December 20, 2006 by dafyd
After a sum total of four days in England, I’m back off to Heathrow (undoubtedly my favourite place in the whole wide world – for reasons, see Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently novels) to fly out to NYC tomorrow. Yay!
As I probably won’t get a chance to update this while I’m away (although I will try)… Happy Christmas!
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December 15, 2006 by dafyd
In Smouha, on the road from Alex to the Green Plaza mall, next to Barclays Bank, is a building calling itself the Laser Vision Center.
I don’t know what it does, but I would love laser vision.
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December 14, 2006 by dafyd
The water in Egypt is, contrary to warnings, safe to drink. Generally. Over the last few years the Egyptian government, using lots and lots of money from USAID, has pumped the cities’ water supplies full of chemicals, getting rid of most of the really horrible stuff.
So the water is safe. But the chemicals give the water a taste that could politely be described as, umm, disgusting. So most Egyptians tend to drink bottled water. You can buy water practically everywhere – every street has at least one shop selling it. A 1.5-litre bottle tends to cost between LE 1.50 and LE 2 – or about 15 to 20 pence.
There is quite a range of brands, including offerings from the usual suspects: Coke has its Dasani brand (the one withdrawn from sale in the UK), Pepsi has AquaFina, and Nestle has PureLife. Local brands include Baraka, Siwa, and Aqua, of which Baraka is the best known – its quality is “controlled by Vittel” and it recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. All the water is, basically, exactly the same. Some are “sourced from a deep well”, some are treated tap water.
The thing that surprises me is that none of the companies sell a more expensive version of the same water. Coke should sell their Dasanti at 5 LE a bottle, say, to appeal to tourists, expats and the rich Egyptians who buy the most expensive product whenever they can. Sure, they wouldn’t sell as much, but at practically 100% profit, who cares?
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December 13, 2006 by dafyd
I’ve just spotted the whole Concert for Diana thingy happening next summer (Al-Jazeera isn’t exactly up to the minute on that sort of news) and looking at the list of performers, just one thing strikes me…
Why no Cliff?
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December 13, 2006 by dafyd
The single thing I’m getting most confused by here (now that I’m used to cars travelling on the wrong side of the road), is the number 75.
75 in Arabic is written ٧٥. I’m used to Arabic numbers, and usually don’t have much problem coping with them in my head. But 75, or ٧٥, really throws me. I keep reading it as 50. I think it’s because I’m used to working with Roman numerals, where, of course, V is 5. And in the Western number system, 0 is zero. So I read it as the Roman 5 followed by the Western zero – 50.
Fifty, for the record, is written ٥٠.
It can be embarrassing when I’m absolutely convinced that I’ve given someone the right amount of money, but he wants 25 piastres more…
If this doesn’t display properly in your browser, sorry about that… you may need an Arabic font installed
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December 10, 2006 by dafyd
For anyone who cares (and if you don’t, why don’t you?), the thrilling second round of Durham’s University Challenge 2006 adventure will be on BBC2 at 8.30pm on Monday 29th January, a whole six months after we filmed it. I’ll be watching, ‘cos I can’t remember who won.
This date is, of course, subject to the BBC not changing its mind again.
Fear not, for I shall remind you again nearer the date. Probably in every conversation.
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December 10, 2006 by dafyd
In 6 days I’ll be home in Nottingham. Woo!
I have quite a bit to write about here, most of which I have, in fact, written… but it’s all on my laptop, which I can’t connect to the internets. Typical – should have thought of that first, really. Anyhoo, I’ll do my best to get it all online soon.
Over the next week I have exams to prove that I’ve actually learnt something – but as they count for absolutely nothing at Durham, I’m not too worried. Thursday, I think, there’s a party at the centre – we’ve already had a few “unofficial” end-of-term parties elsewhere.
Then Saturday morning, bright and early, is the flight home. It looks like there’s a few of us from the course on the same flight, which should be good. Battling Heathrow will be fun…
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December 6, 2006 by dafyd
Just a couple of things that happened this week that made me laugh…
Our translation teacher, Dr Ahmed Showki (an absolute legend – he has a street named after him in Alexandria… well, either that or he’s named after the street. I prefer to think it’s the former.) told us to “stop polluting my English with your made-up words”. He realised (well before some of the English students in the group… but they’re from Manchester, so it’s understandable) that there is no such word as “dividitude”, “hugeosity” or “congestionisation”. He’s convinced, though, that “oftenly” is a word and that we really do still use “forsooth” in everyday speech.
Meanwhile, in our Aamiya (Egyptian colloquial Arabic) class, the Arabic word “sheek” came up – it means, surprisingly enough, “chic”. One of the Manchester students who had been daydreaming / asleep / dead asked what it meant, and the teacher replied, naturally enough, that it’s the same in English. At lunchtime, walking down the street outside the university, we spotted said student trying to buy a chicken kebab thingy… and the kebabist (for that is what they are called) trying to understand what he meant by “kebab a la mode”… Oh, the laughs.
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December 6, 2006 by dafyd
Yay! Thunder, lightning, horizontal rain, crashing waves, crazy crazy taxi drivers… Alexandria had it all last night.
And power cuts, too, which were a bit of a pain, but still… storm!
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December 3, 2006 by dafyd
… coming soon.
Tomorrow, probably.
An Egyptian Tomorrow, that is.
Which means sometime before Christmas.
Insh’allah.
Sorry, did I say Christmas? I meant Easter.
Easter 2009.
bukra, f’il mishmish, as these Arab chappies say. Tomorrow, in the apricot season.
Category 1 | Tags: egypt,rant,yearabroad | Comments Off