You Can't Make Mistakes.

Nightmare night

Since you last heard from me, I have been lost in the bellies of various airplanes and then was delivered into the hungry maw of homeland security.extra It’s been real, and it’s been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun.

Our flight out of Heathrow was delayed, which I somehow knew instinctively. Something always has to go wrong at Heathrow. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be Heathrow. What I wasn’t banking on, though, was “scheduled maintenance” which would delay us for 3 and a half hours.

Now, I would think that if you were going to schedule maintenance on a plane, you would schedule it for a time when said plane wasn’t about to taxi. This is not how it is done, however. Once we all boarded the flight, it was really quite pleasant. There was really no one on the plane: it was mostly empty, which meant that each passenger got at least two seats and loads of leg-room. Sweet. The crew was funny too. They didn’t give a shit since there were so few of us, so it was very laid back. I got some much needed sleep finally.

When we arrived at Dulles, however, it was a different story entirely.

We were first ushered onto the weird Dulles airport shuttle thing. It’s like a really uncomfortable waiting room, with tightly packed seats, except that the whole thing moves and changes levels depending on where it is and where it needs to go. It is a creepy prelude to the nightmare that Homeland Security/Customs and Border Patrol will then inflict.

You can imagine that I was really looking forward to the body cavity searches that I would be receiving, having just lived in North Africa for 8 months. I have to say, they took it easy on me. I think that the guy who questioned me was a rookie though, he didn’t really know what to ask and just seemed kind of nervous.

I did get extra-special service though—not the ultra-special, wait in a room for hours and hours and then be body-cavity searched version though. They just wrote in huge letters all over my form and then sent me off to a special line with all of the Latinos, Arabs, and anyone else who was brown. I was the only white guy. It was nice. Made me feel at home again, like in Cairo.

So I get to the front of the line finally and the guy that got stuck with me was alright. He was a little green, but friendly—and thorough. He aksed me question after question about my program, my teachers, how I met my tutors. My favorite was when he caught a glance of the load of Quranic studies books and asked me if any of my studies were of a religious. He was, of course, hoping that I would slip up and admit to having been drafted into the ranks of some extremist group.

I haven’t, by the way.

I said “Yes, I’m a religionist by training, so I study the religious texts as well.”

Then finally, after having decided that I was not going to be a threat to our great nation. I was allowed through, back onto American soil.

Thankfully it was really late, so my plans were shot, and I decided to just wait for my flight to come up in wee hours—now swiftly approaching.

I tried to find someone to take my bags off me again, but no one was at any of the desks for Northwest Airlines, so I had to schlep around the airport with 60 kg of luggage, desperate for a coffee.

I thought that was bad, until the time came when I could check in for the connecting flight to Detroit and woman decided to charge me for my bags. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. Apparently,even though I had just come 10,000 miles with these heavy bags, now I had to pay $50 to get them another 500 miles home. She said she couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t been charged in the first place as she had never heard of an airline with a 30 kg weight limit before (both Virgin and British Airways have a 30 kg weight limit, FYI). Bastards. It’s just an example of a sinking American carrier scheme to get a few more nickels and dimes.

It’s amazing how I didn’t have any troubles with airline employees until I landed in the United States. Surprise, surprise.

But I’m better now, I just found Vitamin Water in the airport while waiting for the flight. It went well with the rest of my Xanax. I’ll have a nice relaxing nap on the plane.

1 down, 2 to go

I am sitting here at London Heathrow waiting for my flight back to the States. There is no free internet in airports anymore, and since I figured that it would be nice to have access while I was in the airports today, I purchased some time on some hotspot service that will work Stateside as well.

And so, we have our first ever blog post from the airport. Nice.

Cairo was great this morning. It was nice to drive through the city just after dawn. There was no traffic and the city is really pretty at that time in the morning. I was also in a pretty decent mood because, for the first time in my life, I packed several days in advance—rather than several hours. That was a great idea. Usually I wait until about five minutes before I am supposed to leave to panic and jam stuff into cases. I have loads of books, though, that I am returning to the States with and I wanted to ensure in advance that they would all fit. They did, perfectly. I had two bags that were exactly the max weight limit. Sweet.

The flight this morning was alright. I got some sleep: a blessing since I didn’t sleep at all last night because I had to leave so early.

I had the misfortune of being seated in front of the two loudest and most boring wankers on the plane, though. They were a young Brit and a middle-aged American attempting to trump each other’s traveling stories. Boring. They were both the types who have sort-of been everywhere, but they have never drank local water anywhere. These are people who refuse to use squat toilets—unless there isn’t another one for a 100 miles; never eat vegetables or fruit—because they may have been washed in local water; make even their tea and coffee with bottled water—idiots; and generally follow all of the information they find in guide-books as gospel. I call them: misguided tourists, on account of the fact that they are perfect fodder for (mis)guided tour companies.

Oh yah, and the American was a proper racist, which is always nice. There was an Egyptian woman sitting next to who displayed the same wincing patterns as I did when this dude excreted such gems as: “Well, Arabs are generally easily excitable, sort of infantile, really” and “The best experience I had in London was riding the regular train early in the morning and seeing all of the street kids. It gave me a real sense of London and the culture.” I’m sure it did, buddy.

Thankfully after about an hour of saying these loud things for an hour or two, they both shut their mouths and slept, until the end, when it was right back into the swing. Unpleasant bastards. Thankfully they exist all over the world. I just don’t like being captive at 10,000m with them.

I was a little sad leaving Cairo this morning. It’s dirty, polluted, crazed, busy, sometimes scary—but fun. Everyone talks to everyone as well. I don’t get that at home so much. It was weird leaving the flat as well. It is like I am just going to be back there next week, a temporary thing. Which, really, is the case, since we are going back in the fall. It is starting to feel homey.

I woke up the other night from a nightmare that this has all be a weird dream. I was panicked to realize—in the dream—that I had fallen asleep while taxiing down the runway in Washington, DC and it was still last September. I am not sure it the panic came more from realizing that I had to do all of this over again and not wanting to, or that it would have meant that I wouldn’t be able to parse what was real and what was not about my experiences.

Thankfully, I then realized that I was dreaming, and woke myself up. Still, though, scary.

So, now here I am. Not a dream-me, not a hologram—at least I don’t think so: the jury is out on this theory still—real-John, John of the real-world, sitting in an airport, blogging.

And now real-John is a bit hungry, and would perhaps like a beer with his lunch. Ciao for now. See you tonight, America.

[Update: I just finished a vegetarian English breakfast—complete with FAKEN—and a Guinness. I have consumed neither meat-replacement technologies or Guinness for nearly 9 months. They tasted like ambrosia.]

But not for a pig.

I’m on my way to the souq today one last time before leaving the country for the summer. I used to hate going there, but that was before I discovered the real souq. Khan al-Khalili is the very tourist-oriented mess of tiny pyramids and sphinxes made of alabaster and various other trinkets and shiny things. The real souq is the whole area around it to the north and west.

It is excellent.

You can get anything there. Anything. My favorite is the spices market, though. I can’t take it very long before I start sneezing, but that goes for a lot of my favorite places in the city. It’s a dusty, smelly, glorious place.

There is a whole part devoted just to shoes. Another for clothing of various kinds. Fabrics. It seems sort of counter-intuitive that you would have a hundred shops selling the same things all in very close proximity, but for some reason it works. Shopkeeper monger and compete with each other. There is always a throng of people moving through the little streets and alleys like a river of humanity.

The best part is that there are no cars. There wouldn’t be any room for them. Everyone gets merchandise into the alleys on these little hand-carts. In a city with millions of people and millions of cars everywhere, it is not a surprise that a market thronged with people would be a relaxing alternative to a streets thronged with honking, noisy, smelly cars and trucks. Because of the lack of cars in the souq, the air is also a great deal cleaner, which is not even the case in most of the gardens in the city.

I never really go there intending to buy anything, but I always find something cool or interesting, or monstrously strange.

Today, though, I am actually looking for some things:

1. An Egyptian flag. Big, not too big.
2. A piece of jewelry from a baladi-dancing pro shop for a friend back home
3. Some prayer beads
4. And an inflatable baby

The inflatable babies are always out around the holidays. Today is Coptic Easter and this week was Shem al-Nasim as well, so I should be able to find one. They are these creepy, inflated, cartoon looking babies. Ghastly, but I have a friend who I haven’t bought a creepy, inflated object for a while, and he will be thrilled by this one.

Not easily

My mood tends to reflect that of the people around me. If those around me are having a good time, then I will likely be having a good time. If those around me are upset, then I will be more likely to be upset. I realize the failure in this mode of being, but some things are built into us, and this is one of mine.

I recently underwent a type of hypnotherapy to make it easier to deal with above-mentioned situations. It was easy. Apparently, what it did was remove the buildup of negative emotions related to specific events which trigger the emotions of fear, anger, sadness, hurt and guilt, in that order. These buildups of emotion are called “gestalt” and have a significant effect on the way that we react to new situations which trigger these five emotions.

I have noted the effects of this therapy in two distinct and significant ways.

First, I didn’t know before that I was afraid of the dark. But, I was.

Now, for all of you naysayers, it is not like regression therapy where you dredge your past mental states to drag stuff up that may have happened in reality or may have happened in your mind, but had the same cognitive weight. No.

What I noticed, after having time-line therapy, was that I would walk down the hallway, or down the stairs, in relatively total darkness without turning on a light. In the past, I would have always turned on a light at some point, which doesn’t make any sense. In the situations that I am referring to, I have lived in a place for some long amount of time; I know the landscape; I will not trip over the ottoman; and yet I still would always turn on the light when I walked through a darkened room, if possible.

Now, in the same situation, I will just walk through and get and do what I need to do and then continue on: light or no light. If I know the terrain, it doesn’t make a difference.

It felt odd when I realized what I was doing, and what it meant.

The second way that this has affected the way that I move through the world is that I no longer immediately engage during a situation motivated by fear, anger, hurt, sadness or guilt.

It used to be the case that if someone pissed me off, they were in for a rough ride. I would escalate and escalate, always trying to outdo the the emotional level of my opponent. Now, I don’t. If someone starts down a road with me where I would have formerly escalated, I will generally remove myself from the situation. This is the case, unless, I feel that it is something worth fighting for. The problem that I have found, of late, is that there are about 6 things that I can figure are worth fighting for, and most of them are a far shot uglier than anything that the chumps that I hang out with can muster. So, as a result, I generally will just walk away from situations motivated by fear, anger, sadness, hurt or guilt, and wait until everyone has calmed down—or sobered up, as the case may be—to deal with whatever the problem was. Most of the time, there is actually no problem.

Regardless, I was just thinking that there are two types of people—HA!—in the world: the people whom I care about a great deal, and those whom are not really of any great consequence.

Now, of course this is a false dichotomy. But, come on, we can all relate to it.

The reason that I realized that there are people that I care about so significantly and people who don’t hold any bearing on my emotional state is that I recently have been able to catalog a difference in the ways that I react in given situations. It turns out that with the people who I care the most about, or believe—mistakenly or not—care about me, I become upset when I am confronted with unreasonable or illogical emotionally-based responses.

Now, I realize that I sound like a robot right now, but I am serious. The folks that I love the most have the most emotional sway in my emotional inner-life. Those who don’t, well, don’t factor. In those cases, I step aside, out of the picture, or disregard the things that would have pissed me off had they come from someone who mattered more significantly to me.

Regardless, it works out in the end. I am not attributing any of this to some sort of weird therapy, but I think that it might have helped me get there. I can’t deny that.

Now: the point.

I left a situation this evening in which someone feared that they may have offended someone else. Did they? Likely. Did I react defensively and try to right the injustice of my offense? No. Why? Honestly, because it was easier to leave, not worry about it so much, and go and write a blog post about it. It is better to remind myself that we are all just doing the best we can with the resources that we have at our disposal than get worked up about why someone or other hasn’t sorted themselves out.

Is this healthy? Well, I didn’t get into an argument or a fight with anyone over something that before would have incited that particular response or another equally emotionally escalated situation.

I would have to say: Yes. It’s fine by me. I’m happy with no black eyes or hurt feelings. Not to mention: a smile on my face.

Think about these things the next time someone pisses you off. Is it worth it? Why are you pissed off? Is the person whom you are angry at doing anything other than their best, considering their current situation and resources?

If the answers are anything other than: “No,” “I don’t know,” and “No,” then you may have a case. Otherwise, think about it again.

Not like you might think

I used to get nervous getting on planes.

I don’t really anymore. Years of conditioning myself to know how to feel on a plane by taking a pill or two and a pre-flight beer took care of that. I no longer fear the idea that the giant, heavy thing that I just sat down will force itself into the air and then through the skill of a pilot, a little luck, and whatever other unseen forces, land safely on the ground safely several hours later.

What I fear now about air-travel is threefold: delays, other passengers freaking out, lost luggage—in that order. I suppose that this is not unreasonable. I have been subject to all three in the past, though thankfully not all at once. My luggage was lost coming to Egypt once. I have been so delayed in the past that I have missed flights or had to run through the airport like a madman.

Don’t even get me started on other passengers. Top three worst:

1. Awful woman who refused to put her seat up on landing because the intercom had gone out and no one asked her personally. How could she have known otherwise?
2. Toy Daschund/Boxer stowed under the seat two rows ahead of me. His owner kept taking him out of the carrier so that he wouldn’t be scared. Seriously.
3. Little girl who screamed every minute or so sitting on her mother’s lap next to me. She would do this and then laugh riotously while her mother smiled sheepishly at me like it made a difference. I got her back by sitting there reading Arabic. It made her really nervous, especially when the—oddly—Egyptian flight attendant asked me about it and we had a conversation in Arabic. Ha friggin’ ha, lady.

Now the only variables which have matching values in these three different scenarios—aside from the obvious: on a plane, in a seat, eating peanut-replacement-salty-snacks because everyone has an allergy to peanuts now—is that these were all American domestic flights. And, all of the above-mentioned individuals, as well as their pets and children, were Americans. Hmmm?

These are all average, normal experiences.

Right before I am about to cross the Atlantic, for whatever reason, it seems like something weird, or awful happens right beforehand. In this case, it was the disastrous opening of the Heathrow Terminal 5. Who knew that it could have gone so wrong?

Luckily, I have a stopover at Heathrow this week on my way to DC. Superb. If, I’m really lucky, they will let me check one of my pieces of hand luggage at the gate, and then lose that as well. Then, they can ship all of it to Milan, and I will never see it again.

Maybe I should just take a backpack.

Anyway, these are just pre-travel jitters. They are easier to handle than the other kind. They all have to do with people, and can be rationalized. Fear of planes and flying, on the other hand, are more difficult to rationalize. I will take this type, any day.

I’ll still take a couple of Xanax, though.

Tell me what movie this quote is from:

“Are you Mexi-CAN, or a Mexi-CAN’T?”

I’ll give you an extra point if you can tell me the actor as well.

An open letter to the state of Indiana

This blog has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate from the Democrat Party, and this blog will not endorse a presidential candidate from the Republican Party. Sorry, Republican readers. Some of my best friends are Republicans, I just can’t vote for one. Maybe we will discuss that one day, but for now, I will leave it at that.

Back to the point, no endorsements have been made. Here is why:

Today I was watching the American news on the satellite and saw coverage of Senator Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania yesterday and then her move directly to Indiana to campaign like crazy there. During this coverage, there was an out-of-context segment show in which Senator Clinton was shown with hands raised emphatically punctuating her words, “… because I LOVE Indiana.”

I, frankly, find this hard to believe. And don’t you believe it either, Indiana. She is probably just buttering you up like all the others. I mean, how many states can you really love. Where is the loyalty, the devotion, the dedication? I am a one-state guy myself. Don’t get burned, Indiana. Don’t feel pressured to do something that you are not ready to do, just because she says she loves you.

The same goes for that Senator Obama as well. I know that this is a time of experimentation and alternative choices, and if you feel like you really want to swing toward the Obama camp, don’t worry: I won’t judge you and I won’t love you any less. I just want you to keep your options open and not be too hasty in making decisions when it comes to doing something that will have such a profound effect upon you. Also, don’t worry about what other people say about you, Indiana. They are just mean and unfulfilled because they got burned by Senator Clinton.

On the other hand, Sentaor Clinton may have seen something in you that changed her. She may be ready to settle down and love only you. It’s a tough one.

Just take your time, think about it, and remember that no matter what you decide, I will still support you.

One last thing, I want to thank you again, Indiana, for always being there for me when I need to take a pee-break before getting on the Skyway into that unreasonable neighbor of yours. You have always been there for me and never let me down.

Yours truly,

John Martin

Well, look at the sign, for starters.

I am often asked for directions. I am told that this is because “[I] look like [I] know where I am going”—I did an impromptu survey last week when asked where something was.

Now, as most of you know, I am a foreigner in Egypt. I should not know where I am. The streets are named things like “Mohie el-Din Abou el-Ezz” and Gameat al-Dowal al-Arabia,” and so forth, and they go off every which way, with no rhyme or reason. But, I am armed with a very useful tool: a map. Not just one map, a bunch of maps. I have loads of them. I buy every map I see in hopes that they will afford me a more complete picture of how the city is laid out.

This has caused me several problems.

First, before acquiring the maps, I navigated the city like everyone else: blind. Now, I actually feel obliged to answer when someone else asks me “How do I get to such-and-such place/street?” or the more common shouted demand from cabbies: “Fayn haaga? [Where is something?]” This holds doubly true, because not only do I know where stuff is usually, but I also know how to say where it is as well.

I don’t get to play ignorant that much anymore.

Second, when I am in a cab or driving with someone else, and they take us the terrifically long way, I am inclined to make a suggestion that we could/should/should have/could have gone a different way as well, and possibly saved ourselves some time—in some cases an hour. This is met with either: confusion, denial, indignation, ridicule, or—the worst—offense. It isn’t that I always know where I am or where I am going, either. But, I do almost always know what I am near, and how to get there. I’m just trying to help. Most of the time now, I just keep my mouth shut and see how things unfold.

It’s a neat skill to have in a city like this, but nearly useless unless you want to always want to be telling people where to go or pissing people off.

Other than the endless hours memorizing maps, I also often know where I am because there is a sign. Now, this is not the case everywhere, of course. There are parts of the city that have no signs. There are parts of Boolaq, very near to where I live, where the streets only have impromptu names because they are either too new, or no one has cared to name them yet.

But, in the vast majority of places where I am asked for directions, there tends to be a sign standing somewhere nearby indicating the information requested. The Metro is fantastic for exhibiting this phenomenon.

Inevitably, when you are descending the escalators in the Metro stations, someone will ask which way one or the other of the trains are. There are huge signs with this information in two languages all over the place. No one reads them, they just ask instead. Once on the train it is the same deal. There are line-route maps indicating the name and position of every stop in on that particular line above every door. Instead of looking to these for information, it is more customary to turn to the guy next to you and ask, then he will likely look at the sign, and relate his findings.

I know that much of this phenomenon has to do with relatively rampant illiteracy or partial literacy, but I can’t imagine that this is the only explanation. There must be more involved as well. It seems almost as though no one is sure of themselves to a high enough to degree to be happy with their choices as well. Maybe it is just a social thing—being sociable via feigned ignorance. Lord knows that American kids do that all the time, fearing perception as a nerd, geek, or know-it-all on account of knowing or understanding something. It’s probably all of the above. I don’t really care what behind it. It just cracks me up when someone looks at me and at the sign past me and asks, “Where am I?”

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 a pool match in Maadi, so the Metro was closed. We just grabbed a cab, asked Mohandessin, and off we went. Started chatting up the driver, who seemed pretty jocular and good-spirited anyway, and in no time we were cracking jokes with him talking about his kids. It was a blast. We over-paid in the end, but only because we had so much fun.

Today I grabbed a cab because I was running late—nearly a non-issue—and didn’t want to hassle with the Metro. It was a Yellow Cab, which are a bit more expensive, but sometimes cheaper.

I should probably explain that. See, when you get in a regular cab here—a black-and-white—the price is entirely variable. Depending on the traffic, the mood of the cabbie, your status as a noob or an expat in Egypt, whether it is Ramadan or not, etc. the price for the same cab-ride could be 3 LE or 10 LE, 10 LE or 20 LE. Like I said: variable. Completely.

The Yellow Cabs, though, have meters that work and are utilized. I am not sure how this is enforced, but it is. So, if I am going to Medinat Nasr or the airport—both lengthy rides—it is actually less expensive to take a metered cab and tip. This is doubly true to and from the airport.

Generally B&W cabbies want 50 to 75 LE to take you to and from the airport. A Yellow cab will cost approximately 33 LE, and you can leave a tip, and get all the way home if its a round trip for about the same price at the alternative. Much better.

For short journeys, the B&W’s are just fine. You also can’t usually find the Yellow Cabs, since they are a call service as well, but they hang out in packs on certain corners, and I know some of those corners.

Back to the story: I grabbed a Yellow Cab on the corner near my apartment. It was hot today too and I kind of wanted to sit in an air-conditioned car rather than the non-air-conditioned Metro or a B&W, which typically are free of such luxury. Plus, it is just nice to drive across the city sometimes. It is such a beautiful, strange and crazy place, which is very difficult to take in on the underground. At least, not in the same way, I suppose.

So, anyway, I’m in the cab, start talking to the driver. We’re laughing about the dumb thing that other people were doing—and have been doing—while driving recently. We talked about what has been going on in Egypt recently with the strikes and other madness.

I told him that I am leaving for the United States—that’s “Amreekah,” to you—next week and that I am pretty excited to see my homeland. He offered, no, insisted that I call him to take me to the airport.

My favorite thing today, though, was the conversation about his kids. See, small-talk in cabs goes like this:

1. “Where are you from?”
2. “What do you think of Egypt?”
3. “Here’s what I think of America, what do you think of America?” Politics
4. Religion
5. Family and children
6. Questioning of the politics of each others’ countries now that we’re friends
7. Exchanging of mobile numbers (optional)
8. “Great to meet you. Cheers. Bye.”

His son’s name is Abdel Rahman. But, he referred to him always as, “My little man, Abdel Rahman.” Of course, it didn’t rhyme in Arabic, but it was still really funny. He showed me pictures on his phone. Fantastic. I felt like I could be pretty honest with this guy, so when he asked me if I liked kids: “Not really,” I replied, “I am fearing them”

He laughed boisterously at this. I, in an attempt to defend myself as valid, could only say, “Seriously, they are like the small people. And they are always getting themselves into the danger.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was laughing at my Arabic at this point—because we were really stretching the limits of my vocabulary—or at what I had said. This also led me to wonder if he understood that I was afraid of children or if he took it to mean that I feared midgets and dwarves—also sort of true, sorry Little People, more power to you—and therefore children as well, by extension.

He, after wiping the laughing tears out of his eyes, said that it was alright that children were always getting into trouble, because they were bl-blah-blah. I can only assume that the word I didn’t catch meant “kids bounce back easily” or “children are expendable and easily replaced.” Either would have made sense to me, in the given context. And that was that. He continued chuckling for a minute and the told me he was thrilled to have met me and he would see me on Tuesday and I got out of the cab.

It was great. The only time that I have ever had this much fun in cabs at home was the time that I got a cab in Chicago and the guy sang. I thought that it was just a cool thing that happened on the way to the airport, but apparently the guy is a legend. Finding that out made it less special.

All cab rides in Cairo are special in their own way. For that, I am thankful.

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, everyone has been a little edgy about gathering together in groups, moving around the city and country, and also going out at night.

It is a common Cairene pastime to drive around at night. Usually the streets are packed, especially on the weekend nights, until the wee hours of the morning. This contributes to the relative slowness of traffic which enables people to cross the street without cross-walks, traffic-signals, foot-bridges or tunnels.

No longer is this the case.

Now, with the empty streets and since no one cared to follow the speed limits—a paltry 60 km per hour, seldom reached due to the often deadlocked traffic—it is dangerous to cross the street. It may not actually be the case,

Usual speed of traffic but it certainly now feels like we are attempting to cross an interstate highway in the States.

I have decided to think of the whole thing as a big game of Frogger. Very thankfully, I was excellent at on the ol’ Atari as a kid. It might be time to drag out that Atari anew for some honing of the traffic-dodging skills.