T.G.I.X.

T.G.I.X.

Yesterday (yom al-Xamees), I went out to Muqattam with Blake to work on a translation for the Ibn Khaldoun Center's newsletter. It was hot, dusty and barren (at least compared to the rest of Cairo) out on that hilltop, so much so that I almost thought I was in Sana'a again. Shudder.

I don't know how I'm going to handle being a desk jockey again if I can barely handle one week of tooling around on the Internet in an over air-conditioned library plus one day working in an actual office. Last night we stayed in, watched some bad television and slept for eleven or twelve hours. Hard.

Which brings me to my favorite time of the week: Friday morning before noon prayer. It's the equivalent of Sunday mornings in New York, where no one moves, nothing stirs and the city is blissfully quiet. When I can muster up the energy, it's a great time to go for a long walk, but normally I prefer to loll around in bed and maybe eat a lazy breakfast in front of the tv. Most importantly, absolutely no calls or text messages before noon. Mish ma'aoul!

As usual, I've accomplished not a whole lot this Friday: made some raspberry ice tea, did three big loads of laundry and have been continuing to try to race through the Media I textbook. I'm hoping to whip through it in four weeks or less, but there's so much vocabulary to remember and I've got a memory like a friggin' sieve.

I should have stuck with French.

I'm Cranky.

I'm Cranky.

Today's just been one of those days...where nothing works the way it's supposed to, no one responds to your phone calls or e-mails, and even when you think you've done everything exactly as you're supposed to do, there's always something you have either missed or that is standing in your way, laughing maniacally at you for thinking you would actually achieve the task at hand.

On top of that, I've been working at the AUC Library every day, where it's always freezing and the students still insist on talking and letting their *$#)&!)@#& mobile phones ring incessently, although it is decidedly quieter around here now that it is summer. I guess I'm mostly just depressed to still be hanging around here on a campus that is largely populated with people who were born well into the 1980's, but I also feel anxious, restless and stressed by this whole job search thing.

I hate to whine like a baby, but I'm just not used to this whole process. Every pseudo-job I've ever had fell into my lap through one connection or another, usually by complete random chance. So now having to go through this whole process of whoring my resume around, scouring for any job opening I can find, waiting, waiting and waiting some more, is driving me crazy. And still, I persist, trying to convince myself that becoming a desk jockey will be good for me. Gah.

Anyways. Nir sent me this picture yesterday that he took when Team One went for a goodbye felucca ride at the end of the semester. It looks sort of staged and cheesy but it still makes me smile.

Yacoubian, Part Deux (Warning: Tangentially related rant to follow)

Yacoubian, Part Deux (Warning: Tangentially related rant to follow)

Blake and I went to see "3amarat Yacoubian" again last night, but this time we went to Cinema al-Tahrir, which is just down the street from our place. The theater is huge! We sat up in the balcony which was pretty well-packed considering that the tickets cost more than twice as much as those on the main floor (25LE vs 10LE). I understood so much more of the dialogue this time around, which was a great relief, but there were still several key scenes that I didn't get at all. I'm going to go see it again with a native Arabic speaking friend next week, so we'll see what I get out of it after that. Maybe by the end of the summer, I'll have the whole damn thing memorized.

One of the themes of the film deals with the subject of harassment of women, something that I happened to be discussing with several male friends the other day after the New York Times published a story on women being harassed or flashed on the subway. Many of the women interviewed noted that they did not respond in any way to the harassment for any number of reasons: shock, fear of reprisal, fear that they might be responsible for this unwanted attention, not wanting to upset children who were present (but, they assume, unaware of the situation).

As someone who has been harassed and physically assaulted in public places all over the world, I was totally dismayed. Primarily, of course, that perpetrators of harassment even think this sort of behavior is acceptable in the first place, but also that women feel unable to protect themselves or voice any sort of response.

There are, of course, many different levels of harassment which call for different levels of response. I, for one, generally try to ignore verbal harassment of all kinds unless it is persistent or extremely offensive or inappropriate (my tendency to walk around plugged into my iPod helps).

Physical harassment, however, is a whole 'nother bag of chips in my book. I've made it a personal rule *never* to let this sort of behavior pass unless doing so would escalate an already dangerous or threatening situation.

I recounted to my friends the story of how, one night in Sana'a (Yemen), I was walking home with my two flatmates - a man and a woman - when a local man walked right up to me and grabbed my crotch. On top of that, he didn't even keep walking, he just stood there! We were all so shocked, for a moment, no one moved. I thought, for whatever reason, that my male flatmate might step in, but when it became apparent that he was not going to move an inch, I took matters into my own hands, despite my disgust at even having to touch this criminal. I grabbed the man by the collar and proceeded to shake him and hit him while I yelled at him loudly in both Arabic and English. Eventually, he ran off, chased by another local man who happened to be walking by and was furious when I explained to him what had just happened.

I told my friends that I was upset and disappointed that my flatmates did not step in to help or protect me, and then asked them what they would have done in that situation. While most agreed with me, one male friend argued that he wouldn't have done anything for the following reasons: (1) such behavior is part of the culture in this part of the world and nothing you can do will change that, and (2) it is more important for him to get a female companion home safely then to pick a fight that might put her in danger. He also noted that "girls like to see their boyfriends beat up other guys" as some sort of explanation for why I was incensed that my flatmate (not boyfriend) didn't step in to help.

First of all, I find the first argument completely insulting, racist and, dare I say it, Imperialist. The idea that any man anywhere in the world somehow thinks it is acceptable to grab a woman's crotch in the middle of a public street is quite possibly one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. You can give all the culturalist explanations you want about how western women are viewed whores in other parts of the world or how this sort of disgusting behavior happens to local women all the time, but what kind of message does it send when a woman keeps quiet and moves on after a complete stranger gropes her?

As for the second point, is violating a woman's physical body in this manner not a threat in and of itself? And the whole sexist notion that a victim of assault would want to respond to the threat so she can realize her fantasy of having a man come to her rescue? You have got to be kidding me. Clearly notions of respect, honor and dignity have nothing to do with it, right?

It just makes my blood boil when people try to rationalize this sort of behavior, and that we as women are expected to suffer it in silence.

Brother, Can You Spare an Irsh?

Brother, Can You Spare an Irsh?

So, 3.5 degrees and let's not talk about how much debt later, here I am, unemployed in Cairo. I launched into the job search with gusto last week, remembering very quickly that the middle of summer, particularly in a city where the average highs are around 102 by mid-June, is a less than ideal time to start pestering people about anything that doesn't have to do with escaping to the North Coast for the weekend.

I've been trying to keep my perspective on things, however, and have been telling myself that this is a great time to do all the stuff that I won't have time for when I do (hopefully, someday, probably too soon) get a job: beefing up the Arabic vocab, studying some Korean, reading books on the history of the CIA - ok, I realize all of that doesn't exactly sound fun, but I'm enjoying it when I can keep my mind off my rampants fears of never finding a real, respectable, salaried job before I'm dead.

Is This Burger Free-Range or Test Tube?

Is This Burger Free-Range or Test Tube?

I won't lie: the idea of eating a burger made from in vitro "meat sheets" makes me queasy.

But according to Wired this week, test tube meat is a hot business with the potential to put lab-grown ground chuck that looks, smells and most importantly tastes just like the real thing on supermarket shelves in the next few years.

Putting the "ick" factor aside (God knows I ingest far worse things here on a daily basis), the ethical and environmental repercussions of this could be profound. No more mass farming of animals crammed into tiny sheds pumped full of hormones. Land used for grazing and pasturing could be used for more sustainable agricultural purposes. It's creepy, yes, but it's hard to see just yet what the downsides are.