Daily Life in Egypt

I arrived in Egypt now four weeks ago, it seems like ages since I have written anything down. And I know a lot of you have been asking about photos, but inshallah (Arabic for Lord Willing) they will come soon. The last post which I just put in is below was some thoughts that I had written in Dubai before and I had just never posted it because I kept thinking that I would get back to it to write more about my time in Dubai. Here we are four weeks + later and I have given up.

So most of you have heard as the story goes, I was working on a project in Dubai and loving my time there. Getting to hang out with a bunch of old friends and just enjoying life, living in one of my favorite cities in the world. But one night I was told that the company was starting up a project in Egypt and needed me to buy a ticket to come to Cairo the next day. Flexibility again the name of the game in my position. So I went to the mall got a ticket and I guess that where I am today.

Its interesting thinking that while in Jordan I bought an expensive airplane ticket to take the one hour flight to come to Cairo thinking that I might not ever get a chance to get back here. Since that time the company had sent me back twice for a couple of nights each and now I am at four weeks.

As far as Cairo itself how can you describe. Its like no place on earth, first off it has the Pyramids which is amazing sight everyday when I see them, and a population of 76 million people of which 20 million of those live in Cairo. I think that it is also important to point out that Cairo is much different from the rest of the country, I guess as most capital cities are. Cairo is different in many ways from most capital cities in the following ways: The city never sleeps, ok well that may not be so different on the shell, but truly it doesn’t matter what time it is 24 hours a day there are people out in the street hanging out, doing business or just enjoying life. This causes a signature of Cairo the Noise pollution – the constant honking is like nothing before – so much so to give you an idea one of the great benefits to my apartment is that I am soo high up that I don’t have to hear all of the honking. Next the pollution it is amazing there is no concept of pollution weather that be from cars, smoking or factories. And I guess it is also important to have a funny note: they don’t believe in having their lights on, on their cars at night, they only flash them at people once they see another car coming then they turn them off.

My apartment is great, its on the same island where I stayed before called Zamalak that breaks through the center of the Nile river, and is basically in the center of town, with a strong reminder of New Orleans, with the old Victorian houses and the huge trees. This is the location where most of the embassies are so you can picture the size of the typical Victorian house that I am talking about. My apartment is on the 21^st floor with views of the entire city and the Nile River, not to mention the Pyramids what a cool thing to wake up to every morning. The living and sitting room is covered with windows with a huge balcony by the living room so it really feels as if the city is a part of the apartment.

We have the same driver Hamdi working for the company here although he is working for the other team right now so we have his brother. Magdi is great, very kind man who is fluent in Arabic, English and Japanese. He also knows where every office for every government department or private sector company is so this is a great help for me in terms of time.

The project that I am doing here is for our Asian Television network and is the same as the project that I worked on when I was in Dubai last June. Since then the Dubai program has been produced and aired, as well as a program on Oman, and we are currently researching the program for the Egypt and Kuwait program so it is actually a part of the larger series on the Middle East.

It fun because we are now at the point where my Fox New York program has aired in recent months, and my British Magazine is now on stands, and now I am doing a program for Asia. So I have been able to reach the North American, European and now Asian markets in my work thus far.

I guess looking more at Egypt it is again I can’t say how much of a great city, with lots to offer with lots of room to grow. Sadly unemployment is very high and the average salary per year is very low, so there is vast need for foreign direct investment and international companies to come here to bring new jobs. Which is good thinking I could help. Also this being said, it is a very cheap city weather that costing an average taxi around a dollar or burger fries and drink costing around $3 at McDonald’s.

We got to go explore last weekend Southern Egypt in the resort city Sharm El Sheikh which is just an hour flight from Cairo. It is a great area with lots of hanging out by the beach and enjoying the scuba diving and cheap food. It is always a nice break from the hustle and bustle of Cairo. Looking towards the future the network for the project is coming along really well and I expect it to be very successful. I am headed to another resort town in Egypt for the weekend where we are having our regional training with lots of people from the company flying in town. Don’t get me wrong it won’t be sitting by the beach all weekend because we have a full schedule during the day but hopefully I will learn a couple of things that will increase my sales which is always nice. Also The following weekend I have the first two days before off as well and so we are going to try and get together a Nile cruise if possible. It would go from Luxor to Aswan with a couple of stops along the way.

I guess that’s all for now, I better run. I will for sure try to do better in keeping this up to date.

Chad