I had some great cabbies this week. Usually they can go one of two ways: 1) mean, and/or trying to get some more cash out of your because you are foreign, 2) really frigging funny. The latter were exemplified this week.
We had one guy completely cracking up. We were coming back pretty late from [...]

I am Frogger, hear me roar
A number of things have happened in Cairo since the strikes a couple of weeks ago. The most immediately noticeable of these was a relative increase in the speed of traffic.
It turns out that since the government and security forces warned the general public about participating in a strike, [...]

“Clang, clang, clang went the hammer…”

It seems, and do keep in mind that I live in a relatively well established residential neighborhood in the middle of the city, that there is continuous construction around me. I can look out my window and see no less than nine new apartment blocks being constructed. More to the [...]

What is the name of this thing?
I am sitting here this morning eating a grapefruit for breakfast and musing on that word. Guess what the word for “grapefruit” is in Arabic.
Come on, guess.
See, my rule for language acquisition is this: if I don’t know the name for something and how to ask for [...]

Reporting on the technological forefront of asses
I’ve talked about the donkeys and horses in the city before. I still can’t help smiling when I see a donkey: the are just so pathetically adorable. Unfortunately they are often mistreated and underfed here. Then again, so are a lot of people, and I have to prioritize my [...]

Warning: memoir material ahead
I had one of those creepy, sappy moments last night that I always wince at when I hear from someone else. However, it left me with a warm contentedness—something that usually only a Xanax and two whiskeys will do for me before I get on a flight—so I felt it was worth [...]

YOU want mint.
I was walking today and saw a kid standing in the street shouting and waving something in one hand. As I approached, warily, I realized that he was yelling—indeed bellowing—the words: “Who wants mint? YOU want mint! Who wants mint? You WANT mint?” I went out on a limb and assumed that he [...]

al-Khamasin! al-Khamasin!

As I mentioned yesterday, we had a sandstorm headed our way. I have been asking everyone I know who lives here what they are like and I finally got to see one for myself. This was of the mild variety, though.
The sky was a little hazy this morning, and then all of a [...]

All that fuss over nothing
Well, no strike actually happened. The Egyptian security forces prevented it from even beginning:
Egyptian security forces prevent planned textile strike
International Herald Tribune – Sunday 6 April 2008]
And so it goes.
The weird thing about all of this—or maybe not-so-weird—is that there was definitely a sense of foreboding in the air [...]

There is a bit of excitement going on in Om al-Dunya right now
Lately, I’ve been hearing from my friends in the States and from some foreigners here that Egypt is big in the news these days. So, I decided to do a little digging, as we don’t really get a lot of local news here. [...]