Categories
beer

Apparently, I have been a VERY good boy this year

My karma paid off in truck loads today. Santa delivered. Whatever metaphor you want, I scored today, and I scored BIG.

I don’t know what I have done to deserve, but I am gonna take it.

Today was the Annual European Christmas Bazaar. It is held in early December every year here in Cairo. All the embassies and development agencies and NGOs and companies that work in Cairo get together and rent out the tennis courts and surrounding area at the Nile Hilton.

They set up tables and sell Christmas-y type items that are indicative of their respective countries. They also sell other, non-christmas related items that typify the country in question.

We didn’t know about this affair last year. Some friends were talking about it this year and we decided to go. Kaddee wanted to go shopping for some small christmas items, and I had heard that they had imported beer and wine.

I figured, I would sit in the beer garden and drink what I could get my hands on.

Now, if you have read the blog, you know that I am kind of a beer guy. We spent 2 weeks in Belgium, the sole purpose of which was to drink beer. You can read my trip report starting here.

Anyway, I had figured if I was lucky I would get a couple of German lagers. Maybe a darker christmas ale. Hoo boy, was I wrong. And I gotta say, I have never been happier to be wrong than I was today.

First off, I almost didn’t even go. It has been a late night weekend for us and we haven’t gotten a lot of sleep. Combine that with Kaddee’s usual end of the semester cramming-everything-in-at-the-last-minute, and we were both tired.

We were supposed to meet people outside our apartment building at 9am.

I rolled over and looked at the clock and it was 8:45. Uh-oh. We gotta get moving. Maybe I’ll just stay in bed. I decided to get up.

Jump up, do the college shower (brush teeth and hair, quick swipe with the deodorant, baseball cap and good to go).

We take a taxi to the Hilton and the traffic is all screwed up. Morning traffic usually isn’t this bad. Well the traffic was screwed up because of the BUSES of people going to this Bazaar.

Many of the ex-pats, and almost all ex-pats with children, live in a part of Cairo called Ma’adi. Which is, on a quiet traffic day, at least a 1/2 hour drive from downtown. So many of the various organizations, embassies and companies, rented buses to transport people.

We get into the Hilton and I buy my ticket to get in and I am handed a ticket and a slip of paper with the rules for purchasing alcohol.

It said that purchases were limited to:

  • 2 bottles of hard liquor/person
  • 12 bottles of wine/person
  • 2 “boxes” of beer/person

Now I wasn’t really awake yet, and I was very confused by this. I looked at one of our friends who told us about it and asked “What do they mean ‘2 boxes'”. She replied, I guess that means 2 cases.

My knees felt week.

My mouth dried up.

It got very warm.

I stood in place and tried to parse this information.

I asked, “you mean they are selling european beer and wine TO GO?”.

Her response was

DUH.

To quote my good friend ChrisD, “Why was I not informed.”

There was a lot of “I thought you knew” and “well yeah, why do you think all these little old ladies have wheeling suitcases.”

Guh!

So in we go. Kaddee and I split up to locate beer.

She found it first.

At the Belgium table.
She called me on my phone to summons me.

I arrived at the table and they had 6-packs of Duvel, Leffe and cases of Hoegarten.

My knees got weak again.

In comic book fashion, my jaw dropped to the ground, my eyes bugged out, my hat jumped off my head.

And the really unbelievable part: I was speechless.

I really was having cognitive difficulties.

I could turn around and see the Egyptian Museum. And then turn back and see Belgian beer.

I could look down the crowd of people, and see women wearing headscarves. And then I could look back and see Belgian beer.

I could look at another table and see hand painted ornaments with santa riding a camel. And then I could look back and see Belgian beer.

I think I stood there for what seemed like forever trying to process all this.

Finally, the brain engaged and I got traction.

“How much [at this point I am pretty sure my voice cracked and I sounded like an underage youth trying to convince the nice man at the liquor store that I was of age] can I buy.”

The nice man said 2 boxes per person. A box being a case of 24 bottles.

I had no way to carry the beer. The nice man said, that’s ok and waved over one the Hilton porters.

I bought 3 cases of Duvel which took all the cash we had and was as much as the porter and I could carry.

I hightailed it outside, got in a taxi and went back to the apartment.

Put the beer away, grabbed a rolling suitcase and headed back for my last case.

They were sold out of the Leffe and Hoegarten [which is ok with me really.] So I bought another case of Duvel.

And some Hungarian sausage.

And some Italian sausage.

We celebrated with some nice cheese croissants and an Irish coffee.

Kaddee and the women folk went off to another sale at a pottery shop.

I went home to hoard my gold^H^H^H^Hbeer like a dwarf in a mine shaft.

It is going to be a VERY Merry Christmas, this year.

Categories
Cultural Differences

What is this “off the clock” of which you speak?

Working hours are long here in Cairo.

It is completely normal to have a Doctor schedule an appointment at 9 or 10pm. That same Doctor will give you his mobile phone number and you can pretty much call it anytime you like.

Lectures of visiting professors and other “people of interest” at the university and other research centers often start at 8 or 9pm.

There is little if any concept of being “off the clock”.

While this can be very handy if you are on the consuming side of these services, it is a royal pain when you are expected to be providing these services.

Students expect teachers to list home and mobile numbers on the syllabus. As well as personal email addresses.

Many instructors here do just that.

A closed office door just means “knock once and then walk in without waiting for acknowledgment.” When I need to work in Kaddee’s office, I lock the door. People will knock and try to enter. Then they will knock again and rattle the door knob.

It is, apparently, incomprehensible that one would lock one’s door while trying to get work done.

So why do I bring this up now? The good doctor was notified, on Sunday, that she was expected to have a presentation ready for Tuesday, to give on Friday at a mandatory faculty retreat.

She will board a bus Friday morning (Friday and Saturday being her days off), ride for 3 hours to a “beach side resort” (on the Suez Canal. Lovely view of tankers). Then spend 2 days in a room giving and listening to presentations.

Then back on the bus to Cairo. Should get home around 10pm Saturday.

Of course, this is the end of the semester, so luckily there aren’t tons of exams, homeworks, lab reports or papers to grade. Or finals to write. Or schedules for next semester to hammer out.

And that whole being prepared for lecture is over-rated anyway.

BUT, it’s all ok, cause they are going to feed her (2 whole meals: dinner Friday, breakfast Saturday. The bus leaves “before dinner time” so they don’t need to feed her then) *AND* she gets to take her spouse. (ahem). So its not like she has any right to complain.

PFers.

Welcome in Egypt.

Categories
Photographs Travel

Some photos from Lebanon

In celebration of the fact that Lebanon has been without a president for a whole day and nothing has blown up yet, a small handful of photos of the places we visited.

Categories
Politics Travel

My heart’s not in it.

I have some photos from our trip to Beirut that I wanted to post. And maybe talk a bit about our (too few) days there.

But today, the president of Lebanon has called in the army to “keep the peace.”

Today is supposed to be the last day of his term. But the parliament has been unable to agree on a replacement.

So, there is no president, legally. Is there still a constitution?

It is a very complicated system they have.

The president must be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister must be a Sunni Muslim, and the Speaker of Parliament must be a Shi’a Muslim.

In addition, the parliament must be made up of so many of each, based on a census that is over 50 years old.

The Christians, who hold a majority of the parliament, have not allowed a census to be taken because they (the Christians) have not been breeding as quickly as the Muslims, and know that a new census would change the division of power.

Tonight, the streets of Beirut are dark and empty.

We managed to visit for 4 or 5 days in October. We had been trying to visit there since we arrived in Cairo, but every time that we had free time, things had seemed to heat up in Lebanon. October was quiet. The elections had been put off (again) and the entire country was holding its breath.

We were hoping to go back again sometime soon. It is a beautiful country. (Even with bombed out buildings in downtown, and long detours because of bridges that were destroyed).

I have never been accused of being an optimist, so it is no surprise that I fear the worst for Beirut and the rest of the country.

I am glad we got there when we did.

I hope we get another chance sometime soon.

Categories
The Ordinary

“Fresh” Air

I was finally able to open the windows here in Cairo for the first time in several weeks.

They have remained firmly shut until now for a couple of reasons:

  1. The weather has been unseasonably warm. It has been in the mid- to high- 90Fs lately. That is warm for Cairo for this time of year.
  2. THE BLACK CLOUD (stories here and here). A foul blend of burning smoke from rice fields, stench from burning garbage, dust from the desert and pollution from some 1.6 million cars, most of which burn leaded gas.

These combine to make opening the windows this time of year a bad idea. In addition to the potential health ramifications, the air just smells burnt and nasty.

But it is only around 75F here today, there is a cooling NW breeze blowing, the skies are blue with wispy white clouds.

A good air day. For Cairo.

Categories
Photographs Travel

Vienna Photos

More photos getting pushed out of the queue.

Categories
Photographs Travel

Photos from the MotoGP weekend in Brno

Yeah, that was like 2 months ago.

Here are some of the photos.

Categories
Uncategorized

Where in the World are Jack and Kaddee?

A photo essay.

The first and last are probably give aways.

Categories
Cultural Differences Out and about The Ordinary

Ramadan Kareem

(which roughly means “Happy Ramadan”)

As has been written by any number of bloggers and others, Ramadan can be a stressful time. 12 hours or so of no food, no water, no caffeine, no sex, no nicotine (all those things that make like worth living) can make one irritable.

There is a great deal of lamenting in the local press about how “Ramadan just isn’t the same as when I was a child….”

People are more materialistic. They are too stressed about keeping up with the Joneses (El Din’s?) in regards to their Iftar spread.

People were kinder to people on the street

People knew what the meaning of Ramadan REALLY was…

The traffic is SO much worse these days

All in all, it sounds a lot like the grumblings one can hear and read in the Western press about how people have “lost the meaning of Christmas” in all the commercialism.

Apparently everything was skittles and ice cream in the old days.

Anyway, some of the taxi drivers we encounter are Coptic. Some of them are rather sarcastic about Ramadan. They will point to shouting matches and fights on the streets, smirk, say “Ramadan Kareem” and shake their heads.

And fights on the street are common towards the end of the day. Most fights in Egypt in general are little more than slap-fights with a bunch of shoving. Strangers will rush in to stop a fight before it gets serious. I am not sure if that is function of the over-crowding here, or some other aspect of the culture.

What it means is that one can be fairly confident that if one were to get into a scuffle, one would only get to throw (or receive) one punch. One could extrapolate that to mean that is one of the reasons that scuffles happen so frequently, because people know the chances of real physical harm is minimal. It allows a blow off of steam in a (mostly) harmless fashion.

Don’t get me wrong, you don’t see fights “all the time” here. But I have seen more fights broken up on the streets here then I have in any period of my life, with the possible exception of junior high school 🙂

People were more cranky than usual the other day. On a taxi ride from campus to Zamalek (about 10 minutes drive, about a 40minute walk) I saw 3 separate fights.

The first involved 2 taxi drivers. I was moving past this one, so I did not see it in detail.

The 2nd involved drivers of private vehicles: both cars stopped and blocked traffic while they shouted and pushed at each other for a while.

Then the drivers got back in their respective cars, continuing to jabber at each other. Then they got BACK out of their cars for more nose-to-nose yelling. At which point the police came over and sent them on their way, mostly because they were completely blocking traffic.

The 3rd fight was in among a crowd outside the local post office.

It was this 3rd fight that prompted my Coptic taxi driver to wryly wish them a “Ramadan Kareem”

Categories
Cultural Differences

Ramadan II, this time it’s personal.

This is our 2nd Ramadan here in Egypt. However, it is new in some ways.

Last year, when we arrived, Ramadan started about 3 weeks after we arrived. People talked about the crazy traffic and the tiredness of folks that made it difficult to get things done, and the noise at night.

When we arrived last year, the traffic all looked insane, getting ANYTHING done took a ridiculous amount of people AND time, and the streets were always noisy with traffic and people.

When Ramadan arrived, the only real difference I noticed was that you could manage to get from one end of town to the other in about 10 minutes just before, during, and after iftar. [If you could find a taxi, that is.]. And everything was closed from about 2 hours before Iftar to about an hour after.

Looking back, all this was because we didn’t have a baseline of “normal” yet for Cairo. When you are still trying to figure out how things work and a major disruption like Ramadan comes along, it can be hard to see the forest for the trees.

This year is different. We have adapted to what passes for normal in Cairo. This year, the disruption of Ramadan is much more noticeable. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the positive aspects of it as well, but we now see how different the days and nights really are.