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.