London Calling...

So I got to London yesterday on an unusually warm and sunny day (about 28C). Amanda and I had a great afternoon- drinking pimms and catching up. Then last night was the Dave Matthews concert. It was a reasonably small venue- bigger than the Royal or Mac in Victoria, but by no means a stadium. It was an amazing show- he has great energy and stage presence (which may or not have been chemically enhanced...) and played for about 2 hours without a break. Today we went for a run along the thames and through Battersea park. Serendipitously, Angus happened to be in London as well so we met for breakfast. After an afternoon of walking along the river and through borough market we are just taking a break before heading out to meet Kate. Hope you're all having a great weekend! xoxo C

Remember these??

TV Ontario always played this before Saturday AM cartoons in the early '80's...I still remember all the words!



Dad, this one's for you!

Friday Chez Moi

Amanda didn't believe me when I said the prayer sounded like someone was yelling into my window. You should have seen her face the first time she heard it... I think she spilled her drink!

TGIT!

I am realllllly glad this week is over. Lots of stuff going on at work, but one thing we didn't need this week was a H1N1 scare- someone in one of the office towers attached to the hotel had a suspected case of swine flu. The ministry of health was there, which made everyone in the building do two things Egyptians are exceedingly good at- panic and spread rumours.

We were all praying (some of us literally) that it the person didn't have it because when they found it at the American University here the dorms were quarantined for TEN DAYS! I can barely get through 8 hours with some of my co-workers, I can't imagine having to be stuck somewhere with them for that long!!!

Thankfully, the results came back negative. Whew.

So now the weekend is here- I have to go in on Sat for a few hours to hand out contracts but thankfully I have tomrrow off. We're doing a short run in the wadi tomorrow. 9 days till I fly to the UK!

Hope you're all having a great week!

xoxo C

Ahh the old underwear or no underwear (while running) debate...

From the Runners' World daily blog. The comments are the funniest part- lots of controversy...

HOT!

I had a great weekend at the red sea with Nassiba- we spent the majority of the weekend like this <----- Cairo has been over 40C the last few days so even the veiled ladies were in the water (with all their clothes on). It was especially unpleasant to come back to the city.

Despite the heat, Peter and I ended up doing speedwork tonight- the track at the school is being redone so it is U-shaped at the moment and is only about 200m (the google earth pic was taken before the renos, but picture about half of the track being cut off). We did the U 15 times at a steady fast pace, walking across the top of the U between each one and trying to build each 5. It felt like we were building, but I suspect if Peter's garmin hadn't died it would have showed positive split, it was really hot (about 35C) even though we started at 7:30pm- we were both struggling at the end a little- I am trying to forget that he is 58 and I was only barely keeping up with him- let's blame it on my foot!


















I hear the weather is really nice in Victoria this weekend- I hope you're all enjoying it and not melting like me! xoxo C

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