{{{Aimée}}} I hope you get everything worked out to your advantage!

{{{vw}}} Also, your neighbor is an idiot.

Congratulations DebetEsse!

Happy Anniversary, JZ and Hec!

I am trying to decide whether I should do laundry today or tomorrow. I have enough clothes for work so I'm not desperate (yet) and the idea of actaully putting on clothes besides my pajamas to go to the laundromat is unappealing. Weekends should be about relaxing, right?

OMG! Really? Here? Now?

...I feel like I should dash off and ply him with sheesha and mint tea, or something. Damn. Any idea where abouts he is? Just out of curiousity? Hope he gets to at least go on a faluka on the river, and maybe swing by the pyramids. TOTALLY worth going for coffee/lunch at the Khan El Khaleili restaurant upstairs in the Mena House hotel. If it were any closer to the pyramids, it would be under them. You can sip your coffee and stare out of the window going "Oh. My. God." It's very cool.

Re: curriculum - teaching about people's lives post 1930 is part of the National Curriculum, and the topic of Children's lives in WWII is one of the government-approved schemes of work. Now, I don't know what the Egyptian Government's take on that is - in plenty of bits of the Middle East you wouldn't be allowed to teach it, end of story.

Happy Anniversary, JZ and Hec!

Egad, Fay.

You have parents who are objecting because you aren't teaching HATRED? Bad Fay! Bad!

Sadly, the same attitude exists over here.

To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught....

Fay, he's doing some consulting work for some new university they're building, I guess, but I'm not sure where he's staying. He's been doing these trips off and on for several years, so he's seen the pyramids and all (actually, I have pictures of him on a mule in front of them).

Oooh! Is it the British University in Cairo? Is it? That'd be very exciting!

(...if it were for a school, rather than a Uni, it might even be my future employers...)

Don't know. I'll ask him next time I email him.

Oh, lordy. You know, people tend to have their car radios on pretty loud as they go past our apartment, which is a little annoying, but they only stop at the stop sign and then move on, so no big. But now there's someone out there playing bad rap who's been there for the last five minutes and shows no sign of moving on. Come on, people. Not everyone wants to hear your fucking music! How hard is this concept?

ETA: okay, so he's cleaning his car. And thus has all his doors and windows open and the volume cranked up to maximum. Jesus. How loud does it need to be? You're in the car!

Congratulations DebetEsse! That is wonderful news.

Happy Anniversary, JZ and Hec!

Ack vw and Emily... I am glad things weren't any more scary. I also hope you feel comfortable in your room sooner rather than later, vw.

Fay a racist? Suuuuuuuuure...

Weekends should be about relaxing, right?

I'm watching Indy Time Trials. And though I have managed to get a lot done this weekend, I don't know if I have done enough to justify just sitting here with coffee watching tv.

eta: Helio Castroneves is qualifying now. I can't hear (or, frankly, see) his name without hearing Billytea making him sound neferious and evil. Which, of course, he is in his wee little Brazilian and notevil way.

You know, as we drove home this pm I kept saying things like "Oh my God! They think I'm a racist! Who tortures children! Oh my God!" etc etc ad nauseum. Our conversation rambled around the whole teaching thing and the whole appropriate-to-teach thing and my flatmate said that the new lad at school had better be damned careful, because he's screamingly of the out-and-proud variety - at least when we're out in the pub - and because the year before she and I came out here there was a bloke who got sacked (or maybe just his contract not renewed) because word spread amont the parents that he was not of the straight.

We'd earlier been talking about the whole Jewish thing, and my friend (who was giving us both a lift) said "Honestly, it never even occurs to them that some of the teachers could be Jewish." And, yes, a colleague who's now left was indeed a (non-practicing, married-to-an-Egyptian-Muslim, bringing-up-her-son-Muslim) American Jew. Which the parents evidently didn't quite catch on to.

"Or worse still, a gay Jew," said my friend.

And it struck me, a trifle belatedly, that in addition to my not-entirely-all-that-easy-to-explain GVSP and NC17 HP slash-writing hobby, I'm a bi girl whose grandfather was called Levi. There was a definite note of hysteria to my laughter.

Jesus, Fay...you should forgive the expression. You know you did the right thing, right?