. Tuesday, Dec. 02, 2003 Starbucks is trying to take over the world…. guess what, they have their own website! They even have their own friggin credit card! Definitely world domination. Secret password of the week is “eggnogg latte”….. Ok, I am deeply dissapointed, no shop in Egypt yet…. Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Emirates, but not Egypt….. hey, were do all the nice American engineers reparing the Egyptian subs go for their caffeine fix? This is so not on…. I demand a Starbucks for Cairo! They could make a killing! Ok, I am doomed, I just sent them an e-mail begging for a shop in Cairo…. Picture Big Brother sipping a latte half-fat decaf…. that’s Big Brother as in George Orwell, not as in that stupid thing on telly for all you illiterates out there….. Hey, while we’re discussing websites that do not need to be….. McDonalds has one, too! Ok, I mean, who the f*** needs this: “Travel planning has never been easier with the McDonald's Restaurant Locator and Trip Planner. You can plan road trips and map out all the McDonald's restaurants along a travel route or in your hometown.” Right, so I am travelling across the country and I am planning my trip along all the McDonalds along the way???? Pleaaaaase! Monday, Dec. 01, 2003 Back from the trip. Tired and a lingering cold. I have been taking big doses of natural vitamin c and echinacea since last night. Right now I have a huge glas with hot lemon juice next to me. Felt crap all day. Hot, cold, hot, cold…. Was running a temperature at some point today. So I’ll eat something small and then it’s off to bed with my book. The trip was really good. Last Monday, still here in Cairo, we booked tickets for Lion King and Chicago on the internet and then went for a really nice meal at the Japanese restaurant at the Sheraton, right next to the airport. So we were really excited by the time we got going. As we were flying with Air France, we had a lay-over of 45 minutes in Charles de Gaulle. We were late taking off in Cairo, as usual and just made it to our connection in Paris. They were just closing the gate…. Well, we made it, our luggage didn’t… So we went to the hotel without and they sent it over a couple hours later. Probably explains my current cold. I was dressed for winter in Cairo, not in London. We crammed in all the major sights. Tower, Tower bridge, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Horse Guards, Tate Modern (finally!), Natural History Museum, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Regent Street, Oxford Street, Harrods, Fortnum and Mason and so on and so forth. Did not manage to do everything we wanted to, there was just not enough time. We had a meal in China Town, in the crummiest restaurant we could find with the highest possible density of Chinese guests. Crispy pork and pak choi, yummy! We saw plenty of pubs from the inside, had pub food, had a proper pre-theatre dinner, the works… And would you believe the amount of Starbucks we saw! They must outnumber McDonald by at least 2:1. Ridiculous. How many coffe shops can one chain have in a single town?? Anyway, on our return flight we were delayed again and this time not only our luggage missed the connection in Paris. Air France only flies to Cairo once a day, so guess what. They put us up in a hotel 10 minutes from the airport including 3 meals, we checked in at a run, dumped our stuff and were on the next train into town. Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, Louvre, Mona Lisa, Opera, shopping at Gallery Lafayette…… We crammed it all in! It was really cool! Unfortunately I was supposed to be at Ji’s surprise birthday dinner at Hana that night. So I was pretty dissapointed. But hey, Paris! Back to work now. Lots to do, as usual. And some overtime coming my way. Lemon juice, sandwich, bed! |
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| Short Holiday........ The initial plan was to go to London... ...but on the return flight we missed our connection in Paris, so we also saw this....... |
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