On a taxi ride to the train station I passed:
1)Three stores all on the same block - none more than eight feet tall, five feet wide, and six feet deep in from the street - that sold NOTHING but bright red fire extinguishers in various sizes, and
2)A clothing shop entitled in ENORMOUS lettering (like 3 feet per letter): GOLDEN MAN STORE
and I thought to myself, "I want one of those" (a golden man, not a fire extinguisher).
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Crossroads
I got the job with the international commercial arbitration firm. I got the offer yesterday while I was in Alexandria for a conference on the Human Right to Peace (keep your eyes peeled, fans of utopic, toothless international law, for the Alexandria Declaration on the Human Right to Peace due out this week…I was there when it was drafted!). I have accepted so I will start January 10th, right after my cousin and some friends head home from their visit earlier in the month.
I am nervous because I do not know anything about international commercial arbitration and now have to do a ton of reading in the next month to start filling in the gaping holes in my knowledge of all things legal and practical. I am also nervous because, although it is physically located in Egypt, this firm promises to be just as grueling and competitive as any American law firm and I just don't know if I am cut out for the pace and emotional stress of that kind of environment. I am a kind and easy going person and I worry that in my first weeks there I will watch my sensitive soul slowly crushed like a ticklish muppet under a steam roller.
In other news, in a moment that totally made my day, a coworker came into my office this morning to clarify something with the English speakers. She had expressed some concerns about something to a representative from the US government who replied "its on our radar screen." She knew it was an idiom but thought it sounded vaguely military and wanted to make sure it actually meant something good, like they were taking her comments seriously, rather than that they were about to attack us. I never paused to consider how disturbing that expression could be when sent to a perfectly innocent Arab NGO!!!
I am nervous because I do not know anything about international commercial arbitration and now have to do a ton of reading in the next month to start filling in the gaping holes in my knowledge of all things legal and practical. I am also nervous because, although it is physically located in Egypt, this firm promises to be just as grueling and competitive as any American law firm and I just don't know if I am cut out for the pace and emotional stress of that kind of environment. I am a kind and easy going person and I worry that in my first weeks there I will watch my sensitive soul slowly crushed like a ticklish muppet under a steam roller.
In other news, in a moment that totally made my day, a coworker came into my office this morning to clarify something with the English speakers. She had expressed some concerns about something to a representative from the US government who replied "its on our radar screen." She knew it was an idiom but thought it sounded vaguely military and wanted to make sure it actually meant something good, like they were taking her comments seriously, rather than that they were about to attack us. I never paused to consider how disturbing that expression could be when sent to a perfectly innocent Arab NGO!!!
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Deal or no deal?
For a three day week, this one has been strangely exhausting.
I went to Dahab, on the Red Sea for the Feast of the Sacrifice weekend, a five-day vacation in which Egyptian extended families gather at the biggest house in the family, sacrifice an animal, usually a lamb, sheep, or goat, and then eat and socialize all weekend. It is to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac on God's command, though I'm told in the Islamic faith the Isaac character in the story is Ishmael instead, Abraham's firstborn son by his wife's servant Hagar. Anyway, while the Egyptians were doing this in Cairo and elsewhere, the foreigners were relaxing on the beaches of the Sinai and SCUBA diving in the Red Sea, or at least this one was.
Diving in the Red Sea is incredible. Underwater cameras cost a fortune here so unfortunately I have no pictures for you all but the landscape is very three dimensional, with huge bulges and chunks of coral looming out from coral cliffs and up from the white sand and coral-covered ocean floor. Schools of BRIGHT orange, electric blue, and neon yellow fish no bigger than my thumb cost in the current just near the surface so when you look up these long blue coral walls to the sky you really do see perfect rays of sun, tropical fish, and blue blue blue blue everything.
I can't wear a wetsuit because I'm allergic to neoprene and since most dives are between 40-60 feet and can last more than an hour, I would get pretty cold by the end. My lips would be blue by the time I got out of the water and I'd be shivering in the wind while trying to take my gear apart and one of the other divers would always make a comment about how they can't believe I dive without a suit. Dahab is one of the few places I've gone diving (Vietnam was another) where I was sure I would find a way to dive, and it would be worth it, even if I were allergic to water.
My friend Myriam was the perfect travel buddy for this kind of trip. As you know, I'm not much of an out-all-night partier roaming the abandoned streets at 2am in search of liquor and karaoke. I'm more of a put-on-PJs-pass-out-at-ten kind of girl. On this trip, partly because her antibiotics were making her a little nauseous, so was Myriam. We'd roll out of bed around nine at eat the huge breakfast platter included with our hotel. Then we'd read until 12:30, dive at 1, shower around 3:30 or 4, read or nap until 6, eat dinner, then watch a movie in our hotel room, read some more, then fall asleep around 11. We did this for four days and then watched the Amy Poehler sitcom Parks and Recreation for like four of the nine hours we spent on the busride back (the rest of the time was spent…you guessed it…reading).
I had one free day in Cairo to catch up on laundry and get acquainted with the DOG that my roommate purchased while I was away (a black and white Pekinese/Griffon mix named Galleta, which means Cookie in Spanish). And then I went back to work. But in addition to work, Marisol and I are looking for apartments so we saw two crappy places on Monday night that for some reason we couldn't get in to see until nearly 11pm (soooo far past my bedtime). This gave me a jet lagged feeling for most of Tuesday that no amount of Nescafe could cure but there was no rest for the weary and we had two more apartment viewings lines up for Tuesday night when the WEIRDEST thing happened.
Myriam's boyfriend had just gotten an offer from a Cairo law firm specializing in international commercial arbitration. She had said they were looking for people who were members of a bar, so on a lark I sent in a resume and cover letter around four in the afternoon. At four TEN I got a call from the office asking if I could come in for an interview at 7:30 THAT NIGHT. Apparently they were in the middle of recruitment decisions and wanted to give me the opportunity of at least a face to face meeting. So I sprinted back to Zamalek (my neighborhood, which is no longer under full siege by the riot police following the Egypt Algeria World Cup qualifier, but still has a haunting police and armored car presence on my street), met Marisol to look at an apartment, which we both like and agreed to take (more on this in a minute), then ran home, put on my ONLY suit jacket in Cairo and shoes that didn't match, then jumped in a cab for the law firm's offices.
I wound up having to wait 40 minutes for the attorney to finish interviewing someone in Arizona via videoconference for a much higher up position (CFO maybe?) but had the privilege of sitting on the ultra modern black leather furniture in the beautiful waiting room. High, white ceilings, interesting architecture-based photography, silver mesh and black lamps winding up from the floor like futuristic plants, and the Bloomberg financial news channel kept me company (shout out to the HUGE fight that is about to ensue over the Comcast purchase of NBC, antitrust lawyers get your laptops!). When I was finally shown into the office, the office assistant (every office of any kind in Egypt has at least four office boys who do the most random things, from ordering food to making personalized teas and coffees for individual workers to photocopying) made us espresso, which by then I REALLY needed.
The attorney that owns and runs the firm did the interview and it was actually quite fun. He is smart in a quick on his feet kind of way but also very honest and direct so there wasn't a whole lot of game playing as is usually the case in interviews. I was really honest about knowing nothing about int'l commercial arbitration, which was obviously not ideal, but was okay with him. His main concern was that the firm didn't spend a lot of time and resources training me only to have me bolt in a year or two. He asked no fewer than three times if I could make a five year commitment and all three times I very honestly answered I haven't done this kind of work before and couldn't make a firm commitment to something I don't know if I'll like. He asked hypothetically if I had a job where I was happy and the work was interesting and the pay was good (he brought this up, not me)… and I agreed that although I wouldn't promise anything, if all those things were true, then I wouldn't have any pressing reason to leave that hypothetical job (duh).
Even after I totally refused to commit, and after I admitted I had no experience at all in international commercial arbitration (or business law of any type), he said that they would consider my resume "sympathetically" at the meeting following my interview. And then he said "and by 'sympathetically,' I mean you'll get an offer." And I about snorted espresso through my nose.
I am supposed to hear back from them with a firm offer, including salary by email this week but this week only has one hour and thirty six minutes left in it before the weekend starts so I am beginning to think I hallucinated the whole thing.
Leaving the office in a confused days, I counted the zeros in my future salary all the way home, only to find that Marisol had seen another apartment after the one we'd seen together (I knew about the appointment but couldn't make it because of my interview so we just agreed that if she thought it was amazing I'd see it later). She said it was the most amazing place ever, that we had to get it, etc. etc. Remember: we'd already told the earlier place we wanted to take it.
So I went to look at this new apartment around 10, after my interview. I was exhausted to be sure, but this is not why I hated it. There were mirrors on every surface, including the doors (where half the mirrored squares covering each door were not only mirrors, but PINK mirrors), there were no fewer than 18 chairs in the living/dining room area, most of them upholstered in pink and tan, two lamps were shaped like DOLPHINS, the bathroom was tiny and plastic and ugly, and the kitchen was exactly the width of one person. Marisol thought it was beautiful and I really didn't and so we turned it down but we turned down the place we'd agreed to earlier as well and went back to square one in an exhausted, contrary funk.
Thankfully our degenerate landlord's father, the one who REALLY owns the building (who we've never met because he works in Saudi Arabia and his son manages the place), came by last night and apologized for the delay getting our phone fixed, promised he had paid the outstanding bill (and showed us the receipt, which his son had refused to do) so it would be working today. He found out we were thinking of leaving and didn't even ask why (he knew, I think, that his wife and son had been totally unresponsive to any of our requests for help with things falling apart in the place since the girl I took over the room from still owed them a little bit of money…but they have her contact info, she's still in town, and the problem has nothing to do with Marisol or me so holding it against us has really not been fair). He just said we shouldn't leave, that we should write down everything that needs to be fixed and he would have it all fixed this week, including adding wireless internet soon. Plus, although he's legally allowed to raise the price by up to ten per cent, he agreed to keep the price the same even though he could get a lot more on the open market right now.
So we get to keep our apartment, which will hopefully no longer be coming down around our ears by the end of next week, we don't have to spend the money to move our stuff and redecorate a new place, and now that we know we're staying in this place longer, we feel comfortable committing a little time and funds to sprucing it up a little more. Plus, we have the daddy landlord's name now and can communicate with several other members of the family (mom, dad, and sister) in order to avoid dealing with the son. It was like the family must have agreed we were worth keeping around (because we are clean, quiet, pay rent on time, and pay for improvements to the place) so they made a policy shift in their dealings with us and are no longer holding us accountable in their minds for what the former tenant owes them. We are nervous this won't pan out in the end but if we don't see improvement by the end of December, we don't have to sign a new contract. It is at least a reprieve from the exhaustion of apartment hunting!
Damn. Now the week is only an hour and 17 minutes from ending and still no offer email! Going back to watching the pot not boil…otherwise known as hitting refresh on my Gmail inbox for an hour and 17…er…16 minutes.
I went to Dahab, on the Red Sea for the Feast of the Sacrifice weekend, a five-day vacation in which Egyptian extended families gather at the biggest house in the family, sacrifice an animal, usually a lamb, sheep, or goat, and then eat and socialize all weekend. It is to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac on God's command, though I'm told in the Islamic faith the Isaac character in the story is Ishmael instead, Abraham's firstborn son by his wife's servant Hagar. Anyway, while the Egyptians were doing this in Cairo and elsewhere, the foreigners were relaxing on the beaches of the Sinai and SCUBA diving in the Red Sea, or at least this one was.
Diving in the Red Sea is incredible. Underwater cameras cost a fortune here so unfortunately I have no pictures for you all but the landscape is very three dimensional, with huge bulges and chunks of coral looming out from coral cliffs and up from the white sand and coral-covered ocean floor. Schools of BRIGHT orange, electric blue, and neon yellow fish no bigger than my thumb cost in the current just near the surface so when you look up these long blue coral walls to the sky you really do see perfect rays of sun, tropical fish, and blue blue blue blue everything.
I can't wear a wetsuit because I'm allergic to neoprene and since most dives are between 40-60 feet and can last more than an hour, I would get pretty cold by the end. My lips would be blue by the time I got out of the water and I'd be shivering in the wind while trying to take my gear apart and one of the other divers would always make a comment about how they can't believe I dive without a suit. Dahab is one of the few places I've gone diving (Vietnam was another) where I was sure I would find a way to dive, and it would be worth it, even if I were allergic to water.
My friend Myriam was the perfect travel buddy for this kind of trip. As you know, I'm not much of an out-all-night partier roaming the abandoned streets at 2am in search of liquor and karaoke. I'm more of a put-on-PJs-pass-out-at-ten kind of girl. On this trip, partly because her antibiotics were making her a little nauseous, so was Myriam. We'd roll out of bed around nine at eat the huge breakfast platter included with our hotel. Then we'd read until 12:30, dive at 1, shower around 3:30 or 4, read or nap until 6, eat dinner, then watch a movie in our hotel room, read some more, then fall asleep around 11. We did this for four days and then watched the Amy Poehler sitcom Parks and Recreation for like four of the nine hours we spent on the busride back (the rest of the time was spent…you guessed it…reading).
I had one free day in Cairo to catch up on laundry and get acquainted with the DOG that my roommate purchased while I was away (a black and white Pekinese/Griffon mix named Galleta, which means Cookie in Spanish). And then I went back to work. But in addition to work, Marisol and I are looking for apartments so we saw two crappy places on Monday night that for some reason we couldn't get in to see until nearly 11pm (soooo far past my bedtime). This gave me a jet lagged feeling for most of Tuesday that no amount of Nescafe could cure but there was no rest for the weary and we had two more apartment viewings lines up for Tuesday night when the WEIRDEST thing happened.
Myriam's boyfriend had just gotten an offer from a Cairo law firm specializing in international commercial arbitration. She had said they were looking for people who were members of a bar, so on a lark I sent in a resume and cover letter around four in the afternoon. At four TEN I got a call from the office asking if I could come in for an interview at 7:30 THAT NIGHT. Apparently they were in the middle of recruitment decisions and wanted to give me the opportunity of at least a face to face meeting. So I sprinted back to Zamalek (my neighborhood, which is no longer under full siege by the riot police following the Egypt Algeria World Cup qualifier, but still has a haunting police and armored car presence on my street), met Marisol to look at an apartment, which we both like and agreed to take (more on this in a minute), then ran home, put on my ONLY suit jacket in Cairo and shoes that didn't match, then jumped in a cab for the law firm's offices.
I wound up having to wait 40 minutes for the attorney to finish interviewing someone in Arizona via videoconference for a much higher up position (CFO maybe?) but had the privilege of sitting on the ultra modern black leather furniture in the beautiful waiting room. High, white ceilings, interesting architecture-based photography, silver mesh and black lamps winding up from the floor like futuristic plants, and the Bloomberg financial news channel kept me company (shout out to the HUGE fight that is about to ensue over the Comcast purchase of NBC, antitrust lawyers get your laptops!). When I was finally shown into the office, the office assistant (every office of any kind in Egypt has at least four office boys who do the most random things, from ordering food to making personalized teas and coffees for individual workers to photocopying) made us espresso, which by then I REALLY needed.
The attorney that owns and runs the firm did the interview and it was actually quite fun. He is smart in a quick on his feet kind of way but also very honest and direct so there wasn't a whole lot of game playing as is usually the case in interviews. I was really honest about knowing nothing about int'l commercial arbitration, which was obviously not ideal, but was okay with him. His main concern was that the firm didn't spend a lot of time and resources training me only to have me bolt in a year or two. He asked no fewer than three times if I could make a five year commitment and all three times I very honestly answered I haven't done this kind of work before and couldn't make a firm commitment to something I don't know if I'll like. He asked hypothetically if I had a job where I was happy and the work was interesting and the pay was good (he brought this up, not me)… and I agreed that although I wouldn't promise anything, if all those things were true, then I wouldn't have any pressing reason to leave that hypothetical job (duh).
Even after I totally refused to commit, and after I admitted I had no experience at all in international commercial arbitration (or business law of any type), he said that they would consider my resume "sympathetically" at the meeting following my interview. And then he said "and by 'sympathetically,' I mean you'll get an offer." And I about snorted espresso through my nose.
I am supposed to hear back from them with a firm offer, including salary by email this week but this week only has one hour and thirty six minutes left in it before the weekend starts so I am beginning to think I hallucinated the whole thing.
Leaving the office in a confused days, I counted the zeros in my future salary all the way home, only to find that Marisol had seen another apartment after the one we'd seen together (I knew about the appointment but couldn't make it because of my interview so we just agreed that if she thought it was amazing I'd see it later). She said it was the most amazing place ever, that we had to get it, etc. etc. Remember: we'd already told the earlier place we wanted to take it.
So I went to look at this new apartment around 10, after my interview. I was exhausted to be sure, but this is not why I hated it. There were mirrors on every surface, including the doors (where half the mirrored squares covering each door were not only mirrors, but PINK mirrors), there were no fewer than 18 chairs in the living/dining room area, most of them upholstered in pink and tan, two lamps were shaped like DOLPHINS, the bathroom was tiny and plastic and ugly, and the kitchen was exactly the width of one person. Marisol thought it was beautiful and I really didn't and so we turned it down but we turned down the place we'd agreed to earlier as well and went back to square one in an exhausted, contrary funk.
Thankfully our degenerate landlord's father, the one who REALLY owns the building (who we've never met because he works in Saudi Arabia and his son manages the place), came by last night and apologized for the delay getting our phone fixed, promised he had paid the outstanding bill (and showed us the receipt, which his son had refused to do) so it would be working today. He found out we were thinking of leaving and didn't even ask why (he knew, I think, that his wife and son had been totally unresponsive to any of our requests for help with things falling apart in the place since the girl I took over the room from still owed them a little bit of money…but they have her contact info, she's still in town, and the problem has nothing to do with Marisol or me so holding it against us has really not been fair). He just said we shouldn't leave, that we should write down everything that needs to be fixed and he would have it all fixed this week, including adding wireless internet soon. Plus, although he's legally allowed to raise the price by up to ten per cent, he agreed to keep the price the same even though he could get a lot more on the open market right now.
So we get to keep our apartment, which will hopefully no longer be coming down around our ears by the end of next week, we don't have to spend the money to move our stuff and redecorate a new place, and now that we know we're staying in this place longer, we feel comfortable committing a little time and funds to sprucing it up a little more. Plus, we have the daddy landlord's name now and can communicate with several other members of the family (mom, dad, and sister) in order to avoid dealing with the son. It was like the family must have agreed we were worth keeping around (because we are clean, quiet, pay rent on time, and pay for improvements to the place) so they made a policy shift in their dealings with us and are no longer holding us accountable in their minds for what the former tenant owes them. We are nervous this won't pan out in the end but if we don't see improvement by the end of December, we don't have to sign a new contract. It is at least a reprieve from the exhaustion of apartment hunting!
Damn. Now the week is only an hour and 17 minutes from ending and still no offer email! Going back to watching the pot not boil…otherwise known as hitting refresh on my Gmail inbox for an hour and 17…er…16 minutes.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Under Siege
After a troubling weekend, I feel particularly connected to the abstract and omnipresent anxiety that seems to have become the hallmark of my generation, both in Egypt and at home. However, as I read the news coverage of the weekend, and of the post-World Cup riots in particular, I have the depressing feeling that the international press does not recognize, or at least isn't reporting on, my claim to that hard-earned angst.
What coverage there has been has focused mainly on the soccer game itself, in Sudan, and has centered on the debate of whether or not there actually was violence perpetrated against Egyptian fans at the levels reported. Coverage of the riots has mentioned how the Egyptian government seemed to encourage this outlet for popular frustration at first since it was, happily, not aimed for once at the Egyptian government. Then, journalists concede, the government realized all this protesting was more destructive (of storefronts) than productive, and called in the riot squads to quell the disturbance.
What the newspapers have not mentioned so far is that although nothing has happened in Zamalek since Thursday night (possibly due to the huge contingent of riot police cordoning off every ingress to my street, or possibly due to a falling lack of interest in attacking the Algerian embassy), the police barricades remain in full force. Hundreds of officers in full riot gear pose an intimidating obstacle to the performance of even the most basic tasks such as grocery shopping and catching a cab (the above photo is shot out my apartment building door and shows the road I would normally walk to the grocery store).
To do either, I must walk at least a block in any direction under the stares of dozens of loitering young men in imposing black uniforms. They leer and call out in Arabic, which happily I don't understand, and in English, which unfortunately I do, and in the universal language of lewd gestures, in which I am also fluent. The sudden increase in concentration of gross young men this weekend has changed the tenor of my neighborhood, which is generally upscale and inhabited primarily by foreigners and wealthy Egyptians. Normally, the office boys, market stockboys, currency exchange workers, etc. who hang out on the sidewalks of Zamalek, step out of my way to let me pass, often avert their eyes from mine, and generally keep a respectful distance. However, the crowds of shouting, whispering, giggling, and sometimes groping soldiers seem to have granted permission to the local workers' basest behavior. Men who have seen me pass their shops and used to greet me as a customer, now leer as I pass and young men who would have jumped out of my path now hold their ground and mutter at me as I hurry by.
This government-sponsored filling of the streets with poorly-supervised, poorly-mannered young men has created a claustrophobic, siege-like feeling that kept me in my apartment most of the weekend and compelled me to travel with a friend when I did venture out. I, thankfully, have not experienced any physical harassment, but it is happening. As his contingent slid the heavy metal pole barricade fences aside to let her pass, one of them reached out and grabbed my friend's roommate on the ass. This is a crime in Egypt which, if reported to police, is punished by a mandatory three years in prison. But to whom, exactly, do you report sexual harassment, when it is perpetrated by a police officer in full view of twenty other police officers? You don't report it. You hurry home.
Which is exactly what I wish the government would order the hoard of creepy men in Zamalek to do today: GO HOME.
The anxiety that I and the other women in my neighborhood felt today when we saw that even after two uneventful nights the riot police have maintained their positions, and their suggestive grins, is visceral and real. The stress of police occupation, and particularly, sexually aggressive male occupation, is tangible in Zamalek today. My friends in and around Brazil St. are sleeping poorly, dressing conservatively, not wearing makeup to work, and, in some cases, not going to work to avoid having to pass through the police barricade. Those of us that did go to work are already dreading having to return home at dusk, a time of day which women in Egypt already recognize as emboldening harassers by lending the cover of semi-darkness to their stares, whispers, and touches. Zamalek could use some protection from our protectors. Some spotlights, literal and figurative, would help.
Hey Reuters, NY Times, AP and Co.: Can we get some reporters down here please?
Friday, November 20, 2009
Riots and Lambs
On Wednesday night, Egypt lost to Algeria 1-0 in the World Cup qualifier. Afterwards, Algerian fans, some of whom supposedly brought KNIVES to the match (though it is not certain that this is actual footage of the match, Egyptians BELIEVE it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA_pwTdJIPk), attacked Egyptian fans, causing quite a few injuries. Algeria then ordered the Egyptian ambassador out of Algeria and today the Egyptian government followed suit, kicking out the Algerian ambassador…right…because this situation needs LESS diplomacy.
Last night, my street, which also houses the Algerian embassy down the block, filled with angry protesters armed with drums, car horns, whistles, and loud clapping hands, who shouted, chanted, and yelled until around 4:00am. This, supposedly, to protest the violence of the Algerians at the match, though the protest itself dissolved into a riot, no doubt with the help of the riot police, and several storefront windows in the neighborhood were broken as I walked to this café to use the internet this evening. Riot police in groups of twenty or so have ever entrance to my street blocked off (see photo), using their full body plastic shields and sometimes huge sliding metal barricade fences, which they kindly slid aside to allow me to go shopping earlier today. They are expecting riots again though I hope the crowds are smaller, or at least quieter, tonight so I can sleep better.
I’m on the eighth floor of my building so I don’t feel I’m in any danger but the Thanksgiving dinner I was going to tonight, also in the riot zone, got bumped to tomorrow and all the stores on my block are closed so I can’t buy things like eggs so more than anything I’m annoyed by the inconvenience rather than feeling any actual fear. Honestly, the police officers kind of creep me out, though, since police officers are notorious for sexual harassment and every time I have to slip past a barricade I get treated to comments, fairly tame so far, like “I love you,” and smooching sounds.
In other news, at the grocery store today, in preparation for the upcoming “Big Feast” celebration this weekend, the meat counter hosted a small pen of little lambs awaiting their doom. It was so depressing to walk by them, sitting in their straw, with their miserable tear-smeared eyes, not even bleating but just sort of resigned to their fates. It must take real balls, or else no heart at all, to order your rack of lamb for the weekend barbeque while LOOKING AT THE LAMBS!
Speaking of dinner, if I can get through the riot police back to my apartment, I have sweet potato and ginger soup awaiting me. Egypt is slowly turning me vegetarian.
Monday, November 16, 2009
My panacea of choice: cold-removal implements and an angry email
I am sick sick sick. I’m on my fourth day of it and seem to be on the rebound though now what started as a headcold with a sinus compression headache so bad I couldn’t even force my ears to pop, has moved down into my chest and I am coughing up all sorts of lovely green bits. As I lie in my bed, too weak to move, I listen to my audiobook about life in ancient Egypt, written by one of my favorite mystery writers.
I also imagine the perfect cures to my truly disgusting cold. Am I thinking up novel antibiotics? Nope. I don’t imagine medicines. I imagine tools. Mostly different kinds of hooked scrub brushes. I think about a softer version of a car jack that I would use to crank my jaws all the way open so they lay flat on their hinges, then a pair of rubber-tipped pliers which would grip the hangy ball in the back of my throat (I know, I know, it is called a uvula, bleh!) and gently unscrew it from its base, lift it out of my mouth and place it in a shallow basin full of warm water and antibacterial soap (in my scrubby fantasy, the soap smells like Irish Spring – fresh and disinfectanty at the same time). Disembodied heavy duty rubber gloves, like the kind used to handle uranium, gently but firmly attack the equally disembodied hangy ball with a series of flex-headed toothbrushes with the brand new bristles of the softest grade until the hangy ball is thoroughly disinfected and practically glitters with cleanliness. At which point high intensity waterpicks, like at the dentist’s office, spray down the rest of my mouth and throat, suctioning as they go, as the hangyball is carefully reattached.
I have also come up with innovative cures for cleaning out my sinuses and straining the gunk from my lungs but I’ll spare you.
In addition to these clever, if somewhat redundant, imaginings, I have also watched quite a few movies, though these are more difficult since they require me to breathe and listen at the same time. This proved nearly impossible in the case of Inglorious Basterds. After several months of wanting to see it, I finally scored a bootleg DVD for about $4 only to find that it was filmed in a RUSSIAN movie theater rather than in an English-speaking country. The company that puts out this particular brand of bootlegs, usually pretty high quality, adds Arabic subtitles, but only to English dialogue (I assume it is like one English and Arabic speaking guy alone in his Russian basement).
Thus, in my copy of Inglorious Basterds, which includes stretches of French and German sometimes up to fifteen minutes long, only the English conversations are subtitled: in Arabic and Russian. All the place names and dates that act as headings before each scene are in Cyrillic writing and are not subtitled in Arabic, which I may have actually been able to understand since foreign place names are usually transcribed phonetically into Arabic. Therefore, besides the few scenes where it is just the Basterds talking among themselves in English, the only part I understood is when Brad Pitt and two other Americans pretend to be Italians and get out-Italianed by one of the German officers (I don’t think that ruins anything for anyone, you can kind of see it coming).
This whole pathetic sick weekend actually started with great potential. I got an invite for a job interview on Friday at 1:00 East Coast time, which would have been 8:00pm here. I could already feel myself getting sick by about 3 but made great efforts to tough it out. After a day trip I had already planned before the interview was scheduled (and, in hindsight, should have skipped since it turned out to run from 7am to nearly 5pm and didn’t include lunch or even time for lunch), I picked up my computer at my apartment and turned right around to hit the internet café for some research into the position and the organization. The org is one I’ve followed for awhile, an anti-sexual violence non-profit in D.C. The position was basically what I’m doing now, only with less responsibility and since it required only a B.A. and 2 years of general office experience, I suspect it wouldn’t pay a living wage for D.C. but I wanted the phone interview to find out.
I realized even before we scheduled the interview that the interviewer was getting cold feet when I explained the time zone difference, for the purpose of scheduling, and she seemed surprised and dismayed I was in Egypt, a fact I made quite clear in my cover letter. She told me she was hoping to fill the position within two weeks and I said my travel plans were quite flexible…anything to get to the interview and find out about the salary (by my current calculus of poverty, a job that paid in the high 20K’s in D.C. wouldn’t be worth leaving my middle class salary in Egypt for…but a job in the high 30’s in D.C. would put me closer to paying at least SOMETHING on my loans, and would therefore be worth moving earlier than I’d intended).
So we arranged to talk at 1pm on Friday, I did my pre-interview research and made some notes on good answers to questions I could reasonably expect (like why I was interested in leaving my job in Egypt after just a couple months, etc.), and then I waited for her call (despite metnioning twice in our email conversation that I’d be willing to call her and absorb the international charges and the difficulty of calling internationally), she did not give me her phone number. Although I Googled her before the interview time and jotted down her number just in case we were disconnected or something, I assumed her decision not to give me her number meant she would call me. I waited and waited. At 8:15 I was both really sick (the cold had come on in a rush at the end of the day, my nose stuffing and throat hurting and I was managing the pain and congestion with medicine until I could collapse in bed after the interview) and really anxious and I dialed her number for the first time.
Straight to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I waited another five minutes, then called my dad at home in Oregon to ask him to check my email (I don’t have email in my apartment here) to make sure that she hadn’t written to postpone (ah, my naïveté) the interview and also to confirm that the time zones were as I thought they were. I was correct on the time, she was over twenty minutes late, and had not written an email in the hour between my internet research and our scheduled appointment. At 8:30, a half-hour past our appointed time, I called got voicemail again, and left a message, repeating my phone number with country code, and offering to reschedule if something had come up. At 8:45, I called again, got voicemail again, and hung up again without leaving a message. My forehead had compressed into my skull and was getting friendly with my brain by this time and I was keeping my nasal passages open by wedging toothpicks into them like they do on cartoons (kidding). I needed to sleep but was too freaked out! What was going on? Had she forgotten the interview? How was that possible? I’d written back confirming the time at what would have been around 9am East Coast time that morning so it would have been among first emails she received on coming into the office. Maybe she didn’t come in that day and that’s why I kept getting her voicemail? But why would she ask me to interview at 1pm and then not come into the office without letting me know?
At 9:05pm, I couldn’t stay awake any longer. My body and my nerves were spent. I called, got voicemail immediately again, and left a second message stating that I was still interested in the position, knew she was on a deadline and would therefore be available for another couple hours (I somehow thought that if she called just after I’d fallen asleep the adrenaline would help me rally enough to get through the interview) if she still wanted to do the interview that day. I said if she wanted to reschedule, I’d make myself available anytime, just shoot me an email. Finally, I collapsed into sleep, breathing gape-mouthed and chapped-lipped for twelve straight hours (after which, I brushed my teeth IMMEDIATELY).
I slept all day Saturday, then called in sick to work on Sunday and slept all day that day too. Late Sunday afternoon, I called my mom, who dutifully checked my email (I can’t believe my parents put up with me like they do) and reported that my would-have-been interviewer wrote that she had just received the message I had sent at about 2:30 on Friday afternoon East Coast Time (so I guess she wasn’t in the office?!) and that unfortunately she’d decided she needed to fill the position by this Wednesday and that she would require an in-person interview. Therefore, I was not eligible for the position (which she never should have scheduled since if she’d read my cover letter, which she clearly didn’t, there was never any question I am IN EGYPT) but my resume and cover letter looked great and she has a good feeling that good things are headed my way.
I of course went ballistic and sent her an email today about how it was her prerogative to decide to interview only in-person candidates but that once she made that decision she had a responsibility to inform me by email or phone before our appointment and that her failure to do so showed a lack of professional courtesy and consideration for my time and my feelings. I did not say that I totally blame her for making me sick, but if they ever develop a hangy-ball transplant surgery, I am getting it and leaving my grime-covered discarded hangy-ball in her bed like the horse head in The Godfather. Booyah.
I also imagine the perfect cures to my truly disgusting cold. Am I thinking up novel antibiotics? Nope. I don’t imagine medicines. I imagine tools. Mostly different kinds of hooked scrub brushes. I think about a softer version of a car jack that I would use to crank my jaws all the way open so they lay flat on their hinges, then a pair of rubber-tipped pliers which would grip the hangy ball in the back of my throat (I know, I know, it is called a uvula, bleh!) and gently unscrew it from its base, lift it out of my mouth and place it in a shallow basin full of warm water and antibacterial soap (in my scrubby fantasy, the soap smells like Irish Spring – fresh and disinfectanty at the same time). Disembodied heavy duty rubber gloves, like the kind used to handle uranium, gently but firmly attack the equally disembodied hangy ball with a series of flex-headed toothbrushes with the brand new bristles of the softest grade until the hangy ball is thoroughly disinfected and practically glitters with cleanliness. At which point high intensity waterpicks, like at the dentist’s office, spray down the rest of my mouth and throat, suctioning as they go, as the hangyball is carefully reattached.
I have also come up with innovative cures for cleaning out my sinuses and straining the gunk from my lungs but I’ll spare you.
In addition to these clever, if somewhat redundant, imaginings, I have also watched quite a few movies, though these are more difficult since they require me to breathe and listen at the same time. This proved nearly impossible in the case of Inglorious Basterds. After several months of wanting to see it, I finally scored a bootleg DVD for about $4 only to find that it was filmed in a RUSSIAN movie theater rather than in an English-speaking country. The company that puts out this particular brand of bootlegs, usually pretty high quality, adds Arabic subtitles, but only to English dialogue (I assume it is like one English and Arabic speaking guy alone in his Russian basement).
Thus, in my copy of Inglorious Basterds, which includes stretches of French and German sometimes up to fifteen minutes long, only the English conversations are subtitled: in Arabic and Russian. All the place names and dates that act as headings before each scene are in Cyrillic writing and are not subtitled in Arabic, which I may have actually been able to understand since foreign place names are usually transcribed phonetically into Arabic. Therefore, besides the few scenes where it is just the Basterds talking among themselves in English, the only part I understood is when Brad Pitt and two other Americans pretend to be Italians and get out-Italianed by one of the German officers (I don’t think that ruins anything for anyone, you can kind of see it coming).
This whole pathetic sick weekend actually started with great potential. I got an invite for a job interview on Friday at 1:00 East Coast time, which would have been 8:00pm here. I could already feel myself getting sick by about 3 but made great efforts to tough it out. After a day trip I had already planned before the interview was scheduled (and, in hindsight, should have skipped since it turned out to run from 7am to nearly 5pm and didn’t include lunch or even time for lunch), I picked up my computer at my apartment and turned right around to hit the internet café for some research into the position and the organization. The org is one I’ve followed for awhile, an anti-sexual violence non-profit in D.C. The position was basically what I’m doing now, only with less responsibility and since it required only a B.A. and 2 years of general office experience, I suspect it wouldn’t pay a living wage for D.C. but I wanted the phone interview to find out.
I realized even before we scheduled the interview that the interviewer was getting cold feet when I explained the time zone difference, for the purpose of scheduling, and she seemed surprised and dismayed I was in Egypt, a fact I made quite clear in my cover letter. She told me she was hoping to fill the position within two weeks and I said my travel plans were quite flexible…anything to get to the interview and find out about the salary (by my current calculus of poverty, a job that paid in the high 20K’s in D.C. wouldn’t be worth leaving my middle class salary in Egypt for…but a job in the high 30’s in D.C. would put me closer to paying at least SOMETHING on my loans, and would therefore be worth moving earlier than I’d intended).
So we arranged to talk at 1pm on Friday, I did my pre-interview research and made some notes on good answers to questions I could reasonably expect (like why I was interested in leaving my job in Egypt after just a couple months, etc.), and then I waited for her call (despite metnioning twice in our email conversation that I’d be willing to call her and absorb the international charges and the difficulty of calling internationally), she did not give me her phone number. Although I Googled her before the interview time and jotted down her number just in case we were disconnected or something, I assumed her decision not to give me her number meant she would call me. I waited and waited. At 8:15 I was both really sick (the cold had come on in a rush at the end of the day, my nose stuffing and throat hurting and I was managing the pain and congestion with medicine until I could collapse in bed after the interview) and really anxious and I dialed her number for the first time.
Straight to voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. I waited another five minutes, then called my dad at home in Oregon to ask him to check my email (I don’t have email in my apartment here) to make sure that she hadn’t written to postpone (ah, my naïveté) the interview and also to confirm that the time zones were as I thought they were. I was correct on the time, she was over twenty minutes late, and had not written an email in the hour between my internet research and our scheduled appointment. At 8:30, a half-hour past our appointed time, I called got voicemail again, and left a message, repeating my phone number with country code, and offering to reschedule if something had come up. At 8:45, I called again, got voicemail again, and hung up again without leaving a message. My forehead had compressed into my skull and was getting friendly with my brain by this time and I was keeping my nasal passages open by wedging toothpicks into them like they do on cartoons (kidding). I needed to sleep but was too freaked out! What was going on? Had she forgotten the interview? How was that possible? I’d written back confirming the time at what would have been around 9am East Coast time that morning so it would have been among first emails she received on coming into the office. Maybe she didn’t come in that day and that’s why I kept getting her voicemail? But why would she ask me to interview at 1pm and then not come into the office without letting me know?
At 9:05pm, I couldn’t stay awake any longer. My body and my nerves were spent. I called, got voicemail immediately again, and left a second message stating that I was still interested in the position, knew she was on a deadline and would therefore be available for another couple hours (I somehow thought that if she called just after I’d fallen asleep the adrenaline would help me rally enough to get through the interview) if she still wanted to do the interview that day. I said if she wanted to reschedule, I’d make myself available anytime, just shoot me an email. Finally, I collapsed into sleep, breathing gape-mouthed and chapped-lipped for twelve straight hours (after which, I brushed my teeth IMMEDIATELY).
I slept all day Saturday, then called in sick to work on Sunday and slept all day that day too. Late Sunday afternoon, I called my mom, who dutifully checked my email (I can’t believe my parents put up with me like they do) and reported that my would-have-been interviewer wrote that she had just received the message I had sent at about 2:30 on Friday afternoon East Coast Time (so I guess she wasn’t in the office?!) and that unfortunately she’d decided she needed to fill the position by this Wednesday and that she would require an in-person interview. Therefore, I was not eligible for the position (which she never should have scheduled since if she’d read my cover letter, which she clearly didn’t, there was never any question I am IN EGYPT) but my resume and cover letter looked great and she has a good feeling that good things are headed my way.
I of course went ballistic and sent her an email today about how it was her prerogative to decide to interview only in-person candidates but that once she made that decision she had a responsibility to inform me by email or phone before our appointment and that her failure to do so showed a lack of professional courtesy and consideration for my time and my feelings. I did not say that I totally blame her for making me sick, but if they ever develop a hangy-ball transplant surgery, I am getting it and leaving my grime-covered discarded hangy-ball in her bed like the horse head in The Godfather. Booyah.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Learning from my mistakes
I ate ants yesterday. They were in my cereal box and I poured them into yogurt with my corn flakes. I didn't notice until the last two bites that I had sprinkled in an extra protein source. There were three ants in those last two bites so my guess is that I ate 3-10 ants in total.
So I freaked out, threw up, sprayed the holy hell out of the kitchen with a huge bottle of RAID, then went to work and dumped a half liter (see how I'm trying to throw in metric terms?!) of cappuccino into my belly to burn the suckers in acidic coffee goodness.
This morning, even though I'd sprayed every twitching, crawling inch of my kitchen and opened a brand new box of corn pops (they were out of flakes) last night, I carefully inspected the inside and outside of the box for invaders BEFORE I added any protein to my breakfast this time. Sure enough, the ants had braved the remnants of the RAID and were exploring my BRAND NEW BOX of cereal! A whole box of corn pops totally wasted! But my newfound strategy to look before I eat saved the yogurt from a similar fate and I was able to mix in some cornflakes from the box I keep at work as a backup.
I am going to my first Egyptian dentist appointment tonight. I swear if the doc finds ants in my teeth, I'm moving home.
So I freaked out, threw up, sprayed the holy hell out of the kitchen with a huge bottle of RAID, then went to work and dumped a half liter (see how I'm trying to throw in metric terms?!) of cappuccino into my belly to burn the suckers in acidic coffee goodness.
This morning, even though I'd sprayed every twitching, crawling inch of my kitchen and opened a brand new box of corn pops (they were out of flakes) last night, I carefully inspected the inside and outside of the box for invaders BEFORE I added any protein to my breakfast this time. Sure enough, the ants had braved the remnants of the RAID and were exploring my BRAND NEW BOX of cereal! A whole box of corn pops totally wasted! But my newfound strategy to look before I eat saved the yogurt from a similar fate and I was able to mix in some cornflakes from the box I keep at work as a backup.
I am going to my first Egyptian dentist appointment tonight. I swear if the doc finds ants in my teeth, I'm moving home.
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