Category: Uncategorized

I was at a function somewhere recently ( I don’t remember where) when someone brought up the subject of

If I need to get to the hospital, should I just get in a taxi or call an ambulance.

I laughed and replied:

Get in a taxi. It will get you there faster and it’s not like the ambulance staff can do anything for you.

Then this article came out in Egypt Today.

Brand new, shiney ambulances. I am still going to get in a taxi.

Congrats to Obama and all the people that made it happen. They worked hard and beat the odds. Nice work.

A few months ago, I said that I thought that McCain was going to win. This was before the Palin pick.

I was wrong.

I am pleasantly surprised that I was wrong.

And the democrats have increased their leads in the Senate and House. If they can’t get their agenda passed now, then they should just disband as a political party.

It is going to be interesting.

We are in the process of making arrangements to visit Asia for a couple weeks over Christmas/New Years holiday.

Well, that is a popular time to travel. Especially for one of our destinations, Phuket. We are going to use that for a base for some diving. We are looking at a live aboard.

So we looked at all the boats and the available dates and email and asked for cabin.

We were told “Sorry, that boat is all booked for those dates.”

Oh.

Ok, so we went with our second choice.

Nope, all booked as well.

Booked? 2 months in advance? We clearly aren’t in Egypt anymore. You mean I can’t just show up and expect to be admitted? What kind of country runs like that? I mean, really.

So, we juggled our schedule and got a cabin on our desired boat, just different dates.

We have always had a problem in this apartment with not getting hot water.

We would have to let it run for 10 minutes or more before it got “hot”. And it never got HOT. By HOT, I mean hot enough that you have to turn on the cold water faucet to blend the water so that it doesn’t burn.

I never gets that hot.

But we adapted.

But the water stopped coming out of the hot faucet entirely. Or it would spurt out and stop. and spurt and stop.

We had the staff of the apartment building look at it several times. And when they were here it was fine.

We finally had to play bad cop, good cop. We went down stairs and kaddee, very rationally, tried to explain the problem. I interrupted and railed and generally “made a scene”.

The next day we had no less than 6 workmen in our bathrooms. (might have had a peak of 7 at one point, with them all coming and going, I kinda lost track).

I tried to explain the problems:

1. The water pressure is erratic to the point of getting no water, followed by enough pressure to knock a pigeon off a garbage truck.

2. When we had water, it wasn’t hot.

So they turned on the water and let it run for a couple of minutes and determined it was hot enough. I assured them in no uncertain terms “uh, no. that’s not hot. I want STEAM”.

They (and I am not making this up) banged on the pipes with a wrench. and tested it again. “See hot”.

Me: “no, no steam? do you see steam? call me when you see steam”

As I was leaving the bathroom, problem #1 reared its ugly head. [we had never been able to repro problem while they were here].

“AHA! LOOK! MAFISH MAYA” (no water)

There was much muttering and they sent off one of the junior workmen. I understood enough to know where they sent him:

They sent him off for a new hose for the shower head. The thinking being that the hose was clogged.

I tried to explain to them why their reasoning was faulty:

the cold water behaves fine. Great water pressure. The cold water comes through the same hose that the hot water comes through, ergo….

“uh. Wait 1 minute. new hose.”

I shrug and wait.

They replace the hose and turn on the water and (thank god!) no hot water….. They turn on the cold water, plenty of water. Turn on hot no water.

Hmm, fancy that. It wasn’t the hose. [Once I lost the “it aint the hose because the cold water works fine” battle, I never even bothered to ask why it was the same in the sink (no hose) and the other shower. I figured it was faster and easier to allow them to figure it out then to try to save them time and effort]

More people were called up. A man in “nice” clothes came up to see what the problem was. [The rest of the men had on overalls]

They went down to the apartment below to check his water pressure.

And came back up. Apparently it was localized to this apartment.

Except for the hose, nothing was replaced. But they (again, no joking) banged on the pipes and joints and valves for about 2 hours.

Then they called me into the bathroom to see.

Very good water pressure, tons of grit in the sinks and shower (that came out of the faucets) and HOT-ish water. [hot enough to shower comfortably, but not HOT enough to need cold water added].

Apparently, the hot water pipe was clogged with grind/sand. [I clean the aerator/screens on the faucets about once per month to get rid of the build up]. The banging broke up enough of it and flushed it from the pipes.

Since then the water pressure and temperature are far better than they ever have been in this apartment.

It still is poor enough that if this were my house in the states, I would be replacing the water heater or looking for another cause.

But it is as good as it is going to get here, I am afraid.

Apparently the old saying of putting enough monkeys[1] in a room with typewriters, and you will get the combined works of Shakespeare holds true.

Just substitute “wrenches” for “typewriters” and “hot water” for “works of Shakespeare”.

And you need 7 of them.

[1] Which is not to say I am comparing Egyptians to monkeys.

I am celebrating Ramadan by listening to Warren Zevon’s “Mohammed’s Radio”

Makes me wanna rock and roll all night long…..

I, apparently, made a comment some time ago when someone asked me about how I enjoy living in Egypt and asked if I will miss it.

My reply was

I look forward to the time when I miss living in Egypt.

Now this was really an off-the-cuff, throw-away kind of line.

But my wife was there and she remembered [She remembers everything].

She reminded me of it a while back, and it is now my standard reply when people ask me “what do you think of living in Egypt.”

I think it sums it up.

Just a quick page with a small handful of shots of riders we were able to get in the paddock at Catalunya.

More to come, as soon as I get that load of round tuits I ordered.

There is an article on the Discovery channel website about sea shells embedded in the stones of the Sphinx, pyramids and other monuments in Egypt

I mentioned this in one of my recent posts when we were scrambling around the Sphinx.

There is an hypothesis that the stones that built the pyramids (among other large monuments) were cast in place like cement. It is not a highly regarded hypothesis.

Zahi Hawass (Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities) vehemently denies the possibility that the blocks were cast. He views it as an insult to ancient Egyptian in that it insinuates that they were incapable of building the pyramids by moving the blocks. I don’t necessarily share that opinion. It would seem to give the ancient Egyptians some great credit for figuring out cement all those years ago. [shrug]

And if Zahi Hawass is unhappy with you, you will never get another permit to dig or explore in Egypt while he draws breath.

And if Zahi Hawass were to say something like “write an article that refutes this nonsense about cement casting the stones of the Pyramids” to another archaeologist or geologist, it happens.

[I recently attended a lecture at the SCA that was “requested” by Zahi Hawass to “clarify” some statements made on a BBC documentary about the town of Armana. Someone had dared to say that the people that built the city of Armana worked hard and suffered hardships. Preposterous! All Egyptians have always been healthy and happy and whistled while they worked. This misinformation had to be stopped!]

This article seems at least partially aimed at refuting the casting hypothesis. Perhaps by request?

For the last few weeks I have been spending some time doing some basic computer networking/repair/upgrade/de-virus-ing at the offices of one of the archaeological groups here in Cairo.

The group is responsible for the Giza Plateau Mapping Project(opens in new window). The director of the project is Mark Lehner.

The work isn’t particularly challenging, but it is great to have some non-AUC social contact. They are a very bright, hard working group of people. And they are interesting to talk with and listen to. An interesting mix of nationalities and disciplines.

One of the big benefits (to me) of working for them, is that I get invited on tours of the sites that they give to new arrivals to the project.

Mark Lehner has been in town the last few weeks and has given a couple of tours. One was a Sphinx tour.

I was a horrible host and deserted our house guests to go to this. I felt rather guilty for going. But I got over that once we started our tour. [A big thanks to Kaddee, who convinced me to go].

One of the interesting things that Mark talks about is the geology. He ran into a geologist, Tom Agner (now head of geology at Tubington) at Giza some 30 years ago. Mark tells the story something like this:

I saw this guy with a geologist’s pickaxe being frog-walked out of the area by a whole bunch of policemen. He had been picking at the ground and the walls of the sphinx enclosure with his pickaxe and examining what he pulled out. The police wasted no time in arresting him.

I told him I would try to get him out of trouble if he came to work for me. I did and he did.

Mark goes on to talk about what he learned from this geologist. No one had ever before really looked at the Sphinx or the rest of Giza geologically

.

The entire area was on the ocean bottom 50 million years ago or so. You can see in one of my photos the coral reef exposed near the base of the Sphinx. Oyster shells, tube worm holes and other shells are easily visible in the rock here if you just look.

The head of the Sphinx is a different composition than the shoulders and the lower body. Many people think that the head was attached to the body, but it is one big hunk of rock. The sea ebbing and flowing left mixed layers of soft and hard deposits. This is perfect for quarrying, you can cut the soft layer and pick off a large hunk of hard layer rock.

It seems that there was a huge lagoon/harbor that stopped a few meters from the base of the Sphinx. This is based on long ramps that have been found (and are now reburied) that go down about 20 meters from current ground level, to heavy, thick effluvial mud flats.

After our mini-geology lecture, we moved to the Temple of Amenhotep II and then on to the Stela between the paws of the Sphinx.

The Stela tells the story of Tutmoses’ dream. At the time of Tutmoses, the sphinx was buried in sand up to its head. Tutmoses fell asleep under the head and dreamed. The sphinx came to him in the dream and told him to “free my body from the sands and I will make you king”.

Tutmoses did as he was told and became king. There is some speculation that there was an older brother that was slated to be king. This brother disappears from the record and Tutmoses became king. Perhaps Tutmoses used this story to legitimize his reign. Who knows.

What is visible now of the sphinx’ body is covered with cement to keep it all together and prevent further weathering.

We looked at the elevation documents that the project has compiled over the years and walked around the entire sphinx.

There were many stories that Mark told. He would be a great guy to have a beer with, I would imagine.

My photos.