{"id":39,"date":"2006-09-03T01:20:24","date_gmt":"2006-09-03T08:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/?p=39"},"modified":"2006-09-03T01:20:24","modified_gmt":"2006-09-03T08:20:24","slug":"waiting-for-the-courier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/2006\/09\/03\/waiting-for-the-courier\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for the courier."},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a magazine called Egypt Today<\/a>. It is an English language magazine dealing with news and politics. It also has a really good directory of restaurants and shops. This directory is sold for 60LE. Or for about 10LE more, you can subscribe to the magazine and get the directory. We decided to subscribe.<\/p>\n

So I went online and filled out a subscription form. It says on the form that they do not accept credit card payments electronically, and that a member of the subscription department will be in touch.<\/p>\n

I submit the form and we get an email back confirming our contact info.<\/p>\n

The next day the phone rings, and it is a nice lady from the magazine explaining their subscription options.<\/p>\n

I pick a 1 year subscription and was asked:<\/p>\n

When would you like the courier to come?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Excuse me?<\/p>\n

Labo(u)r is cheap in this country. I believe that the official unemployment rate is around 40%. I have heard unofficial rates as high as 70%.<\/p>\n

What that means is that everywhere you go, stores, restaurants, hotels etc, there are 6-8 guys standing around. It is unclear whether they all work there, or are just hanging around.<\/p>\n

Buying something in a store involves picking out what you want with one guy, who gives it to another guy who writes a receipt. You take that receipt to the cashier, pay him\/her. Take the receipt back to another guy, who hands you your purchase.<\/p>\n

Any job that is labor intensive and can be done with locally produced materials is extremely cheap. Anything that requires imported materials is expensive because of duties and taxes.<\/p>\n

This is one of the reasons that EVERY place delivers. Restaurants, kebab stands on street corners, markets, dry cleaners, makawagis, everybody.<\/p>\n

As an example:<\/p>\n

We bought 2 cases of 1.5L bottles of water. To get them home, 2 delivery boys from the market put them in a shopping cart, carried the cart up the stairs to street level, followed us the 3 blocks home. Then carried the cases of water to our apartment. We gave them 2.50LE each. That’s about $0.45. It was a generous tip cause it wasn’t that hot and they had the cart, so they didn’t have to carry the cases the entire way.<\/p>\n

It was surreal, and a little uncomfortable, to have 2 men following us through the streets of Cairo with our groceries. It felt decadent and almost colonial. I have been told we will get over that. I kind of hope that we don’t.<\/p>\n

Back to the courier:<\/p>\n

Egypt Today doesn’t really take credit cards at all. They are sending a courier today, Sunday, to pick up our payment and give us our first copy and a receipt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a magazine called Egypt Today. It is an English language magazine dealing with news and politics. It also has a really good directory of restaurants and shops. This directory is sold for 60LE. Or for about 10LE more, you can subscribe to the magazine and get the directory. We decided to subscribe. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-differences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}