Lack of Updates

Average hours per workday: 12 hours
Average workdays per week: 6.5
Average sleep per evening: 5 hours
Average curse-words uttered per day during Ramadan: 0
Average curse-words uttered per day post-Ramadan: Increasing

Purty trees and dead gunmen

Sightseeing 'round Libnan was twofold awesome. Sure, there was the ridiculous scenery and the fact that a large majority of the country is the perfect mountains-next-to-sea blend. It was honestly one of the most beautiful countries I've ever been to, and I was blindsided by how fantastic some of the scenery was. Although many Arabs come as tourists to Lebanon, I'd never heard a single thing about it before beauty-wise, only negative descriptions of the violence and political problems. It's a big misnomer to pigeonhole Lebanon as a purely "Arab" country though, and that's as far as I'll go into any sort of political discussion on the matter. On to stories.

Oh yeah, the second fold of awesome. I'll get to that in a bit. First, pretty things.

Old Roman ruins by the sea in the city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon. Most of the more famous ruins in Lebanon that I visited were of the Romany-columny variety, with remains of old temples, city walkways, necropoli, and even a chariot racing stadium.


View from one of (or The) largest and best preserved hippodromes EVER. This is from near the center of the stadium. The fuzzy triangle in the background is a portion of the amphitheater seating that once fit about 20,000 people hopped up on classical NASCAR. Chariot races, from what I hear, often involved pretty spectacular crashes, especially at either end of the elliptical track as the chariots skeetered around the non-banked curves. I relaxed in the shade under one of the seating areas (amazing similar to modern stadium seating in acoustics and feel) and imagined watching a specawesometacular combination of NASCAR, figure skating, jousting, and gladiators all mixed into one sport. Oh, and there was hibiscus growing in the stadium (the red thing ruining my stadium picture). I wonder if Lebanese drink hibiscus tea as much as Egyptians do.

Cedar tree in the Chouf Cedar Reserve, up in the northern area of Lebanon in the mountains. Lebanese cedars make for some good wood - these cedar forests are apparently mentioned in the Bible (somewhere in the chapter about trees) and traders used to transport uber-cedar-lumber all over the region, including down to Egypt for use in their boats 'n shizzle. Some of the larger ones are over 1000 years old - this one was just a mere 300 or so years old though. After I learned about the way older ones, this one was still visually pleasing but just not as cool...sorry, whippersnapper.

So, onto the second fold of awesomeness. The stories we heard from random people we ran into (our driver buddy, a ranger/guide in the forest, etc.) were jaw-dropping to my grew-up-in-a-stable-country mind. The first was a cell-phone video our driver showed us while we were at a rest stop or something. It was a wounded Hezbollah fighter sitting against a wall, saying what were close to his last words, filming everything around him, including a dead fighter right next to him. At first I was curious why our driver would have downloaded this off whatever news website onto his phone, and temporarily geeked out wondering about the bandwidth available from his network provider and whether they had 3G, and how long it would have taken to download the video file.

Turns out one of his buddies got the video directly off the phone of the Hezbollah guy, who our driver buddy and posse had fought in their neighborhood during the recent conflict in early 2008 when Hezbollah took over parts of Beirut. Our buddy relayed this fact with minimal emotion or expectation of reaction, just totally matter of fact, like he was saying "actually, this ISN'T butter, despite your belief."

Later on, while walking through the forest with a ranger describing what baby cedar trees look like, he paused in a section of forest, smiled, and whipped out his cell phone. He then played a recording of some staticky panicked yelling and gunfire, started talking to our driver buddy in Arabic, then repeated the conversation to us, in English. The audio was of some Hezbollah gunmen who for some reason were fighting their way into the cedar forests, near where the ranger and his peeps live (and near where we were standing). The panicking was from the gunmen as they were all getting killed and driven out of the forest. Ranger Rambo beamed as he described how he and his posse defended their land, and it almost made me feel warm and fuzzy (from killing enemies) too, so effervescent and contagious was his pride.

A scene from another cedar forest, which pretty much fits my definition of textbook beautiful. A little weird to think people were getting shot at around here earlier this year. I really admire how so many Lebanese deal with the constant instability and just deal with events as they occur, without sensationalizing the violence that seems so intense in my mind. Driver-buddy was talking about how, since his people live in the suburbs in the mountains around Beirut, they were safe when Israeli warships off the coast of Beirut were firing missiles into the capital during the recent war. What did he and his neighbors do during the attack? Sat on their roofs and watched the rockets flying through the air, like fireworks.


A scene from near Sidon, back in the southern part of Lebanon again, what one of the contractors in my office refers to as "Hezbollah-land". Without degenerating into some crappy geopolitical history lesson, the south is where Hezbollah is most active and has the most support, since they were the Lebanese fighting off the Israeli invasions from the south, as well as firing rockets into Israel. There are martyr memorials all over the place of young men killed in fighting (possibly by Israelis, possibly by Ranger Rambo). Hooray sniper-shot pictures from a moving vehicle with tinted windows!

Diversity. Lotta Christians, lotta Muslims in Lebanon, and being pretty ignorant about who's who, I never knew who to salam-alekum or who to, um, hallelujah or whatever. But in the south, it's predominantly Muslim so yay less potential awkwardness when greeting people! Amusingly, since the little Arabic I know is mainly Egyptian colloquial, a few people actually looked at me funny when I tried to talk to them and asked if I was Egyptian. Even weirder, I felt a pang of pride and often replied "well I do live in Egypt". Holy crap were people friendly though, and they barely even tried to rip me off as a tourist! Very refreshing.

Brain is obviously mushifying now. Suffice to say Lebanon is awesome and I will definitely visit again provided all is relatively stable. As cool as it is to see shiny automatic weapons every few dozen kilometers on the road and tanks scattered throughout the city, I don't really have any huge urge to see any of the military in action.

I heart Beirut

First time out of Egypt while on this project. A buddy of mine happened to be planning a trip to Lebanon and invited me along, woo! We'd been talking about this potential trip for a while, but there were some, um, Hezbollah-occupying-downtown-Beirut issues in Lebanon that would have precluded any sort of touristy trip to the area (as much due to the gunfire and fighting as to the closure of most of the nightclubs). Thankfully, the most recent civil conflict reached some sort of ceasefire/agreement in May, so we quickly booked last-minute airfare to hop over while things were cool for the time being.

I knew a sum total of nothing about Lebanon before going there, so was pretty excited to head to an area ubiquitously raved-about by everyone I've met in Cairo. Dancing in my head before I passed out one the one-hour-plus plane ride were tales of beautiful mountains, forests mentioned in the Bible, gorgeous, erm, nightlife, and a cornucopia of friendly cultures accustomed to on/off military conflicts. Was really looking forward to a rockin' long weekend.

Waking up upon landing, I looked out the window to see the suburbs outside Beirut, with residences and offices covering the hillsides - beautiful city, check.


First thing I see after going through the arrivals customs (free visa, whee!) was this.



Very promising.

Plan was for three nights and two+ days touring the countryside during the day, and sampling the nightlife at, uh, night. Our first evening there we took it easy, taking some time to meet with my friend's driver-buddy in Beirut, plan out the next few days, and wander the city a bit without (yet) painting the town red, white, and green.

Eurocup 2008 was going on at the time, and Germany won a game the night we arrived. Apparently, Beirutis love themselves some football - the streets near our hotel (near the American University in Beirut) were filled with revelers driving around honking and waving German flags. At first we thought that maybe they were die-hard Germany fans....until the next night, when Turkey won, and we witnessed the same phenomenon but with different flags. The third night, Russia won, and all of a sudden Russian flags appeared in the clubs and everyone went wild.

I suspected that maybe people just loved celebrations and football, and kept a supply of flags around so that no matter who won, it'd be reason to go nuts. Hell, any relativism that results in constant partying is A-OK in my book.

Speaking of which, holy liver-cirrhosis Batman, Beirut is every bit as good a party-town as I had heard. [Random grammar/spelling victory insert - I somehow spelled cirrhosis right on the first try! Huzzah!] It was dang good idea to take it easy the first night, as I only got an hour or so of sleep the between the second night. After bar/club hopping for a few hours, right as me and my revelry-mates were ready to call it a night around 3 or 4 am, one of the fine fellows working at the bar took it upon himself to show us an even better time. I don't know how my mangled Egyptian Arabic sounded to the dude, but all of a sudden trays of "grapefruit juice" and "sparkling grape-juice-distillate" start showing up, some with random sparklers in the middle. All, for some reason, for free. Sword of Omens, get me sloshed beyond sloshed!


Drinking of fruit juices (3-4 AM), dancing on bars (?? AM), eating ridiculously rich-and-sweet cheese-honey caloric-juggernaut desserts called knefet jibly with breakfasting laborers in the morning (~6 or 7 AM), minimal sleep (7ish to 8ish AM), hop in de car (9 AM), TOUR-TIME (9:30 AM to I-don't-even-know-anymore PM). In totally achronological order, here are some sights we beheld in Beirut.

Pigeon Rocks. Very pretty, resembling pigeons not-at-all. I'm not sure if I even saw any pigeons in the area.....but then remembered that Egyptians are very fond of stuffed pigeon. Not sure if the Lebanese have that culinary tendency.


Memorial to Rafik Hariri, ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon who was assassinated in a block-encompassing car-bomb blast in 2005. The blown-all-to-hell buildings remain in their damaged state. I'm not sure if this is on purpose to memorialize the site, but the new construction of memorial items in and around the block, coupled with the immaculate new buildings throughout this quarter of the city, make an interesting contrast with the blast area. The memorial area still seems pretty politically charged too, keeping with the theme of, um, all of Lebanese history. Random guy driving by with this wife and kid berated me in broken English while I was photographing the area, but luckily drove off quickly after firing off some angry "no-photos-blurb-blurb-blurb-something"s. A politically-indignant Lebanese guy getting in the way of a hungover Asian taking photographs would not be a pretty sight.

Holy f-nuggests, an update!

Still alive and twitching here in Cairo. Project's been pretty insane(r) here for the past two months here, as has everything else, including visits from famry, traveling around and outside Egypt, and somehow not getting sick in the process. Last comment there probably called upon the stars to put the karmic-Murphy-gastrointestinal-ruiner-machine back in motion.

I really have no clue how to adequately face the task of back-blogging over two months of happenings. Luckily, facing certain failure and overwhelming amounts of work have been a running theme these past few months, and I think I've been able to adapt to the constant stress. Someone once said to me "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." I received this frighteningly-prophetic advice about a year or so ago, right around then time herds of elephants started thundering down my throat. As much as I tend to dislike proverbs and catch-all sayings, this question-answer snippet appeals to my love of eating, my love of eating endangered/protected species, and my love of eating way way more than I should ever try to consume. I'll leave y'all to admire some wrinkly elephant butts (taken on safari in Tanzania around the time I received the advice) as I try to crank out some updates this afternoon.

Twitchy man in the boat

Went on a boat ride on the Nile recently with some hasher friends, in a sailboat called a felluca. They're one of the signatures of the Egyptian Nile in my mind, and some of the only boats that cruise around the city sections of the river. Not many drawbridges that I know of around downtown at least, so there are few big ships that use the river as a thoroughfare.

Heck of a good time to meet up with friendly faces to down some beers and snacks on a silent boat, lazily cruising up and down the river away from the incessantly honking cars and yelling pedestrians. I actually did this 1-2 months ago when the weather was cooler, so it was pleasant to spend a Saturday afternoon in the shade of the boat with the (generally non-sewage-y) constant breeze. It was nice to just close my eyes and face into the wind, kinda like the content dogs with their heads poking out car windows on the road, with minimal cranial processes getting in the way of a good time. The beer, kebab-flavored chips, and caviar (!) certainly didn't hurt either.


I've been under the impression that swimming in the Nile was a generally ill-advised activity, but saw many a child and even a few water-skiers cooling off the in the water, and had some discussions with my fellow hashers about how the little water-nasties only tend to be found in stagnant water. Still, I didn't feel any urges to strip down and dive into the Nile.

A few beers later, I realized one of the limiting factors for felluca-enjoyment time; there are no restrooms of any sort on the boat. It's really just a basic single-deck sailboat, generally not designed for multiple-hour trips by beer-swilling foreigners. Hmm.

A few beers later, I realized that we were surrounded by water, the boat was full of hashers that I knew (well enough at this point), and that everyone else in Egypt was at least a few hundred meters away.

A few minutes later, I realized that the breeze I was enjoying before can also have other effects. Oops.

omg omg omg

I WANT TO DO THIS SOMEDAY SOON

Must have awesome shark-fin spoiler too, like this one I spotted south of Cairo.

A few facets of Cairo

Hooey, on a roll tonight, one last post before I pass out again into my dehydrated, stomach-percolating stupor. Just some pictures of things that say "Cairo" to me at this point in my travels.


A spoon at El Fishawy coffeehouse, possible the most famous ahwa in Islamic Cairo, located in the middle of Khan al-Khalili, a market/souq/bazaar. Note how spoon is actually made from what appears to be tin from a scrapped oven (you can see the word "Oven" on the handle).

Cats. This one looks both silly and regal, which for me is typical of street cats around Cairo. Not too many dogs as I think many of them have been culled and Egyptians tend not to be dog fans.

Coptic priest who I sniped walking by poster of......hisself or a fellow bearded priest? Although a minority in Egypt, Coptic (Egyptian Orthodox) Christians still have a nice community south of downtown a bit.


The Citadel, viewed from Al-Azhar Park. Citadel, awesome learning/ruling center of olden times. Al-Azhar Park, awesome greenery and parky goodness literally built on top of a huge pile of garbage....reminds me of that park in Mumbai that was built to keep vultures from dropping remains of dead Zoroastrians into the water supply as they carried remains away from the Tower of Silence. Read about Zoroastrian last-rites for some pretty cool information.

Angry freakin camels. I'm pretty sure that every monster/alien noise from the original Star Wars trilogy was sourced from angry camel sounds, from Chewbacca's complaining-about-everything noises to all the monsters used as steeds. Camels can be pretty cute when they're just hanging out, but irritated camels are some hideous beasts.

Don making out with the Sphinx, with special thanks to the little kids trying to get tourists to take these horrible, disrespectful photos.

And finally, friendly people confused by my friendship with a neon-green inanimate candy dispenser.

Fakka. Fakka? Fakka!

Some words in Arabic, like any language really, are phonetically similar to English words. Occasionally, this occurs with amusing results.

In the great video game of living in Cairo, one of my favorite mini-missions is collecting small bills. Apparently Egypt has a shortage of small bills, so people in the know tend to hoard 25 pt (100 pt = 1 LE), 50 pt, 1 LE, and 5 LE notes. These bills are essential for tipping bathroom attendants, paying bus and taxi fare, and pretty much everything else associated with daily living. Especially for taxi drivers, it's nice to have exact change so you don't give the driver the option of claiming to have no change, or invite additional haggling. Just pay the man through the front passenger window and walk away.

My obsessive nature and overwhelming cheapness makes this a hell of a fun mini-game. Every chance I get, I'll try and extract change from a point-of-sale. It's gotten to the point that I actually divide up my money into 3 pockets: 1 for big bills (20 LE and up), one for smaller bills (5-10 LE) and one for small change (1 LE and less). That way, I can just whip out everything in my pocket, starting with the biggest bills, and claim not to have any small change.

One time while buying a large bottle of water (2 LE), I tried to pay with a 20 LE note. Cashier looks at the bill, then at me, and says "fakka". I blink, and blink again. Did he just curse at me? He didn't seem angry at all, or even slightly irritated. He repeated it again - "fakka?" I blinked some more, and then he sighed and just gave me 18 LE in change. As I was walking away, I figured out that "fakka" probably meant "change" or "what the hell" or something along those lines, an assumption later verified by some friends. It means "to break up or disassemble", such as breaking up a large bill into smaller bills - so "do you have anything smaller", pretty much.

New mini game, at least for now - smiling and saying "fakka" at every point of sale when I try to pay for something with a bill that is at least 10 times larger than the actual cost of the item. The 11-year-old in me giggles every time, hehe. Then I walk away with my precious, precious change.

Cocktail party

Been over two months so far of risky street-food sampling, eating all manner of friend/grilled organ-y goodness, and overall flaunting of my immune system and manly stomach acids. And no sickness! Everyone seems mildly surprised when they find I haven't gotten sick yet so far given the length of time here, and my eating habits.

Well, surprise surprise, my culinary hubris has caught up to me. I knew this was gonna happen.....in fact, I kinda expected something to happen from this particular meal.

There's this little sandwich stand near the hostel where I used to stay. There's a guy there who serves little sandwiches filled with either sausage (sogo') or liver (kebde), and I cleverly named him "the kebde guy". There's always a crowd of guys around his stand sampling his wares, and the smells that come from his cart are generally downright divine. Multiple people in Cairo have even referenced this very kebde guy as a source of very, very tasty treats.

They've also uniformly cautioned me that the food there, although delicious, is also highly "suspect" and that if I were ever to try it, to work out my immune system at other local places first, and even then, give myself at least two days after the meal to fully enjoy the "experience".

They were pretty much right on all counts. Twitchy has fallen, hard. Started feeling ill at work this morning (meal was last night around midnight), and slunk outta the office around 3pm when I really thought I was going to legitimately pass out (and then do unspeakable things while passed out). I feel like Icarus' lesser-known little brother Dwayne, who, after watching his big brother's escapades, went out and did the same freakin thing.

Luckily, like in many developing/non-western countries, pharmacies dole out every medicine possible with zippy prescription. All you have to do is describe the symptoms to the pharmacist (who generally speaks a workable degree of English) and you're set. In my case, this involved pointing at my stomach and colon, emphatically huffing "moshkela" (problem), and then using my hands to make spraying motions from my orifii. In addition, drugs in Egypt are subsidized by the government, so they're super cheap too. After getting advice from coworkers and browsing a few pharmacies, I have this little cocktail of various "intestinal antiseptics," "anti-intestinal amoebiasis," and "anti-protozoal" medications of almost-recognizable chemical compounds, including some promising quinones and nifuroxazides. Cost me about $3 USD.


I'm fine by most accounts, so no need to worry about me posting even less often than usual. In fact, after a few hours of shivering and sweating in bed, posting this is about as active as I'm going to get. So you have Egyptian parasites to thank for this recent update!

And to flush out all the mental images you may have right now of tapeworm thrash-metal bands and amoeboid mosh-pits, here are some super tender kittens that live in a nearby alley.

And now, Horrifying Baby Hour

I'm about 3 weeks behind on updating anything, but the task of catching up is so daunting that I'm just going to continue avoiding it for now, and instead muse about how terrifying shopping for children's clothing must be for parents in Cairo. Some recent happenings such as goats on taxis or coming back from the Red Sea in a minibus full of Cairo ballerinas (who were all from Eastern Europe), have gone disappointingly unphotographed for various reasons. Inane, inanimate oddities, however, are easier to catch on film.

Preface: Individual kids tend to just annoy me. They offer nothing but constant movement and noise-making (kinda like Cairo), with none of the redeeming offerings of fun people, cheap tasty foods, and structured insanity. When they stop moving and quiet down, though, kids start to scare me. Encase them in plastic, and it's nightmare-fodder. On one of my wanders around the shopping districts downtown (down Talaat Harb for anyone around), I stumbled upon Hell.

Stores upon stores, windows alongside windows, of well-dressed, lifeless, ever-staring mannequins of children. Freakin hundreds of them.

This first window actually wasn't too bad - just obedient little girls cheerfully watching their serpent overlord arrive from somewhere to the right of the photo.

This scene bothered me because of the vague "grab your junk, grab your junk" motion that some of the kids are practicing. Little albino girl disapproves and quietly plots something on her own.

I WILL RISE AGAIN


Here we witness the classic "pillar of children" so common in the nightmares of wicked people. My favorite babies are the ones with their heads cocked/kicked/twisted at odd angles.


Yuppie-children with their little ties and vests, thinking of murder.

No caption.

I saw a live goat on the luggage rack on top of a taxi today

and it was awesome.

The Shower Saga, Part 1

Before moving into my new flat, I did what I thought was a pretty complete inspection of the unit, including making sure that accessories such as a shower curtain were included, and utilities such as the shower worked. Still relatively new to Cairo at that point, however, I made some rather poor assumptions and extrapolations that, alas, did not allow me to accurately predict how well the included amenities and utilities would actually work.

Incorrect Assumption #1: The existence of a shower curtain rod above the shower and a shower curtain in a closet means that there will be a workable shower curtain for the apartment.

L-shaped curtain rod around shower area? Check. Shower curtain? Check. Curtain rings to attach curtain to rod? Check, even though there are half as many rings as holes in the curtain where rings are to be installed. Install rings in every other curtain hole, hang on rod. Looking up at the curtain rod, curtain appears to adequate cover entire width of shower - Check.

But wait....something is not quite right. Look down at length of shower curtain.

FAIL.

I don't know where the heck they got this shower curtain, how/if the previous tenants used it, or whether someone tall got bored and raised the curtain rod. When turning on the shower, the angle of the shower head actually caused approximately 99% of the water (maybe more) to gracefully arc out of the shower area and splash all over the floor, instantly turning the bathroom into a slippery death trap. One of my lingering fears in life is somehow ending up naked and dead in a situation not of my choosing. Even worse, being found mangled with boxers partially put on, with one leg in and the other foot tangled in the boxers. Then there's not even a question of what happened, and no opportunity for anyone to propose less-lame causes of death.

I played with rubber bands, twist-ties, and random plastic hooks from the 2.50 LE store for a few days, trying to lower/extend the curtain, with limited success. Hence the need for a new non-pygmy-world shower curtain, and the odyssey that I whined about in the previous post. After finding the new shower curtain, I rushed back to my apartment, giddy to install my awesome new bathroom accessory.

It was still too short.

There was just less clearance between the curtain and the stream of water as it continued to splash onto the floor. I now imagined an extremely tall person installing the curtain rod just a few inches higher than the usual height of a curtain, cackling maniacally to himself (or herself) before feasting on kittens and teddy bears. I'd grown tired of trying to be stable and agile on my feet after groggily showering in the morning, a time reserved for stumbling around dry bathrooms floors.

But, with TWO short shower curtains, there was definitely a way to make one curtain of acceptable length. I tried taping the first tiny curtain to the second less-tiny curtain, creating an overlapping fantasy of smothering vinyl that clung to me while showering, which was exactly as comfortable as it sounds. That permutation self-destructed before I could get too annoyed with it, as the tape was quickly deactivated by water and steam. I finally settled on cutting a piece off of the first curtain and gluing it to the second curtain, hoping that the super glue and the reduced weight of a smaller curtain-piece would make the curtain-merge more permanent. Pictured below is the birth of my current franken-curtain.


Looks like I've ruined a perfectly good curtain......no, TWO perfectly good curtains. Plus half of my fingers are bonded together with astoundingly-effective super glue, and the weird blue acetone I got at the pharmacy is nothing to alleviate the embarrassing syndactyly that I'm trying hide from my coworkers.

And to top it all off, the past two uber-long posts have been about freaking shower curtains.

My my my beautiful neighborhood

I went wandering around my neighborhood finally, on a multi-quest to get lost, AND find a shower curtain (future entry on why I needed a shower curtain). I got some rough directions regarding in what general area I could find a shower curtain, so I started walking in that direction somewhat purposefully. I'm pretty sure those last two sentences were full of grammatical obscenities. Almost a solid month here, and I hadn't gotten lost in downtown yet, so I was pretty excited about finally having zero direction (in a venue other than work).

First stop - the 2.50 LE store, equivalent to a dollar store in the States. Actually, I don't think 2.50 is really all that cheap, but the store had enough of a selection of low-quality house supplies and essentials that I noted its location for future visits. Found some nice hair-care products: Who wants garlic in their hair? Mmmm boy. How about whale liver oil? Actually these may be perfectly legitimate products, but I'm a guy who washed his hair with hand soap for 2 weeks because I was too lazy to look for shampoo, with minimal (visible) effect on my hair. So this, like most of my pictures, may only be funny to me.


Bigger non-western cities sometimes have streets where all the shops sell the same category of materials, from the all-wedding-dress and prosthetic-limb shopping streets of Seoul to the fireman's-paradise alleys of Cairo, pictured below. I was going to photograph the propane-cylinder-and-engine alley, but that place was a little too close and sketchy-feeling at first visit for me to want to whip out the camera. I'll have to photographically assault that corridor again later - but for now, the fireman's equipment square will have to do. I'm really tempted to stock up on gas masks and then just freak people out (and breathe easier) by walking around downtown and hailing taxis wearing a gas mask. Too hot to wear the whole suit and rubber boots though....sorry ladies!


Continuing the theme of, um, themed shopping areas, this display had All Things Taxi. Beaded seat rests, faux-fur dash covers, leopard-spotted steering wheel covers, and all manner of flashing lights and decorations - rows upon rows of taxi knick-knacks to please the eye and distract one from the noxious exhaust/smoke fumes. Oddly enough, there were no tourists around this area - I guess crappy plastic accessories aren't the most desirable souvenirs, but to me, they make me think of Cairo more quickly than tiny stone pyramids.

Not a joke, this isn't a Big & Tall store, it's an Average-Height & Potbellied store. All the clothes and suits were for guys about my height (maybe slightly taller), and about twice my weight. As tasty, greasy, and fatty the food is though, soon I will be shopping here. I'm also adding this to my list of mannequins-my-future-mansion-shall-be-full-of.


Interestingly creepy art on the walls of a restaurant about 5 minutes from my apartment. Food was so-so, but it seemed like a hangout for older, well-to-do Egyptian intellectuals as much as it was another expensive place that foreigners go to dine. I want to try their mollokheyya (sloppy stew-sauce liquid made from some sort of tasty green leaf) to see if it's worth the 2x price tag, compared to the local places. Some of these ghostly ladies seem to be giving a two-finger peace sign, others seem to have fists in the air, while others look like they had their hands lopped off entirely. But it's not like they have faces or eyes, so I guess no-hands is the least of their worries. HAR.



Weirdest hijab I've seen so far. Honestly, I don't know if this is meant to be a hijab or just a weird underwear display. The blouse seems way too tight to be anything resembling a hijab anyways - panties on face and chest, perhaps not so modest. The more I look at it, however, the more I think this is just a weird display - there isn't even anything covering the hair on this metal mannequin, reducing further the hijabiness of the outfit.


After about two hours of wandering around, the novelty of being lost started to wane, and I tried to focus on figuring out where I was in the city, and where I could find a shower curtain. There's probably a shower curtain district that I missed, but even the toilet-seat-cover and shower-head stores didn't have shower curtains. After another hour or so, I started to become somewhat irritated, and started looking for anything resembling a shower curtain, including sneaking around the industrial district looking for tarps, and later, trying to steal the plastic wrap off of a roll of sheet metal, thoroughly unsuccessfully. I was now desperate for shower curtainage.

I walked by a carpet store at one point, and, seeing something resembling a table cloth in the display window, decided to give it a try since trying all the stores that made sense (bathroom supplies, pharmacy, fish market) was not resulting in the purchase of a shower curtain. At this point I had gone through a few iterations of learning how to say "curtain" in Arabic, and tried it out. Blank looks. Tried it again, and the guy in the front pawned me off to an older guy in the back of the store, who took me down a narrow isle of rolled-up carpets, presumably to slaughter me and hide me between some carpets.

And then, there they were, slightly dusty, but still shining in the fluorescent light like something awesome that's shining in fluorescent light. A whole freakin wall of shower curtains, in the back of an Oriental carpet store. Of course, why didn't I think of that? EXACTLY....no one would have thought of that, so the Infinite Improbability Drive of Cairo had me find my shopping target there. Whatever urge the shopkeepers may have had to rip me off likely vanished when I started hopping with glee singing "ilham d'illeh" (Arabic for "woo hoo!" or "rockin") over and over again. They went from surprised to curious to amused to vaguely concerned after about 5 - 10 hops, sold me a glorious curtain, and bid me a wary farewell.

A place to rest my head, at least until woken up by horns and children

So, after all that great apartment hunting and dealing with shady flat-finders, turns out the most ideal apartment was found by one of the guys working at my hostel! Apparently my near-constant nudity and obnoxiousness has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated...out of all the people in Cairo, these guys probably had the most motivation to help me find a place of my own. The guy at my hostel used to work at another hostel near the apartment, was chatting with the doorman at his hostel, who in turn knew the doorman at my apartment.....networking works, yeah? So, after some shenanigans (that I'll write about later) with the landlord, I've finally moved into my very own Cairo pad. Now that I've finally sat down to write about it, I realize that the majority of my pictures are on my camera, which is not at all on my person right now. Awesome. Here are the few I have so far on my computer though:

The entryway to my little slice of Cairene heaven: nice, marble, stone, and unpolished enough that I don't have to worry about slipping on the steps while wearing my work shoes and cracking my head open on the stairs. If the lighting weren't so institutional and fluorescent, it'd feel pretty classy, as it's kept relatively clean, and is quite open. Plus, some of the marble floor tiles are a bit cracked and loose, so they wiggle and rattle a bit when stepped on. Every time I walk on one, I have mini-daydreams about prying it up and hiding something cool under the stone slab, to be found by no one, ever. High on the list of stupid-things-to-hide-under-an-unmoveable-stone-slab are my only apartment key and passport.

The view from the mini-balcony, accessible by both bedrooms, is pretty spectacular. Right across the street is what I believe is called Qasr (mansion) Champollion, possibly where the famous French archaeologist/Rosetta stone translator guy lived, or had dealings? I need to research this more later. But there's a fantastic abandoned classical-European-architecture mansion right next to my apartment building, and I fully intend on "accessing" it at some point, even if I have to get my hands on a grappling hook (or bribe the guards). Down the street a bit to the right, there is an all-girl's school that has classes starting at right around shut-the-hell-up-o'clock in the morning. I hear a steady stream of chatting and giggling every morning that's enough to wake me up, but not only to the half-awake/asleep state where sounds merge with dreams. In fuzzy-mode, their voices really do sound like a babbling brook or flowing/bubbling water, which makes for an interesting mindset to start the day. Like I'm drowning in children.


My bedroom! Notice the random assortment of phone-with-no-cord, homeless mirror, disassembled vacuum cleaner, and oddly placed stool. All accoutrements around the nest of love at the core of Cairiasian central, complete with leopard-spotted blanket that came with the flat! Now even while unconscious, I can be P-I-M-P. After putting on my suit in the morning, I feel incomplete walking out of this room without a cane and a big hat. Note to self: go shopping.

It's been a slow/fast few weeks

Been busy as all hell these past few weeks with apartment hunting and work, so not much to report on....or, it's been too long since amusing things happened, and I up and forgot them all. Slow regarding time to post/download things in my head, but quite fast regarding how quickly the time has passed. Luckily, I've gotten used to using my camera to create external memory pointers, allowing me to remember strings of events based on snapshots during the events. At least, that's my excuse for some of my crappier photographs.

And now, random memory hour!

This rather creepy drawing was hanging on the wall of one of the apartment buildings I visited. It was the only decoration.....big white wall, crying-little-girl art smack in the middle of the wall, slightly above (my) head height. I sat on a couch opposite this painting for about 20 minutes waiting for the simsar (real estate agent) find the landlord, so really had nothing to look at but this painting. It may have been some sort of psychological ploy to make me so sad that when I saw the apartment, I'd feel better no matter how bad it was, since I just stared at a little girl crying for 20 minutes. Instead, passerby just wondered why I was snickering to myself for 20 minutes. Ah, the joy of children in emotional distress, who aren't seated near me on a plane. Like veal, lobster, and schadenfreude, nothing beats the flavor of suffering. Mmmmm, boy.



On the way back from a meeting with one of the government ministries, I passed by a series of apartment buildings in various stages of construction. I noticed after passing a dozen or so buildings that something looked a little weird......if you look the buildings above, you'll notice a scarcity of windows. Some of the apartments appear to have no windows at all. I wasn't sure if they just knock out bricks for windows later, or whether some of the apartments just don't have windows, but either way, it seemed even worse than institutional housing. At least in prisons, there are windows with metal bars over them. My mild distaste looking at these buildings was tempered by my total ignorance of construction processes, as I hoped that there was just some cost-saving or logistical measure that explained the lack of windows. It's not just the lack of sunlight, it's the ability to let fresh(ish) air in from outside; after seeing some older inhabited and fully-constructed apartment buildings, I noticed that many of the windows were completely covered in sand/dust/brown anyways. Even dirty windows can be opened for ventilation, though.

Found this little gem at a book sale that one of the hashers had, getting rid of old literature and collecting some cash. You can almost hear the voice of that severe man who narrates old 60's documentaries, talking about "the homosexual" as a plural/species. Believe it or not, I think this was actually FOR education about gay rights, and not some sort of hate manual. But man, check out those angry homosexuals on the cover. They sure are pissed about the law.

No trip to a foreign country would be complete without deformed Disney characters. The resolution here might suck too hard to see clearly, but there's Goofy lounging and the left, Donald and Daisy sharing a drink (probably dairy-based, not sure why) in the center, and the immediate aftermath of something hurling Mickey out of a window, on the right.

Biggest freakin stack/pillar/tower of shawerma meat I have ever seen. While I am sure there are larger in existence, I snapped a photo of this to remind myself of the shock/wonder/delicious feeling I got when seeing that much greasy tastiness, ready to be sliced, packed into bread, and then given to you by the same hands that just handled your money and scratched his butt. I wanted to combine the word shawerma with something implying "large mass", but am too tired to be witty right now. Hell, that's why this entry is so photo-heavy. Oh wait....shawermassive? That sounds like a name I'd give my group of friends if I lived in the UK and loved shawerma and drum and bass. London shawermassive, represent!

Hee hee hee. Next time I feel like ending a meal very awkwardly, I'm going to order this. Note that "F.F" is french fries, on the side, not to be confused with a french-fry sandwich, which also exists here. French fries stuffed in a sub roll or pita bread are a common fast-food item, which would make any Atkins-freak shrivel and then explode with fear and longing. Also, misspelling "dessert" as "desert", a common error even in the States, takes on new hilarity in Egypt. Especially when the first item is a bottle of water, hehe.