Wednesday 20 August 2008

grrrr

I just spent half an hour typing a new blog entry on the pda just for the thing to freeze up and lose the whole post. It was a work of genius about busy days at work (today), nice wine and fillet steak (£16 & £5.50 respectively), men sitting around on street corners or working in oil companies pressing buttons in lifts (i hope there is more to life, or it's a means to an end). Also my placemat at breakfast told me I'm in Zemalek (or Zemelak?) which is on Gezira island in the middle of the Nile.
Other than that, it's job done other than a brief pop into the office on the way to the airport tomorrow.
Night all...

Tuesday 19 August 2008

Don't panic!!

I didn't kill anyone!
This trip has been a strange one; on many of my trips, especially to Cairo, the travel & hotel arrangements have been perfect and the work itself has been challenging, but thia one is quite the opposite. The job has gone perfectly, to the extent that i've pretty much finished after 2 days and tomorrow is really just about waiting for the users' feedback when they start using the new software (hopefully all good). It's gone so well that I tried moving my flight forward by 24 hours this afternoon, to 5pm tomorrow. I know I would be asking fo a headache when it came to checking out of this hotel a day early, then potentially dashing through traffic at the last minute to the airport... But it would mean I got home to Olga and Lara sooner. However, BMI intervened by telling me that tomorrow's flight is full anyway. I'd even bought a flexible ticket, learning from my Houston nightmare, but to no avail.
So, I've got a hopefully quiet full day in the office tomorrow then an evening and half-day to fill. I should try to do something cultural, but I'm not sure I could be bothered with the effort of using taxis, and I'm too far out to walk anywhere, at least in the midday sun anyway. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that! At least I think I'm too far out, I'm not sure where I am to be honest. For Anton's benefit, who knows Cairo, i'm on the west bank, north of the Cairo Tower, in Mohandiseen I reckon. Anyway, at this moment I'm in the hotel bar enjoying a heineken and not paying the hotel's fee for internet, so Olga and I have been limited to phone calls rahther than the skype webcam chats I enjoyed in Houston with her and Lara - and Lara did seem to react to my voice and face when we did that, which was great. OK, time to stop looking like a geek.....

Sunday 17 August 2008

Cairo, where do I begin?!?

Oh my god, what a nightmare. I'll try to sum it up in one sentence for now.. Plane hour late,no alcohol on the 4.5 hour flight, no-one to meet me as expected, but found him later, no reservation for me in hotel, or in next hotel... I'm writing this at about 2am in the café in hotel #3 waiting for my soup and already on my 2nd stella. Not the jolly trip I was expecting so far. It's a 90 minute commute in cairo traffic tomorrow to get to the office, too. More updates tomorrow maybe, if I've calmed down. For the first time on a business trip I nearly lost my temper tonight!