I'm not 'lovin' it'....

So a few more cases of H1N1 have been discovered and the panic here is getting out of control.

The most recent case was a Mickey D's employee- as soon as that got out, there were email forwards flying back and forth like crazy suggesting a boycott of all fast food outlets. It is really amazing how fast rumours spread here- in Canada it could take about 2 weeks for an email forward to make its way around the country, but here, the population is so large and so concentrated that if an email originates in the morning most people in the country will have seen it by the afternoon. Of course this is effect is amplified in at our hotel because they've all been hired from different companies so by the end of the day we had emails circulating from 4S, Maryit, Hiott, Heltin, and Intorconanantal*. Also, I think hotel people are just naturally more dramatic than other industries and seem to crave attention. Needless to say, not a lot of work was getting done yesterday. After the hamburger conversation of a few days ago, I decided not to waste my breath trying to convince people you couldn't get it from food, and to be honest, I think the average egyptian would greatly benefit from avoiding fast food for a few days.

(*I am purposely misspelling these company names so people don't inadvertanly stumble upon this page while looking for something else- I don't mind people reading who are actually interested, even if I don't know them, but I am always coming across blogs accidentally and though I'm guilty of being one myself sometimes, I don't like looky-loos! Yes, I have changed my privacy settings but I still don't think that blocks google alerts)

Here is one of the emails (I'm still trying to find out what it means to have a "cracking body"):

Dear All,

Please don’t eat anything out of home, today they discovered a swine flu case in MacDonald Maadi (one of the staff), the government closed the branch, and please advice every one you know.

One of my friends is working near by Mac and he confirmed it's true, government closed all fast food restaurants (Gad, 3mo Hosny, Teeka, Pizza Hut, …etc) .

The inflictions show in follow symptoms:

1- High temperate

2- Diarrhea

3- Cracking Body

If you have any of the above inflictions; please goes directly to any of " el7omyat " Hospitals.

(those numbers in the middle of the words represent arabic letters we don't have in english)

So after all this ridiculousness and drama I'm so glad it's finally the weekend- Nassiba and I are off to the red sea in an hour or so- last time we went it was too cold for more than a 20 second dip so I'm looking forward to some swimming today!

Hope you're all doing well.

xoxo C