I’m going on strike!

I feel like I am trying to do too much – and am slowly realising that “down time” is allowed…

After a very hectic work week last week (still getting used to working 11/12/13 hour days) all I wanted to do was relax this last weekend – but alas…

We had Paula and Lyndon round for dinner on Thursday night – cooked a great roast lamb. In the absence of Woolies I’ve had to get creative in order to find really good food – and after hunting around a bit I found a fabulous website: www.gourmetegypt.com. You can order Australian beef, veal, lamb, fish, pies and even avocados! Amazing find I tell you! You order online (amazing, considering how backwards the internet is here eg. the credit card details on the bank’s website include our terms and conditions – that’s it! Absolutely nothing about what a credit card is, or what products we offer…), and the food gets delivered to your door – frozen – all the way from Down Under (yes, it does cost a fortune!)

We played a very competitive game of Risk, where the girls ended up making an alliance against the boys, and I’m pleased to announce that I took over the world (it took until 2am!) Half way through our board game, we decided we wanted a sheesha – so we phoned the restuarant down the road and managed to convince them to deliver a sheesha to us! The sheesha guy brought it across and set it up for us – with the most unbelievably elaborate tin foil additions – look at the photos for the tinfoil bow!

On Friday I had my first horse show in about 3 years! I rode Foxy Lady in the 1.10m class. We had a pole down, but she went well. Amazing how horse shows are the same all over the world – hurry-up and wait! But I managed to squeeze into all my old show kit, and looked semi professional! I’ve put photos up – have a look and appreciate the highway going over the main arena!

On Friday night we had Ahmed, Sherin and Karim round for dinner, and on Saturday we headed to Karim’s travel agent to book our trips to Sharm el Sheikh, London and Croatia (how exciting!).

Then we headed to a place called the BCA in Mohandisseen to watch the rugby. It was a ground floor flat + a second story apartment, that had been converted into a sort of expat pub. I walked upstairs to be ogled at by about 7 lecherous men sitting at the bar swigging beer… Western men have an amazing ability to drool at women and make them feel very uncomfortable. Egyptians ogle in a much more polite and less invasive manner (but oh my, can they ogle!) I am going to get home one day, and be really disappointed that no-one looks and catcalls at me anymore!

Paula and I played three games of pool, and after she annihiliated me 3 times, we decided we had had enough of the grose men, and tootled off for a facial at the one and only Clarins spa in the whole of Egypt. Blissful, but still not quite the same as home! Headed off to a Korean restuarant after that and had to cook our own food on a fire in front of us.

I finally made it home, only to be compltely panicked that I was never going to survive another week of 11 hour work days having had no time to put my feet up all weekend.

So tonight I am sitting at home chilling – about to head to bed actually!

(I sent a message to Cielo and Foxy Lady that I would see them tomorrow evening…)

 

Prayer rings

Muslim people that pray a lot sometimes get a mark on their forehead because of the constant friction of their forehead on their prayer mat. I kid you not…

It sounds completely far fetched, but after staring at a couple of foreheads today at work, it is unbelievable how obvious they are! People with marks literally have a 3cm diameter dark ring on their forehead. I enquired if this was actually a cool thing to get, because it proved you were very religious, but this is not the case. Apparently some people don’t even have to pray much to get these marks – they are just prone to them…

On another note altogether – I went to my first radio ad recording today. I had to approve the final version – a fairly strange task considering my ad was in Arabic and I don’t speak or understand a word of the language. The sound effects and background music were cool though.

 

A Boring Weekend

I think I have a problem – my hangovers are really really bad these days! I didn’t drink that much on Friday night, and I could hardly move on Saturday…

Rob (a great guy who has the arduous task of putting together a data centre for our bank in Maadi and Alex) came round for dinner. He has some really amusing stories about getting these data centres up and running – a lot of it too technical for me to understand, but a lot of it is so basic that even I get that it is truly ridiculous! An example: three massive cables (about an inch thick each) go into the data centre to supply power – one should be red (live), one green / yellow (earth) and one brown (neutral) – except that at this multi-million pound data centre, there were two red cables and one brown one, because the supplier didn’t have any green / yellow cable…

Another thing he mentioned was that there were no plugs – so the guys had just grabbed the live wires and shoved them into the sockets…

Anyway, back to dinner…

We decided to roast a chicken, and in the process of shoving a lemon up it’s bum, we noticed that the neck had not been chopped off! Luke chased me around the kitchen with this stupid headless chicken, while I ran around screaming and mock charging – I still can’t believe I ate it in the end!

Maybe it had something to do with the amount of wine I had to drink beforehand – which brings me back to my sorry state on Saturday. I literally could not lift my head off the couch until the evening. I am going to have my liver tested I’ve decided – this is just not right (and I didn’t really drink that much!).

Having recovered slightly by 6pm, I had a serious case of ants in my pants, so managed to convince Luke (and Paula – who had decided that my sorry company was tolerable) to go for a walk down the Nile.

About 5 minutes outside the front door, we heard a metallic crunch from behind us. Not thinking too much of it (lots of other things to concentrate on), we noticed a tyre rolling past us – not attached to a car. This was fairly intriguing, so we finally turned around to find a black and white taxi had just lost a tyre… Honestly, the front left tyre just fell off, and the crunch we heard was the front left part of the car hitting the road. The driver just sort of steered the car to the edge of the road on 3 wheels and a cog, and jumped out to collect his tyre that had carried on going for about 50 metres.

I caught Luke having a real giggle about it about 5 hours later – just another one of those extra-ordinary things that would just never happen anywhere else in the world!

Come to think of it, our fairly boring weekend can still be classified as different…

 

Things that go “bump” in the Night

I had one of those nerve-wracking experiences when I woke up because of a strange noise in the house last night. You know the feeling - pulpitating heart, straining to hear more, trying not to move because then the baddies won’t know you’re there and not wanting to turn on the bedside light because it will mean not being able to see into the shadows…

Well, Luke heard it too and just mumbled “Don’t worry, we’re in Egypt” and went straight back to sleep!

It is strange to realise just how accustomed I’ve become to living in fear, and what a weight off my shoulders it is not to have to constantly worry about my personal security.

 Just a note – this is new to me, and it’s quite cool :-)

 

Egypt won the African Cup of Nations last night…

We went to watch the final of the African Cup of Nations between Egypt and Cameroon last night, on Le Pasha boat, just off Zamalek island…

And in the second half Egypt managed to score a goal, and the entire country went crazy! It reminded me of us winning the Rugby World Cup – so great to be part of such excitement and celebration…

This boat is one of many, and is one of the many things that I just take for granted, but the phenomenon is actually quite interesting…

There is a serious lack of space in Cairo (18 million people here), so what you get are these massive boats in the Nile that are permanently attached to land (ie. they don’t go anywhere). On each boat you get at least 3 levels, and on each level up to 3 restuarants. It is a floating restaurant, except you would never know once you are inside… It would be impossible to move these boats anyway, because they wouldn’t fit under the many bridges that go across the Nile…

Egypt Air sent a 747 to Ghana in the morning of the match filled with football fans. You could buy a ticket on this flight at a seriously discounted rate, which included a flight there, transport to the stadium, ticket to the match, and transport and flight back (straight after the game). Brilliant! Love government subsidized passion for the sport and country!

The whole country went crazy – reminded me of when we won the Rugby World Cup – so great to be part of such excitement and celebrations. So crazy in fact, that Paula was advised to stay with us last night because the roads back to Katameya (the golf course where she lives about 30 mins away) would be blocked!

 

Sharm el Sheikh

The expat team (me, Luke, Paula and Lyndon) decided to escape Crazy Cairo, 

and head to Sharm el Sheikh for a nice relaxing weekend…

Sharm is on the Red Sea and is famous for its diving… The best way to describe 

what Egyptians think of Sharm, is to compare it to what Johannesburgers think 

of Cape Town (or at least me in any case)… They rave about it: “You’re going to

 Sharm? Oooo, you’re going to love Sharm, gotta go to Sharm, Sharm is the best,

 no you’ll really love Sharm…” (in one breath).

We jumped on a plane at 7.15pm on Thursday evening (making it by the skin of our 

teeth), and arrived there an hour later… Another hour (at least) later, and we left the 

airport and headed to our hotel. We stayed at the Sofitel (and it was seriously crap 

– so if any of you reading this go to Sharm don’t stay at the Sofitel…)

Sharm el Sheikh is bizarre, but in a kind-of-good way! It is like an Egyptian version of 

Vegas by the sea… I have never seen anything like it! Picture lots of casino’s with the 

most ridiculous light schemes (obviously most of them are in the shape of a pyramid), 

loads of people and shops and cafes – and nobody sleeps! (Seriously, even at 4am in 

the morning I had to shove past people to get a taxi home – but more on that later…)

The whole of Naama Bay (the main busiest bay) is closed off to cars, and as you walk 

down the main drag, on either side of you are just rows and rows of cafes and sheesha 

dens… Each has its own man standing at the entrance (they are all open air, and have 

cushions on the floor to sit on) who tries to convince you to come in and sit down, and 

they all compete with the level of their music… Did I mention there are no walls or roofs,

so it is just complete noise chaos, unless you decide to sit down in one café, and then

all you can hear is their music?

We spent our first night at an awesome place called the Little Buddha – absolutely 

brilliant! We found it in the Lonely Planet (big up to LP – they seem to be pretty good at 

finding the best spots – I have tested them!) The whole of the upstairs looked down onto 

a massive Buddha statue. We had a delicious dinner and then headed upstairs to join 

the bar / night club area…

A very big night was had by all, with varying sizes of hangovers the next day – mine was 

by far the worst!

Friday was spent on the beach (a funny little beach that had clearly been dug out of the 

rock specifically so the hotel could advertise that it had a private beach). Luke (in typical 

Luke fashion) didn’t stay still for one second (he was kicked out of the room at 9am for being 

awake!) – and snorkeled, hired a catamaran, windsurfed – you name it he did it…

Apparently the snorkeling was unbelievable – strange that 3 metres into this very quiet ocean 

(surrounded by desert) is a bustling ecosystem with a million things to ogle at!

We went to a fantastic Indian restaurant (in the Camel Hotel – I mean, who comes up with names 

like that?!) for dinner on Friday, and another great restaurant on Saturday evening called Aboel Seed 

(actually a chain – you can’t get into the one on Zamalek without booking in advance – it is the 

best Egyptian food by miles!)

Sharm was great, but not a relaxing place to go! It is clean – a real pleasure after Cairo, and it feels 

really good not to wake up in the mornings with black schnarlies in your nose… But it certainly 

doesn’t have any of that breathtaking beauty that Cape Town has…