CORRECTION: Author’s Note

In the category of keeping my marriage happy, I have agreed to insert a correction to the “Malls, glorious, maaaalls…” posting. Apparently I mis-represented Ron’s offering of water to the taxi driver. He wants it to be known that he was not offering him a half-empty bottle of backwash, as I apparently implied. Ron said that we had a completely full, unopened bottle that he was offering. So I apologize for any misrepresentations my mistake may have created (and I honestly thought we only had a half-bottle left).

I tried to explain the theory of poetic license to Ron, and said that inadvertently tweaking the tale of the offered backwash because he was so worried that the driver was falling asleep, added not only comedic value but also stressed the sense of urgency at hand. Ron disagreed and said he had not signed anything that permitted me such liberties (though one could argue that it falls under the umbrella liberties of the marriage license). Luckily, though, Ron’s antics rarely require any poetic license enhancing so future tales will not be irreparably harmed.

However, in a PURELY FICTIONAL yet-to-be-written hardback best-seller about newlyweds in Cairo, you may read of a situation in which the husband, not named Ron, offers not only a half-empty bottle of warm backwash to a sleepy taxi driver, but then jumps into rousing choruses of “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” all the way to Tahrir Square. Please note that these stories will be a work of fiction, created entirely from creative brain cells, not memory ones, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons or husbands, living or dead, will be completely and utterly coincidental.

Glory, glory, Under Armour

While I have yet to discern the secret behind why Egyptians don’t perspire, I have been able to find a solution to my own outpourings, and it comes by the name of Under Armour. Essentially they make athletic clothing, hence my being unawares of their existence. A friend here told me of their “HeatGear” clothing line which “wicks” away moisture (i.e., prevents sweat stains). Dubiously I purchased a t-shirt from their outlet section and I am delighted to announce that after a two-hour excursion wandering around Maadi, temperatures reaching 101 degrees – performing various errands such as “Buy red pen,” “Visit iron welder furniture maker,” “Look for small trash can with lid for ‘compost’ trash” – I arrived home with not a drop showing on my new magical shirt. Now, my hairline was soaked and my forearms looked like they’d been dunked, but I could not have been happier with my new miracle shirt. I promptly jumped online and bought three more (from the outlet section, of course).

While I’m sharing my new-product joys, I would also like to tell of two other products that I’ve found very useful in high-heat and astronomical-temperature situations. Coppertone sunscreen makes UltraGuard: Continuous Spray. It’s great because it’s 50 SPF, it’s applied via an aerosol, so there’s no goopy lotion, it’s waterproof, kid-friendly (so I’ve been told), offers broad spectrum (UVB and UVA) protection, and it doesn’t make you all oily. (I found that a similar product from a company named after a yellow fruit monkeys love, cannot assert the same non-oily claim.)

Neutrogena’s Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock, SPF 70, is great for faces. It’s also non-oily and essentially feels like a face cream. Now, I am receiving no endorsements from any of these companies, but felt I’d like to pass along my positive experiences with their products (and if anyone has connections that could lead to possible endorsements, please feel free to pass along my contact info).

Dip-Wife Doings

So I was able to get all the electrical issues from a few weeks ago finally remedied. By 3 o’clock on the day they were scheduled to come at 11am, I finally left the house in a huff and just wandered Maadi for a few hours to cool off (figuratively, of course). Ron dropped an email to the head of facilities regarding the no-show and we got immediate response. The Director promised to get someone there the next day and even called me to verify that I knew they were coming. So the next day I had two electricians, the maintenance supervisor for the compound and even the Director of facilities show up. They were here for several hours, and managed to connect the ground wires in the kitchen (which merely meant to me that the little do-hicky tester thing Ron showed me, indicated everything was connected correctly), and they fixed Ron’s bathroom zap-switch. So no more exclamations after his showers.

I’ve been having some “fun” tracking down whom I need to speak with regarding painting our new apartment, finding out what paints I can use, and learning what furniture is available for us to possibly swap out once we do move. I was delighted to learn that I was completely wrong in assuming I would have the option to pick from a mere handful of paint colors. I was able to borrow the paint sample book, which encompassed pretty much all the colors available in any hardware store back home.

Then I had to find out whom I could speak with to see the apartment before we move in. After a string of emails, phone calls, and referrals, I got through to Madgi who is the Maintenance Supervisor for our new building (good person to keep on speed dial, I figure). I arranged for us to come see the place last week. My intentions were to take some pictures, see the colors of the floors and counters so I could better pick matching or non-clashing wall colors, and take some measurements as I’m planning on having some furniture and stuff made (poor Ron has no idea of the breadth and depth of my plannings).

So last Wednesday I took a shuttle into the embassy, ran up to Facilities to borrow the paint sample charts again, zipped into the APO (post office) to return some items from our continued online shopping ventures, and met Ron who had hopped out of work for an early lunch so he could join me in checking out the new apartment. We grabbed a cab, and shot over the bridge to Zamalek, up to the Marriott and around the side where we hopped out, and walked two blocks over to our new building, loving called “FBOZ.” (Not sure what it stands for, but the government does so love its acronyms.) We will be in apartment 1B, which is on the second floor at the back. Like Europe, Egypt has Ground floors, then First above that, Second, Third, etc. We walked in to find the place empty, except for the 27 men diligently painting all the walls. I stood in the middle of the living room, with the embassy furniture piled in a mound in the middle, wrapped in heavy brown paper, staring at the institutional eggshell walls. “Do you like the color?” one of them asked me. I looked at him, smiled and said, “No,” as I held up the 700 paint samples. I went through, took my pictures, some measurements, and we explored our new space. There are positives and negatives in comparing it to Maadi, but I think we’ll really like the area and we’ll just have to make more of an effort to see our friends in Maadi – instead of hopping up to someone’s apartment at any time of day like we’re living in a dorm. I spoke with Magdi afterwards and told him I’d make the paint decisions within a few days so he could let me know how much it will cost (the embassy will paint it white for free, but if we want color, we apparently pay for the paint – so I just have to see how much it will cost).

We opted to give Cairo a break on the July 4th weekend and spent it in relaxation at Ain Sukhna (again) with two other couples from the embassy. I definitely needed some time away from all that is Cairo, just to detox and refocus. I was feeling a bit bogged down by the heat, dust, dirt, poverty and animal suffering. We’d been told that moving overseas infects people initially with a Honeymoon-like feeling of joy and excitement, but then is followed by a harsh reality of the differences from what you’re used to and I was definitely in that space. So Ain Sukhna helped me tremendously. (See photo of the view from our room.)

Ron enjoyed himself in the waters of the Red Sea, working painstakingly with the kids of our group in finding fish, hermit crabs, small crabs, and dead blue jellyfish. For the same reasons Ron was so enthralled, I opted to spend most of the time at the beach under the umbrellas reading a book. We swapped places though and I thoroughly enjoyed the huge gorgeous pool and waterfall while Ron sat on the side and read. Maybe we’ll be able to better-coordinate our water interests in the future (though I don’t see my fish-phobias departing anytime soon – therapy may be in order).

We are experiencing technical difficulties

"Technically" our difficulty is that the wifi we've been "borrowing" from a kind, and un-secured neighbor, has disappeared, leaving us with (gasp) dial-up. It is cumbersome and we can only access it with Ron's laptop as mine has apparently advanced beyond dial-up and has no telephone-jack port thingy. We can go to the Maadi House or the local coffee place for free wifi, but that would require effort, which we are apparently currently lacking.

Posts are being written and photos have been taken, so relevant and (hopefully) interesting postings will be forthcoming. We appreciate your patience.

Malls, glorious, maaaalls…

(Anyone else have an “Oliver” tune in their head?)

Last week, we added two more mall-ings to our exploratory repertoire. I took a day of wandering in Maadi and during a two-hour outing checked out the new “Nile Mall” that’s along the Corniche. When we arrived two months ago it still had “Coming Soon” signs posted, but all of a sudden the signs are down and stores are stocked and opened for business. Compared to the Maadi Grand Mall (MGM) with its grubby ambiance, the Nile Mall was really nice. It’s brand new, sparkling clean, air-conditioned, has festive red velvet ribbon draped everywhere and the stores were actually open in the afternoon. It’s relatively small, with four floors and two sections separated by a glass walkway. There are mostly clothing and shoe stores with a few accessory stores (earrings, scarves, etc.), one or two pharmacies (essentially drug stores with basic medicinal supplies, some makeup, soap, shampoo, etc.), and one coffee shop (Starbucks and Starbucks-like establishments are all over). Probably not destined to be a regular hang-out joint for us, but it’s good to know what’s where.

Then last weekend Ron suggested we head to CityStars Mall in Heliopolis, which is north of Cairo, close to the airport. I’d been hearing of CityStars, but hadn’t made it out there yet. After experiencing the trek out there, I see why I hadn’t just popped over sooner. We first drove into downtown (in the newly arrived Jeep – yeah!) and parked near the embassy. We then grabbed a yellow cab from Tahrir Square. These are the relatively new cabs with A/C and, even more important, meters. Since Ron wasn’t sure how long or far it would be, he thought it’s best to rely on the meter until we know the typical fare. Well it must have taken us about half-an-hour to get there. Some of that was due to distance, some due to traffic. The last time I’d seen any of this area of Cairo was on our 10pm drive from the airport after our 30 hours of travel – can’t say I was particularly cognizant of my surroundings at that time, so I enjoyed the new sights (we passed the Cairo railroad station which is a beautiful building, a lot of really magnificent mosques, and the tomb of the unknown soldier, not to mention thousands of stores and apartments and lines of laundry flapping in the hot breeze).

CityStars Mall is, well, huge. Twenty years ago it was probably more desert-like, but it’s now a 5-6 story, enormous structure of over 550 stores, 21 movie screens, covering over 750,000 sqm, surrounded by “luxury apartment" high-rises on all sides and three international hotels. Oh, and it houses a 6,000 sqm theme park too, although we opted to check it out on another visit. Aside from the Arabic conversations and signs (though many are in English) and head-scarves, we could have been in Minneapolis’s Mall of America. Teen-age girls are the same in any culture – gaggles of posing, preening, pre-teens were giggle masses around every corner. Packs of teen-age boys prowled behind them. Couples walked hand-in-hand with their shiny new bags and babies tottered around or were carried by their distracted parents. It was huge (did I say that already?), shiny and clean, air-conditioned (key factor), and had more high-end stores than I’d seen amassed before – Rolex, Villeroy & Boch, and even a Mercedes-Benz store.

We had two primary objectives; 1. See the Mall, 2. See a movie. Attempting to use the mall maps lead us all over, but never near a movie theater. Our cab driver had said they were inside the mall, but our frustrations were growing, so I attempted to ask a woman who is the only person I’ve met so far who didn’t speak any English. Luckily someone else overheard me and she was able to direct us to the theaters. Buying tickets was another mini-adventure. The concept of standing and waiting in lines is, well, foreign here. It’s the shove and wriggle method. Ron finally made it up to one of the windows, only to find out that the windows are movie-specific, and we were not interested in “Prom Night” so we had to shove over to the “Narnia: Prince Caspian” window. Once we made it up to the window, we then had to actually pick out what specific seats we wanted (I think they were all the same price, though). Tickets purchased, seats chosen, we grabbed a popcorn and some soda cans (and a large popcorn here is like a childhood flashback – no suitcase-sized containers, which was actually nice). Then an usher led us to our seats and after seeing the Egyptian Ministry of Culture’s written approval of the film’s contents flashed up on the screen, we settled in to enjoy the latest Narnia, replete with Arabic sub-titles. The only oddity was when the movie stopped about half-way through, lights came on and we just looked at each other. It only lasted for a few minutes, so we’re not sure if it was a scheduled stop for an intermission or possible call-to-prayer, or just a blip. But the film resumed without issue.

We grabbed a sandwich at one of our favorite coffee/juice places, Beanos, after the film and wandered the mall a bit. My latest quest is to find a non-plastic, non-ugly, dish drainer (oh, the Dip Wife Life glamour never ends), but after a few attempts I gave up and bought a Mercedes instead. Just kidding, I met Ron in the Virgin MegaStore. Knowing we had about an hour’s cab+Jeep ride ahead of us, we headed out and grabbed a black-n-white cab. We were flying along the highways that have been constructed over many areas of Cairo (smart move to avoid the city traffic) when Ron asked the driver if he wanted any water. Granted, Ron is very generous and kind, but I thought it an odd offer. All we had with us was a half-empty bottle. The driver declined and I looked over at Ron. He mumbled under his breath, “He looks like he’s falling asleep.” GREAT!! I spent the rest of the ride trying not to appear as if I was watching the driver, while watching the driver. I’m not sure if he was tired, or new to Cairo, or new to cab-driving, but he didn’t know where Tahrir Square was, so we had some fun (read: annoying) turn-arounds and double-backs before we finally made it. We paid him and walked to our car at the embassy. To get to the gate we had to cross a regularly-busy road and Ron almost got clipped by an apparently blind driver in a car. One of the guards at the gate said, “Careful, you’re not in America anymore.” Ron laughed and concurred. Definitely not Minneapolis.