Weblog

Thursday, Feb. 21, 2002

Ok, almost there. That's the hotel we will be staying in: Royal Rojana Resort.
Everybody buggered off into the holiday at 2pm today, I hung on about another hour and then also left. This morning driving though Alex was like passing through a ghost town! Hadn’t realized how many people were also going to take today off.

Not the best time to take the train in Egypt:
http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/9810/20/egypt.crash.01/
And another one:
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/africa/02/21/egypt.train/index.html

That is so terrible – all those poor people that wanted to go home for the feast and have a great time with their relatives….And there you are all of a sudden, confronted with the task of identifying a loved one and you’re facing these totally burnt bodies. So terrible.

Will update again when I'm back, in March, bye!

Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2002

2 more days, 2 more days, 2 more days, 2 more days, 2 more days……..
My mood is picking up with the approaching holiday. Just been out with the crowd for a beer and a cheeseburger. Was beaten disastrously at pool – I’m crap, lack of practice….

Monday, Feb. 18, 2002

Ok, I feel better today. Blue sky, the sun was shining when I came outside in the morning AND I got my ticket confirmed! HALLELUHJAH!!! Did I mention that I’m flying Business class, so I have to sit next to as few Egyptians as possible? I am sure there are plenty of nice Egyptians around that behave like normal people from the 20th century – I just haven’t met any so far.

Disclaimer: We apologise for any remarks lacking tolerance towards Egyptians or showing racist tendencies, the author feels extremly stressed.

Sunday, Feb. 17, 2002

Still in a piss-pot mood. Still on the waiting list. I need some food....

Saturday, Feb. 16, 2002

I’m in a bad mood. I’m on the waiting list for the flight to Sharm. And I had a walk – sometimes I get these stupid ideas – and had the full bandwidth of demented Egyptian idiots hissing at me, throwing kisses, shouting at me, squeaking at me, asking “Where are you from”, “How do you do”, blabla and a million “Hellos”. Which is quite charming the first 3 times, but then quickly looses its appeal. I remember now, why I normally travel by cab.
I hope I won’t end up going to Cairo to get a flight to Sharm. Or, even worse, go by Superjet again. Case of very bad planning. Who do I need to bribe? Might as well take advantage of the local customs….

Friday, Feb. 15, 2002

Christ, this is difficult! We are finally getting somewhere – back to Sharm el Sheikh. After swapping endless e-mails with Dirk, I finally called him this morning. We spoke a couple more times since and it looks as if it is finally sorted. The core of the problem – I thought the easiest would be if he booked the rooms together with his flight. Well, apparently not. German travel agents seem to operate on the assumption that you book packages. You can not possibly book a flight for 1 person and then want 2 single rooms or a double/twin – after all, you’re just one person! Man! How about individual travelers? Anyway, after a lot of huha (is that how you spell it???) one of those travel offices managed to unearth a deal including a double room that could actually be used by two people. Stupid or what?

Thursday, Feb. 14, 2002

Valentine’s day is highly overrated. It was invented by the flower industry. That’s all I’m saying.

Weekend. Yes! One of those days today. Got pretty intense at work in the afternoon. I am going to eat something now and then dig into my current book. Desperate for some R&R.
Last night I went to some book sale at the French school. 95% Arabic stuff and I felt as if I was one of the main attractions. That’s what always makes me so glad to live here – people look at me, as if I had stripes. Buggered off after 20 minutes, took a cab, went home and watched a double feature of Stargate. Felt less alien after that….

Monday, Feb. 11, 2002

Last night met Rick, Steve and Sadie at the Mercure Hotel. They had Chinese, I ate Thai – very nice! Brought a take-away-menu home, I love Thai food!

Eventually went to the wedding, a little too late, at 10pm. The usual Egyptian affair. Bride and bridegroom sitting on a white-clad pedestal, on show, the video camera never very far. We waved at Sahar, who actually looked really nice. Too much make-up, but that’s compulsory. Wedding dress with short arms – the first time ever that we saw her arms! And the first time ever we saw her hair, which was done up really nice. She even had a distinct waistline, also a first!

Then we joined the others from work, who all sat at one big table. Hellos all around. Then plenty of Egyptian music, everybody dancing, clapping, wailing, the bride did a little belly dancing routine – not an easy task in such a massive wedding dress – and so on and so on…….

After an hour we figured it was ok to leave again. So we said goodbye to Sahar, shot some photos with her and us together and wandered off. At which point she clearly showed quite a bit of anxiety. She actually looked as if she wanted to do a runner and come with us. Just imagine the situation!

Otherwise just very tired, will have an early night, 11 more days to my week off…

Saturday, Feb. 09, 2002

Hallo, ihr Lieben,

[...]

Sehr wahrscheinlich am 22. Februar geht's dann fuer eine Woche nach Sharm-el-Sheik. Ich warte nur noch darauf, das Dirk seinen Flug bestaetigt. Wir haben uns schlussendlich doch gegen Hurghada entschieden, weil es in den Reisenfuehrern doch nicht so nett klingt und die Riffe wohl auch schon ziemlich uebertaucht und beschaedigt sind. In Sharm kann man auch mehr anfangen, zum Beispiel eine Ausflug zum Berg Sinai (Charlton Heston, 10 Gebote...), inklusive Besichtigung des brennenden Busches...nicht mehr brennend... Soll aber sehr schoen sein (der Berg, nicht der Busch...). Ziemlich hoch, tolle Aussicht, mit einem schoenen alten Kloster. Alle, die ich kenne und die da waren, fanden es toll.

Falls wir besonders viel Elan haben, koennten wir sogar nach Petra fahren, das sind allerdings noch mal ein paar Stunden mit dem Auto und dann mit der Faehre rueber nach Jordanien. Klingt mir im Moment zu stressig, obwohl ich da wirklich gerne hin wuerde. Ich habe es Dirk ueberlassen, das Hotel zu buchen, weil er gerne was Pauschales machen wollte. Die Idee war aber ein 4- oder 5-Sterne-Hotel und ein bischen Luxus, definitiv europaeischer/amerikanischer Standard = Swimming Pool + anstaendiges Fruehstueck usw.

Am Donnerstag Abend war ich beim Bingo in der amerikanischen Schule. Habe eine Topfpflanze gewonnen. Ganz toll, verglichen mit den Hauptpreisen - Kreuzfahrt auf dem Nasser-See, Wochenende in Luxor, noch ein Wochenende in einem Hotel mit Golf spielen und - der Oberhammer - Lufthansatickets zum halben Preis an eine Ort der Wahl. Da war die Stimmung natuerlich am Kochen. Mir haben am Ende noch 2 Nummern gefehlt. Mist! Ich weiss auch schon, was ich gemacht haette = 1 bis 2 Monate unbezahlten Urlaub in Australien. Ich weiss bloss nicht, wen ich mitgenommen haette. Ich haette mir ein kleines Wohnmobil gemietet und waere einmal von Cairns, ueber Brisbane, Sidney, Melbourne und Adelaide nach Perth gefahren, mit Tauchstops am Great Barrier Reef. Und im Maerz kommen die Walhaie zur australischen Westkueste... Das waers gewesen! Ich glaube, das mache ich jetzt ueberhaupt zur neuen Nummer eins auf meiner Wunschliste.

Ich hatte ja im Lufthansa Buero in Mannheim noch ein paar Kataloge mit genommen. Die hatten auch was fuer Australien, muss ich direkt nochmal nachsehen... Aber es gab zum Beispiel auch 2 Wochen Seychellen, klang toll! Nur hatte ich dummerweise die Preise fuer DM gehalten. Pech gehabt, ist in Euro! 4000 Euro fuer 2 Wochen Urlaub sind doch etwas viel, oder? Das war allerdings inklusive Flug, Transfers, 5-Sterne-Hotels, Ausfluege usw. Trotzdem, ziemlich viel! Alternativ koennte ich kleinere Broetchen backen und mit Andrew nach Kreta fahren. Aber das toernt mich irgendwie auch nicht so recht an. Aber auf Urlaub alleine habe ich auch keinen Bock.

Friday, Feb. 08, 2002

Bingo night – first of all I was friggin late leaving the factory. I did not even try at Les’ place. I sent a mail to Karin, asking here to wait for me, as I didn’t know where the school was. I came home, Karin and John had already left. Brilliant. So I asked my driver to get me there. He didn’t know where Shutz’ American school was either. Or did not understand me, whatever. He drove around the area once and then dropped at a major junction, next to the tram line, not willing to have another go. Prick. So I wandered off into Shutz – the whole area is called after the school. Typical. Ridiculous! Anyway, there I was, walking along the tram line, swearing under my breath and looking like a nutcase, having a conversation with myself. Finally I asked some guy for directions – he was young and looked fairly fashionable. He spoke English and was from Cairo – thanks for small graces! He even knew where the damn place is and walked along with me. So we had a chat on the way and subsequently had to swap phone numbers. His wandered into the bin when I got home last night. I pondered giving him a wrong number, but then didn’t. I hope he’s not going to call. Anyway, finally got there – everybody was having a conference on “Where’s Cathy, how’s she gonna get here? Is she lost forever?”. Ok, we got Bingo cards, shuffled in, got a table and started the fun and games. It actually was fun! For the first two hours at last. And they gave away some great prices. John won a golf-weekend for 4 at a Marriott somewhere and gave it away to Les, who was drooling allover the table. I won a pot plant…… Typical. The two biggest prices were a cruise on Lake Nasser and ½ price tickets from Lufthansa to anywhere in the world! Man, and we did not win that, no trip to Australia this year. That would have been so cool. The plant, by the way, I didn’t win through Bingo, but with some Raffles tickets. They also gave away vouchers from my company for t-shirts. Wouldn’t it have been a hoot, if I had won a voucher from my own company?

Monday, Feb. 04, 2002

Funnily enough I am not that busy at work right now, which sucks. Too much work is no good, not enough work is no better. Frustrating. On top of that the usual stuff that goes wrong, customers that try very hard to be difficult, the usual amount of colleagues that don’t give a flying f*** about work….The short and the long of it, I am frustrated. I want to have a more rewarding job, this can’t be it. If I could just come up with a bright idea, what to do instead. I need to marry a millionaire or something down those lines.

Instead I go home, cook, eat, watch the telly, go to bed, sleep, get up, go to work, get annoyed, go home, cook……. It’s time for that holiday.

Talking of which, I had this dream last night – I went for a night dive and got attacked by a shark. I got out of it in one piece, the shark bit into my bottle, I slipped out of the BCD and swam off….Let’s hope it’s not an omen. I can live without having dived with sharks, thank you very much! I was not a happy bunny, when I woke up from that dream, I can tell you…

Sunday, Feb. 03, 2002

Well, Dirk is finally and definitely coming down here for the EID. I read up again on Hurghada and it sounds crap. Lots of ugly hotels, nothing to do and the coral reefs are in bad shape, too. So we are now discussing to go to Sharm after all. I still want to go to St. Katherine’s on Mount Sinai. And there’s plenty other things to be done, camel trips to the Coloured Canyon and so on. Diving at Ras Mohamed is supposed the best in the Red Sea and if we feel particularly adventurous and don’t mind a 6 hours car drive and then some, we could go to Jordan to see Petra (well, probably too ambitious). Anyway, shouldn’t be too full, as lots of tourists are staying away, afraid to get blown to smithereens or whatever….. Uhhhh, I’m starting to get excited now!

Saturday, Feb. 02, 2002

Had a Chinese take-away with John last night and then we watched this dreadful video. Some US TV production of the Odyssey with Armand Assante. It was pretty bad, John kept nodding off. And the damn thing was almost 3 hours long! Ordering the food by phone was another one of those comic moments. While John was placing the order, I was rolling around on the sofa, laughing my ass off. I guess, if we just made an effort to learn Arabic, we would not have these problems. But hey, I moan enough about being here and how crap it is, I can’t be bothered to learn the language on top of it. My capacity for suffering is only so big.

Friday, Feb. 01, 2002

Friday….. Mmh! Time off, that’s sooo nice. Nobody bothering me, can do what I want… My mum called last night, chatted for 20 minutes. Watched some telly, that was pretty much it. Oh, yes, there was a wedding party outside. Lots of drumming, singing, women wailing – I felt like Lawrence of Arabia. Mercifully they were done by about 1am, around the same time the tram stopped and the garbage van buggered off. Blessed silence, so I went to sleep. Got up at 11am, checked my e-mails, called the Netherlands to talk to one of our customers about a production problem. Couldn’t get hold of them yesterday, so I’m making international phone calls at my own cost on my day off. All for and above the call of duty…. Then needed to call the factory, but by then Friday prayers had started, so I fixed some breakfast (French toast, English breakfast tea) and gave it a shot an hour later. Just surfing around now, waiting for some download to finish…