Things I have learned to love in Egypt
0 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Wednesday, September 15 at Wednesday, September 15, 2004.
Every new environment you live in makes you realise how wonderful some things are that you never appreciated before. Whether it is something that you once took for granted that you are now deprived of, or something that you have never seen utilised to its full potential before. Living in Ireland made me appreciate just how wonderful hot weather can be (by suddenly getting none of it), the true potential of breakfast (no-one does breakfast like the Irish), the importance of high quality fresh fruit and vegetables (not Irelands strong point), and how awesome it is living within a few hundred kilometres of Europe (as opposed to a few thousand).
Life in Egypt has given me some new things to appreciate - here is just a few of them:
Air Conditioning - You'd think that growing up in Australia would have schooled me on this. Nope. I've never lived in a house with air conditioning, and although I do remember the lovely feeling of walking into a department store, supermarket or upmarket house with the AirCon blasting, I never really felt strongly connected to the air conditioning. As mentioned before, Cairo is a structurally hot city, and living on the upper floors of an apartment only amplifies the heat. Let me clear something up here. Air conditioning is a gift from God. It is the greatest development of the 20th century. It changes your life, at least in Cairo. It makes life worth living.
Night Time - Egyptians do things on a different time scale. Morning means anywhere between 11 and 3. Afternoon begins when the suns starts going down. Evening is from 6-10. "Tonight" means any time until the sun starts coming up again. At first I was thrown a bit off balance by people calling me at 11:30pm wondering if I felt like hanging out. Hang on! This is sleepy time! No it isnt, not in Egypt. The traffic in Cairo is at its most insane between 11pm and 2am, because this is the peak time for nightlife. Me and Thea wanted to go and see a movie the other day so we called the cinema to ask what time they were screening. 11pm, 1am, 2am. Ummm, anything at like....a normal time? Not a chance.
Anyhow, I love it now. Late at night is the best time for hanging out, especially in Cairo, because the temperature cools down, a breeze picks up, and it all feels so naughty to me still. Its like a replacement for not being able to drink booze and act innapropriately. "Sure, I'm not loaded on whiskey and gin and there isnt any half naked receptionists doing the macarena to Britney Spears all around me. But hey - its 3am! I must be doing something bad"
Water - Sure, it is the essence of life. But I've never relished water, loved water, longed for water, like I do in Cairo. Daily life here is a contant search for water - where is the water, I need water, you have water, damn thats good water. It is so easy to get dehydrated here - forget to slug back your hourly litre and you notice really fast just exactly how important water is to your body. Especially cold, cold water. Which leads me to my next point.....
Frozen Water - What is the only thing worse than waking up in a hot room, hair and pillow soaked in sweat, sun beating on your face at 8am, already feeling hot, bothered and dry? Waking up in that situation and remembering that you forgot to put the fecking water in the freezer before you went to bed. A bottle of frozen water is vital in Egypt. First, because Egyptian tap water smells and tastes like a swimming pool. It is, as I have come to describe it, reassuringly chlorinated - anything that smells like a Nazi gas chamber can't possibly be loaded with delicious strains of typhoid and polio. The best way I have found of dealing with the heavy chlorine taste is to drink it freezing cold. I think this is the same logic behind why you keep Vodka in the freezer - not that I would ever pollute our house with the devils liquid, praise be to Allah.
Crusty White Bread - I'm not even that keen on it, but damn, as Joni Mitchell would say, you dont know you've got till its gone. Egypt generally doesnt do "western style" white bread very well - the dimensions by which it seems to be produced are softness and sweetness. It tastes like McDonalds bread, and feels like you could squeeze the whole loaf into something the size of a ping pong ball. Crusty bread is non-existant, at least to my knowledge.
Fruit Juice - Here's something Egyptians have nailed better than anywhere else I have been. Any popular street will have a few juice stores, which you can pick out by the piles of fruit on display at the front of the store, advertising what kind of juices they make. The most common ones are mango, lemon, strawberry and banana, but you find plenty of other weird ones. The Egyptian way of making juice is a fantastically primal one - get fruit, put into blender, pour blended fruit into cup. No sweeteners, no milk, no yogurt or ice cream - normally just a few ice cubes to make it cold. I'm telling you, a whole punnet of strawberries, emptied into a blender makes something a lot better than the sum of its parts.
I could keep on writing like this for hours, but I need to go and find my bottle of ice water so that I can leave the air conditioned office to rush to the Juice bar before it closes at 6am.
Life in Egypt has given me some new things to appreciate - here is just a few of them:
Air Conditioning - You'd think that growing up in Australia would have schooled me on this. Nope. I've never lived in a house with air conditioning, and although I do remember the lovely feeling of walking into a department store, supermarket or upmarket house with the AirCon blasting, I never really felt strongly connected to the air conditioning. As mentioned before, Cairo is a structurally hot city, and living on the upper floors of an apartment only amplifies the heat. Let me clear something up here. Air conditioning is a gift from God. It is the greatest development of the 20th century. It changes your life, at least in Cairo. It makes life worth living.
Night Time - Egyptians do things on a different time scale. Morning means anywhere between 11 and 3. Afternoon begins when the suns starts going down. Evening is from 6-10. "Tonight" means any time until the sun starts coming up again. At first I was thrown a bit off balance by people calling me at 11:30pm wondering if I felt like hanging out. Hang on! This is sleepy time! No it isnt, not in Egypt. The traffic in Cairo is at its most insane between 11pm and 2am, because this is the peak time for nightlife. Me and Thea wanted to go and see a movie the other day so we called the cinema to ask what time they were screening. 11pm, 1am, 2am. Ummm, anything at like....a normal time? Not a chance.
Anyhow, I love it now. Late at night is the best time for hanging out, especially in Cairo, because the temperature cools down, a breeze picks up, and it all feels so naughty to me still. Its like a replacement for not being able to drink booze and act innapropriately. "Sure, I'm not loaded on whiskey and gin and there isnt any half naked receptionists doing the macarena to Britney Spears all around me. But hey - its 3am! I must be doing something bad"
Water - Sure, it is the essence of life. But I've never relished water, loved water, longed for water, like I do in Cairo. Daily life here is a contant search for water - where is the water, I need water, you have water, damn thats good water. It is so easy to get dehydrated here - forget to slug back your hourly litre and you notice really fast just exactly how important water is to your body. Especially cold, cold water. Which leads me to my next point.....
Frozen Water - What is the only thing worse than waking up in a hot room, hair and pillow soaked in sweat, sun beating on your face at 8am, already feeling hot, bothered and dry? Waking up in that situation and remembering that you forgot to put the fecking water in the freezer before you went to bed. A bottle of frozen water is vital in Egypt. First, because Egyptian tap water smells and tastes like a swimming pool. It is, as I have come to describe it, reassuringly chlorinated - anything that smells like a Nazi gas chamber can't possibly be loaded with delicious strains of typhoid and polio. The best way I have found of dealing with the heavy chlorine taste is to drink it freezing cold. I think this is the same logic behind why you keep Vodka in the freezer - not that I would ever pollute our house with the devils liquid, praise be to Allah.
Crusty White Bread - I'm not even that keen on it, but damn, as Joni Mitchell would say, you dont know you've got till its gone. Egypt generally doesnt do "western style" white bread very well - the dimensions by which it seems to be produced are softness and sweetness. It tastes like McDonalds bread, and feels like you could squeeze the whole loaf into something the size of a ping pong ball. Crusty bread is non-existant, at least to my knowledge.
Fruit Juice - Here's something Egyptians have nailed better than anywhere else I have been. Any popular street will have a few juice stores, which you can pick out by the piles of fruit on display at the front of the store, advertising what kind of juices they make. The most common ones are mango, lemon, strawberry and banana, but you find plenty of other weird ones. The Egyptian way of making juice is a fantastically primal one - get fruit, put into blender, pour blended fruit into cup. No sweeteners, no milk, no yogurt or ice cream - normally just a few ice cubes to make it cold. I'm telling you, a whole punnet of strawberries, emptied into a blender makes something a lot better than the sum of its parts.
I could keep on writing like this for hours, but I need to go and find my bottle of ice water so that I can leave the air conditioned office to rush to the Juice bar before it closes at 6am.
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