And Moses Said...

Let me preface this by stating that I am supposed to be in Alexandria. There was a train that had my theoretical ticket, and a theoretical seat, where theoretically I should have been sitting drink my theoretical drink and reading a theoretical book. But that didn’t happen. Mainly because I was supposed to go with my roommate who was going to come with me because this girl lives in Alexandria but she goes to school at AUC and she told me to come visit sometime because she goes up there for the weekends a lot. But noooo… He had a book report to write, so we didn’t leave.

As it turns out, that was a really good move. See, one of my roommate’s parents are in town so they are out on a Nile Cruise, and so if we had left there would have been no one in the apartment to stop the flood. Yup, thats right, the flood. See, because there are so many bad pipes in Cairo, there is a great invention in many of the bathrooms of a drain. The idea goes as follows: pipes will clog, and water will get everywhere, and therefore every bathroom should have a “master drain” that has an opening somewhere in the bathroom floor so that if anything ever clogs the water has a place to drain, instead of going all over your apartment. Quite a stellar idea which has come in damn handy when the door to the washing machine popped open and water flooded everywhere.

So you can imagine my surprise yesterday morning when I walked into the bathroom to find a mini-lake sitting in the bathroom. I thought to myself “this isn’t good”. However, there is a precursor to this story, because a few days ago, the same thing had happened. The lake was a tiny puddle, and at the time I thought nothing of it. Without my glasses on early in the morning I dismissed it as nothing more than water that dripped off my roommate after he got out of the shower. Well, I got a text from Andrew later that day asking if the bathroom was flooded when I got up. I found this strange, but I said not really. He said that it just sort of magically went away after a bit. So this was good news. I thought perhaps it was our continually troublesome toilet. Maybe the tank that held the clean water didn’t stop filling and started flowing everywhere. Thanks random internet for the pic of drains in Egypt (this one isn't flooded).

So back to the story story thingy. I had to piss, so I got up and went into the bathroom. Naturally I was still groggy, and not fully with it, but was surprised to find my foot in about 3 inches of water. The only good news is that our bathroom isn’t quiet level, so the water was mainly only covering about half the bathroom.

Well, I turned off the water to the sink and the toilet. Or I tried. The problem is that our sink leaks 100% of the time, all day, everyday. The knobs underneith to turn the water off are stripped on the cold water, and doesn’t shut all the way on the hot water pipe, so there is no stopping the flow of water. Well, I didn’t think anything of it because I thought it was the toilet. There was no sign of water leakage from the sink, so it couldn’t be from there. I decided the best course of action was to start to scoop the water off the floor and then get a fan to dry off the floor. So I got a pot lid and started scooping into the shower. Well, after a good 20 minutes I realized that the water level wasn’t decreasing. This was strange. So then I decided to check that drain that was “supposed” to make the water go away. It obviously was clogged (otherwise the water would have drained). And thats when it clicked -- all the water lines in the bathroom go to a central pipe (perhaps except for the toilet)! I did a little test, and sure enough, when I dumped a bunch of water in the bathtub, I could see the ripples of water come up OUT of the drainage ditch. This is a bad thing. I didn’t think much of it, perhaps it would drain by itself like it did with Andrew. The bowab was no where to be found (it was Friday morning, when everyone is at prayer, Friday is the holy day) so I though I’d go get some milk from the one store that was open and just wait until I could get my hands on a plumber.

I get back maybe 15 minutes later, and I see there is a problem. The water had started spreading. It was clearly advancing up towards the carpet of the hallway. In fact, it was only about 6 inches away, and getting closer. Something had to be done. The good news is now with the exasterbaited problem, I could detect the cause. There was a good 2 inches of water ABOVE the shower drain, and this was the clue I needed. The way the piping system worked under the tile floor came to my brain in diagram form. The only question was… where was it draining? Or supposed to be draining? In retrospect, its quite obvious that there was only a partial clog, so it clogged and filled up a little, but then that morning when I went out to get milk it entirely clogged, and the never ending flow of water from the sink came out of the drainage pipe into the bathroom. Regardless, I didn’t put that piece of the puzzle together until later. I got our big plastic garbage can out of the kitchen, woke up my roommate, handed him the pot lid, and told him to get scooping. The water was beginning to move into the carpet, not good.

I then followed the pipes. There is an interesting central shaft that is just open without a roof. It is there that the vents for the gas appliances and the water pipes run. You can get into this space by crawling through a window. Luckily we live on the 1st floor, so getting to our pipe was relatively easy. It was quite obvious there was a problem because water was seeping everywhere in this little space. Just as I was about to go investigate further, a guy came up, and I said I needed help, so we went into the bathroom, and started to use a mop to try and plunge the main drain in our bathroom. After some searching, we managed to find a plunger under the kitchen sink. After that there was progress. The clog partially dissipated, and the threat of apartment flooding was averted. It wasn’t draining great though, so it required someone to wade out to where our master pipe came out on the other side of the bathroom wall in the small space for all the apartment pipes. The pipe has an “oh shit” opening, basically so that if there is a clog downhole, you can plunge something, and theoretically the water has a place to drain out of (which it was partially draining). After some motivated plunging work, the clog was gone. The man asked for money. At the time I thought he was the bowab, who we pay to handle this kind of stuff, so I didn’t pay him much, but in retrospect, I think he might not have been, which means I was a real mean bastard for being a cheep ass, so I’m sure. Feel a little bad about that. Oh well.

Later I had to mop the floor to get the “dirty” water from a backed up drain off our floor. The smell wasn’t great, but after some good mopping, and the use of a fan for a few hours to evaporate the rest of the water, I think the bathroom is probably cleaner than it was prior to the incident.

And that my friends is why going to Alexandria would have been really really really really really really really really bad. Whew. Dodged a bullet.

Family Time

Let me preface this by stating that we are three grown men. Sitting around, watching a love story. About a man dying from cancer young. It was terribly tragic and sad. So we got to talking about families, and I decided I wanted to find out about some of the history of my family's past. I'd heard some fun stories and I decided to use the new tool of the internet to see if they were true.

The first is about my great-uncle: a Mr. Fritz Weinschenk. The story goes as follows -- after being born in Germany the family escapes from the Nazi's in the 1930's. He goes on to fight in WWII and made it into Life Magazine! He had a special talent that he was able to seal himself INSIDE his own dufflebag. Well, such an amazing skill couldn't help but make it into Time Mag. It has been family legend for years, but the article in question had been lost to the sands of time.

Enter the internet. Google is doing this cool thang where they archive all the old publications they can get their hands on. One perk of this is that they have some great software that automatically transcribes the print on the page from bits to meaningful letters and text. This means that time Mag is now searchable. So I pulled up my handy google books search engine, and typed in fritz weinschenk, and guess what?

http://books.google.com/books?id=3E0EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA94&dq=fritz%20weinschenk&pg=PA94#v=onepage&q=fritz%20weinschenk&f=false

Check Page 94 on the bottom for my Great Uncle.

There is my great uncle staring back at me! I must say, I was quite impressed. It was very cool to be able to dig up a relic of the past. He of course fought in WWII, and in fact was a feature charictor in a documentary about Jews in WWII. The website for the documentary has a nice little snippet about him.

http://www.aboutfacefilm.com/soldiers_weinschenk.htm

He moved from Mainz, Germany in... I think it was 1935. Anyways, thats just some interesting family history. I've always wanted to visit Germany, and now I think I'll have to take a visit to Mainz when I go.

I wish I knew a bit more about my mom's side of the family. Her maiden name is a bit more common so its harder to search for her side. Also, both her parents died when she was younger, so I never met them, and there is just a lack of "family stories" simply because there aren't many people around to tell them. My grandfather (from who I believe I take my middle name -- Miles) I believe (if I remember correctly) also fought in the war as a medic. Invasion of France, and all that fun stuff.

Anyways, I just think its cute.

Dream Team?

Let me preface this with a question -- what would your dream team be?

The reason is this -- I've just realized that if the US leaders were to play any sort of competitive sport against the "enemies of america", America would just own. They'd slam down. If we pick basketball, for example, lets see how the lineup looks. Lets look at the "dream team".

USA political basketball team:

Center: First, I gotta go with my main man Abe Lincoln. 6'4", mean beard, crazy top-hat, ghetto (he got shot), but not a ballhog (emancipation proclamation). Good post move. Has a tendency to sacrifice to keep the team together. Also, will go all "Burnin' Sherman" on yo' ass if you try and secede from the team.

Small Forward: Easy, oh so easy, I'm going with Kobe Hussain Obama baby! Err... Thats Barack. Seriously, have you seen this guy's moves? If he gets a foul, he's awesome at talking his way out of anything, and getting the refs to change the call. Good stroke from outside the arch.

Small Forward: Clarence Thomas. NBA star turned supreme court judge? Sounds like a match made in Heaven. Quick to the boards and quick to the gavel. Used to taking whatever Justice Scalia dishes out, but a good coach could get him out of his funk.

Point Guard: Rob Emanual. This guy is a leader. If you can orchestrate a presidential election, orchestrating a 2-1-2 zone is easy. Good play at the top of the key. He's quick and plays smart.  Good vision downcourt. Has a strong drive to win. Works well with Barack, so there is a great driv'in dish out to Barack who can hit the three.

Shooting Guard: Ralph Nader. Experience Experience Experience. He's see failure his entire life, so he's not afraid to fail, but is a solid player. He doesn't get discouraged which makes him a great shooting guard. If he misses a few threes he doesn't get in a funk. He just keeps shooting with that beautiful stroke of his until one rattles in. He's not your go to guy at the buzzer though, I'd give it to Barack if time was winding down. He'll give you solid minutes, and can probably average maybe 8-12 points a game, but don't expect a superstar.

Sixth Man: Westly Clark. Overall good athlete, will give you 100% all the time. Used to having a good tryout but always failing to make the A team. Good sport though. Defensive specialist (from his army training). If you think he's going to give up the baseline to the enemy you're crazy.

Crazy Man: I gotta go with Theodore Roosevelt. Every team has one of these players. Think of them as the Ben Wallace of the world. No skills, won't really give you points, but provides a great spark, and OK defense. Teddy was a roughrider so we know he's crazy and not afraid to foul hard. Gives some personality to the team, even though he lacks some ball skills. 

Coach: FDR. He led us through the Great Depression and WWII, therefore, a run to the world playoffs will be easy in comparison. Levelheaded, but never satisfied. He'll make you work hard even if he has to hire 2 million americans to dig ditches to do so. Plus, he's iconic. Coach in a wheel chain. Common...

List of American Enemies:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Notoriously short. Maybe he's quick, and maybe on the football (soccer) pitch he could be a decent player, but not basketball.

Kim Jong Il II: Seriously? By far, easily the worst basketball player ever on the history of the planet.

Adolf Hitler: Painter who was crazy and un-athletic. Not tall either.

Stalin: Maybe... Maybe... Doesn't seem quick but that mustache intimidates.

Osama Bin Ladin: Ok, he'd def. be a decent center. Probably no endurance because of the dialysis but he's tall, mean, probably has a good post move or two, and undoubtably has motive. Probably if we could shut him downwe'd be OK.

Hugo Chavez: Probably would spend too much time getting rid of all the photos taken by the press of him to have his head in the game, that, and if his team wasn't red he'd flip a shit nut.

Putin: Ok, intimating, and probably has a pretty good 15 footer from the baseline, but lets be honest, kinda a ball hog. Instead of getting it to Osama who has a good high percentage shot, he's gonna shoot fadaways from 15 feet out every time, and they are going to clank off the front of the rime more times than not. So potential? Yes, but I'd have a Clarence over Putin any day.




I can't think of a single team who could ever beat up on the US. We're just too good at basketball. What would your dream team be? Let me know!

World Cup Final Match U20 Ghana vs. Brazil

Let me preface this by stating that I had zero inclination that I was going to a football match (kurra in arabic, which means ball -- technically the full name is Kura al-kaadim, literally, ball of the foot, but people just use kura, since there is only one sport with a ball in Egypt). Just to make a little more sense of everything, I will be referring to AMERICAN FOOTBALL as american football, and “soccer” as football/kura. I’ve found this is the easiest way to avoid confusion. Often when you’re dealing with Americans and other world people, complications do arise.

But Katie from the University of Wisconsin showed up to review the AUC program for UW. She was nice enough to have dinner with the Study abroad kids and we just talked about life and Cairo and Madison. While I was there, Liz mentioned that “she knew a guy” and we could get free tickets to the FINAL of the U-20 football tournament that has been taking place in Egypt. The final was the next day between Brazil and Ghana. Not only that, she said she knew some other people, and we could get in the Brazil Cheering section.

So thats what happened. We took the subway to the old AUC campus, where we took a pretty long taxi ride (but it was only 15 pounds -- we’re getting good at negotiating fares) to the stadium. We got through security, the girls got their faces painted, and then we made our way to the “first class” entrance. It was really really bad. They’d only let in white people/forgieners. It was the most blaitenly racist thing I’ve every seen by far. We managed to get in 3 egyptian friends by saying they were “Mexican”. We taught them some “spanish” really fast and they got in. It was horrible.

Plus we were with two hot girls, so that helped. Somehow we managed to squeeze our way through some crazy crowds into the “first class” section for foreigners. Liz knew some Brazilians from somewhere who live in Egypt, so we got into the Brazilian section! It was so awesome, right down near the field. It did make me wonder why I didn’t go to Brazil to study abroad -- those ladies are FINE.

The atmosphere was crazy. Most of the fans were Egyptian (obviously), and so they were kinda cheering for whomever, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a good showing for the Brazilians. It was ok. The cheers were great. Lots of people, lots of cheering. When the match starts, the millions of police officers make everyone sit down, so during halftime shit gets crazy because people can stand up and yell and cheer.

The game was all going Brazil's way. They had so many chances to score. It didn't help that Ghana got a red card, so they were playing down a player the entire second half. The Brazilians had a great way of ball control. They basically dominated Ghana in terms of the game, but in terms of physical endurance, and playing hard, the Ghana's played better. In the end, it was 0-0 after 90 minutes. So the game went into OT. The way it works is two fifteen minute halfs. It was really close, but after another 30 minutes -- still tied. Finally, it goes to penalty kicks. They tie that! Then its sudden death penalty kicks, and Ghana manages to capitalize after Brazil misses. Crazy game.

Ballin'

Let me preface this by stating that I have been getting into basketball recently. As some of you may, or may not know, I decided to try out for the AUC University Basketball team. It went down like this. So one of the nice things about the new AUC campus is it has a really nice gym, its really nice, and of course, really empty. So there are hoops, racquetball, a big huge track and soccer stadium, handball, weight room, carteo room, the works. So thats super nice. During some free time I had over break, I was bored, and so I’d go to work out. I ended up strolling down to the gym and renting out a basketball. I used to be really bad at basketball. I still am, but I used to be really, pretty terrible. However, I remember my days in basketball at school. I love playing the game, especially if its pickup. That “team” feeling is nice. So I had all day, and as the white stripes would say “I just don’t know what to do with myself”.

I worked on post moves, I worked on free throws, I took my shot apart and rebuilt it. Drive and Penetrate. Pick and Roll. My skills aren’t as shabby anymore. The good news is that as people came back from break, there were more and more pickup games. I made some good buddies. The thing was, I wasn’t really that good, but I was OK. OK enough to try out for the AUC basketball team. Now, to be perfectly clear, I didn’t have much of a big intention of getting on. Basketball isn’t that big in Egypt, but its probably the third largest sport, or at least the third most popular after football, and football (again). Its mostly a one sport country, but to put it in perspective, the government built a HUGE sports complex outside of the city. It has Cairo Stadium (which I’ll talk about later), the bowling centre, but also a HUGE venue for Basketball. Probably seats 50,000-60,000. So its not like American Football where no one plays. I’m guessing a little over 100 guys tried out for 16 spots on the team.

We had three tryouts, and there were some really quality players. Apparently there is this one guy who plays for the Egypt National team, he’s really good. A dick, but a good basketball player (though those usually go hand in hand). Regardless, the tryouts are kinda a joke. You get split into teams of 5, then its just a big tournament. If he sees you do something athletic, or you’re tall, you “sign the list”. Apparently (I have a friend who made it on), there were 21 guys who got “signed” but then 5 got cut. The point is, you play one five minute game, so if you happen to not hit that 3, you don’t make it. W/e, its his team, I don’t want to complain. The fact of the matter is that I didn’t make it on. The scary thing though, is that I was close. I wasn’t as good as the good guys, so if I made it on the team, I would not have started or anything, but on a great day, I’d say I was about as good as the worst 4 who got “signed”.

Please note -- there are some really horrible egyptian players. They just never got coached, so they just see NBA play, which is really bad ugly basketball. Most egyptians are not team players because they just don’t understand how to be a team player. Most don’t box out, or set picks. They take a lot of misguided 3’s. Basically a team of Americans would destroy an equal athletic and talented Egyptian basketball team just because Americans understand the game better, and how to WIN at basketball.

Regardless, the pick-up games are really fun. Especially since the talent level varies a lot, so its a good feeling to be on the average to better player scale. Obviously I’m short, but I do OK. Thanks to the internet for the pictures. They aren't mine.

I’ve made some good friends on the court. Unfortunately I have class so I can’t ball all day. Ha.

Bonding

Let me preface this by stating that I’ve started meeting new people at AUC. Its very nice. I decided that in order to truly mend into a more regular Egyptian mode, I still need to meet some people. Basically, since we don’t live in the dorms, we have a lot of perks. There are no rules about gender mixing, noise, I get a bedroom, and a kitchen, and I can come back whenever I want. Oh, and its cheaper. The only problem is that the big perk of the dorms is all of the students in a very confined space. If you want to meet lots of cool people, the dorm is the place to live.

So. Living in Maadi, especially, there is a tendency for people to be unable to find each other since most students live in the downtown or Zamalak. Basically its rather lonely over in Maadi. Nice, quiet, but rather lonely. So its hard to meet new people. IDK what people in Cairo do to meet new people, but there aren’t shows, so IDK how it works. So I’ve decided to join basically every student club I think I can possibly enjoy even a little. That way I can meet people, both Egyptian and Western, and make some new friends.

The first club I joined was the Arab American Bond group. Basically there is a problem at the University where the American kids tend to hang out around other American kids, and the Egyptian kids hang out with themselves. Its hard, because although the classes are all in English, during the lunch break all the kids speak with themselves in Arabic. It makes it hard to make friends at school because its really intimidating to just walk up to to a group of much better looking women speaking in a different language. So they started this group to make it easier to facilitate the conversation that was lacking. We took a great trip to Khana Khalili.

While I had already been there, we still saw some new stuff, and I got to go to some new Mosques, and we actually got to go in this time (because it wasn’t Ramadan).

There was this one Mosque that was HUGE. Maybe the size of two super walmarts. It was huge. The inside had these huge columns arches that never ended. Remember the underground city in the Lord of the Rings under the Mountain? That huge old Dwarf city that got taken over by the goblins and the Balroug. It looked like that. In the middle there was a never ending marble floor. Maybe 200 yards long and 200 wide. Nothing but the night sky above it. Then more of the never ending columns.

I made some friends, and I got some numbers that I lost when they took my phone.

Crazzy Night

Let me preface this by stating that last night was a crazy ass night. Super super super random. So to start out, it was a Friday, which is the holy day for Muslims, but also means no class, open stores, etc... Like Sunday in America.

Anyways, we hung around the apartment all day, with not much to do. Then, we decided to go out at about 9:00. We took a cab to the Metro, and then the Metro up to Naser Station (one north of Tahrir Square). We had found this cafe that apparently was on a rooftop somewhere. So we have one of our friends who is part russian. And we are about to leave the subway, but the guy next to us has a shirt that has a bunch of russian letters on it, so naturally we strike up a convo. Apparently he's an Egyptian but his girlfriend is from Russia, or is Russian, or something. Well, he's a nice guy, and talks to some street vendors after we exit the subway to get some decent directions. We know the place is in the neighborhood, but we aren't exactly sure which way. One thing you have to understand is that every building has an address, and every street has a name, but that doesn't mean that there are signs. So that makes finding addresses difficult.

This place was called the carlton rooftop, and my first instinct was it was a "carlton hotel", so we walk a while, and sure enough, there is a big building that says "Carlton Hotel". So we walk in, and instantly I'm hit with this huge Deja Vu. Which as it turns out, is quiet justified. The first week we were in cairo, we were wandering this part of town with Alison, and and we were looking for a place to eat. We walked by this cafe, but it happened to be closed, so we kept walking until we found a schwarma place (which was bad because at the time, it was still ramadan, and we totally forgot about the not eating thing but w/e, we were new). But thats on the first floor. So we invite the Egyptian guy to come hang out with us for a while, so we go up to the top floor, and there is a really nice place. Great view of the neighborhood, and its just got a good atmosphere.

We chill for a bit, and then the Egyptian guy says he's going to meet some friends of his, and we should come along. Well... we got to the Rooftop at probably 10... and we left at 11:30... and the metro stops running at one. Anyways, we say, sure, why not? And we all pile into a taxi, and meet up with some of this guys friends at this random sidewalk cafe in the middle of somewhere/nowhere. So there are about 10 of us just chilling. We talk the shit a bit. The russian guy speaks enough English to do a good job translating what we can't pick out. We talk a bit with our Arabic, they try some bad english, its a good job. The big thing is Obama and his Peace Prize. So we just sit around and smoke some sheesha, watch the chess and backgammon and card players. We make fun of lots of things. The best thing is there are these random baskets that just decend from the roofs of these appartments. Like... You're just sitting around, and all of a sudden there is this basket just sitting in front of your face. As it turns out, if you want something, you just put money in a basket, with what you want, and use a rope to drop it over the side, and it'll get put in. Like newspapers, which apparently get delivered at like 1 in the morning.




Finally, its... IDK... maybe one in the morning, the place closes down. Thanks to http://images.starpulse.com for the pic.

We shoot the shit in the street for a while, and they ask us if we want some food. We're like, sure! So we find this Egyptian Fast Food joint, and get three falafal sandwiches for 5 pounds. By now its two in the morning, and the Egyptians haggle a great price for a taxi for us to get back to Maadi. So we get out of the cab back in Maadi, and I manage to realize that my phone has fallen out of my pocket in the cab.

So I sprint after. I can see it driving down the street. I probably sprinted about a half mile behind it, but then it turned a corner and I lost where it went. I couldn't catch the attention of the cab driver. I was so pissed. So we've called it a bunch of times. We might get it back, maybe not.

I'm walking back after chasing this cab, and I'm exhausted. As I'm walking back home, these two security guards and a little shop owner call me over. We get to talking (in arabic) about stuff. We talk about the Obama Peace Prize. I manage to convey that I left my phone in a cab. There was some communication going on. It wasn't great. So finally I gave it up and got home at three, and went to bed.

So random nights meeting random people on subways in cairo = fun.

Peace and love folks.

Is life really that Different?

Let me preface this by stating that I've been thinking. I've been thinking about life here in Cairo. And life in the States. And honestly? I don't see what the big hububub is.

Here is my thought. First, if you're really poor, like... really poor, of which there are many poor people in cairo, then your life isn't going to be as fun as if you're in the US. Of course being poor in the states isn't all fun and games, but at least you probably have clean drinking water around. So lets not look at the bottom quintile, because they, I think, are a special case. BUT yet, I think that 80% of the time, whenever anyone ever compares countries, they are always taking a sample from the abject poor, or the extremely rich. I want to compare the life of the average middle class egyptian to that of the average class American family.

I'm looking at a guy like Makhmood. He runs one of the many local Mobile shops that litter the city. He sells cell phones, prepaid plans, and DSL. Basically, the things in his life are kinda the same as people in the states. He lives in a modest appartment above the shop with his family. Its obviously smaller than the suburban homes that american middle class live in. So there is that. Maybe he lives with his brother, or other siblings. Maybe its like 3 small bedrooms and maybe a big living room, a big bathroom with a shower and toilet, and a kitchen. He wakes up early in the morning and goes and sells mobile phones during the day. If he's very religious he'll pray a few times, and then at night he closes up, goes to his apartment above the shop and watches TV with his family. He has fresh running water, good food, probably a washing machine. How is his life so radically different from life in the USA? Sure he doesn't spend nearly as much but by no means is he living in a sewer ditch somewhere, and he has the same basic joys in life that we in the states do (with the exception of booze, but there are always cigs so it evens out). He watches sports on TV, and plays games with the family. His kids go to school, he went to school, probably speaks some english even, etc...

Like I said, obviously this is just for the middle class, not the radically poor. They have a different situation, but there is a bad misconception that just because a country is in the "developing" side of things, somehow life in that country is actually somehow radically different from the US is just not that true.

Thanks,
Guthrie

Trip up to Cairo Tower

Let me preface this by stating that.... errrmmm... I don't have anything whity. Sorry.

So, let me tell you about something that happened to me over break! As many of you know, school was "halted" due to "swine flu" which of course no one has. W/e. So I had some time to do something interesting. Many of my more interesting friends went galavanting off to Jordan, or France, Greece, maybe Turkey, even Kenya. Well... I didn't have $2000 to spend on airfare, so I decided to save it for my UK trip! A well worth exchange. Should I have gone somewhere more interesting? Probably, but I'll go other weekends. I'm in no rush. So what did I do?

I explored Cairo some more, and read a lot. Lets see... I read the entire hitch hikers guide to the galaxy series, as well as "Wired for War" by P.J. Slinger. Its an awesome book. He was on the dailyshowcolbertreport and is really cool. I'm telling you, go get that book and read it. Very well thought out, cool topic, interesting. Yeah. I also read half of "Brave New World" and... umm... there was another book but I can't remember it for the life of it, w/e.

Also, a very nice girl from AUC by the name of Yohna was kind enough to go and take me to some cool places in Cairo. This one day we took a trip to Cairo Tower, and ate some food at a nice restaurant. Honestly... I think I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves. It just works better that way.

Check out the FLAT chicken.

This is brilliant. Just take chicken, cut it

and lay it flat to grill it.

Weird Dreams

Let me preface this by stating that I still don't have internet in my apartment, so sorry the blog posts are slacking, I shall try to keep going. Its hard though, lol.

So I've been having weird dreams of late. I've been all by myself recently. I still haven't gone back to classes as they are still canceled. My roommate is galavanting around Europe these last two weeks, and everyone else is either running around the world or busy. So I've kinda been a loner the past few days.

That doesn't mean there haven't been highlights.

But strangely enough I've started to have really weird dreams. Its strange. I apparently am re-living my life slowly but surely. I basically started sophomore year of high school, and I've made it up to freshman summer of college. Its just my dreams, is really weird. In fact most of my dreams have been with my high school friends. Or I suppose ex-friends? IDK... I haven't seen a lot of the kids I chilled with in high school for a long long time now. So its double odd that I'd be thinking about those old days. Days when I was in Basketball, days when I was in Jazz Band. Its weird.

A lot of basketball actually. This one is easy, since I don't have internet, and nothing to do, I've been taking the bus into AUC (the campus is open and everything, just no one around) to lift, get some internets, and shoot some hoops. I've been shooting a lot of hoops. I decided to break my shot down, and build it back up again, like King James did. He's still better than me, lol. I'm still too short to be good at basketball, but w/e.

But last night I had this strange ass dream where I was in the old Edgar High School Gym, and we were playing a basketball game. An interesting point, that the dream people/psychologists might note, is that my team's jerseys were not green and gold (my old high school colors) but instead red and white, the colors of UW. So thats interesting. And then of course it just gets stupid. There were maybe 15 players on my team, but no one ever subbed in, so IDK why they were on the bench. They were all like 30 years old too. So on the court were these two anon. guys, myself, Kobe Bryant, and Danny Devito. That was the weird one. He was really bad too.

I knew it had to be a dream because Kobe passed the ball to other people (OHHHHH... BURN...)

Anyways, I did pretty good, I had a bunch of steals. And rebounds too, which is weird, because I shouldn't get any rebounds. I scored the last basket too, and the final score was 58-50, we won, so that was nice.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what my dreams mean?

Peace brothers.

No way...

Let me preface this with http://www.365black.com/

Yes. Thank you Mr. Sxephil for bringing this to my attention. I too thought it must be a spoof, but no, its just mcdonalds pandering to the black community apparently. Fun.

I wanted to talk about the amount of pent up sexual tension in this country.

Its been really weird because of ramadan, but that just ended, so things seem to be different now that its all over. All the guys are really immature because its a sexually repressive society.

Its a bad never-ending cycle. The women back in the day were not allowed to hang out with men, so men only started seeing women as sex objects, not as people. So, whenever women (especially western women) roam around the guys always make cat calls and just gawk all the time. Its stupid. So women don't want to go out and mingle, so out in like public squares there are like 4x as many men as women (especially younger women), which only makes women less likely to go out.

A good example is this -- on the subway there are two cars for women only, which seems like something only the really traditional women wearing burkas would ride, but actually all the western women ride that train because they can't take the gauking.

Then, the cycle keeps going, women hate getting cat calls, so they start covering themselves more, and its really easy to see how

burkas and hijabs are becoming more popular. Thats why I think there is a disconnect between western cultures and women who wear hijab, and arab countries. In both cases its a religious thing, but I think in places where there is a high rate of machismo like egypt, it is more of a personal comfortability thing than in places with more cultural gender equality.

Its really pretty bad. Flirting at AUC still resorts back to 3rd grade American standards of pushing women's books around, and pulling hair, and teasing. The thing I haven't figured out yet is if the girls like that, or if they wish the men were more mature.

Thats not saying that there aren't guys who aren't mature, but it just kinda feels like those guys aren't getting any action. Hummm... Complicated. Of course it is Egypt... Unless you're married it doesn't appear that anyone is getting any action, but of course there is perhaps a growing trend away from that.

http://www.medindia.net/news/Poll-Finds-50-of-Egyptian-Women-Harassed-Daily-39457-1.htm

Though, something that was brought to my attention is one of the reasons that religion is taking such a strong root here in egypt is because apparently you can't get married unless you own a house/apartment!

I didn't know this, but its a law that if you want to get married to someone, you (i'm sure 99 times out of 100) the guy needs to own his own place to live. So if you're not rich enough to afford that, you can't get married, so any chances you have of living a "normal" life within society are gone, and your only option to turn to is religion! This is creating a huge rift between rich and poor, as the poor tend to have to turn to religion more. It doesn't help that the Coptic Christians are as a whole, wealthier. So, the "rich culture" is more dominated by western and Christian influences, making the rift even wider. Its a problem.

I don't know

Let me preface this by stating that I’ve been spending my time not getting swine flu.

With that out of the way, I feel pretty good. The last few days have been weird. My roommate has been in Greece so I’ve kinda been by myself for a while. Everyone else is apparently traveling and having fun elsewhere. I stayed back because there was a perspective new roommate coming to check out the digs. His name is Pat, and he decided to grab an apartment downtown, but we’ve been hanging out regardless. He’s been in Cairo for 2 years in the past, so his arabic is passible. He also knows a bunch of cool spots downtown. Basically thats what I’ve been doing, just going downtown and running around.

I’ve had very little motivation to write. Thats for sure. I’m not exactly sure why.

This isn't my picture btw. Thanks flikr.

Anyways, my Cairo experience is changing a lot. I think people have just been cranky because they were fasting everyday. All of a sudden people are just being nice. I’m not sure what happened, but there were a couple of cool things that happened.

The first, is that I was on the subway going into downtown. It was totally packed, and we’re stuck at stop I guess waiting for the train ahead of us to get father away. Well, there are like 1000 guys crammed on this car, and out of the quiet comes a faint piano wafting over the hushed din of random people on the subway. It comes almost like a dream. Then a voice, lighting the train car like a mist, and I reconginze it as if out of a dream… “How can you see into my eyes, like open doors”…

Then the electric guitars kick in. Yes, on the Hayedek El Maadi Subway stop “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence is playing from somewhere. I smile to myself, and I can’t help feeling really really really happy. It was awesome. All these old guys in the traditional dress were casting death glares looks over to two boys probably 12-14 (though I’ve heard that Arabic boys/men hit puberty later than in the states) who had their cell phones whipped out listening to tunes. Nice. So that made me really happy.

We finally get to the Sadat downtown subway stop and its super busy. Everyone around me starts to shout, and its easy to tell that we are all teammates. Here is what happens. The doors open at the subway, and they only stay open for a limited time, but a TON of people need to get in and out, which of course means that there is a war. Inside the train there are about 50 people trying to get out of our door, and another 30 wanting to get in, and the crowd outside crowds the door. So on the inside, everyone gets together like team A, everyone is patting shoulders, and giving smiles all around, like we were some sort of High School Basketball team. The doors open and everyone yells push at the same time, and together, the 50 of us push against 30 people on the other side. Its like a war cry. It was so awesome. See… and then its only a matter of time until the other side starts to fill in from one side or the other. Of course some people get cut in the cross fire. They can’t move forward, or back, and are stuck. They eventually get out, but its kinda funny for a while, especially if its a woman in a burka, and she’s trying to get out of the slip stream, but she can’t push hard enough.

Anyways, that subway ticket was the best 17 cents I ever spent.

Then on the way back I got to talking in mostly broken arabic and some broken english with a couple of high school boys. Wow, they are actually pretty tool-ish and immature, like most of the guys here (flirting here at the AUC usually has not moved past the “i hit you because I love you stage” for guys here, idk when they grow out of it). But, it was still nice to talk to some people for a change. We exchanged numbers. Some dude actually bought my subway ticket too, i was like “cool”.

Then I walked home at midnight from the subway station to my house and got totally lost somewhere in Maadi, but managed to get home. It was awesome.

The Swine

Let me preface this by stating that I never thought swine flu was a big deal.

I was wrong.

Yesterday, the school was at a point of orgasm because there were wild rumors running around that the school was going to get cancelled for an extended period of time because of swine flu. Apparently, all the rest of the egypt schools had been closed for a week to slow the spread of swine flu. The idea being that if enough people get it, thats bad, and it'll spread very quickly.

Egypt is trying to buy some more time so they can save up for some vaccinations, or at least some anti-viral drugs. So by shutting down schools, they can prevent the virus from gaining any momentum or traction and stave off a widespread pandemic.

In Theory.

Of course, the Egyptian government has killed all the pigs in Egypt. This is, in my personal opinion (shared by many) just a way to piss of the Coptic Christians that live in Cairo (of which there are many, and they all eat pork). The idea is... how could we, the muslim egyptian governement, piss off the christians? Humm.... Well, they like pig, and we don't. Voila!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/world/africa/20cairo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&emc=eta1

The number of deaths due to swine flu is sitting near 3,000 atm.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32690557/ns/health-swine_flu/

It is well documented that more people die from the regular flu then swine flu, by large amounts. Most of these deaths in fact are not even because of swine flu. In the majority of these cases the victim usually had a compromised immune system already. In fact this article by the CDC, it states that on average, about 36,000 people die every year from the regular flu, 10 times as many as have died from swine flu.

http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm

It is also important to note that even though there have been 3,000 deaths due to swine flu, that is out of near 300,000 documented cases, and of course, the real number could be much higher. That is a 1 in 100 chance of death.

To put that in comparison... Even if you GET swine flu, your chance of death currently sits at about even with BASE Jumping or Deep Sea Fishing. I'm not saying thats very good, in fact thats pretty dangerous, but if you look at your lifetime odds of dying from other things, this is pretty low.

And these numbers include the people who don't even GET the them, for example, for Americans, your chance of dying from Cancer is 1 in 7, even though not everyone gets cancer.

Chance of dying of heart failure is 1 in 5, 1 in 27 for a stroke, and 1 in 100 for motor vehicle crashes.

http://www.judgesguild.net/guildhall/pegasus/pegasus_01/disease.shtml

This puts it at about twice as deadly as the measles, but half as deadly as the Bubonic Plaugue. Of course these are all without medication.

Anyways, the point is that I'm not at school because of this, and somehow in a city of 14 million with hundreds of people on subways every day, somehow this will slow the spread. Sure...

My Classes

Let me preface this by stating that I’ve finally basically adjusted to Egypt.

Let me just give you a little update on how I’ve been since I last wrote. Good. Classes have started so let me give you a little rundown.

My first class on Sundays and Wednesdays is Intro to Photography. My thought here was that why waste all that time running around Egypt taking pictures when the university will put me on buses and run me around so I can take pictures for credit. Plus I’ve always loved taking pictures, but of course I don’t really know what I’m doing, so this is a good start. Eventually I will get a DSLR, oh yes, I will. Until then, I was sad to learn that we can’t borrow them from the university, so I will continue using my Canon SD 700. The little trouper is almost 3 years, and still takes AMAZING pictures. I’m very impressed by that camera. Only 6 megapixels, but when its on auto, its almost impossible for it to take a bad picture. Of course you can’t do much with the manuel settings (basically useless). No manual focus, and a host of other things are missing, but I’ve always been happy with it. That aside, the class appears to be the teacher teaching us stuff, we take pictures, and then show them on aprojector, where we then argue over them (every class just has tons of arguing). The professor is an American, who worked for time magazine for a decade, so he knows what he’s doing. Only disappointment is that it is a journalism class, not an art class.

My next class is my developmental economics class. This one is probably going to be my favorite. My only disappointment? The class got so big (somehow… apparently the “caps” on registration aren’t real) that our big final paper will now be done in teams. I kinda don’t want to work with someone else on econ papers. Thats what I like to do. The class seems to be “Why are poor people poor?” . Of course the answer will probably be the rich being rich, and colonialism. The professor is really cool though, she seems wise.

I have coloquial arabic, and I got lucky there. My teacher is very nice, and doesn’t give out a bunch of homework yet. I’m learning a lot. I’m also surprised at my level of fusha. Obviously she is going slow, and the class is designed for students who have taken arabic, but no Egyptian. Its a small class (6), but she is nice, and its already coming in handy. The Egyptian Arabic is really interesting because there of course arabic words, but then there are alsmo mixed in greek (like the word for the country, Egyptious, everyone in Egypt calls the country by its arabic word, Misr), latin (don’t forget the city of Alexandria is here), coptic, syrian, and hieroglyphic. In fact the word for “girl” in egyptian is actually the Hieroglyphic word (sit/set), instead of the arabic word. The country has gotten conquered a lot.

Then I have Intermediate Micro-Economics. The class feels like a joke. Probably because I’ve already taken Macro. People argue a lot in this class. Whatever. It doesn’t seem very practical. All the issues people with have with economics can be found in this class.

Then I’m in choir, which is also, sadly, a joke. The ting is that most Egyptians don’t have choir in high school, so a lot of kids have never sung at all in their entire lives, or done anything music, while the western kids, like me, have. So it has a vast difference in talents. The American choir director is very good though. He has a hard job. I hope they pay him a lot.

I’m in an Intro to Engineering. I’m not sure why. I needed a 1 credit class, which it is. There are team projects. I am of course not in a team. I know no one. No one offered to include me, as no one ever does. I’m a loner. I think its valuable to see how another profession works. Especially since I’m doing all my BP stuff, it’d be worth knowing how engineers do their job. Class has a lot of women in it. I must admit that surprised me.

So thats it for now! Ta ta! I’ll talk to ya’ll about England next podcast.

Some interesting Ideas.

Let me preface this by stating that I have a few ideas to share with ya'll.

Whenever school starts, I get a-thinking, and since this blog has become very much about my adventures in Egypt, these are starting to pile up.

Now, I have to forewarn everyone that I have NOT done the required background research that usually accompanies these ideas. They are simply interesting things I've thought about. Now that I have internet at AUC I'll be able to include more and more real data as I can get it via the Internets and their series of tubes.

The first is something interesting I heard in my Econ 302 (Intermediate Micro-Economics) Class. First, this class appears to be not that great. My Developmental Econ Class seems cool, but since I've already taken Intermediate Macro, Micro is something I kinda already know about. Anyways, we'll see how the class goes. One thing I can tell, is that people are very argumentative about Econ. I'll write about this in some other post, basically, the bargaining that is pervasive in Egyptian society finds its way into the classroom. So grades are not hard, but "sticky".

Anyways, one thing that I found was very interesting was that we talked about the three flows into the production of goods. The first part is labour, the second is capital (the machines that do the making, though, in many cases this is the labour), and the final was "Gifts from God", which of course here in the states we call "resources". I found it fairly enlightening to find out that the idea of natural resources are of course gifts from god. This vein of thought troubles me because it would appear that the "green" movement will have trouble taking hold in the Middle East. If you believe that the resources around you are gifts, that implies that resources are of course theoretically endless because they come from a divine creator. Also, the entire problem of global warming turns into a "punishment from god" instead of a man-made created problem. That is an easy scape goat for washing your hands of any environmental damage. All you have to do is say "its gods will" and voila! Why do you need to change your habits? Just pray harder.

The second and third ideas are strictly economic thoughts.

The first of those two is an idea I've been having about unemployment and inefficiencies. Let me first state that I am of the disposition, for the most part, for neo-classical economics. So that has to be said in advance. The second is that I believe that recessions/depressions are a very important part of long term economic growth. The force innovation and the value of finding inefficiencies. Without recessions, the long term positive effects that come with great ideas would fade. They also act as a catalyst for change. Barack would never have been elected if the economy was still going strong. Social Security, FDIC, and the GI Bill were all products of the political capital for change that was accumulated during the great depression. Recessions are necessary for developed countries to move forward.

That being said, I've had some thoughts about unemployment. Actually... I've been having thoughts about employment. I've never seen what cheap labour looks like until I arrived in Cairo. The inefficiencies in the work place are beyond anything I've ever seen. Since most of the hiring is "friend of a friend got me a job" anyways, there are a large number of people in Cairo who do nothing but basically wash sidewalks. At AUC, there are probably ten times the number of people on the custodial crew as at Madison, yet AUC is no cleaner. Of course AUC is also in the middle of the desert, so I am leaving out the endless encroachment of sand that invades the roads in my cleanness figures.

That being said, the reason that people in the USA are so productive could be because the price of labour is so high. No company can afford to pay for 50 janitors, so there are only 3. This of course means that in order to get a job in the marketplace, out of those 50 that would have been employed, 3 become janitors, 40 become something else, and SEVEN more become unemployed! Of course unemployment figures are only snapshots at one time and place. The point is that the low price if labour is causing people to become janitors when the should be moving into different fields that can help growth, like engineering, or manufacturing. It is when there is a glut of cheap HIGH SKILLED labour that economic growth occurs. In the past most of the growth has occurred when countries begin to manufacture products, instead of export natural materials, which, somehow in my head is connected to steady jobs in non-developing industries, like washing sidewalks.

There is of course a huge caveat to this, which is that people need hope and the ability to better themselves. If there are no janitor jobs, then the only way you'll be able to be employed is to go to school. Of course this assumes that you CAN go to school. The idea is that boosting the minimum wage can help in the long run. Of course, unemployment will rise. The only problem is that no government could probably keep up with the societal pressures in the short term, that I believe in the long term could provide benefits.

I should elaborate on this more, but I have to leave the library now. I never got to the second point, but I guess I'll write that tomorrow. Ta ta.

Time for school to start tomorrow.

Let me preface this by stating that as I am writing this I am taking a daring chance. Yeah, I’ve decided to eat a salad. We went searching for some internet today, and so we stumbled across a store that is actually a big chain named “cilantro”. They have wi-fi (9 pounds to get on of course). Well, I opted to just wait until tomorrow when I could get it for free. I’ll pay someone a pound and check my schedule or something online. The card works for 2 hours, so I’m in no rush. Anyways, not the point. The point is that I haven’t eaten hardly any raw veggies so far during my trip, so I saw a salad, and I bought it. To be fair, this is not your standard Egyptian joint. Some sort of blues trumpet player is pumping out not so good as Miles Davis Kind of Blue soft café la modé jazzy mellow jazz.

So its not the same as the fruits on the street, thats true. But that doesn’t make the achievement any less of a feat. I’ll keep everyone updated on if I get sick. I hope I don’t, and so far I’ve been feeling good. If I get sick, I get sick.

However, what I really wanted to talk about today is not sickness, or internet but tomatoes.

I have to admit… the tomatoes in Egypt are the best tomatoes I’ve ever had. They are just crazy good. American tomatoes come in many types, but most are acidic. The tomatoes here are super sweet, with plenty of meat on the inside, not watery at all, but the meat isn’t hard like the meaty tomatoes in the US, instead, the meat is very soft. They are just crazy good.

Two more short little stories. Last night I went back to the music store. He had this cheap guitar in, and I played around with it for a while, but eventually I settled on the step above the cheap cheap one (450 pounds). Instead, I opted for the 650 pound one. Its a weird model. It has a fiberglas back and neck, which makes for a bizarre mix. The good news is that the harmonics are “perfect”, and it is a smaller body, very light, and rounder, so when you sit it on your knee it feels nice. You can really feel it vibrate. Of course I can’t say that it sounds the greatest. I haven’t made up my mind yet. One of the nice things about wooden guitars, or wooden instruments in general, is that as you play it, the wood bends, and warps just a tiny tiny bit the more you play it because the energy coming out in waves. Therefore you can “break in” any new instrument by playing it. Its kinda like a living thing, it takes time, and it responds, because each instrument is different.

The thing is, IDK how much this will change because its not wood. Hopefully this fiberglass also bends enough to change. The strings are harder than I’m used to, so my fingers hurt after a good half an hour of playing.

So there I was, playing on our porch, and this little kid, maybe 8 years old, he comes up to me. And I’m there playing guitar and this kid comes up to me with these curious eyes, and says hi. Then he asks me if I need my shirts washed because there is this great place right up a block away -- Makmouds. This kid was obviously delivering clothing for his dad. It was really sad that no matter what I do, most Egyptians just see me as a walking bag of money. Oh well, I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised.

IDK what this blog is about.

I’d like to preface this by stating that I finally got to AUC, and my internet worked at the same time Iw as there, and therefore, I am completely caught up with posting my blogs online. Until we get internet at home, I will continue to write them during the night, and then post them during the day. I’m not sure exactly how well this system is working, but I am glad to see such an… enthusiastic response to my blog. For a few months it was seriously lacking followers. Just a simple note to those newcomers reading -- I often have grammatical mistakes, and the clarity of statements may not be crystal, but do not fear! These are done on purpose. I have set up the blog to allow others to glimpse inside my mindset at the time I hit the keys. My writing voice follows how I would speak (as I am sure you can figure), and just as there is no Ctrl Z in life, I feel that the “prose” that I am typing should be raw and full of truthyness. I do not go back and edit (except to weed out bad mistypes and some spelling errors) what I write as I hope you, the reader, can get a TIFF version of my head instead of a JPG. If you fail to understand that reference, it will simply suffice to akin it to seeing my faults and failures instead of a refined finished product because what goes on in my head is neither refined or finely polished and I feel my literary work should express this fact in its glorious detail, either for good or ill.

Another question I am debating in my head is how long I should keep this blog about my day to day activities. If you want boring dribble about what boring people do, god created twitter. Go waste your time there. Obviously it is the experience and the perspective in Cairo that is interesting. I am considering starting to drift back to my older style of ideas and research. I have found that the city of cairo is perhaps a good ten degrees cooler than AUC. I have a fairly good theory that involves what I believe to be cars, NO2, photons, O3, and ultra-violet radiation. This can lead to the reason of massive migrations to urban centers in the hotter parts of the world. But Alas! The only problem is that without available internet I cannot do the research that I need to do to confirm my suspicions. Still… This very post is a shift from my current tone of conversation into a more monologuical style (thats a word I just made up, take monologue, and turn it into adjective?).

I encourage you to read my previous posts. They are quite humorous because you can see into my brain just a little, especially over a year ago. Its quite funny to read them. Ahh… Nostalgia….

So right now I am sitting on my bed, using the back-propper-upper to lean against my bedpost. The computer is quietly humming “Walking After You” by the Foo Fighters. The sheets on my bed are yellow, flecked with images of bird feathers (oddly enough). Strewn on the end of my bed past my feet sit a strange amalgamation of what was in my pockets. And no you hobbit lovers, its not “string or nothing”. I am doing some laundry atm, so I switched from pants to shorts to wash my jeans. I’ve got some coinage, contact stuff, my headphones, a book titled “ Capitalists, Workers, and Fiscal Policy -- A Classical Model of Growth and Distribution”. Strung on the aft (for you sailors out there) of my bed is my towel. Its drying. I share a bedroom with my dubious roommate Andrew, as you might very well know. I find I am calling him “Drew” after Andrew Lucasko whom I knew many years ago, though he since has apparently disappeared off the continent. That is double ironic because I am the one in Africa, and Andrew my roommate is actually nothing like Lucasko. Strange.

Our room is the common bedroom shared by two boys. Disorganized piles of organization dot the landscape. His pile of papers and bathroom supplies on the left, my pile of boxes and electrical components on the right. His suitcase sprawls on the floor while mine sits upright, although, I would say we are evenly messy.

So within that frame of reference, I can start to talk about my day.
I’ve been trying to avoid talking about AUC. There is just too much to say about the American University of Cairo, and I have been pushing off the date to avoid tackling a topic of such massive proportions.

I shall briefly talk about my day at AUC. We went in this morning on the 8:30 bus. One of the perks of living in Maadi is that we only have a 30 minute bus ride, as opposed to the possible 1:30 bus ride that some have to endure in different parts in the city.

My internet worked! That is why I finally got caught up posting my blogs, checking my facebook, uploading some pics, and sending out a few emails. What is important is that my computer is working, the internet for my computer on AUC is working, and so life is pretty good at the moment. Because of that I basically sat online until noon in the library. I had a sort of internet orgasm if you will. It was glorious. Then came lunch time. The “egypt” cafeteria store isn’t open yet, so I had to buy some overpriced pasta (27 pounds). Still, it was good-ish and filled me up. I still haven’t figured out how to make pasta here at the house. I did go to the store today and buy the ingredients for, and later cook up, some potato pancakes. Yummmmmm…. I love eating.

Back to AUC. After lunch, I decided that I needed to change my classes. It was on my to-do list for a long time. IDK how the “signed us up for classes”, but they did a poor job. Luckily, the place I went was one of 3 good administration facilities (the other two being the one chick at the tech desk, and the library).

I dropped one arabic class (sorry Mustafa, I didn’t want to get up really early to take my foosa, or standard, arabic) but picked up a one credit and another 3 credits for a total of 14. This ok with me since anything over 15 credits costs you even more at this university (trust me, its expensive).

So what are my proposed classes? I added Intermediate Microeconomic Theory (I’ve already taken Intermediate Macro, which probably will end up being the much more interesting one). I’m also taking Econ 312, which is Economic Development. Hopefully we’ll do some fun stuff. I’m getting into reading about how the Classical economic model can pull through this current economic recession (the last recession basically killed old school Keyensians off) by figuring out how to have a long term view of growth that can include fun stuff like global warming, and depletion of natural resources. I have some good ideas, but I’ll take some new perspectives. My next book will be Michl and Foley (2007), since apparently they tackle this problem from the Classical Economics vantage-point. We shall see.

I am in the AUC Choir (singing! yay!), which is a one credit, and I threw in “Intro to Engineering” which is a strange one credit. IDK what it’ll be good for, but we’ll see. After my stint at BP, I feel I can roll with the best of the engineering community. Hopefully it’ll be fun. I’m not sure why it is so short (one credit), but maybe we’ll blow some stuff up.

Finally, I’m taking Intro to Photography. I feel this is a good skill to have. If I must be honest… I signed up for this class because I thought I might be able to loan out some Digital SLR cameras. Some really nice ones. Then I can run around Egypt with a good camera. I mean, god, I have Photoshop on my computer. I’m all set up to do some really great photo stuff, but my point and shoot canon SD is a great camera, don’t get me wrong, but not good at all for trying to change focal angles. If you are really close to a subject you can do it (like 2 inches away), but besides that, it just takes good pictures. Thats what it does. Of course, there aren’t a whole lot of expressive shots you can get. Either way. I like photography, and I think if I’m going to make it a life hobby, what the hell, I might as well learn about it and get some credits. My big question is what it will transfer back to Madison as. Exciting.

Alright kids. I’m off to my bowl of cereal and TV time. It was fun ya’ll. Keep it real.

Pyramid Time

Let me preface this by stating that I have two things to talk about. The first are the Giza Pyramids and the second is my quest to find a guitar.

So we were just chillin’ around. Nothing special to do, and so I throw out a little --

“Boy… no good movies on TV or anything, what should we do?”

“How about go the Pyramids?”
“Eh, sounds like it could be fun.”

So we took a short cab-ride over to the Metro, and took the redline to the green-line, and so like 20 minutes later we get off at the “El Giza” stop. Then, we basically rented our own party bus (they are actually called “microbuses”), its white, and in order to get the engine running we had to get four guys to push the van for a few yards before the crank could get a running. I would like to add that since it started running, it purred along smoothly. Microbus was 5 pounds a person (overpriced said our Egyptian friend who came along), and of course the subway was 1 pound a person as it always is.

Its actually really pretty cool that whenever you feel like it you can just “get up and go” see one of the seven wonders of the world. So that made my trip feel a little more special.
So we get out at this street, and look out the windows and Voila! Its the three Pyramids. I wanted to go during the day, but the girls wanted to go at night, so I obliged. I don’t have great pictures because it was at night (which sucks, we’ll probably go back). We tried to see the “lights and sound” show off some guys balcony for free, but we simply couldn’t see or hear anything, so we forked over the 75 pounds each (ouch, and in retrospect, we could have gotten it for the half price student discount, ouch…) to go and listen to Charton Heston talk about the Pharos. They had some cool laser effects and stuff. It was kinda made in the 1960’s or something. Oh well. The thing is, when you first go, you can’t figure out if the pyramids are small, or just far away. Apparently we were about a mile away. So I guess they are big. Majestic. Obviously built by aliens.

Seriously, there is no way there were not aliens involved in the building of that damned thing. Its just crazy. You’re telling me that 7000 years ago, some people living around decided, to hell with it, lets just mine a mountain and kinda design it perfectly in this weird shape. And we’ll have three of them in perfect order in this weird sideways line pattern thingy. We’ll just point them into space in a straight line so that they are easy to spot from aerial craft, we won’t design anything else like them, use technology way beyond anything else at the time, and execute it flawlessly. No. Freeken aliens, I swear.

In retrospect, I learned that either there are aliens, or, as the ironic shirt says, “Slavery gets things done”. Which, btw, is incredibly true. Sidebar. Speaking of stupid ironic shirts, Andrew tells me that they are basically the “ultimate white person thing”. White people do love their ironic tee-shirts, so we thought of the best most ironic ironic-shirt ever! It would simply say “I’m from Egypt”

Its funny because we’re so white and obviously not from Egypt, so anyone who sees it would know we’re not Egyptian, which makes it an Ironic Tee, but the SECOND layer is that white non-Egyptians like ironic tee-shirts, and therefore, us wearing an ironic tee-shirt that says “we’re from Egypt” makes us uber non-Egyptian, therefore doubling the whiteness of both ourselves and the effectiveness of the irony. Maybe its even like a 3x multiplier.

I’ve def. decided something though. If i ever get my hands on $8-$10 billion, I’m definitely building myself a big ass pyramid. I don’t need it to be made out of nice stone, just stuff that works. If it’ll last 10,000+ years it’ll do.

But I want mine to be super huge. The Egyptians wasted their time on making the inside all nice, and pretty, and they thought about it a lot. I just want there to be, in the middle of nowhere, a HUGE towering pyramid. Its the BAM that gets you. If I wanted to be all fancy, I’d get a geothermal power-source, and hook it up to a bunch of rotating LED’s (so that when one batch burns out it’d automatically rotate, enough to last me 10-20k years), so that every so often, maybe once a year, or just randomly, a huge spotlight would turn on, and a HUGE beam of light would shoot out of the top. If I could get some big speakers to blare “Life is a Highway” I think that would really mess with peoples’ heads. They’d be like, whow. This is the weirdest most awesome-est thing ever. And I’d make it the bad country remake, not even the mediocre Aerospace version. No… BETTER than that would be Gustav Mahler. 5th Symphony in C Sharp Minor. The 1st movement (Trauermarsch). That would scare the shit out of some locals, let me tell you.

If the idea of keeping the human experience alive is enticing to you, I strongly recommend you check out the millennium clock project. It’ll be around for 10,000 years keeping good time. Pretty cool design (awesome actually), and the fact that its happening is even cooler. Timeless (almost, but not really).

Next, its guitar hunting time!

Sidebar, I’m giving mini-arabic pancakes my seal of approval. I can’t say brilliant, but a good effort none-the less.

Sidebar #2, I’m unsure about the correct way to spell “whence”. I guess its whence. So this sidebar should back from whence it came.

Back to the guitars. In our effort to find the Cafe Red Onion, our taxi stumbled upon a large music shop (quite on accident, i assure you), and I thought to myself, ah-ha! a perfect place to get a cheap acoustic guitar. I must say, while at home there isn’t a lot to do except watch tv atm (due to a lack of internet). So, I’ve thought to myself, having a guitar around would be useful. I figure I can either sell it back at near the same value, or maybe I can ship it back to the US. Thats the plan.

So, today I felt like stretching my legs, so Robin (kaww kaww) and I went to find this place. I knew it was somewhere in this like 5 x 5 block radius. Needless to say, we were going in blind. It took two hours to retrace what we believed where our cab-rides’ steps. We managed to find Boss’s, which we had been looking for that very same night, and lo! Just as we were about to lose hope and march back, there on the way was the shop! And it was even open, which is unheard of for 5:30 at Ramadan. Score. I was told I could get a guitar for 450 pounds, which isn’t bad. They seem to be of fairly high quality. It’s definitely an above average store. He said he’d call soon and let me know when the cheap one was in.

Well, I have to get up in six hours, so I suppose I should wrap it up. Yesterday I finished my stew that has treated me so well. It was a success. Tomorrow I go BACK to AUC to see if I can get my hands on some internet. Hopefully post all the rest of these backlogged blogs. Meet some ladyfriends perhaps. Ooo la la.

Final side-note -- robin and I were asked if we were married earlier today in the bakery. Yeah. Awkward. At least in Maadi when someone asks two westerners if they are married you get TWO options -- “Yes” or “friend”. I get the vibe that in most of Cairo there is only one answer. I’ll let you figure out which one is the only “appropriate” answer. I mean, we just walked in together, its not like we were holding hands or anything (and, btw, in many parts of the city, holding hands is reserved only for those married, and even then, holding hands in public does not happen very often). Kisses on the checks happen often, and often between same sex greetings (like the French). Kissing on the mouth/lips will get you spit on from what I’ve heard. I’ve yet to see that in public, so no, its not like france after all. I’m not sure what the penalty is for getting caught “doing it in her brother’s pickup truck on the gravel road outside of town”, but I’m betting its pretty severe. So once again, no, its not like America either. I image the jail time for getting/giving roadhead is also very high. If you don’t know what roadhead is. Um.