I actually
pay attention to, and appreciate the clothes the women wear here. At
home I barely notice. Specifically, I really enjoy the long, fancy gowns
that the slightly conservative women wear. (All the cool kids wear jeans
and shirts, everything long but also tight.) I’ve seen some very cool
long gowns, as well as tastefully understated ones. My favorite is a
long black gown which has on it, in spirals, numbers in blue and green
hues. At home you will find T shirts with similar creative designs, but
the effect is much better when a design is on a full body dress instead
of just a small rectangle on the chest.
I’ve been
seeing a physical therapist for a pulled muscle in my elbow, and
Danielle has twice seen a dermatologist regarding a rash she’s had. It’s
pretty sweet to be able to just call the specialist directly, and be
able to see them the next day. Prices seem very reasonable (about \$20
for a consultation). We found our doctors by checking the US embassy web
page. They do seem to prescribe medicine much more readily than doctors
at home. For instance I’m taking 2 pills and a cream for my elbow. They
also massage, use ice and electrical stimulation, as well as ultra sound
and a laser light. (I’m sceptical that the laser does anything, but you
never know.) But medicines are cheap, and prescriptions are not
required. We were able to buy more of our malaria medication for about a
fifth the price we paid in the US.
Anything you
might want is available in Cairo, although finding it is a function of
your personal network. There isn’t really a yellow pages or a website
where you can look up anything. To get a new camera battery (custom one
for Canon cameras) we went to an electronics neighborhood. There we
randomly picked somebody and showed him what I wanted. He passed my
battery to somebody else, who went off somewhere (presumably) far away.
It took about 45 minutes before he returned, but he did have a brand
new, Canon brand, battery for me. The price was quite reasonable as well
(a little bit more than it would cost at home, which is par for imported
products).
We went to
Saqqara with my parents the other day. We’d gotten a private tour for
the 4 of us, and it was awesome. If you only visit one ancient Egyptian
site, this is the one. The pyramids are neat to see from the outside,
but the highlight was that we visited the inside of a noble’s tomb. The
inside was covered in great rock carvings, largely still intact. It is
one thing to see some slabs of rock in the Egyptian museum. Seeing it
all in context is much more interesting. We also got to go inside of
Tite’s pyramid. Unlike the great pyramids, the insides still have a lot
of hieroglyphs left over, and our guide explained to us how the
pyramid’s massive sliding rock doors were closed, and how grave robbers
got in anyway. Most of what we saw was in incredibly good condition too.
It was hard to believe that it all was thousands of years old.
Muslims
respect their mosques in a very different way than Christians respect
churches. Non-believers are not allowed inside many of them, while
anybody can wander into a church. On the other hand, churches tend to be
a quiet respectful place, while in mosques I’ve observed what I thought
were loud conversations. I’ve even seen people walking around using
their cell phone at times. Every mosque also has quite a few people in
it just lying on the floor, taking a nap. But in mosques you take off
your shoes and, if you’re a woman, cover your head. Expectations just
differ a lot between churches and mosques.
I offered to take a look at our neighbor’s computer, which locks up when
accessing hotmail. So after quite a bit of playing around I concluded it
was the modem driver that did it. We moved the PC to our apartment to
use DSL and get new drivers. And to be nice I downloaded 50MB of Norton
updates, but during install the machine locked up. Turns out the HD was
bad, and now WinXP wouldn’t boot anymore. (It took me quite a while
before I figured out that the HD was the issue.) So I got a new one, and
installed WinXP from scratched, recovered almost all files from the old
machine, and generally cursed at Windows, wishing I could just install
Ubuntu instead. It takes a long time to install XP, download updates,
install them, and reboot all the time. It’s quite amazing how much
better Ubuntu is in this regard. Anyway, I finally got it all pretty
happy. I did have a bit of trouble activating the installation. None of
the Egypt phone numbers worked, so I used Skype to call the US 1-800
number, which was busy. So I called the US toll number, which
transferred me to a rep in India who helped me get the magic numbers.
Next time I’m running memtest86/badblocks first, and then looking at any
problems that might exist.
I’ve finally
browsed the Koran a little bit. I’m no Bible expert, but I have read
bits and pieces. The first thing that struck me about the Koran is how
explicit it is in its rules. A lot of the same stories from the Bible
are in the Koran, but the interpretation is not left up to the reader.
On the other hand, it’s not like a true franchise manual. For instance
scholars do not agree on how women are supposed to dress. There is at
least one section in the Koran aimed at atheists (can any of your
friends create a universe? then surely you must believe in Allah), which
makes me wonder how prevalent atheism was when Mohammed wrote the Koran.
There at least a few places where it explicitly states that Jesus is a
prophet, and not part of any holy trinity and not God’s son either. It’s
interesting, but not easy reading.
