*** Saturday, 13May06 ***
Didn't try to do much today. I got up late and went to the bookstore of the American University in Cairo (AUC) and bought a Cairo guidebook and had a plain double cheeseburger at the McDonalds across the street from the AU entrance. Took the sun for several hours and relaxed in a very pleasant way.

*** Sunday, 14May06 ***
Dinner with Bill at the Nile Hilton. I had beef bacon in fettucini carbonara: the beef bacon didn't taste bad because, indeed, it didn't taste at all; but it did add some chewiness to the dish. What it could not cover or disguise was the missing flavor of real bacon, mouth watering bacon; chunky bits of pork belly that are forbidden in Moslem culture. I can tell the my food passions are growing, spiraling out of control; I am powerless to prevent it. I am just the tool of desires for pepperoni, rich, succulent bacon cheeseburgers and bacon and cheese sandwiches. If I don't feed this monkey on my back I may go crazy.

Remember, I pay a significant price for being abroad.

*** Monday, 15May06 ***
The hotel I live in has a significant number of tourists and more particularly tour groups. It is easy to tell as they invariably gather in a large herd in front the the main desk. They mostly stand together and display a generally lost feeling about them. Individuals seem nervous about doing anything alone, even something as simple as walking to a cash machine and withdrawing local currency. Still, their expenditures are the lifeblood of the economy. And, heaven knows, there is plenty to see here in Egypt -- even in a group.

In traditional Moslem culture, a woman is not supposed to ever speak to a man in an unsupervised setting.

On one of my walks on the Nile Corniche, I found a swim club which I assumed to be a pool but behind the main building was a pier and I could see several dozen men at the pier's edge putting on flippers and generally dressing for a dip in the river. I was amazed. The Nile, for all I love to look at it, is polluted in more ways than can be tabulated quickly. Let me just mention some: chemical wastes from factories, dead animals thrown in by citizens, agricultural drainage containing ammonia, nitrates, and phosphorus salts, and nearly two billion cubic meters of sewage. And this does not mention the two major parasites that live in the Nile. Swimming in the river is not a good idea.

Many buildings in Cairo were constructed before the hayday of air conditioning so, seeing air conditioning units in building walls isn't surprising. It is distressing however that some buildings, and not necessarily only old ones, have their facades marked by air conditioning units like a teenager with a furious case of the zits. The buildings themselves can be well-designed but the after thought of the air conditioning units is distinctly gross. This isn't everywhere but it is something I noticed here and there and was repulsed by every time I noticed it.

*** Tuesday, 16May06 ***
I had a meeting at 10 A.M. locally so I didn't go to the office in the morning as usual but worked in my room until I was picked up for the local meeting. This probably saved me an hour of commuting. Have I talked about how horrible traffic is here?

A boy with the ever present glass of hot tea.

Remember my recounting how an old man suckered me into a tourist store and tried to sell me fragrances? The store also employs a young man as tout and he has tried to get me into the store almost since the first day of my arrival. The most irksome part of this is that the acts as if _I_ were being rude for not going into the store. Of course, once in the store, he would act as if _I_ were being rude for not buying the over-priced crap they sell. Such people are second only to taxi drivers in their obnoxiousness.

The bad news is that these types cluster intensely around tourist points but the good news is that they are generally absent from the rest of the city. This fact won't do you much good unless you wander far and wide as I do but I state it here to emphasize how unlike to average Carireens these creeps are. When I am lost somewhere in the city (if I knew where it was, it wouldn't be lost), people (and I mean just about everyone) are uniformly polite, friendly and constructively helpful. If you ask a question and they cannot deal with English, usually they take the initiative and find someone who speaks some English and who can help you. Caireens seem to like everyone -- especially Americans.But I digress from the jerk of a tout who works in a shop about five meters from the shop where I have my laundry done. The man has far too little to do so he is frequently outside in the public space between my hotel and the laundry. He always comes up to me and asks me when I will come into his shop and I always say that I will visit before I leave but that is not soon. He tries to put a guilt trip on me but I am getting a bit old for that.

Well, recently, I went into the laundry and he was inside talking to the guys who work there. It seems nobody has enough to do in this country. By this time I have been going to this laundry for about six weeks, generally twice a week. We have an established rhythm going but this day, Mr. Tout tries to impress his friends with how important he is and starts telling me how I should pay for the laundry in advance. This has never been an issue before so I resisted saying that, after all, they had my laundry (clearly of inestimable value). He insisted and kept insisting -- and he didn't even work there!! I noticed how the others (there were three or four in the crowded space) were taking it all in and getting a real chuckle out of it, wondering which way the argument would go. I held my ground and left without a deposit and I think the guys who ran the laundry respected me for it. After all, they knew from experience that I paid and paid quickly -- I was a good customer. And I think they knew the tout was a jerk who was always suckering people and they provided a real service. They earned their money and he didn't. That made a difference.

*** Wednesday, 17May06 ***
The weather forecasts here don't get all that specific. They show a diagram of the north American continent with swirling grey things and say it is raining very heavily in New England. Not all that useful.

Tonight when our car approached the hotel driveway a large vehicle drove past us with what I thought was a polluting engine because clouds of gray smoke came out the rear. The smoke got so dense that I couldn't even see down the street and we hastily rolled up the windows. We couldn't figure out what was going on until the driver took his left thumb and finger and seemed to grab at this right arm and he went "bizz, bizz." So we were subjected to some concentrated insecticide. Life in Cairo is great.