Bookmarks

A good bookmark is hard to come by. By that I mean a good everyday item that can double as a bookmark, not an item that is meant to be a bookmark by design (that's for amateurs). I have had a few different bookmarks over the years from random event tickets to fake credit cards you get in the mail (that always has people worried that I am stupid enough to use my real credit card) to my personal favorite, old commuter train passes.

But as of a couple days ago I have settled on two staple bookmarks for the future, both sentimental picks in their own way.

Leuven-Brussels Train Pass


Or alternatively known as the "Who stole my Skittles picture" by Katy, this laminated piece of paper is written completely in Flemish and complete with one of the best pictures of me ever to be taken of yours truly (courtesy of a very confusing photo machine at the Leuven train station). Besides reminding me multiple times a day of everything Belgian, this card is a great bookmark and I implore all of you who have one like it to use it for such a purpose

Egyptian Doctor Pass


Second is the newly acquired Egyptian doctor pass. Besides saying my name in Arabic script somewhere on there it also wrongfully claims (or at least Egyptians act like it does) that I am a doctor of archaeology and therefore I should be given access to all tombs except the ones that are really expensive and bring the Egyptian government money.

Unfortunately that picture does not scan all that well, the actual photo does not make me look like I am high, it actually makes me look like a sexy peace of man meat in my opinion. Which I mean if I smoked weed would be OK but I don't so now it will just make me look like the stoner I am not. And no I am not a stoner poser.

Notes from a Plane

• Waiting to see if someone is going to sit next to you or you will be granted two seats for a 13 hour flight are some of the most nerve racking moments of your life.
  

• Must be easy for Charlie Sheen to play a womanizing douche bag in real life and on TV.

• I could get used to having two seats to myself, but I don't think I could get used to the "You're mother didn't raise you right" glares from the old women on the flight

• Declaring that I have come in contact with animals (Donkeys, Dogs, Water Buffalo, Goats, Sheep and Chickens) may have been a poor choice.

• "Fuck you buddy" were the first words I heard when boarding the plane. Must be a New York bound flight. Oh wait it was.
  

• I am far too tall to lie across two seats.

• Is there ever a plane flight that allows smoking? Or is this just the airlines way of driving smokers crazy for 13 hours at a time?

• One of the many downsides of sharing a flight with old people; they turn their headphones into speakers.

• No I don't want to watch Taylor Swift videos I want the fucking live map god damn it!
  

On Equus Asinus (or Donkeys)

I actually took this photo, yes it's true.

Some time before coming to Egypt, Katy asked me if I had ever seen a donkey, to which I responded that yes I had (anyone who has been to a farm has). I would like to retract that previous statement, I have never seen a real donkey.

Real donkeys are the most pathetic animal there is on the planet, all they do is just stand there and stare at the ground with their half shut, droopy eyes. Now I know why Eeyore has such a defeatist attitude.

Besides just looking like they hate life they sound like they hate life. It seems as if I can not go twenty minutes with hearing a noise like this erupt from outside the window.

Egyptian Grumblings II

For Part I navigate your web viewing thingymabobby to this page here.

Grumbling along....

• The Egyptian Museum looks to me like what a WW II era government building should look like, complete with all the old wooden encasements one could desire.
  

• New favorite meal: Kushari

• Egyptians are incredibly friendly, but because of a select few of them (I'm being nice here) you can not trust any of them when it comes to their kindness and the guy we met on the street just after lunch is a perfect example. When at first he just wanted to talk to us about America it seemed perfectly normal, when he led us down a dark alleyway just to show us the front of his store it seemed odd, when he started shouting at us for refusing to have tea with him it was just down right scary. Surprisingly though he believed us when we said we would be back in two hours and we would then have tea. It should be noted that I did not have any tea that day.
  

• Crossing the street in Egypt is like running across a minefield, you just close your eyes, run in zig zagging patterns and hope that you make it to the other side with all your body parts attached.
  

• Stella in Egypt is not Stella in Belgium, more on this next week.
  

• Khan el-Khalili is where the French Tourist was killed by a Grenade last week. How do I know that? No not because I read about it in the news, no, I know about it because whenever I told someone I was going to Egypt they said "Oh watch out that you don't get killed!" And no I didn't get killed at Khan el-Khalili.
  

• Because I love everything public transportation I insisted we take it at some point during our stay in Cairo, something our Taxi driver found rather perplexing when we told him to drop us at a Metro stop. Most interesting thing about the Metro: the Women only cars.
  

• Egyptian Traffic makes all traffic in the US look like 6 lane highway with 5 cars on it. Let's just say that when you have two lanes and you try to drive cars wide the end result is not often a positive one.

• Cairo International Airport is a joke, and I don't use that phrase lightly.

• If the fact that when you call Egypt Air you have to talk to 3-5 different departments to change your flight, or the fact that you need a print out of your online receipt to get your ticker, or that the plane makes a very odd buzzing noise during your entire flight, if those things don't bother your then maybe this fact will (because I was outraged), they are a Pepsi only carrier. Never flying Egypt Air again (lies, I am in a week).

On Mummy Dust

ARCE Menna Tomb

The Underling has taken another job as a minion, as a photography assistant in a dust ridden tomb in Egypt. How am I qualified for this job you may ask? The answer is, I am not, in a photography sense qualified but Katy is and as her boyfriend I am of course inclined to do as I am told. So since it was in my best interest I agreed to take on yet another role that my name alone qualifies me for.

Though this job is indeed interesting and ranks up there with some of the more interesting things in my life (oh who am I kidding, I think second on that list is a meeting at the EU) I do believe it may be hazardous to my health. I mean yes I am helping catalog a 3,500 year old tomb but the more important thing is that I am inhaling thousands of years of Mummy dust as I work.

More commonly known as "Zift", Mummy dust is basically very fine sand and dust sprinkled with a very small amount of the remains of exhumed Mummies. Now this Zift is everywhere inside the tomb, including my lungs while I bend in all different positions to place the color chart or light meter while at the same time avoid interfering with the photo or the lights, but I perservere and do as I am told like the good little Underling I am.

So if in a few years I suddenly collapse and die and the autopsy comes back with a bunch of rag fragments and millenia old chunks of body parts in my lungs, you will know why.

And yes those are my spider like fingers pictured above.

Egyptian Grumblings I

Photo by Katy Kobzeff

After a day of flying, two days in Cairo, another flight, and my first day in Luxor I finally have time to clue you all in on what I have been doing. At first I had a couple individual posts in mind to write up and publish over time (the plane, first day in Cairo, Second day, etc.) but it has all sort of just tumbled into one constant day in my mind that spans four actual days. So what I have decided to do instead of a bunch of separate posts I am going to just bring back the "Grumblings". "Grumblings" are basically like "Ramblings", Underling style (therefore tweets are Little Grumblings). What follows then is the past 4 days condensed into a series of "Grumblings" brought to you in two parts. Enjoy.


**********************

Where: Cairo International Airport
When: Last Night

After being hassled by security (twice mind you) and being shuffled around by the god awful airline known as Egypt Air, I found myself sitting at the gate, waiting to board, staring at this man at a small computer. Now he obviously worked for the airport or airline, that was plain to see, and in the end that really doesn't matter in the slightest. What matters is that after clicking a few buttons on the computer he proceeds to take 30 minutes combing through each and ever last piece of information that is printed out. Now of course this is not your typical printer paper, this is early 90's printer paper with the holes on the side and each sheet is connect to the next. What resulted was this man surrounded by a pile of computer paper with God knows what on it, and there I was trying to read my book but all I could do was turn around every few moments and start laughing uncontrollably at this spectacle. And after about 30 minutes he obviously found what he was looking for, ripped the one sheet he wanted off and sauntered away leaving a pile of paper littering the floor.

What follows was a series of questions I had pertaining to this particular event, all of which I find myself asking every 5-10 minutes here;

1. What the hell is he doing?
2. Why is he doing it?
3. Why is this process so odd?
4. Why is he not doing it my way
5. Who the hell is he?

And so on and so on......

Just keep those questions and questions like them in mind while reading the follow Grumblings, because you know I was.

Grumbling along....

• You know when Ron Jeremy is sitting across from you in the terminal your day is going to go well.....

• I really do not like airport food (though I do like beer), especially at JFK,

• Thanks to about 4 beers I successfully fell asleep before take off only to wake up while we were still over New Brunswick, I remained awake for the rest of the 11 hour flight.
  

• On Southern People: You guys are far too nice, cheery, and slow talking. I can not take it. Flying with a Southern flight attendant, and a pack of Alabamians was far more trying than it needed to be. Let's lay down some ground rules so it never happens again; the civil war ended over a century ago therefore no more calling me a Yankee, no cackling, just because I talk fast does not make me elitist it just means I have better developed motor skills, lastly if and when you talk in and around foreigners please tell them you are from the South of the US (not to be confused with South America) because they always get confused when I don't have a drawl and say y'all like you, best to say that you consider the Northeast a different country all together. Grumbling forward!

• Delta lied to me, their website showed a picture of an airplane equipped with a television for each passenger. What I got was a partially obstructed 17 inch 15 feet away.

• I can never remember the name of Dennis Quaid, not to be confused with Kevin Costner.

• Drinking 4 beers, taking a 1 hour nap, feeling irritated, and being next to the bathroom is not conducive to reading.

• I apparently can not go an entire flight without spilling a liquid of some kind on myself, the lucky liquid this time: Hot Tea.

• In Egypt certain individuals are allowed in the arrival terminal, so they can assist you in getting a Visa, your luggage and getting through customs. I feel as if this lends itself to corruption and terrorism, but hey what do I know?

• First of all, Egyptians drive like crazy people, but that's neither here nor there. What is truly disturbing is that there is a cop position every 50 - 100 yards on the street armed either with a Kalashnikov or a Radio. They appear to be glorified traffic cops but then you see cops with "Traffic" on their chest. I think this is President Mubarak's way of preventing and better responding to the eventual car bomb in Cairo. Disturbing yet reassuring at the same time.

• Pyramids = Very large
  

• The Menna House was everything I expected and more. The pyramids were about 400 yards from our window, need I say more?
  

• Watching Katy haggle with Taxi drivers is very amusing. It's something about them initially treating her like a stupid American woman, only to realize that she speaks Arabic and lived in Cairo for a while so she knows their ways. And taxi drivers are scum.
  

• We went to dinner in what is considered the best Egyptian food restaurant in Cairo, and it lived up to its reputation. The clientele was that best part though
  

• We went to bed at about 7 PM local time and slept until 7 AM the next day, no I am not kidding. Though I was briefly disturbed from my slumber around midnight when Katy couldn't sleep and wanted to go check out the Disco.

Part II will follow tomorrow, stay tuned....

The Underling goes Egyptian

Glorious readers, tomorrow I will be leaving for Egypt which means you will go postless for at least tomorrow and probably until Monday because Saturday is Pyramids and Cairo, Sunday is more Cairo, meeting Melinda and a flight to Luxor (which from now on will be referred to in it's ancient name of Thebes, that goes for Istanbul too which will now only be called Constantinople, though I don't think I will be saying that in Egypt much or ever for that matter). Then the real reason for being in Egypt begins.

That reason is that I will be Katy's assistant while she photographs every square inch of the walls in the Menna Tomb. My job, besides standing there and looking good like always, will be to stand there with a reflector.

This of course is not going to take up everyday of the 2 weeks, because I have been promised among other things; camel rides, tombs, country buses, rides on The Nile, other tombs, guys names Ali, and rabid dogs chasing me down if I stay out past sunset. That along with a pool, a multitude of books and an internet connection will of course provide you the reader with many blog posts to read whilst I am away.

I have no idea what I will post about but don't expect any features other than book related ones (though I reserve the right to break that promise at any time) because I think I should spend my time completely devoted to giving my uneducated opinions on Egypt and its' people.

If posts become impossible to make then I will surely update my twitter, which should be posting to my blog every night but that has been off and on.

Other than that, I hope to write many hastily scribbled notes on the plane to give to you as soon as I can. Ta ta for now!