Insteadi has moved..

..and changed. You can now find me at Trailing Grouse.

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Fun stuff

I've been tagged! Before I proceed to the tagging, I just want to apologise to the people who have been leaving comments here that I've taken a long time to reply to as well as the blogs out there that I read and have not been leaving comments on recently. I am setting up a new blog and although Lil Bro (very busy website expert) has been extremely helpful, Big Sis here, is fending on the most part for herself. Figuring out CSS and stylesheets etc is proving to be...challenging!

Now to the fun part: ExpatKat at The Pea Green Boat has tagged me.

What was I doing ten years ago?
"I was working as a waitress in a cockta-ail bar.." Ok, well sort of. I was working as a barmaid in a Darwin bar opposite Australia's North Western Territory's parliament. I wore a fitted high-necked T-shirt and skirt skimming my knees (the longest I could get away with). All the other barmaids wore platform shoes, g-strings and, occasionally, bras.

5 snacks I enjoy?
Very dark chocolate, cashews, any cheese that isn't processed, heavy breads, and generally, put me near anything crunchy and salty and I morph into the human vacuum.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire.
I would buy a helicopter, hire a full time pilot and spend lots of time being flown, suspended from a bungy type rope, over beautiful scenery, including the sea.

I would spend some time diving locally to hone up my skills, then travel the world diving in remote sites: bliss.

Once back on dry land, I would support local mobile health units in remote parts of the world and invest heavily in HIV/AIDs programmes, support education, particularly skills-based. There are a hundred more causes out there I could/would support and I don't want to get all corny by listing them all. What I would be a stickler about however, is that I fund lots of grassroots projects directly, rather than an umbrella organisation. Experts could be brought in to advise and help out, but the dosh/equipment/services would be going straight to local facilities.

I would also clear all the mines from the Northern Coast of Egypt and work on irrigating it.

5 jobs I have had.
Making rubber-art stamps.
Running a bar for weddings at a Scottish castle.
Sales for a magazine here in Egypt (I got the job specifically because I am foreign, not because I had a clue what to do...)
Dancer for a music video
Accountant

3 bad habits.
I am incapable of being tidy for any extended period of time. Extended means more than two hours.
I like starting things and I love finishing them, but I'm not very good at getting the middle bit done.
I forget to water my plants.

5 places I have lived.
Bethlehem, Sydney, Salzburg (Austria), Amman (Jordan), Cairo (Egypt)

5 people I want to know more about.
I have been thinking about this. There are lots of people I would like to meet, both alive and dead, but people I would actually want to read more about, rather than meet? I am not sure. Gosh, how boring!

So, here people, I'm tagging you:
Lulu's Bay
Tuesday's Bread
Missy M Misssives

There should be two more, but because Ive been so bloggospherically antisocial over the past few weeks, I don't have any more friends I can tag.

Fancy a shag, a shabby shag?

Someone in Egypt worked out a couple of years ago that advertising can pay a lot of money. Since then there has been a plethora of tree eating brightly printed magazines that contain nothing but the stuff. Not having a letterbox in our door (actually, come to think of it, we don't have a letterbox at all), these publications end up on our doorstep. They are fantastic for shaking all the outside dust onto before entering the house.

Sometimes, just for a laugh, I have a look through. Without doubt, there is always something chuckle-worthy. The latest one, however, is too good to keep to myself:

The more I look at it, the more I wonder why that couple is there. Is it because:
a) They have just 'done it' on the rug or
b) They are being interviewed about having done it on the rug and are saying, "It's ok, but the carpet burn is nasty. All in all a bit shabby."

Then the marketing guy thought, "Brilliant word, 'shabby', they use it next to 'chic' nowadays, let's see, how does it work against 'shag'?"

Or perhaps it's named after the place you're supposed to take your dirty stopovers if you think they're not going to be very good: the Shabby Shag corner.

Can you imagine having the neighbours over. "I love your rug over there, where did you get it?" "Oh, it's from Oriental Weavers. Now the kids have moved out we are really excited to finally have space to have a Shabby Shag."

PS In case you're wondering, the text in white underneath reads: The largest rug producer in the world. So there you go, there are a lot of shabby shags out there.

Karma: revenge is best served cold

In the days BMS (before Mr S), I used to work for an NGO in Cairo. It was an interesting time and a beneficial project. I had been toying with doing a masters in development as I found a career that would enable me to 'give something back' appealing.

My particular task was not so appealing. It was one of those things that looks simple, but in actual fact was fairly complicated and required a great deal of patience for the technical side that in the end nobody would notice, unless corners were cut and then there would be complaints. My immediate boss knew exactly the nature of The Beast (as we called it), as did my department. At the time that was all I cared about because they were the only people who actually understood what I was doing.

When the final, final deadline came (the first one was 12 days after I started, pushed back every two months or so for others to be involved - for two years), not enough time had been left for me to completely finalise the work. So, being a bit of a perfectionist (well, then, not now!) I worked 13 days for free. The Beast still wasn't 100% finalised, so I emailed all the Relevant People and explained the situation, including the 13 days. Anyway, it was more than decent and totally workable.

About six months after my final day there (final due to reduced funding) I started hearing that comments were being made by the Relevant People about how I worked for two years when the job should have only taken about a month. Then comments about how I worked for two years and didn't even finish The Beast. Then comments about how I basically was fleecing them for two years.

Of course, not being there to explain that the additional 'deadlines' they set, all given because of the extra involvement they authorised, meant that this book of rumours kind of stuck to my name. Although I was partly upset about it, I also didn't care because I had no intention of working for that group again. By this time I had well and truly decided that there were better ways of me 'giving back'.

I also knew that sticky beaks wouldn't be able to stay away from The Beast and that at some point in the future my position would become essential again. Knowing the Relevant People, it would also be at the last minute.

That day came this week: I was asked if I would come back to work with The Beast again, it was urgent and essentially I was the only one who knew how to do it.

I don't think there has ever been a "No" spoken before that was as rotund and oozing with glee as mine was that day.

A shopping trip

I was wandering to the tentmaker’s area in Old Cairo and passed a small shop with piles and piles of raw cotton sitting outside. I have been wanting to buy some for years, but for some reason, quite unlike me when it comes to shopping, I have been too shy! This time, however, I decided to go for it so stopped and a rather serious young man appeared. He thought I was lost, then he thought I was joking, but when he finally realised I was a serious buyer, he asked how much I wanted.

Not being up to speed on how much cotton was in each sack, nor what the method was for selling, nor exactly sure myself, I gestured with my hands and said, ‘Um, about this much.’

All sorts of confusion started. It turned out that cotton is purchased by the sack, which is worked out in kilos. I opted for seven (kilos, not sacks!). No particular reason for the seven, it just seemed like a good number.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘Follow me.’ Off we went down the crowded alley, pushing through the throngs and into another alley, a little quieter. When we turned into a third alley, totally deserted, I began to wonder if I'd made a really big mistake.

Luckily my concern was unfounded. Not only had I stumbled across probably the only empty street in central Old Cairo, we stopped at a shop-come-warehouse stuffed (very tidily) to the rafters full of cotton.

I sat down on an aging red velvet sofa and Mr Cotton weighed the sack, with some help:

Actually, he said they were weighing the cotton, but I’m not sure that is what was happening. I think they just took out about the right amount, which was fine by me. I had asked if he minded me taking pictures and he said no. Then he scurried off behind a wall of sacks and indicated I should follow. I wasn't totally sure about this, but I went, with my guard up. He stopped just a couple of metres down and unveiled a large painting of his grandfather, then indicated that I should take a picture of the painting. I obliged and he was proud.

The upshot of all this is that I now have this:

in the sitting room. Over the years I have thought of a hundred things I could make, if only I'd bought the cotton. Now I have it, my mind has gone blank!

Cultural and gastronomical challenges

I am now into my second day being gastronomically challenged. The mere whiff of chocolate on Mr S's breath is enough to leave me clutching my stomach. And being the person who loves Mr S and (in the office days) was brought chocolate by her far senior colleague every time he asked for something awkward to be done because he knew it was her Achilles heel, this is a bad sign.

It started off well: a good friend's birthday dinner. Let's call her Noonie. Noonie has a Sudanese mother who doesn't do things by half, particularly when it comes to food. The menu was pretty much Egyptian and Momat Noonie (Noonie's mother) was in the kitchen for two full days preparing the food.

This should have been more than a little anecdote about how much food is prepared for special meals in this part of the world. It should have been a big Tsunami-alarm with flashing red lights of a warning. But no. Having lived cocooned in The Hood for 18 months, it was a mere funny story.

Out on display was a profiterole tower a good 25 cm tall on a wide plate. All made by Momat Noonie. Dessert, it turned out was to be twice as much: there was something else in the fridge. That was until Noonie's boyfriend turned up with a massive birthday cake. Treble the fun.

As dinner came out on the table the adrenaline started pumping. 'Bloody hell,' I thought (I think out loud!), 'How many people are we?'. There were eight of us in total. In fairness there could have been a couple more, but they couldn't make it. So, say ten people were expected. Here was the spread:

1. Stuffed vine leaves on a very large plate in a tower to about 15cm tall
2. A large bowl of fattoush (salad drenched in oil with croûtons from Lebanese bread)
3. A large plate/tray of cheese sambousak (pastry parcels stuffed with cheese and then deep fried) and
4. Vegetable sambousak (pastry parcels stuffed with veg and then deep fried)
5. A large plate of kobeibah (meatballs with pine nuts, deep fried)
6. A large plate of beef fillet
7. A large plate/tray of chicken cordon bleu
6. A whole stuffed duck resting on
7. A large tray of sorghum (fried)
8. A two bowls of beetroot
9. Yogurt and cucumber salad.

I hadn't seen so much food since the swanky buffet and it's pretty clear why it took two whole days to make! Hats off to Momat Noonie - everything was absolutely delicious. Having not attended a feast like that for almost two years, it had totally escaped me that taking what I wanted to eat, finishing it and putting my knife and fork together, did not convey that I had 'had sufficient' (as my Grandmother says). No sooner had the cutlery clicked than I found a large piece of duck on my plate with some chicken following in quick succession. Instead of finishing, I had pretty much indicated that I had not had enough! This plate I left pretty unfinished. Not a signal that I didn't like the food, but that I was satisfied (read here: stuffed like a Christmas turkey).

After we'd all finished (part finished) our seconds or thirds, the table still looked like it had barely been touched, and everybody waddled over to the sitting room to drink tea, hold our stomachs, joke about how full we were and glance nervously at the now foreboding profiterole tower.

Strong eaters that we were (or pretended to be in my case), it wasn't too long before the dessert hiding in the fridge made its way out. Beside the towering profiteroles and the huge cake, we also now had a ginormous (8cm tall by about 30 diametre) chocolate cheesecake covered in Oreo cookies. One bite into my sliver of Momat Noonie's cheesecake and it became apparent that the topping was, wait for it, melted snickers bars!!

And so it came to be that I was forced onto a diet of chamomile tea, yogurt and not much physical activity due to my burning belly.

The word on the street

Actually, there are two words on the Street right now.

First is that we are not going to change the clocks this year. This has yet to be proven as we normally do it three weeks to a month later than the UK, however, the theory I've heard is that it is because of Ramadan. This year Ramadan is due to fall on or around 1 September, when the weather is still pretty hot. Last year, Ramadan started a week before the clocks normally change, so they were changed early (a week or two) - hence the 'word'. We'll see.

The second word is that tomorrow there is going to be a national strike. There has been no official approval for this strike, so we'll see if people decide to stay indoors. The strike would be about (as I understand it) the rising cost of living. I'm not sure what the would-be strikers hope to achieve though, as with food, the government has been sheltering a sizable part of the population from what is happening on the global markets by way of subsidisation. With petrol, this is so for the entire population. Saying that, prices are rising far faster than salaries, and times are extremely tough for many. Again, we'll see.

~~

Our bowab (doorman) works hard for the building. He is up every morning washing the cars, he cleans the stairs, which has been no small job with the number of workmen in the building for the past 18 months and generally keeps it looking good.

He also does a lot of running around town for The Lady Downstairs (TLD) who has a business and seems incapable of going to the bank or offices on the other side of town herself. The business has employees and sizable funds, given where it advertises, for marketing. Her mode of transport is a BMW, his, because she won't give him a taxi fare (which is nothing here) is the microbus - Cairo's most dangerous and crowded form of transport. His pay for all this is minimal. On top of that, she treats him as a verbal whipping boy. Living above her, I am treated to her daily (on average) screaming fits. The bowab isn't the only recipient, however, being close at hand, he is yelled at daily for absolutely nothing.

The day before yesterday, I was waiting for the elevator and heard him downstairs ringing her doorbell. Someone came to the door (not TLD, probably her maid) and he told her he had the electricity bill. Next hurried footsteps came to the door, followed by TLD's raspy screaming, "You've got the electricity bill for me? Give it here!".

Nice, huh?

So, Mr Bowab told me last month that he would be leaving for his home in the South for a few weeks at the end of March/beginning of April because his wife is going to give birth. This would be the second time he's seen her in the past 12 months as the job of doorman does not come with holiday time.

Yesterday I realised that it was well into April and he was still here. Why? Apparently TLD won't let him go because she has too much running around town for him to do.

And she has him by the short and curlies, because everybody knows that jobs are scarce and people on his his salary have few savings. What he does have though, is a savings account of hatred towards here growing with compound interest.

Great Balls of Fire

First the stomach starts clenching. Next a rats nest of blazing fireball shoots up to my chest and sits, a burning cocktail of indignation and humiliation.

There are many things that caused this when I first moved here: taxi drivers' roaming hands as they 'opened' the passenger door for me, getting ripped off, taxi drivers taking the 'short cut' which always involved an extra 45 mins journey time (and therefore increased fare), sleazy comments made as I passed a group of men and being told something will take five minutes and then being made to wait an hour. And that is just for starters.

I have (I think) learned a great amount of patience on a number of different levels. I didn't enjoy the process much, but it's probably not a bad thing to have learned, especially as I held the double title of Miss Super Efficient and Miss Goody Two Shoes for all the years of my life pre-Egypt.

There are, however, two things that still get my goat and I cannot get over them. First up is the lack of respect for customers by supermarket staff. They have yet to realise that their behaviour towards customers impacts where the customer will shop in future. They have no qualms about pushing you aside to get past and under no circumstances if you meet where one needs to give way, like the entrance to a narrow aisle, will they give way to the customer. Ever.

The second fireball-inducing happening involves groups of pre-pubescent and teenage boys. For some reason, probably because they've seen their fathers/uncles/cousins doing it and want to be macho like them, they make sexually degrading comments (and depending on where you are, actions). Unlike the supermarket, where I show restraint, I am not usually so calm around these guys (and hey, better out than in, right?).

Today I passed six of them mincing towards me. The mutterings under their breath while simultaneously not taking their eyes off me was a pretty clear indication of what was coming. I knew they wouldn't touch me, but the stomach clenching had begun. I let the first comment directly to me go unnoticed because sometimes they just leave it at that. This guy, incidentally the smallest of the group by a good half metre, obviously had to make up for his inadequacy by a second comment.

I have a bit of a frog in my throat (not from French classes) at the moment, which makes me sound like a 40 a day 60 year old fisherman's wife, which happens to be a bit like an Egyptian Momma. "You think you're so big? Huh?! You're," (hand gesture indicating 1 cm tall), "THIS small!" I growled loudly.

Of course, they cracked up repeating it and laughing. That's normal (and hey, I have no idea how what I said actually translates socially/culturally in Arabic, it was just the first thing I could think of).

Part of the reason this enrages me so much is that, as is typical, when this incident happened, there were four fully grown men on the street, before and after the group of boys. Not one said or did anything, and they'd blatantly heard the comments.

Allied to this is the fact that it forces me to stop ignoring the fact that I am viewed by many, by virtue of my heritage and clothes (which were today, by the way, baggy, long sleeved and high necked), little more than a common hoar [ed. whore].

Not a good feeling to be left with.

The only thing I have found to make it better is to treat the next Egyptian male I meet with the respect I didn't receive from the previous. Not always easy and not always reciprocated, but it makes Miss Goody Two Shoes feel at least she has the moral high ground.

The Sound of Music

When I was 13 I went to school in Austria for two months during the Summer term. It was great. Coming from Scotland, the only thing I cared about was that I saw the sun almost every day, which essentially meant I was on holiday (despite the homework).

I was staying in a lovely old four-storey house, just down the road from the Mirabell Gardens and Palace in Salzburg. This meant nothing to me before I arrived (and not very much either when I was there as I didn't watch much TV), but it was where Maria and the children sang "Do-Re-Me" in The Sound of Music. Very picturesque and a little touristy.

I am guessing that at one time, way back when, the house I was staying in faced fields. Then, one day, probably in the seventies, along came a town planner and decided the fields would make an excellent location for a whopping great big block of flats.

The result, twenty years later, was a distinct lack of 'respectability' on the opposite side of the street. This had less to do with economics and more to do with the presence of two sex shops in the giant blocks (one which blatantly offered more than toys for sale). Now, sunshine was most definitely a great change from the grey skies of Scotland, however, living opposite two sex shops, proved fantastic entertainment for a 13 year old girl who was particularly sheltered back in her homeland.

My friends and I used to gather at my window and yell things to the men who would try to sneak into the dodgier of the two shops. Subject to particular attention were the ones who entered carrying toilet roll (no idea why and don't want to know). After yelling, or wolf-whistling, we would immediately duck down under the window, giggling, and then raise our heads slowly to catch sight of the confused patron.

And so it was this afternoon, that leaning over our balcony railing, I saw Mr S arrive home. I blew out a long wolf whistle. Unfortunately he didn't hear. The four workmen on the street apparently have better hearing and spun around, looking at each other to see where it came from.

I, worried I'd be spotted, ran inside giggling, giddy with the idea I had just stumbled upon a way of playing with the workmen who have been annoying me so much for the past 18 months.

And thinking of Austrian sex shops.

A weekend story (long, but bear with me)

Due to some work engagements of Mr S, I found myself heading to Alexandria again this weekend. I didn't mind that he had to work, I was planning to take it easy at the hotel, reading my book on the balcony and looking over the sea.

I expected there to be a problem when we got to the hotel, there have been the two previous times I've stayed there. Apparently 5-star grading doesn't take into account check-in (or check-out!) procedures. Anyway, I am not going to whine about staying in a 5 star hotel. Primarily because I think the stars are there purely as decoration, not as part of any rating. I will say, still not whining (only because I'm saving it for another post), that it is the only time in my life where I have told the manager of a place of accommodation directly to their face that I do not want to stay in their establishment. It was not a good weekend.

We took the train to Alex. It's a decent train and usually runs pretty much on time. I've done this journey plenty of times over the years and until today, had not realised that every time I have gone, I have arrived in the morning and left the same day, or another, in the late afternoon/early evening. What brought this to my attention today was watching the commuter trains arriving.

You can forget right now any polished notions you have of commuter trains. These trains had not seen a lick or a spit probably since they were purchased in the seventies. A lot of the commuters themselves were not on the way to the office in freshly pressed suits, but were traveling in from outlying farming communities to sell their wares at the market.

I did not take any pictures of what I am about to describe, because I was so shocked and so sad at the suffering that I did not want to capture a moment of it on digital celluloid. A picture may say a thousand words, but in this instance, your imagination and compassion are required and words are infinitely better at conjuring them up (I hope I can do justice - and I am not going to weave a tale of whispering hubbly bubbly smoke and minarets in some far gone exotic land, that can be saved for the movies and writers wanting to make a quick buck off a Western myth).

Also, before I continue, I would like to clarify that although I now live in one of Cairo's most exclusive neighbourhoods (so exclusive that I barely consider it part of Cairo), I have not always and I have worked for organisations actively working to improve life for some of the the most unfortunate in this country, so I have a fairly good idea of how life here is for many.

So, back to the platform. It was 7.45am and our train was due at 8am. The platform for the Cairo train is an island between four sets of tracks. We were standing on the platform as it filled up with other Cairo-bound travelers. Hawkers were working their patch selling newspapers and magazines, there were a couple of elderly female beggars moving from passenger to passenger looking for a small act of kindness that would secure their food that day. There was nothing unusual.

A train appeared down the tracks and Mr S commented that he had never seen third class carriages in Egypt. I assured him there were many, particularly on the type of train that was approaching. The engine passed and the first carriage was passing. Inside it was jam packed to the extent that people were hanging out the doors that were by now open. Movement inside the carriage of people wanting to alight made those at the doorways literally 'pop' off the train and onto the tracks below. They would then make their way over, in no particular hurry, to our platform.

Once the train jerked to a halt, the work really began. A boy about eight years old jumped off, on to the Cairo bound tracks and took a 1 metre diametre aluminium pot piled full with vegetables across the tracks to our platform. Then he went back and got another. His portly mother, in her long galabeya, sat down on the floor of the carriage and jumped out onto the Cairo tracks and took a sack of potatoes, easily 10kg and heaved it across to our platform. The little boy clambered back on the now moving train while she stood on the Cairo bound tracks waving him off. She then made her way up onto our platform and proceeded to drag her goods pot by pot across the platform to the other side. Once gathered there, she made her way down onto the tracks coming from Cairo, and heaved one of her pots over to the next platform, then made her way over to the tracks coming from Cairo. Just in time, because another train arrived. Doors open on both sides again, this woman then lifted her two pots and sack of potatoes onto the train, clambered aboard and slid in the single pot from the adjacent platform, just before the train left.

This story was repeated many times over, with her train and subsequent ones.

The train following hers, however, was (somewhat impossibly) even fuller. As the engine rolled past along with it came two young men, straddling the train buffers, holding on to the train with flat palms against steel of the engine and the front carriage.

Sure enough, at 7.55am they, as with many others, jumped off the train, onto the Cairo tracks and made their way, without much haste onto our platform. More women with lead heavy sacks and pots made their way across the tracks, either unaware that a train was due at 8am, or not caring much that it was.

The whole scene, in contrast to us holding our first class tickets and waiting for our plush seats in our air conditioned carriage was, and still is, extremely difficult to stomach. Of course I knew that the trains were crowded, extremely crowded and I've been squashed up against voluptuous female bodies on the Cairo metro at rush hour, and I've heard of people traveling on the roof on Delta trains. Mostly, however, I have not seen it and I was led to believe by the people describing it to me, that it was teenage boys who wanted to be dare devils. Perhaps so in some cases, but this was something quite different.

In all honesty, worse that watching it, was knowing that there is nothing I could do to help. I mean, yes, I could have tried to help the women carry the potatoes etc, but in reality, I would have been a hindrance more than a help.

So this is life in Egypt. You can live in a cocoon and never see anything like this and complain about how tough life is, or you can get out and about and see things what life can be like. The thing is, a poor reflection on me perhaps, it doesn't stop the grumbling for as long as perhaps it should.