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| Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002 It took me 2 hours to pack for 10 days of holidays. Is that good or bad? High frustration levels and I still ended up with 2 suitcases. Little ones, but still…..Will I ever manage to only travel with one piece of luggage (we are not talking jumbo size here)? Probably not. But at least I started packing straight after coming home and not at 1 o'clock in the morning.... *patting my back* Now I’ll throw everything left in the fridge into a deep pan and create some sort of stir fry…..Perhaps I can manage to catch 2 or 3 hours of sleep after that….. Signing off for now…..Happy Christmas….Whatever…. Monday, Dec. 16, 2002 My cleaning lady is really nice. She does a very good job, is thourough, a pleasant woman. I don’t mind that she does not speak any English, we still get along fine. I think she uses my shower, which I don’t mind either – it’s always nice and clean and she very likely hasn’t got one at home. But what really makes me go TOTALLY FRIGGING BONKERS is her habit of re-arranging my things. AARRGHHH! I get home and the dining room carpet is in the living room. Or the sofa moved from this side to that side or all my kitchen shit (thank you, Stephen King) is in a different drawer and I spend 10 minutes frantically searching for a frigging spoon……HURGH! You might think this is funny, but for a control freak like me this is agony. It brings my blood pressure up to a hundred in a millisecond. Remember, I am Monica’s evil twin…..(I like Friends….). Ok, I am calmer now, I will go back into my kitchen and try to locate the new hiding place for my bottle opener, hmpf! 2 days to go…. Apparently it is really cold in Germany. Gosh, that makes it so inviting…. I just discussed dinner for Thursday night with my mum. We settled on Szegediner Goulash….with mashed potatoes…..Heaven! Sunday, Dec. 15, 2002 I put up an English notice next to one of our machines today and one of the girls said to one of the others something down the lines of ‘no good to me, it’s in English…’, so I turned around, smiled and said in Arabic ‘It’ll be here in Arabic tomorrow’ and she went beetroot in a flash…. It was really funny. The girls I mostly work with have caught on by now to the fact that I understand enough to get the gist of what they talk about, but not all of the others. So I often end up in these funny conversations, where some girl makes some pretty frank remark and then gets some urgent ‘hey, she understands you!!!!!’. Perhaps I should just pretend to not have a clue and become a full time informer….but I could never keep a straight face…. Went to the Women’s Guild Christmas market in Maadi. They held it at the American school down there and the security was just over the top. Ok, the USA are not exactly the flavour of the month down here, but this is just a bit paranoid. Well, perhaps not. But it is going to be really interesting once things heat up in Iraq. As I was in Maadi already, I took advantage of the amenities… First Ann wanted to go to this bakery….I bought some really nice wholemeal bread and fresh cinnamon bagels, yum! And the crowning event of the afternoon was a visit to the German butcher. I bought saussages (pork), liver pate (pork), some more saussages (pork), a roast (pork)…..Notice a trend? Had a tough time explaining to Ann what ‘Mettwurst’ is…..other languages are just so challenged in that department. Eskimos have a hundred words for snow, but , hey, bread and saussages…..German…..wehee….Anyway, that Mettwurst did not survive my return home to Heliopolis for long….And the best thing – they deliver! I’m officially sorted. 3 days to go and I will be off home…. Friday, Dec. 13, 2002 6 days until I fly home….can’t wait…..had to work today….tired…..annoyed at not having had a weekend…. You realise that you’re getting old…. ….when they show the top ten of 1984 and you can sing along to every single song…. ….or how about the video top ten for “Bad Hair”….again I could sing along to all songs….. Isn’t that truly depressing….. Monday, Dec. 02, 2002 Yesterday in the office…..Liz puts the stapler back into one of my desk drawers, about 5cms off the spot where I usually put it. So, without a second thought, I open the drawer and put the stapler into exactly the right spot. Liz just looks at me and grins and says “You are a sad person!” I can’t help it, I am a control freak. What’s the name of the character that Courtney Cox plays in “Friends”? That’s me. I am running an experiment – the bottle of olive oil in my kitchen cupboard is not standing with the label facing forward, but to the side….I can do it. It won’t be pretty, but I can live through this….. |
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| Ever wondered if I am the only non-Egyptian person living here that thinks this country is strange? Go and have a look at Walters' World, that's the site of my colleague Steve - he actually left Egypt now, but hey....it's worth a look, although he is actually funnier live! |
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