| Friday, Feb. 28, 2003 No, really, I like going to work 6 days a week, with so little holidays, it’s not even worth mentioning. Oh, not to forget – thanks for living in the Middle East and working for Israelis. What a great combination at the moment. First time I’m glad that I apparently look very German to the folks around here. Smaller chance of getting whacked over the head with something. How do Germans look? What is it, the glasses? Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2003 Today was the first day of the audit – our side, tomorrow the other department will receive the second degree….. It went ok, 2 areas were not too hot, but because it was the first time we ever got audited by them, he was a little more lenient. We can present the problematic areas again to him tomorrow and then, if they have improved, he will certify us. Other areas (mine!!) went very well. Hehe….. Can’t wait to see his report. The other day, in preparation for the audit, we had a fire drill. I supervised the cutting room on the ground floor. I basically had to make sure that everybody had left and nobody was hiding in the toilets etc. Yes, really. No problem, they all cleared out pretty quick. But imagine 600 girls filtering down from the 2 upper floors, all giggling and excited…. I decided to stay put and, yes really, I had to defend my post against girls trying to run into the cutting room to hide in the toilets….. Friday, Feb. 21, 2003 Luxor is on the East Bank of the Nile. After our first night on board of the boat we hopped on a bus and drove over to the West Bank. Valley of the Queens, Temple of Hatshepsut, Valley of the Kings…. Approaching our first stop, we saw 2 hot-air ballons over the Valley of the Queens. That must be pretty spectacular! Apparently Kent Weeks was the first one to use ballons to take aerial photos of the West Bank, researching for his Theban Mapping Project. Good one, Prof. Weeks! Anyway, Valley of the Queens – the tomb I really wanted to see, Nefertiti, is still not open to the public. Next time, hopefully. Instead we saw a tomb of some prince or princess. Did not leave much of an impression, as I already can’t recall a thing about it….. A nice, gentle start, I guess. Valley of the Kings – now we are talking. You drive up to a parking lot and mass tourism rises its ugly head. Shops, shops, shops….. Nothing to see at that point besides high rock walls, shops, buses and lots of pale tourists. Around the next little bend is a restaurant and little trains a la Disney Land to take you up to the entry of the valley. You can walk, it’s not far to the next highlight – the ticket booth. Having mastered that hurdle, you’re finally there. Don’t forget to pay the extra 40 LE to see Tut’s tomb…. Not that we bothered. The goods are all in the museum in Cairo and you can not actually see his mummy, it’s inside of a sarkophagus. We had a ticket for three tombs, you can pick-and-mix… We saw the tombs of Ramses IV and IX and of Merenptah. I hadn’t expected much and so was really surprised to see the colourful murals in those tombs. Everywhere and lots of them. Really good. Did not spot the aliens or the four-legged woman though….. Again the tomb I really wanted to see, KV5, is obviously not open for the public yet. I had a peek – Egyptians in a bucket-line hauling rocks out of the tomb entrance, someone sorting bits and pieces on a table in front of the tomb entrance, a Western woman with a big white hat, sunglasses, carrying paper that looked like sketches. Kent Week’s wife? Didn’t find out, but was pleased nonetheless for getting a look. Thursday, Feb. 20, 2003 Frantic week. Several late nights at the office and early nights in bed. I have no life…..and I will work tomorrow from 9 to 12 to boot….. Keep in mind, Friday is my only day off….or not…..Our boss agreed for us to have Saturday off, but we are way too busy with the preparations for next week’s audit. So we are aiming for a 2-day weekend next week. One good thing about being single, my potted plant does not complain about the hours I keep. As a small compensation we are going to the Club for breakfast afterwards. Looking forward to an extremly unhealthy fry-up….yum…. Sunday, Feb. 16, 2003 Dirk left today, going back to Frankfurt and looking forward to the weather in Germany….Truth be told, it was not exactly boiling here either. But we still managed to catch a little sunburn, first on the boat, during the cruise, and then at the pyramids. All in all it was quite nice. I finally ended up riding a camel. More comfortable than I thought and really high up! Those things are huge, even more so when you are sitting on them! Had a little trot around Chephren’s pyramid. Even have some photos to prove it….well, as soon as Dirk e-mails them to me. Went to the Citadel – great view over Cairo, went to Khan El Khalili and had tea at Fishawis, had tea at the Mina House Hotel, walked a lot all over Cairo, went to the museum, had plenty of milk shakes at the coffee shop around the corner. A couple of nice days. Such a shame I have to go back to work, I could keep living a life of leisure for a while without getting bored….. The cruise was really nice, too. Although, on the flight out, we were massively delayed. Our flight was scheduled for 7.45 am, we eventually left at 2 pm. Supposedly due to a sandstorm over Luxor. But it turned out that Egypt Air just could not deal with the amount of people wanting to travel down there. They just did not have the planes available, so 2 flights got stuck. D-oh! They should be able to figure out that all those people buying the tickets will most likely also show up at the airport. As a result our tours for the first two days had to be rescheduled, packed in a lot tighter and shortened. We only had one hour to see Karnak, which is nowhere near enough to do the site any justice. Still, I finally saw the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak with my own two eyes and it was great. Every bit as awe-inspiring as I had imagined it. Luxor temple was very good as well. By the time we arrived there it was dark and we saw it bathed by spotlights, which made it look very mysterious. I loved the mosque built on top of the temple. More about the cruise later….Bear with me, I will eventually set up a page with all the photos I took..... Thursday, Feb. 13, 2003 Ok, so I am back from the Nile cruise since Tuesday night, but my friend Dirk is still here and we are out all the time, no time to write….. will get there eventually and give my impressions on ther cruise… Saturday, Feb. 01, 2003 Why Women Get Cranky We start to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find anything that comes in contact with those tender, blooming buds hurts so bad it brings us to tears. Enter the almighty, uncomfortable training bra contraption the boys in school will snap until we have calluses on our backs. Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we now bloat, we cramp, we get the hormone crankies, have to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had. Our next little rite of passage (premarital or not) is having sex for the first time, which is about as much fun as having a ramrod push your uterus through your nostrils (IF he did it right and didn't end up with his little cart before his horse), leaving us to wonder what all the fuss was about. Then it's off to Motherhood where we learn to live on dry crackers and water for a few months so we don't spend the entire! day leaning over Brother John. Of course, amazing creatures that we are (and we are), we learn to live with the growing little angels inside us steadily kicking our innards night and day, making us wonder if we're having Rosemary's Baby. Our once flat bellies now look like we swallowed a watermelon whole and we pee our pants every time we sneeze. (The latter condition never goes away, either...lots of times, neither does the former.) When the big moment arrives, the dam in our blessed Nether Regions will invariably burst right in the middle of the mall and we'll waddle with our big cartoon feet, moaning in pain all the way to the ER. Then it's huff and puff and beg to die while the OB says, "Please stop screaming, Mrs. Hearmeroar. Calm down and push. Just one (or 10) good push," warranting a strong, well-deserved impulse to punch the bastard (and hubby) square in the nose for making us cram a wiggling, mushroom-headed 10 lb. bowling ball through a keyhole. After that, it's time to raise those angels, only to find that when all that "cute" wears off, the beautiful little darlings morph into walking, jabbering, wet, gooey, snot-blowing, life-sucking little poop machines. The teen years. Need I say more? The kids are almost grown now and we women hit our voracious sexual prime in our mid-30's to early 40's while hubby had his somewhere around his 18th birthday (which just happens to be the reason all that early, hot, man sex got you pregnant in the first place). Now we hit the grand finale: Menopause. The Grandmother of all womanhood. It's either take the HRT and chance cancer in those now seasoned "buds" or the aforementioned Nether Regions, or sweat like a hog in July, wash your sheets and pillowcases daily and bite the head off of anything that moves. Now, you ask WHY women seem to be more spiteful than men when men get off so easy INCLUDING the icing on life's cake: Being able to pee in the woods without soaking their socks... Now, I love being a woman but "Womanhood" would make the Great Ghandi a tad crabby. Women are the weaker sex? Yeah, right. Bite me. |
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