an hour into my journey.....

I think I forgot how much I enjoy traveling alone, there are so many things that can happen, I love the unexpected it makes me feel alive :) and there is nothing like listening to a well selected playlist whilst watching the world fly by and Cairo that great big dirty city fades away.... goodbye Cairo. goodbye smog, good bye cats goodby dogs good bye street cafes, good bye shisha goodbye micro buses at said ayisha, goodbye piles of trash sat rotting in the sun, can't stand the rancid smells that's why I have to run!!'la yeh sorry I went on one there ok so I guess you have guessed I am sitting on a bus that's taking me far away from Cairo. so I am excited right now actually I always get excited about traveling alone ANYTHING could happen and I just adore that feeling.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Oh what a night......

Late December back in 63.... nope not that night, I wasn't even born then waaaa ha ha ha the night I am talking about was the 20th August 2011 which in itself didn't really grant blogging about but the day after became rather interesting.
So last night I hung out with a friend for a while then went to another friend who had gotten a room at an ultra luxury (they call themselves that) 5 star hotel, I wont mention the actual name of the hotel and you will see why later. So the original plan was to get all dressed up and have a girly night at the casino hustling rich Saudi guys and sipping the complementary drinks, we, well at least I managed the dressing up part and spent the first part of the evening feeling like totally over dressed to be hanging out with a friend, anyway finally got to the hotel, the traffic was hell getting their as the whole of the army seemed to be stationed outside the Israeli embassy. entered the hotel and waited for her to come and get me (you can only get to the rooms with a card). Got up to the room and sat for a while with my friend and can you bloody believe it we ended up sitting in bath robes and watching TV all night, like 2 old ladies. So we slept in the amazingly comfortable bed and the next day tried to recapture some youthfulness by putting on loud (and modern) music and dancing around the room. Check out was at 3pm so at 2 we started to get ready to leave, my friend took a shower and I continued bopping in front of the mirror, thinking I was a spice girl :D
I heard a strange noise but thought it was a part of the song, the music changed but the noise continued so I went to the door to investigate. Can you imagine what I found?? My friend standing naked in the bathroom and the room service guy with his head poking through the door looking at her!! What the hell?? I rushed to the door and told the guy off, he then stood there for another 10 minutes and argued with us, his reasoning was, he wanted to clean the room and we didn't put a do not disturb sign on the door. Our argument was our check out was at 3pm, the music was on in the room and even if he still made the mistake of entering the second he saw my friend naked he should have averted his eyes immediately and left the room, not stand there and stare!!
 This went on and on and back and forth until we finally said look it's enough give us your name and LEAVE.
The thing is, we are used to men behaving badly here but if you go to a place like a 5 star hotel then you expect more respect then if you were staying in a down town hostel, and to be honest this wouldn't even happen in a hostel downtown as men are not allowed to enter women's rooms at all! Secondly when a customer complains you are supposed to suck it up and NOT stand there and discuss the matter with them.
We went downstairs to check out and then on to the guest relations to make our complaint, this put us in the very awkward position of having to discuss the matter of sexual harassment with a group of fasting guys. As people are nosy in Egypt this got more and more embarrassing as more and more employees came over to see what was going on. We finally ended up with the house keeping manager, who seemed like a nice lady but all she could offer was "Well he says he is sorry and the sign wasn't on the door" this is where I began to get pissed off and I said look, "He was watching her while she was naked, do you want us to make a police report because that is how serious this is". I think she got the seriousness of the situation as she scuttled of to find the hotel manager. He broke off a meeting to see us (nice ha) and took us to one of the many cafes there, he offered us juice and water and was very, very professional, he listened to our story in horror and sympathized with us, I think more so as we told him, look we live in Cairo we deal with this stuff all the time and we know it exists but when you come to a place like this it shouldn't happen AT ALL. He agreed totally and told us a little about his life in Cairo, he was french and was living in the same suburb as we do. He promised to take action and investigate the matter fully, he also took care of the bill (which included spa treatments and room service) and on top of that he provided us with a private limousine to Maadi which saved us taking a cab.
His reaction was wonderful which is why I wont give the name of the hotel, they handled the situation perfectly and well it left us both feeling very happy and smug in the end.
Our limo arrived and we traveled in style to Maadi (haaaaaaa not really, we got stuck in the most terrible traffic but that is another tale....)

Americans, Americans, Americans.........

I have dealt with a lot of Americans in my life, now before I go into my rant I should say the Americans I have met in Egypt have been for the most part worldly and intelligent people, although there was one girl who told me her entire sexual history like 10 minutes after meeting her (that's weird no?). So yeah this rant is about the Americans I met in Europe, most of them at the airport. So where do I begin? Lets start with the Irish pub in Mainz, this place was a favorite with the US army guys back when I lived there and at first it was like walking into a film (well I had only ever seen them on TV before). I will never forget the first time a soldier slid up to me at the bar and asked in a southern drawl "Excuse me, do you speak American?" I almost sputtered on my drink, I looked him up and down and gave him the most haughty answer I could muster which was "No I bloody well do not!!". American?? Is that even a language?
Then there were the guys who wanted to meet at the "big ass church", Huh sorry what? Oh you mean the CATHEDRAL!! Once a girl came into the pub, she was a teacher in the States and was visiting her brother who was stationed in Germany. She looked up at the map of the UK and Ireland that was hanging on the wall and ran over to it excitedly, "Ohhhh my god, you mean there is sea separating Ireland and England? Where can I get a copy of this to show my friends???" I think every European in there had their mouths open in shock, I mean really? and shes a teacher, what hope are there for the rest of them??
The airport was a wonderful place to experience Americans at their best. I used to check passports for United Airlines and was once standing at my desk at the United counters, now its pretty obvious that they were united counters as they had United written on them...... So an American family approches, they stop and stare at the counters for 2 minutes then come to me and say "excuse me, is this United Airlines?" THEY WERE JUST STARING AT THE TV SCREENS ON TOP OF THE COUNTERS!! and well me being who I am, I just couldn't resist the urge to be sarcastic and replied "No, No this is British Airways, we just write United to confuse people" well can you imagine what they did next??? They apologized for taking my time and turned away to continue their search for United!! Of course I ran after them and brought them back but dear me!
There was once a guy who had a very high position with a leading junk food company. Our conversation went like this:
Me - "Hello sir, where are you coming from today?
Him- "London"
Me- "So how long have you been in Europe sir?"
Him- "I wasn't in Europe I was in London!"
Me (totally ignoring this) "so how long have you been in Europe?"
Him (pissed off) "SINCE WHEN HAS LONDON BEEN IN EUROPE?" 
ME (in my sweetest voice ever) "Since the continents were formed sir?"
Isn't that just shocking? I mean here is a guy with a decent education and a wonderful position in his company and still he is capable of complete and utter ignorance.
The UK flights always proved to be funny, Non europeans have to fill out a landing card upon entering the UK and we had to give these things out. For most nationals it was a simple procedure, we just asked them if they are in transit in the UK, if they said yes then it meant no card if they said no it meant a card. So of course we quickly figured this was a bit too complicated for most Americans who fly and we simplified the question a little, well a lot, what we now said was "Will you be entering the UK and staying there or will you be getting onto another plane and flying to another country?" To which the answer would be "What do you mean?" god give me strength!! What do YOU mean, what do I mean?? I cant make it any more simple can I???
So once we had figured out that they are staying in the UK we would hand them the landing card back with their passport... the next gem came "Do I have to fill this out???" Nooooooooooooooooo you have to wipe you ass with it as there is no toilet paper on the plane! Wtf of course you have to fill it out. Why the hell would I give you a form that you don't have to fill out!!! Boooooooom that's it for now, my rant about yanks is over. Peace.

Cairo.... Do I love it or hate it??

Well I often ponder this question, there are days when I love, love, love Cairo, the mystic, the feeling of being in another world, the fruity smells of  shisha smoke filling the air, the constant background noise, the lights, sounds, smells, all of it. Then there are days when it all just gets on my nerves, the rickety taxis with their doors hanging off, the smell of exhausts, the comments ohhhh the comments, the complete lack of customer service, the stares, the inability to stand in a line, the phrase "Bukra Inshallah" (tomorrow if god's willing).

Some days it makes me smile that everything seems to arrive by donkey, Gas bottles, watermelons, lemons, prickly pears, you name it you can find it on a donkey cart. Other days when I am rushing to work (I always have to rush) I end up getting stuck behind a donkey and its load and I scream internally "WHERE THE HELL AM I?"
So which is it? Do I love or hate Cairo in all of it's craziness?
The special thing about Cairo, which I haven't experienced in other places is the fact that everything can change in a heart beat, so when it seems like every thing is going wrong and that things can't get better, something happens and it all seems OK again very, very fast. This something could be a person, it could be a party invitation, it could even be seeing poverty and thinking wow my life is not that bad after all. And then I think about my life and how privileged I am, even compared to western standards, like seriously how many of my friends back home have a cleaner? how many of them have an ironing guy? how many can afford to get the majority of their clothes dry cleaned? how many can get a bottle of vodka delivered at 1am or a big mac meal at 4 am? How many of them can go swimming every day after work on a roof top pool? How many of them can go to the beach at the weekend? How many of them get so much vacation time that they get so bored and actually want to return to work? how many, how many, how many??? See when I think about all of that it makes me smile to myself and say "Wow, actually you are ok!".
So the next thing is, how do I make the negative things here seem positive, I mean everything can be seen in a positive light right? Its just a matter of changing the way you think anyway. So I took the thing that annoys me the most which is sexual harassment and I thought about it for a while.... well firstly it makes me want to learn Arabic, I want to be able to shout more then "you are a shoe" at them, I actually want to say something intelligent and make them feel small (evil, yes I know but its a motivation so its positive) OK then it makes me grateful for my upbringing and the fact that I have an open mind, it makes me appreciate all of my male friends who think its disgusting and it makes me speak out to Egyptian women, hopefully getting them to see that it's not ok and they are not at fault (that's a big hope but who knows....). Lastly, well too be honest, if I am in a bad mood and am not feeling OK sometimes its nice to find an idiot to shout at and let all of the stress out :)
So in answer to my original question, I love Cairo, I really do and I think it will keep me for some time yet.

wow I can blog from my phone!

isn't that wonderful? I can sit anywhere in the world and blog... this blog entrance could be coming at you from the toilet, the beach. the back of a taxi who knows!!!!! seem's like there is an app for everything this days... just can't wait for the "skip work and let the app do it instead" app or the "don't get out of bed cos your dying to pee" app or even better the " drunken dialing prevention app" that one would be a winner for sure!
Anyway that's it! Cairo is fine so am I. Just so Appy about my apps..... ok, ok I know that one was lame but I couldn't resist.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Memories of the airport....

Kati came over for beer last night as she does most nights of the week... love you Kati :)
Anyway we got to talking about the famine in Somalia which is of course terrible and I sure worthy of it's own blog post entirely, but this posting isn't about that. It made me think of the Somali's I had dealt with at the airport and one guy in particular.....
I was taking a smoke break in the staff area when I got a call asking me to check on a situation at the gate, there were problems with a Somali passenger....
The agent working the flight was originally from Pakistan and he was one of the nicest, calmest, politest people you could meet, really a charming guy, we will call him Khan as I have terribly forgotten this nice mans name.
So I stubbed out my cigarette, left my coffee standing and ran to the gate expecting to find a forged passport or an impostor (Someone using another person's passport),  what i found was a very angry looking Somali guy and a very stressed looking Khan. I spoke to Khan quickly to check the situation, the guy had a British refugee travel document and Khan had simply asked him about his trip, how long he had been out of the UK and a bit about his life in the UK, now it might sound strange that we ask this but we really needed to ascertain that the guy in front of us really was the one in the passport, and we needed to be sure that he really did live in the UK and know about general life there. We have to do this because so many Somali's send their travel documents to Somalia for their (Very similar looking) family members to use, so normally a few simple questions about the UK have to be asked in order to make us feel that the Doc is in the right hands. Anyway so as I was saying Khan was basically doing his job and doing so in an incredibly cool and polite way. The Somali guy was waving his hands around and screaming "I am a British Citizen" (he wasn't as I mentioned he was an official refugee with the right to stay in the UK).
So here's where it gets good.... the guy turns to me whilst pointing at Khan and yells "THIS FUCKING PAKI IS A RACIALIST!!!!" I wasn't sure if I correctly heard and asked him to repeat himself "I SAID THIS FUCKING PAKI IS A RACIALIST!!" Wow he really did just make one of the most contradictory and wrong sentences I have heard in my life! I stopped myself from laughing and put on my best snooty voice "Sir if it is racist you mean, I can assure you that the only person I can hear being racist at present is you" he carried on with his tirade and I then went on to tell him we were calling the police to make a report about his insults (don't you just love Germany, you can make reports about EVERYTHING) and that he wouldn't be flying tonight, I then walked over to the desk to inform the airline of the decision and while I was on my way the Somali guy rolled up his newspaper and smacked Khan over the head with it!!!!!!!!!!!! Now when I think about it I have to laugh like hell but back then it was serious and it almost escalated,Khan finally lost his cool and went to push the guy, which is of course a huge no, no so I ran and get between them and stayed between them until the police showed up and arrested the crazy Somali guy!!
Wonderful days at the airport really

Cairo Craigs list... a delve into the dark side

My lovely roommate has decided she needs more light in her life, and has found a new lighter place in Mohandeseen. This has set me on a roommate searching frenzy.
I posted on Cairo Scholars and on a few Facebook groups but didn't really have much luck. So I decided to give Craig’s list a go....
Well the replies were many and some were normal and legitimate but there were also a lot of weird, weird replies; one guy offered to pay me 200 le to allow him to massage me and if my landlady was up for it, he would like to massage her too. Another guy, who seemed normal at first sent a mail saying his girlfriend needed a room, I told him she is welcome to come and take a look. He called me and said that she was in Italy and would I mind having a few Eastern European girls to stay?? Do I have to even comment on that?
A Dr Waleed wrote and assured me he would be polite and well behaved, he also promised me that we would have "good times" together and that he would make me pleased (language barrier?)
All of this made me think, "Well, what kind of people use Craig’s list in Cairo?" so I took a deeper look......
I started off with the community pages and was pleased to see a few legitimate sounding ads, a kitten that needs to be adopted and a driver offering his services for 30 le an hour, so far so good. Ahem then I stumbled upon the first shady listing titled " Help everyone become free of oppression" this was a listing urging people to boycott all Israeli businesses and goods as this would miraculously cause them to withdraw from the West bank, seemingly leading to an oppression free world!. Shady yes, shocking not really, and so I went on. Next up was truly shocking, the listing title: " A son for Adoption" the listing itself : " As the title of the ad says: A Son for Adoption Thanks for everything". Really! People are using Craig’s list to donate/sell their children? This one led me to a real "where the hell am I" moment! And as I really couldn't believe it, I went ahead and emailed the poster asking for more information, haven't yet received a reply but will keep you posted.  I went on and sifted through a lot of work from home and earn $$$$ type ads which I am sure are not exclusive to the Cairo branch but are still dodgy in their own way.
I moved on to personals, well Egypt is a conservative place right? There couldn't be anything too shocking here for sure..... first up was strictly platonic where I found offers of toe licking and requests for rimming from a 70 year old 300 lb heavy weight (is that for real???) and then there was the request from a FAMOUS author (yes he really capitalized the word) he wanted friends and was very proud of the fact that he already knew so many important, famous (not capitalized this time) and wealthy people. Ufff next is women seek women and no listings!!! What! No lesbians in Cairo???? Ok next, on to women looking for men, this is actually quite tame just one listing offering a relationship for the financial compensation of 5000le a month which might be a good deal for the Saudi men coming over and looking for partnership. So now it's time for men seeking women, well when I think of the way men act in this country I feel this is going to be the worse section by far, I held my breath and took a look, and was actually pleasantly surprised, most of the ads here were decent and seemed genuine. There were a lot of lonely and looking for love types, the odd foot fetish, and one guy wrote a wonderful piece on how he wanted an intelligent but submissive women. Next was men looking for men.....there were only 3 ads in this section (I imagine Egyptian homosexuals are more cautious then to advertise on Craig’s list). Now where the real "fun" starts is the "Casual encounters" section, the listings and indeed pictures on offer there made me blush!!! I am not going to go any further with this, not because I am disgusted (actually I find it funny), but because I feel if you are interested then you should go and take your own plunge into the dark side....
Just to conclude, I haven’t checked it out, but a friend tells me that London's Craig’s list is just as bad, although I am pretty sure there are no children for sale there, maybe just a lot of freshly looted goods :D
Ok people I am signing off, Ramadan Kareem and all of that.