The Arrival - 16 Oct 2006

There are distinct disadvantages to living half a world away from everything else...

I left Melbourne at 9:30pm Sunday 15 October, then spent about 14 hours trying to find a comfortable way to sit in an airline seat (including putting both feet on the headrest in front of me!). Watched The Da vinci Code (took me 2 goes because I fell asleep!), The Devil Wears Prada, An Inconvenient Truth and half of Lucky Number Slevin. Eremites is a fabulous airline – individual TVs and there must have been 50 movies to choose from!

Upon arrival in Dubai, I had a lovely 10 and a bit hour stop over which fortunately I got to spend at the Millennium hotel. Then it was back to the airport for another 4 hours flight to Cairo, but I couldn’t finish watching Lucky Number Slevin because the TV in my seat didn’t work L

I landed in Cairo at 6:35pm Monday 16 October (about 2am Tuesday Australian time). I’d arranged for transfers so there was a guy waiting for me with my name on a sign. Thanks to the car man I got my tourist visa easy and made my way through customs.

When I got to the baggage area I met Chris (the Canadian Accenture guy that I’m working with) and we went to the hotel. It took nearly an hour from the airport to the hotel. Egyptian drivers are nuts! It seems as though the lines on the road are more guidelines than rules… people just drive wherever they want and if they want to go in a direction, they just beep the horn and drive that way – never mind the combi full of people, or the ute with 4 kids sitting in the tray that are in the way. We saw at least a dozen accidents including car verses bus. Nothing serious, just where they rubbed sides trying to squeeze through gaps in the traffic that didn’t exist.

The rooms at the hotel are quite nice, the whole hotel is.

Once we’d settled in we went to grab some dinner. We rang Yasser (project manager) and he came to the hotel and gave us a bit of an overview of what the work is about. Plus some info on Ramadan… All Muslins are currently fasting from sunrise to sunset (about 13 or 14 hours a day). They can’t even drink water! Ramadan is a full month (like saying we fast for September etc). There is only a few days left of it now, and then there is 3 days of public holidays next to the weekend so we’ll get 5 days off.

It’s about a 15 minute drive from the office, but there isn’t really any public transport so we had to take a taxi. The hotel and the office are both on the Cairo – Alexander Desert Rd, about 25km apart.

The office is located in the ‘Smart Village’. A massive area of new office buildings – vodaphone, HP, Microsoft etc are all there. It seems fairly new (they are still constructing a bunch of the offices), but a bit sterile and there isn’t much other infrastructure yet like coffee shops etc. (a bit like Docklands in Melbourne)

Anyway, our first day was very interesting… no one seems sure why we’re here and what we’re going to do (including us!). Plus the contract hasn’t been signed so we’re technically not allowed to do anything too specifc! Its crazy!. Add to this, that during Ramadan people arrive late and leave by 2pm, its going to be an interesting next few weeks.

Well, best get into figuring out why we are here…