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April 1st, weather is quite nice, a little smoggy today, but otherwise everything started out quite well! Then I was struck by a vehicle.....one that had a really angry donkey as an engine. Was visiting one of the government ministries that was out on the outskirts of the city, where you do get more animal-driven carts and random vehicles, like unlicensed 3-wheeled motorcycle tuk-tuk taxis, like the ones in Thailand, India, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc...except here they're technically illegal and unlicensed, so you'll never see them closer into the city.
Crossing the street after the meeting to get a snack, I walk into traffic as usual, trying to project minimal hesitation and regard for my own safety. Cars, buses, trucks, the odd motorcycle, I frogger-around with no problem. They beep, they swerve, everything is normal for a Cairo street during rush hour (which is 00:00 to 23:59). I hop up onto the median, ready to cross the other side of the road, casually glance at the carrot-covered cart with a donkey at the front. Donkey and cart (with no driver to be seen) were both sitting still a few feet away, apparently minding their own business. I pay them no further attention. I step onto the road, but pause, as there's a microbus speeding my way. Think about one of those old Volkswagon vans with more windows and seats, and like 20 people crammed inside, with a driver on a combination of methamphetamines, and you've got a microbus. Donkey flips out right as I step onto the road, trying to shake off its reins and looking mighty frustrated with being tied to a bunch of carrots it can't reach. Donkey's head shakes to the left and right.
Donkey's head shakes left, towards the road, right as the microbus speeds by.
Donkey's head pretty much explodes as the microbus blasts into it at full speed, no braking.
Something horrible, hairy, and wet flies right at me, bouncing off my laptop bag (thankfully) and rolling out into traffic. By now the microbus has stopped in the middle of the road, there is donkey-head all over its front and side (and probably some of the passengers), and there's quite a commotion. I was too shocked and awed to even take out my camera.
Hehe, April fool's! The vehicle was actually a wobbly bicycle ridden by an older fellow, on the streets of one of the main squares in the city. It did hit me though. Nothing serious, just a bit of a side swipe, with neither of us falling over, but both of us quite surprised, probably me more than him since I didn't really foresee the collision happening until I heard his flustered yelling a second before he skidded by. I guess my calibration and movement strategies through traffic don't translate to man-powered vehicles. I've been ok at dodging the few scooters and odd motorcycle, and even a couple of horses, but give me a clear road with dude on a bicycle, and apparently I'll just try and tackle him. Bet ya liked the donkey story more, yeah?
And now, a cross-dressing camel.
I almost always write these from the hostel so as not to waste work time, even though I pretty much work all the time anyways, in or out of the office. A side effect of working at the hostel, however, is the vastly reduced bandwidth and network availability, so I generally don't upload as many pictures as I'd like, and don't do too much extraneous loading of pages. Side effect - didn't really check out blogger settings, or notice that there is a feature allowing anonymous comments...hopefully that will reduce sign-up requests from blogger when people try to comment. I think.
Random pictures - closer view of the neighborhood by the office building. I'd say "find the goats" but I don't think the resolution is good enough.
Hee hee, this is supposed to be "Lotus Palace for Flower Extract", one of the many perfume/cologne places into which touts try to drag/lure tourists. The misspelling into "Louts palace" amused me.
Angry angry taxis. On the trip back from the Giza pyramids, had quite a bit of difficult finding an available taxi in Giza, and even after finding one, the young fellow seemed a little ornery and irritated.
I think taxi drivers in any country tend to span a huge range of driving aggression, desire for conversation, desire to rip passengers off, and road rage. My experience so far here is that the driving aggression is pretty consistently high, desire for conversation is pretty variable depending on time of day (and oddly enough, not as dependent on English skill), desire to rip passengers off is directly proportional to the passenger behavior in the first 2-3 seconds of waving down the taxi, and road rage isn't too incredibly bad.
I've gotten used to the driving aggression, as it's kind of a more chaotic version of New York City driving, with more horns and cutting off, but also way more driving skill. Drivers really don't get on the road without knowing the dimensions of their car to, it seems, within +/- 2 mm, and even though there are a heck of a lot of deaths due to road accidents, there would be exponentially more if drivers weren't so used to the chaos. It's consistently uber-aggressive, with little "no man, you go first" politeness, but at least everyone's on the same page.
The desire to rip passengers off is really as much as they think they can get away with, and translates to really any country where people can rip someone off. After I first arrived and had to move from the Conrad to a hostel downtown, carrying big luggage and trying to get a taxi from the concierge at the Conrad was poor idea. Concierge said the fare wouldn't be more than 20 LE, which I figured was b.s., but I didn't feel like dragging my luggage down to the street, play frogger with it in tow, and then catch a normal taxi. Paid 20 LE for the ride. My normal commute is slightly further than that ride, and I pay 5 LE each way, which is a pretty fair fare. I just wave down a taxi, try and spit out a few words indicating my destination (and speaking as little english as possible), know the appropriate fare range, and just hand it to the driver as I'm exiting the car at the destination, with zippy discussion of the fare.
Usually the discussion starts like this: As I get in the car, I'll say sabah el-kheyr (good morning/day) or misa eh-kheyr (good evening) depending on the time of day, he'll respond and kinda give me a curious look in the rear-view mirror. Then, possibly depending on how much I stuttered or slaughtered the pronunciation, he'll just start talking to me in Arabic and I'll smile and respond with randomly placed aywa's (yes) and ilham d'illeh (praise God/Allah, or what I use in place of "woo-hoo!"), insha'allah (God/Allah-willing, or what I use for "I have no idea if that's remotely feasible, but I hope so, worth a shot") until I get a confused look. That usually takes about 5 seconds.
He may also ask me where I'm from. I've found that saying "America" usually confuses people, makes them ask me again, or insist that there must be another more correct answer, pointing at my face. I've just taken to saying "China" as my first response now, as I don't speak enough Arabic to properly explain that I am a Chinese-American. If speaking to someone face-to-face, sometimes I'll try with a combination of English, Arabic, and pantomime. I'll say America, use Arabic yes/no's to the next few questions, then try and say "my blood is from China". I usually do this by tapping the vein in my arm that I usually use for giving blood, in the bend of my arm on the opposite side from the elbow. Then I say "China". That seems to satisfy them.
There's a potential issue though - I also use the same arm-vein-tapping motion when I'm joking about heroin or injectable drugs, and that ALSO gets people to understand what I'm trying to say. Thinking about it now though, I may be communicating as part of introductory conversation, "I don't know where I'm from at this moment, but I know that in America, they get all their heroin from China." My smile and nod then indicates that I really, really like heroin. Either way, it's working to introduce myself.
Oh yeah, road rage. Rambled for a bit. So I didn't think road rage was too incredibly bad....until I met this driver in Giza. The whole drive back, his head kept drifting to the left, then snapping back to face forward. It wasn't, however, a downwards drift indicating he was falling asleep; I'm very well acquainted with that motion. It was more like he was a lion watching a gazelle run across the road (or field), quickly lost interest, then saw a really fat, legless antelope asleep directly in front of him. It was really peculiar, and I kept trying to guess if he was on drugs or something, and if so, which drug.
His driving didn't seem erratic (compared to the norm in Cairo), so I didn't really pay much attention....until he started sparring with another driver. I think the other car, a regular non-taxi car with a guy as his wife in the front seats, cut my taxi off in a more aggressive way than usual, which pissed off my driver. Unfortunately, they were going in the same direction, so they ended up taking turns cutting each other off. That didn't bother me, as it was pretty much normal driving, albeit with a single target to cut off instead of just everybody. The driver, however, was getting really, really pissed off, and right when we were at an intersection about to get on a large bridge, he REALLY cuts the other car off, looking like he was trying to hit him. The other car stopped about 10 cm from my door, so that I couldn't even open it; hooray skillful drivers not maiming and crushing me.
Much to my continued surprise, my driver then gets out of the car and immediately attacks the other driver, who'd also gotten out of the car at this point. Now usually in the U.S., there'd be an exchange of words and yelling, and then maybe physical violence/gunfire. The taxi driver pretty much escalated from yelling to shoving as he was approaching the other driver, and the started tussling right in the middle of the street, cars beeping everywhere, with a crowd quickly gathering from the passerby. I was pretty amused and mildly concerned, so stayed in the taxi and just watched the devolving drama through the rear window. The two yelled and shoved and grabbed shirts for a bit, and other guys from taxis and the sidewalk quickly pulled them apart and tried talking to them, who were both snarling and spitting at this point. It was interesting watching other taxi drivers trying to talk some sense into my taxi driver; I wonder what type of feeling of community they have. The two tried attacking each other multiple times as others held them back, but oddly enough it didn't seem like it was too extraordinary a scene. Sure, it blocked a lot of traffic and there were people standing around watching, but just as many people kept walking by as cars drove around the scene.
I didn't start getting concerned until the crowd had successfully disengaged the taxi driver from the other guy, and the taxi driver started walking back into my taxi, still (presumably) swear ing at the other driver and occasionally trying to re-engage the fight. At this point I decided I was close enough to my hostel to walk (which I was), and kinda didn't want to be in a vehicle with this guy at the helm. I popped out of the door on the other side and paid him since he'd gotten me most of the way back, and actually tried to console him, mainly out of curiosity to see what his reaction would be. I patted him on the shoulder and said "ok? ok? calmate" which in retrospect, is Spanish for "calm yourself" and really had little place in the conversation on a Cairo bridge. He was actually quite friendly with me (since I'd paid him) and got back in the car. I walked to the sidewalk and tried to take a picture of the scene, rather unsuccessfully. The grey car in the middle was the other car, and you can still kiiinda see the guys in the street who broke up the fight.
I chatted a bit with some of the bystanders, mainly pointing at the cars and saying "magnoon", which means "crazy" in Arabic. They probably said something similar, I said "itneen magnoon" for "two crazy [people implied]", they likely replied with something similar, and I walked back to the hostel (away from the hostiles, man look at that wordplay). Chatting with some people later, although this incidence wasn't too common, it certainly wasn't unheard of either.
Note to self: do not learn any driving habits in Cairo, and treat them like raw meat or goat poop: under no circumstances should they be allowed back into the States.
Quick note from the office. Someone brought in a sound system with nice speakers. The guy who loves Celine Dion, because his phone blares it when someone calls. People call him a lot.
They are playing Beauty and the Beast on repeat.
Two weeks in Egypt, and I finally get to some sightseeing. Right now just adjusting to life here is giving me enough stimulation, but there was a long weekend this past week, so I took some time to look around. Not a holiday for Easter mind you, but for the Prophet's birthday. Had Thursday (which is effectively "Friday" here) off, and some of my officemates were even nice enough to clue me in on a holiday tradition of eating little snacks on the Prophet's birthday! Many of them had long blue boxes full of little snacks, and offered me a couple. I geeked out and wrote the occasion down on the back of a coaster and photographed it, just in case I forgot why I bothered taking pictures of a little coconut thing (the orange thing on the left) and a peanut-brittle dealy.
Those of you in the States (that'll be 1 out of the total 3 people who read this) may have noticed that I'm trying to use the date format used by most of the rest of the world, with day/month/year. Actually, now that I look at it, I actually wrote "5" instead of "3", and I have no idea why. Maybe I was thinking of my own birthday in May....but then again, my birthday's not on the 20th. What the hell? Anyway, I ate a snack and then went back to staring out the window for a bit. It's weird (for me) but I guess normal in many neighborhoods to be working in a really nice corporate office building overlooking a pretty poor area. It's a nice reminder of why I'm here, and one of the weird juxtapositions that I get to enjoy in countries like this. Behold the corporate shadow blocking the sun from the poor....or maybe shielding the poor from the sun, in a toasty place like this?
Decided to start off my weekend of touristyness by going on a corny dinner cruise, complete with wretched buffet where I was again duped by beef-mimicking liver, a "life band" that consisted of 2 soulless singers and a keyboard player who seemed to want to die, and an even meatier belly dancer than the one at the wedding.
The chain around her belly kinda sunk in when she moved. Mmm mmm good.
On to pyramids. Giza is actually a suburb of Cairo, so the city/suburbs sprawl right up to the three big (and six small) Pyramids at Giza. Kinda weird to see the pyramids looming huge and awe-inspiring the background of some guy peeing on a wall by the car-choked streets. Or a steel lattice tower and some kids playing football/soccer.
And of course, no postcard-worthy photo is complete without being ruined by my buddy Don, or Dontxu, as someone calls him in Basque ;p.
The mystery of why I'll focus a shot on a plastic candy dispenser instead of one of the coolest antiquities in the world:
SarcophaDon
Below is the reason my rear hurt for 2 days after going to Giza. These were the guides (or rather, one non-English-speaking dude and a feisty little kid), who agreed to bring me back to another hill near the pyramids later on that day, to see all three of the big pyramids together. Rode camels and horses this time instead of just horses, and the little kid decided he wanted to race. Guess who was on the hard-galloping camel holding on for dear life while his loins took a county-jail-like pounding. Riding camels is not nearly as cool as it looks; I can't imagine riding into battle on the damned things, unless it was for the purpose of making death-by-sword seem like nothing compared to the pain of the initial camel-charge.
Back to the grind for now. Plan to try and make a crossing-the-insane-streets video at some point, which I'll hopefully be able to make AND survive long enough to post.
Someone mentioned that they wanted to see some camels, so here's some camel (on the left):
This was kofte or kafteh or something like that....everything is phonetic but there's really no standardized way of representing the sounds in English letters, so any given word tends to be spelled around 74 different ways, depending on where you look. It may even be spelled differently on either side of a map. The good thing though is that it encourages you to try and pronounce the words, and once you get the hang of it, the same-word-spelled-differently dealie isn't as tricky anymore, plus then you learn how to consistently mispronounce words. Then you can insist on saying it wrong repeatedly to cab drivers, and end up in the middle of nowhere after work in a suit with a laptop bag, trying to find a metro station. Anyways, kofte is usually either camel or beef, camel being a little easier to procure. I really couldn't tell the difference between ground camel and ground beef, as spiced as it was. Plus, I was nervously trying the very tasty salad (in the middle) and seeing if fresh veggies would turn my insides into fresh battlefields for incompatible critters. Although I like the home team, I want the Egyptian buggers to eventually win so I can eat food here more easily. Ideally, it'll be a gradual infiltration, so that before I know it, Egyptian parasites will be all over my stuff like Asians in Vancouver or Jersey people at University of Maryland. The above meal cost abount 13 LE, which just over 2 bucks. I whined about them charging me 3 LE (a bit over 50 cents) for one cupe of shay (tea), and vowed to bring my own beverage next time.
Specimen 2: Koushari, kushari, kohsaree, the national dish of Egypt, at least according to Lonely Planet. It's actually a really tasty, safe-tasting, cheap dish of some tomato-based sauce on rice and/or macaroni, topped with fried onions. This bowl cost me about a dollar (~5.5 Egyptian pounds, or LE), and even then I think I could have paid less for it. I see myself doing a lot of koushari-hunting while in Cairo...because tomatoes are about as easy to kill as macaroni.
Specimen 3: A tasty little spread of goodness at Kazaz, a fast food joint near my hostel. Walked in the first floor and saw the all-Arabic menu, and just kinda stared for a bit wondering which one to randomly point to, before someone waved me to the upstairs seating area with English menus. Ordered until the waiter said "enough, enough" which was luckily not too far into the ordering process - hooray honesty, or at least not-wanting-to-clean-up-my-pukesty. From left to right: "Alexandria" falafel (Alexandria just meaning bigger-size apparently), ubiquitous pita-like bread, super-fun-mystery-fried-grilled-protein-plate, shaksouka (some meat-and-vegetable-chopped-up-tomato-onion-something served cold), another sketchy salad. Mystery-fun-meat plate was a little too much fried goodness for me, and the only non-fried area of the plate was this grilled-beef-looking thing. Fun fact: horrible flat-pounded grilled liver is very grilled-beef-looking, and very not grilled-beef-tasting. Reminded me of when liver kicked my butt in New Zealand.
Liver, you bastard, you are my culinary nemesis.
....but don't worry, it wasn't mine. 6th night here and I ended up getting invited to a wedding somehow; son of the owner of the hostel got married, and the guys working at the hostel grabbed me along to the wedding. Good thing I'm here for work, and had some decent clothes to wear, as well as extra to let a buddy here borrow. Didn't get to the hotel (which was within sight of the freakin Giza pyramids!!) until about 10pm or so, right when the reception was getting started, apparently. Then, dancing! For like, 2 hours! Then, some eating, around midnight.
Everyone really enjoyed the meaty belly dancer. I was confused as to why I only had this one picture of her, until I realized I just took a whole lot of gyrating videos instead - not so uploadable with this connection (shut up spellchecker, uploadable is a legit word). All for me, or rather, the very pleased guys at the hostel. At some points, it looks like I somehow had the skills to digitally remove a pole from the dance floor.
Then they killed the hell out of the wedding cake with a sword.
Got out of there around 2 am or so, which was just awesome timing for getting enough sleep before my first day at the office.
So weekends are apparently Friday and sometimes Saturday, which makes the Friday midday hash start time make a lot more sense. Not hashish (the 2 am visit to buy oranges from an all-night fruit-vendor is not web-appropriate), but the hash run. Wandered around a neighborhood called Maadi, which is pretty much foreignerville, with English and Germans wandering around in shorts with their kids and whatnot.....really weird scene. Finally found the meeting point for catching rides to the hash, which is outside Cairo a bit in the rocky desert, in a waadi, which is Arabic for either dry riverbed or expat-body-dumping-depot. Ran damn near 6 miles, which was a great return to exercise, hashing, running, and extreme dehydration in weirdly beautiful surroundings.
Here's some flour marking a hash point, and a pile of rocks under which some athletic white people are buried.
f1rst p0st! I suck at journaling and diaries, but the sheer amount of interesting happenings that I plan on forgetting over the next 6 months has justified the creation of this log. I tend to snap photos to supplement my rapidly deteriorating short- and long-term memory, so it'll be interesting to see whether the slow-connection-frustration to photo-size ratio gets high enough that I actually start writing more text, and posting fewer photos. But for now, suffice to say: I'm in Cairo for 6 months on a hybrid nonprofit-social welfare-emerging technology-telecommunications project which looks to be both horrifyingly daunting and mind-blowingly exciting.
I don't think I've ever used that many dashes in so short a paragraph before. This is why I don't write very often.
