"Chaotic and polluted, swarming with humanity, and electrifyingly noisy and alive, this not a city for the faint hearted, rather for those who grab life by the horn and hang on for the bumpy ride."

So I’m feelin in a bit of a daze this morning. It’s Wednesday, which effectively is a ‘Thursday’ here in Cairo, meaning tomorrow the weekend starts!! Woohoo!!

I now understand why people look forward to the weekend so much….now that I have done about 5 days of working 9-5pm, sittin in front of a computer the whole day, and generally feelin very uninspired. I haven’t been trained as yet for the project I came here to do, so I’m just doing odds and ends. The working day is tough. My 9-5 schedule isn’t so rigid, its generally dependent on when I can get a ride to and from work, and how bad the traffic is. On my first day at work, we took 2 hours to get home on a road that should take 30mins. So sometimes we leave around 7pm, because it means getting home at the same time, but not being stuck in traffic the entire time.

I also haven’t found a place to live. It ain’t easy finding a place to live here. You don’t really have a system like gumtree or anything. It’s either going to check the AUC boards to find flyers, or finding a broker to show you places….which hasn’t been so successful. Everything is either too expensive or too depressing. Or they want somebody staying longer than 3 months. Or the location is too inconvenient for me to get to work. Sigh.

And I finally experienced the joys of Egyptian timing the other day. Our broker told us to meet him at 2.15pm. At 2.45, he arrives, and tells us the guy who HE is hookin up with aint gonna be here till 3.30pm. So we go wait in the flat. At 3.30pm, the other guy calls and says he will come at 4pm. We wait more. At 4pm, we head out on to the main road to meet this dude. We stand in the dusty, polluted street for 30mins, and he doesn’t arrive….at something like 4.45pm, he comes, and he shows us an apartment. But the commission he charges us is like 1 months rent for me.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. In Dhaka, the ‘timing’ culture is similar. Nobody makes plans too ahead of time. You kinda go along with it and see what works out. People are always doin things at the spur of the moment, which creates a very laid back culture. As they say, InshaAllah…..What a contrast from London. Over there, people are booked up like 2 weeks in advance. If you don’t let people know the plans for the evening, they will get PISSED OFF. People need to know what the ‘plans’ are for every minute of the day. I’m not sure yet which culture I prefer. London is more stressful though, that’s for sure.

I just read my entry, and realized how much I am moaning. Goddamn, is this culture shock?! LOL.