Little Things, The Holy See... It, Now You Don't

For all the good things Google Earth has, it does sometimes take away the magic. For over a year now, every time I walk past the embassy of the Vatican, I marvel at the total uselessness of it. From the street the embassy consists of an entrance gate and an exit gate, joined by a roundabout in the middle of which a flag-post stands. Occasionally sporting a huge yellow and white flag, occasionally empty. I've always thought this to be very suiting for the Vatican; a whole lot of pomp and prestige for virtually nothing as no buildings seem to be between the gates and the bank of the Nile. Flights of fantasy about buildings being underground or hidden on the riverbank flitted around briefly but were dismissed for the theory of total uselesness.

Although I've tried to take pictures of this situation, I've never been able to get away with it without the guards in front noticing.

Now with Google Earth it becomes saddingly clear that the building is to the south, hidden from the street view by another building.  Blast Google Earth, bursting bubbles like that. They should be banned.

Little Things, Furry Little Things

Living in Cairo means a different approach to lots of things. Here most houses have secondary staircases. Originally staff entrances and access to flats for the garbage collectors. Now the staircase at the back is where you deposit the garbage bags. In my case, living on the ground floor and living in a place with continuous plumbing problems (tho I'm by no means the only one) it means my house is (and as I heard this week, always was) a playground for mice and other animals.

One of my houseguest of the human kind, left a few bags with flower and cornflakes on the kitchen counter. Coming back from Aswan I discovered the mice had discovered the bags and already eagerly gnawed their way through the plastic. A large amount of cornflakes had disappeared under the microwave from where light crunchy sounds could be heard all day and especially all night long. 

A quick peek with a flashlight partially exposed two very small round mice irritated at being disturbed in their cornflakes fest. Alison (one of the house-guests for a week) didn't quite name them yet but already lost her heart to the little grey rodents with, as she observed, ginger patches on the chest.

A few days later one of them was discovered in the bathtub and let out using a towel as a ladder.

The bathtub, for some reason or other, held a huge attraction for the mice. In two days time two of the little round furry critters managed to get themselves trapped in there. Much to my pleasure. I haven't found anything resembling a humane mouse trap here; they have glue and pellets. I have a bathtub.

All I needed to do was gather them up in container, walk them down to the river and let them loose there. The biggest mousetrap I've ever seen and it cleans out really easy...

The Pound Tower of Babylon

I spent a day at the Roman Tower excavations, done by Pete Sheehan in the Old Cairo area, drawing the kiln they found a while ago and doing quick recordings of the colonnade blocks seen in the photo. 

The sign to the entrance of the Tower is only a year or so old but already it's missing parts. Well, missing, they've been eroded away. So the Round Tower of the Fortress of Babylon became the Pound Tower.

The tower is one of two (the other is now incorporated into the Church of St. George, the Mari Girgi) and was heavily under threat of rising groundwater. Pete did amazing things digging and recording and managing the water problem. All to published at some point or other. For the reconstruction a plan of what the (multi-storied) colonnade might have looked like needs to be made. That's where I come in. We only had a day or so to take measurements of the fragments. Apparently that was enough cos I even had time to draw the section/elevation of the kiln that Alison and Pete worked on the last week and a half. 

A nice diversion from the daily inking I've been doing until now. Just my luck that we had a sandstormey kind of day on the one day I worked there. 

It is supposed to be opened to the public at one point or another and for that reason a contractor was brought in to restore the tower. The unsubtle white blocks in the walls and the amount of crud on the floor is the result of that. That's why conservators spend such a long time studying stuff and why it takes them forever to finish their reconstructions. Quality instead quantity....

A House Full of Women

About two weeks ago I had guests. My place isn't that big but I do have a guest-room. Of course as Murphey's laws have it, you never get one guest, they sometimes come in threes. No problem with that. I just bought a new couch which can double as bed tho my idea was to watch TV on it in a horizontal position with the option of dozing off (it needs a new cover and cushions obviously).

Pam and Alison shared the bed in the guest-room and Gilian, who arrived last and stayed shortest, got the couch. A coincidental run-in with Menna and Ilka and a planned visit from Salima brought the tally up to 6. Nick was in Dakhla so I was the only guy. They all look scared and frightened I know, but I assure you that's due to the unexpected flash of the camera. There was lots of hilarity (vibrating toothbrushes one of the main themes) and a fair amount of G&T's.

Just that morning Alison and Pam and Gilian left the flat at the same time as I did, after having taken showers and of course we all ran into my Bawaba, Umm Tamr, a little black-dressed woman, who greeted us with a cheery good morning, an impish grin from ear to ear and in my imagination a "two thumbs up" sign. It's good for my street creds on the Mohammed Mazhar. I'm the guy with three women now. Not sure I'm doing the reputation of foreigners much good tho....

Little Things, Cairo Kitsch

Where else but in Cairo can you find a store that sells plaster casts for your garden (?) and find a mixture of styles that sets your hairs on end and curls up your toes; a wingéd Niké, a Roman Emperor, a golfer, the Chef from the animated movie "Ratatouille", a huge pink flamingo, some classic guy with a major migraine, another chef, crocodile with gaping maw, hideously ugly pots, panther and a camel 

Nope, definitely not going to buy anything there

The Eid, Day Two

This is the second day of the Eid and the partying is still not done. Just around the corner where I live, I find the remains of yesterday's feast. See how many sheep you can identify.

Further down the street indications that the partying is long from over. Most of the pharmacies and stores selling food and gifts are open. In one, just off the 26th july street, preparations are made for tonight's festivities. Not really sure I want to buy my medicine or baby-formula there to be honest. Or could it be that they are actually trying to save the poor beast. Local surgery? After all it's belly and legs have already been shaven. I think I'll go for the second option.

The idea of killing an animal on and next to the sign of Aesclepius is just wrong. And that's not even thinking about health and safety issues. Health and safety? This is Egypt, man!

Little Things, Rules for Traffic

Egypt is cracking down on traffic violators. New regulations say  that motor riders need helmets. Since Egyptian motorists haven't used helmets since the Greeks left the country (and I'm talking ancient Greeks here) and they have no places to actually buy the helmets, the national sense of improvising has been used. Now you see all manner of safety headwear on top of the new and extremely cheap (price as well as quality cheap) Chinese motorcycles. Hardhats are favourite although  now and then you can see a cooking pot, filled with cloth and tied down with strings from the handles on someone's head doing 40 km/h or more in Cairo traffic.

The other thing is the seatbelt. All drivers are required to wear them now. Half a year ago they consisted mainly of swaths of black cloth screwed against the doorframe or used belts without clasp that were quickly draped over shoulders when policemen were visible. 

Now they seem to have the real thing, properly fixed and actually fixed on both ends of the safety device. Sitting in the taxi of Ramadan, my favourite taxidriver, just flown in from Aswan and wondering about the speed of change in Cairo, I find out that it all seems to be well. As soon as Ramadan hits the brakes tho I discover the ruse has merely become more elaborate. the illusion of safety is larger but still only an illusion. The belt is not fixed to the braking system  so if there is a pile-up I will still fly through the front window but only after having my collarbone being broken by the belt. 

Litte Things, Poor Bastard Reprise

Just gleaned a bit of Intel on the statue to be executed. For all you conservators, this should give you a couple of jollies: the head is actually a cast from the original from the BM or the Louvre or any other major museum in the world. It had been fixed on the torso before the people responsible realized that the colour was way off and, here's the kicker, the material of which it was made deteriorates quite quickly in direct sunlight. I mean, Luxor is well known for it's cloudy skies and weak sun. It's not like it's in Africa or something.

't Is the Season To Be...... Slaughtered

The Eid is upon us again, here in Egypt. Imagine Christmas but then with the Christmas goose being so fresh that it has to be decapitated and plucked before you can eat. Same thing here but then with larger animals. Rams and ewes are a definite favourite.

Not unlike with Christmas I discover I need to buy essential stuff (in this case a new floater system for the toilet as it is running continuously, not very christmassy I know but what can I do?)just before or slightly after all the shops have closed. So after sunset I wander over the 26th July street, main traffic and shopping street here on Zamalek. All shops are closed but for food stores and kiosks, oh and the mobile phone shops. The butcher's shop on the 26th has strings of lights in all colours. It really does look nice, until you see the dozens of stripped and naked sheep carcasses hanging in front of the shop. The middle area of the street, covered by the fly-over and usually a fully packed parking area, now is home to dozens of sheep, milling around a feeding trough in a roughly made pen.

Sort of the before and after shots. Before; alive and bleating and woolly (matted but woolly) and after hanging upside down striped red and pink and very much dead.

I guess that around midnight the first of these live sheep will not be anymore.

In a more sickening manner, the Alfa Market, a supermarket catering to foreigners and rich Egyptians, has a small pen with a crappy and becrappéd piece of carpet. There, two little lambs attract the attention. Photos are being made, little children pet the nice little sheep. It's kinda weird, a final petting zoo. Fat chance you'll see those cute little lambs tomorrow kids. At least not in this shape and form and vitality.

Happy Eid all.....

Little Things, poor bastard

Just another little thing of notice on the Westbank. Makes you wonder what the poor bastard did to piss people off that bad that they're ready to execute him. Also makes you wonder if they realize he's actually stone

Little Things

In a huge city like Cairo and a weird country like Egypt, there are lots of little incidents, accidents and other -cents that make me smile, raise eybrows or just roll my eyes. This is one I saw yesterday on my way to Salima for a very nice prawn-rice-dhal meal. On the Brazil street there's a small kiosk that sells water, magazines and second hand books. Slightly off the kiosk two black clad army conscripts (most likely from the delta or the Red Sea coast) were leafing through a fashion magazine somehow obtained from the kiosk owner. Their excitement in going back and forward through the pages reminded me of 15 year olds sneaking a peek at the Playboys on station kiosks. 

Something similar but more much funny (the above was just recognisable) was cycling past a coffee house on the road from the ferry to the German House on the Westbank in Luxor. They have small teevees with a grainy, wobbly reception. Usually the TV is merely background noise amongst all the other background noises. In this case, everyone was glued to the tube. Shishas (the hooka water pipes) were left smoldering, tea and coffee was getting cold but on the screen, in one of the many music/video shows they have in the Near East, Madonna was performing her song from the last Pierce Brosnan Bond. You know, the one in which she is clad in leather, be it sparsely, and singing and dancing as Madonna does. I looked back at this spectacle and almost drove off the road.... 

Beginnings

Well, here we are, attempting to keep others appraised of what and where I am, even more irrelevant dots and ones cluttering up the Internet.

 I'm back home in Cairo and trying to balance the several projects that still need drawings done and making the flat more pleasant to live in. The very crudely patched hole in the bathroom ceiling doesn't help much. Nor do the several drawings that need to be finished before mid December. 

The hole happened while Antje and Micha, two friends from Hannover, were staying here for a week while I was down in Luxor (that's an entirely different story and a bit of a boring one). After innocently inquiring per text how things were, I was surprised to hear my bathroom being described as a construction site. Immediately on arrival I asked the Bawaba (Bab= door or gate, the Bawab is someone who sits in front of the door and does upkeep, small errands (or even larger errands), asks strangers where the hell they think they're going and in absence pays the weekly gas and electric bills) what had happened. A big bespectacled grin and a thumbs up sign, assured me that all was right.

My bathroom has never been the best the place in the house, even before my taking over the flat, but now it's pathetic. In a corner there's a 30 cm diameter splash of concrete smeared on the ceiling. Then there's the spray of concrete drops over the rest of the bathroom and the grimy hand-prints on the ceiling, which is slowly (though lately not so slowly) shedding its layers of paint; sickly yellowish paint. Renovation is desperately needed and I'm willing to, waiting to, wanting to but there's just too much work that I have to finish.