Month: December 2006

Categories
NSTIW

HO HO HO! Did I mention?

The Faculty Services Committee at AUC does lots of events all year for the faculty. They arrange tours to the pyramids, trips to Alexandria, museum visits etc.

They also have a Christmas party for the childrens every year. The regular Santa Claus is a member of the committee. Well this year, he had to fly back to the US for some surgery at the last minute. That left them without a Santa.

And the woman that usually plays the elf also had to leave Egypt for medical reasons. (Hmm, I hope there is no curse on those costumes…)

Anyway, the regular Santa knows me and felt I would make a great replacement. This thinking was entirely based on the fact that I would fit the costume without any modifications. I.E. I am short enough and fat enough.

So I got an email from the nice woman that coordinates this thing asking if I would be Santa and if Kaddee would be the Elf.

I have to admit that I wasn’t really excited about it but I said I would do it since they were kinda stuck.

So, there were 90 children, and 1/2 hour to “process them”. Hoist them on my knee, ask em their name (ismik a?) and how old they are (kaam omrak?) give em a small stocking stuffed with candy and send them on their way.

I was pretty nervous. I have never done anything like that before. The language and cultural differences were just icing on the cake.

After the first 10 or so kids it became kinda fun. Joke with the kids and the parents and kaddee. That was great for the next 50 or so kids. That last 30 kids was tough. It was really warm in that suit.

And then there was the little girl that was also celebrating her birthday that day. We got clued in so when she sat on my lap and told me her name, I said

“Wait a minute! It is your birthday today, right? Happy Birthday” and we all sang happy birthday to her.

The look on her face was priceless and worth the anxiety and sweating for 1/2 hour in the velour Santa suit.

Of course getting some of the cute moms to sit on my lap was nice too. 🙂

I understand the regular Santa wants his gig back when he returns. He is gonna have to wrestle me for it.

Merry Christmas.

Categories
Photographs Travel

White Desert Photos

I have a bunch of photos from our Thanksgiving trip to the White Desert. Some of them are up here.

I will have a post or two eventually.

Categories
Cultural Differences

Elevator chaos.

Getting on an elevator here is interesting.

First there is the physical nature of the elevators.

Many of them are the old open cage style that is often retro-fitted in the middle of a curving staircase in an older building. Push the button and IF the previous user of the elevator remembered to close the inner doors, the elevator will come down.

Open the outer door, the inner doors, get in, close the outer door, close the inner doors, push button.

There are also more modern ones, in newer buildings, like ones we see in the US all the time.

Both types tend to stop close enough to the desired floor. There is always a small (and sometimes not so small) step up or down when getting in or out of an elevator.

But all of this is a minor annoyance that one quickly adjusts to and forgets about.

What is more interesting and frustrating to me, is the social/cultural differences in the way that elevators are used here.

Here is how it works:

Walk up to the elevator call buttons. Regardless of which floor you are on and which direction you want to go, push both buttons.

Then stand directly in front of the doors.

When the doors open, allow an appropriate amount of time for people to get out of the elevator. This appropriate amount of time is approx 10 microseconds.

Walk into the elevator, but only just enough to clear the doors.

Ok, sometimes people don’t actually get in far enough to clear the doors, and it will take 2 cycles of the doors starting to close and re-opening before someone will move.

Stand there, blocking people trying to enter or exit.

So now, you are on the elevator. It might be going in the direction you want to go in. Or it might not. But you are along for the ride.

What this means is that people on the ground floor of a building, that want to go up, will get on the elevator even if it is going down to the parking area. So then the elevator will be full going down.

It will go down one level, 1 or 2 people will get off and then it will go up again to ground. It will stop at the ground level, the doors will open, but there will be no one left to get on, cause they all got on when it was going down, see?

This means that the elevator is almost guaranteed to stop at every floor going up, and going down.

Unless you are really lazy or carrying something heavy, it is almost always faster to walk.

Fun fun.

Categories
Photographs Travel

Marrakech: Day 2

It was a pretty mellow day. We went to “the palace” museum. There are 2 palaces, we went to the ruins of the Badi Palace. That is where I got the photos of the storks starting here.

From there, we walked through the old part of the city back to the Djemaa Fna, which is where I took most of the photos starting here.

We then found a comfy place to sit on a restaurant terrace above the main square and people watched.

We watched the food vendors wheel in there stands and food.

We watched the crowds start to arrive.

In general we just kinda hung out.

The next morning we left of Cairo.

Some general observations:

  • Morocco is MUCH cleaner than Cairo. Having wind off the ocean and rain probably has a lot to do with that
  • There are many more headscarves, but fewer niqabs. Almost all non-western women in Morocco had on headscarves.
  • I don’t know what the Per Capita income difference between Egypt and Morocco is, but it seemed like Moroccons were better off. I saw far fewer beggars, there were FAR fewer ratty old cars on the streets. Of course, I think Morocco has far fewer people than Egypt. That probably helps
Categories
Cultural Differences Travel WTF

no kingly hand loving for you!

I am going to try to do this justice, but it was a surreal visual thing, so I am not optmistic. But here goes.

At the end of the first day in Marrakech, we retired to our hotel. There was a TeeVee in the room. As i almost always do in hotel rooms, I turn on the TeeVee to see what is on.

There were about half a dozen channels. Some in French, some in Arabic, one in German and one in English.

On what appeared to be an all-news arabic channel was a scene that I shall not soon forget.

In the center of the scene, in a fairly tight shot, a man was standing in a white, hooded robe, referred to as a gallabeya in these parts. He looked vaguely familiar. Turns out he is the King of Morocco and I had seen his photo everywhere.

Off to the side of him where several gentlemen wearing military uniforms and a few men in standard western suits.

From off camera-left came men. They were mostly middle aged and older. They all wore a white gallabeyas, with a fez and the hood pulled over the fez.

They approached the King. The king held out his hand. The man would take his hand and kiss it.

Or rather, attempt to kiss it.

Here is where it got weird.

The king, however, decided how much kingly hand loving they got. He would, rather abruptly, pull away his hand which often resulted in the kisser smacking himself in the face with his now empty hand! Doh!

The king allowed 4 levels of kingly hand loving. There must have been some ranking and favoritism to this. The 4 levels, in ascending order of lip-to-hand contact time:

  1. No actual lip contact. The king allowed his hand to be clasped and then would YANK it back before it could be kissed. (Heretofore referred to as the King Yank or K.Y.) Smack!
  2. Kissing the back of the hand followed by K.Y. Smack!
  3. Kissing the back of the hand, then turning it over to kiss the palm followed by K.Y. Smack!
  4. Kissing the back of the hand, turning it over to kiss the palm, then turning it back to kiss the back again. K.Y. Smack!

There were 2 outlyers in this group:

  1. A very small handful (heh) of men got the full multi-sided hand loving and got a few words from the King. They must have been very special individuals
  2. One or two did the whole front-back-front kiss and then proceeded up the King’s arm kissing as they went. This seemed to really annoy the King.

This procession went on for about 15 minutes. There must have been over a 200 people in this line. The entire time a very solemn voice proclaimed, what I assume to be, the names of the kissers.

We were there during a national holiday, a day where the King attends the mausoleum where his ancestors are entombed. I assume that these men were ministers of parliment, or otherwise leaders in the country and this was a ritual profession of loyalty to the king.

Kaddee and I laid in bed watching this with slack jaws. It was like a bad train wreck, you didn’t want to watch it, but you could help yourself.

The entire time I watched it I thought: The Daily Show would get a kick out of this.

I have looked for video of it, but I can find none.

Anyway…