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.

Visiting "Islamic Cairo"

Let me preface this by stating that the crew is assembled.
TEAM! ASSEMBLE!

Basically Robin showed up.

So our house now has all three roommates. Yay! Robin is a fun person, so I think we do a pretty good job getting along so far. She’s had a different time in cairo then us, basically she’s seen the richer part of Cairo, while we’ve been in the medium poor place for the first week. Maadi is in the nice part of town, but not the richest part. When I say rich, I mean like banquets with women in beautiful gowns.

But thats not what I’m going to talk about today!
No… today I’m going to talk about the weird shops and stores that I’ve run into in Egypt so far. Here is the list -- McDonalds, Radioshack, Pizza Hut, Century 21 (weird), Mobile Gas, Total Gas (pronounced “Toe Taal” its french), KFC, and Subway. There are a handful of interesting branches of banks (and I’d like to point out that many large companies have offices in Cairo, like BP, but thats not a consumer store).
In the general stores you can get many popular American brands, like Fruit Loops, or Pasta, or Pepsi, Wriglys, and Tabasco Sauce!!

Interestingly enough, there a ton if differences. I would have thought that Tabasco Sauce would just be imported, but no! Its actually like a different recipe. There is even an entire Label in arabic. The Pizza Hut is super nice. It is the beautiful sit down restaurant, where pizza takes up 2 pages out of an 8 page menu. The whole push for Pizza Hut to do pasta and not just Pizza was really for their international program because it frees them up to do a lot of stuff that works with the local flavor du jour. So that was strange. Mc Donalds seems to be the only company that kicks the trend. A burger is a burger.
Finally, a little about my day YESTERDAY! I’m a day behind… Yikes.

Ok, so after waiting for Robin forever, we finally just go into town and visit Alison, and Ysmiiya (can’t spell it, sorry), the friend of Alison and Marzyia (I hope I spelt your name right too, I probably didn’t). We went to “islamic Cairo, which, apparently is different from the rest of the city in some weird way. I thought it was all Islamic, lol, but this neighborhood is known for their many AWESOME Mosques. Which of course me and andrew didn’t try to get into. I doubt we could have if we wanted to.

They aren’t quite as impressive as some of the Europe stuff -- in this area -- but old and really quite cool. There are also a bunch of “real” markets that really feel like markets. There are tons and tons of people, lots of tiny little shops that sell almost any cheep piece of crap from China you could imagine. I’m sure some of it is made in Egypt too, but it takes a bit of searching. It depends which part of the markets you’re in.
One thing that did strike me as odd, or interesting was the realness or fakeness of the markets. On one market, you could buy all kinds of cheap goods dirt cheap, and it seemed like a legit market, but then as you wandered it kinda turned into a weird tourism thing, where they’d sell little stone “gaza pyramids”. There was this one store that had a whole bunch of regular metal bowls and stuff, but they had this awesome little halogen bulb that when on, and reflected off this brass stuff, reflected the wavelength of gold in normal light, so the whole store looked like it was full of “gold” even though its not. So, the whole Aladdin scene/marketplace kinda thing. So there is some truth to it, though I can’t say a whole lot of truth to it. It depends on the neighborhood, and it depends on the market. Obviously the markets now sell old tape players, universal remotes, well, basically everything you’d want to buy, but the whole “shop full of gold lamps” doesn’t happen anymore. The real gold is in real stores, behind real theft proof glass with real security guards with real AK’s.

Other fun things that happened to me this Monday -- as I’m writing this at night, the power continues to flicker on and off. The entire city block shut down for maybe 20-30 seconds, but then came on again, and it happened again a little later. Rolling blackouts… uhhghghg. I have to say that for the most part, the power supply has been very solid, only tonight has there been problems, and that for the entire city block. Of course I have to say that this was right when robin plugged in her phone, so maybe I can personally blame her for the entire brownout.
Or maybe its called a blackout, I’m not sure. What is the difference? If I had wikipedia I could tell you, but I don’t, so I can’t. Sorry.

Let me preface this by stating that our days are getting shorter and shorter. I swear, I woke up at around noon today because I slept in, and its already almost midnight.

A few points. First, our third roommate robin showed up today, although she didn’t bring any luggage. She was with this interesting family friend. I felt a little put off by her because she was in her 50’s, and kinda acted like a mom to us. It is weird. It appears that she disapproved of living with us. It was weird. The thing is that apparently our apartment wasn’t up to her standards, even though this is the nicest apartment we could find.

I’m a little worried that her “standards” will still be western standards, whereas our are pretty Egyptian. I know that our Egypt experiences will be totally different. I just find it interesting. Although, I know that this woman is very nice, and really has treated Robin like a daughter. I guess its too bad I don’t have one of those in every city, lol.

In lighter news, i found tabasco sauce. It was only 10 pounds, so I had to get some. The very idea that anywhere in this big world, you can get the few drops of heaven that tobasco sauce can provide makes this world a little brighter place. It wasn’t even in a specialty shop or anything either, it was just in one of the tiny little general stores that dot the landscape here, though, I may add, in the rich western part of Maadi. I guess the western-er part, even more westernerer than my part. I wrote a long run-on sentence there, but no harm no fowl.

Also today we called up a data company to get ADSL to our location through the phone line. It isn’t cheap, but it isn’t bad, and although it’ll take 14 days until we can use it, it’ll be nice to get a constant supply of my internet here. Like I’ve written, I’m off the grid until maybe September. We’ll see. I hope no one thinks that I’ve died or anything.

One thing that I find interesting, is it SHOULD feel like I’m in a totally different place right now, but honestly, it feels about as far away as Houston felt. I’m not quite sure why, but I wish it felt (well, maybe I don’t wish it) that I was on the other side of the world, but it honestly doesn’t. People are people, and I think American culture is so pervasive, it is truly global. In Maadi, a lot of people speak English. In fact, if I was French, I’d be pissed off because everything is in English, and NOTHING is in French or German. I’m kinda glad that if one language takes over the world, at least its my mother tongue. Trust me, you never realize how beautiful your own language is until you go to a place that doesn’t speak it. Just hearing it is like cool water babbling down a smooth stream. It is just great to feel your brain pick up on the words so quickly.

My street arabic is getting better. I can basically shop with ease, which is nice. My stew has gotten better on the second day, which is also good news for me.

I think that its the heat. All the dogs and cats are the most docile creatures ever. There are two dogs and a handful of cats that live in front of my apartment building, and they are always just sleeping on the steps. You could probably walk right on top of them, and they’d just bat an eye. Really nice creatures. Obviously used to humans.

I discovered this interesting stuff. I was out looking for some butter to put on bread (I was craving), and I ran into this sweet sesame seed “spread” I guess you could say. I got the almond kind. Its pretty good stuff. It works. Its no butter though. One of the complications with food are bad translations, or lack thereof. Some foods have no english on them, and so its hard to figure out what it is unless its really obvious. The tricky stuff are the things that have both English and Arabic because the translations often don’t get you what you want.

Perfect example is this cheese. I found a place you can buy these bagels (crazy), so I’ve been looking for butter or cream cheese. Now I’ve found lots of cheese, but there is this one container, that looks like it could be cream cheese, but says “cream cheese”. So one would think its cream cheese, but then on the package it says its “feta”, but the ingredients just say milk/cream stuff. So IDK what to think about it. It doesn’t help that all the rest of that brand are like cheese cheese.

Ok, thats all for me today. Well… all I have to say are crazy Egyptian auto-erotica asphyxiation lover stalkers. Don’t worry, you had to be there. Hopefully I can post these online eventually, maybe.

Maadi

Let me preface this by stating that I have lots to talk about.

In fact, I think I might have more to talk about then I can possibly talk about. I’m that busy. If I had the internet, I might be more inclined to write more often, but I don’t. But like I said, there is lots to talk about.

Allow me to turn to fun quotes of the day. We live in a residential block (mostly), but down the street, and one block to the north, there is a strip of shops. Grocery stores, hardware stores, a barber, scuba shops (idk), and a few other very small, family owned stores cover this 3-4 block stretch. So everyday we’ve been making trips out to this place and buying stuff because, well, thats what we do. One interesting thing that happened today occurred near the butcher. There is a butcher shop and it is real and hard core, like, you walk in and they have a window, with like 3 cuts of meat, and a scale, and to the left, the dead animal that the meat came from, strung up on a hook, with boys chopping it up as the blood flows onto the floor. The animal we saw (looked like a lamb) did not have a head, and the blood and guts sat in buckets along the back wall. The meat was hacked off with cleavers, washed, the bone/fat cut off, and then placed in huge chunks in the window. When you go to order a “cut”, this involves you saying how many kilos you want, and the man of the butcher shop takes a big cut, slices about four “steaks” if you want to call them that off of some sort of mystery meat, and then you paid for it. I bought 2 kilos, it cost me 95 pounds (about $20).

First, if you don’t like that picture, then maybe you should become a vegetarian. You do know that your meat doesn’t grow on trees. Maybe you should think about it once in a while instead of continually stuffing your face with hamburgers. Second, the meat was just fine, it was tender and everything. I think there is even a chance it was bovine.

Second, later in the day, we were walking by, and saw a peculiar sight. There was a man attempting to drag a full grown sheep into the butcher’s store. As one of my companions pointed out “They’re going to kill the f*** out of that sheep” -- well said. It simply struck me as strange. We usually see what comes out the front door of a butchers shop, and even if the meat is there, the animal is dead. What’s weird is a live bucking kicking animal being dragged INTO the store. Oh, it knew what was coming. I felt a little bad for it. Poor sheep.

One of the good things about these little family businesses is that they are usually pretty specific. There is a store that sells fresh produce (I’ll get to that in a bit), and this store sells meat. Well, there are 3 other stores within 3 blocks that sell produce, so you know you can trust the quality of their products because that's all they have to rely on. They can’t beat anyone on price, because there are no prices (its egypt after all), and so quality is what they have to live on.

I don’t want to finish writing out the story of what happened in the produce shop, but later in the day I bought a bunch of veggies, and the man did a nice thing for me today. Its one of the first true kind acts that I’ve seen.

I’m glad I'm living in Maadi, because its just different. I know all of my Egyptian friends want me to experience the good friendly Egypt that they all know and love, but as a white Westerner, I am going to have a different experience. In Dokki, it is a true Egyptian town, and Westerners don’t live there very often, so all the native Egyptians run into one kind of Westerner -- the tourist. Which means they aren’t there to live with the people, and it means they have money. So either everyone just stares and ignores you, or they give you the really “friendly” businessman smile, as every other person will offer to take you to the Giza Pyramids. I swear, when we told people we weren’t planning on going to visit the Pyramids for a while, they all had the biggest looks of shock on their faces. But we are living in Maadi, where a lot of Westerners actually live, and the difference is completely noticeable. When you go into a store as a tourist, you get treated differently, sometimes nicer, sometimes worse, but always different. In Maadi they are used to living WITH Westerners, and so when you go to the market to buy some tomatoes they treat you like someone who lives in their community.

It is very very hard to explain, but it is really easy to see in a person’s face when they truly want to welcome you here because they want to show that the Egyptian people in their community are nice, and welcoming, because they want to make a good impression on you as a person, and not because you’re a walking sack of money. We bought some sheets today for our bed (95 pounds), and the woman selling them to us smiled at me and wished me a good day, and she looked at me and smiled and the honesty shines right through a person.

The point? Its a completely different world depending on what subway stop you get off on. Its weird, but its true. Am I in the “real” Cairo living like most “real” Egyptians live? No. Maybe in a few months I will be, but I am living like the real Egyptians in Maadi live. And if I can be authentic in that environment, I can live with that.

Ok, I’ll stop the rantcast and talk about my day.

Today we had a lot on our plate. We needed to make some copies of passports as well as a copy of our rent, Andrew wanted to find internet, and I, not wanting to die of starvation, wanted to cook up a big pot of something. The hard part is that there isn’t much to work with atm. IDK where to get certain foods, and I don’t want to risk eating raw veggies -- yet. In the future I might, but I haven’t gotten sick yet, and I prefer that to remain true. Another trip to the ATM was in order, fixing the leaking of a toilet, cleaning up our mess from the pipes, and a-waiting the move-in of our new roommate (who as of the time of this writing has not shown up).

For food, I had a chunk of meat, and I decided to make a stew. I didn’t really have any seasonings, but I had meat, and veggies, and I picked up some sort of tomato paste stuff that I guess worked well, got myself some noodles, and made like a chili/stew type thing. IDK what it is, but I pour some milk in every bowl to simulate sour cream, and its great stuff. It fills me up, my stomach took it much better than I thought it would handle beans, it was cheap, and there is lots of it, so praise the lord!

I also found a cheap source of cereal (9 pounds a box), and so I am getting set for the food situation for the months ahead. There is milk everywhere, and the cereal are all nice arabic favorites (ripoff of american brands). I got matches to turn the stove on so I stop burning my hands trying to turn the stove on with a damn lighter. I figured out how to basically do the laundry, I took a nice shower in the morning, got sheets for our beds, and I’m bout ready to just go crash and go to sleep after this flury of typing. Still no internet, so idk when I’ll be able to post this, but w/e. Its written. I start school in a few days I suppose as well.

As they say -- good evening.

New Home

Let me preface this with an apology. I have not been able to post for some time now, and for that, I am sorry. Needless to say, I have been a busy boy. Once again, I have no internet, and therefore, writing things online tends to be… tricky.

I shall start with my day today, just as it was, and point out some interesting peculiarities -- the first of course being that we moved today! Yes… our dingy old western-style hotel has grown too small, too long, and its on to bigger and better and brighter things in a new neighborhood no less!

There are problems… Several in fact. Problems which have made be become quite the handy man if I do say so my self.

Anyways, this morning, I woke up, and we checked out of our hotel. We just wanted a taxi, but the concierge desk called us a “guy” instead (which of course ended up costing 50 more pounds than was needed because his sedan was apparently a “limo”). Anyways, we get out of Dokki, and we move into Maadi. Well, we think, lets have a stroll around the neighborhood.

I grab some potatoes and some frying oil, and we come home, and try and move in. There are already problems. When we get back, we find the lock to be unopenable. We even have 5 keys, and none can fix the stuck lock. Somehow, after 15 minutes of banging and jiggling, we get the damn thing open. Well, our first task is to get internet at our apartment, which should be easy enough, but everyone we call tells us we are going to have a “wait” which, depending on the company, is between 10 days and 6 months. Go figure.

So we are still trying to get the internet somehow, and of course Andrew leaves to go see if we can do it over the cell tower lines, which leaves me at home in case the lock doesn’t work again. He gets back, no luck (everyone is closed during the day), so we decide to go to work on the lock. We take it out of the door, inspect it, notice that the problem is with the new door lock we bought, but, it does seem to work consistently from the side that is facing in, so we turn it around so that side is facing the world, and reinstall the lock good as new. Lock problem fixed.

I go to make some hash browns. Mostly epic failure. The damn potatoes stick to the frying pan like crazy, and the stupid sink for dishes is completely clogged. Well, 90% clogged. So I became a plumber today as well. Andrew held up the plastic bags we got from shopping under the drains, and I went to work on the pipes. I took the entire sing apart before discovering the clog. Trust me, this black stuff that was in the pipe is basically every horrible virus and bacteria that has ever graced the continent of Africa (and they seem to have all the really bad ones, for example, polio is making a comeback) is in this black gunk that is now all over my arms. Oh well, all in the name of science right? Sink problem fixed.

We go out, the ATM is broken, I literally spend my last 50 piastars (thats like $.17) and I’m broke. Later, the one ATM within what has to be forever is fixed, and I get some cash. We buy toilet paper, enough said. Of course the toilet and sink in one of the bathrooms (we have two) is always running. We’ll have to fix that somehow (and no we can’t just turn off the pipes, the damn pipe to the bathroom sink won’t even close, its all the way closed and water still leaks).

Then there is the washing machine. Its old, the dial is broken, so when I did the first load I basically played spin the wheel of fortune. I think I hit dedicates, I put the soap in the wrong dispenser, so it didn’t go through, but my dirty filthy smelly grimy boxers got washed, so that's a victory in my book. Of course there is no dryer, and since its about 1 in the morning here, hanging my clothes out to get stolen (I guess dry as well) is not a good idea. So I’ve hung them up on the kitchen chairs.

We were so tired and exhausted that when it came time for dinner we gave up, went to a European style restaurant literally across the street from us, ordered two cheeseburgers, and at them on the couch. It felt good to be American again. The Chick-pea soup at the egypt place will have to wait until tomorrow.

I’m damn thirsty too.

Goodnight all.