El Andalous - Forgetfulness

Coral and Fish at Ramp in Sahl Hasheesh

Well, I had one of those days yesterday (Sunday) where my brain was like a sieve.

Unfortunately, life isn’t 100% fun, and so Saturday evening was spent filling out my UK tax return. I hadn’t realised that it had to be in by October 30th if I was submitting it on paper. I tried to see if they had changed it so that expats could also fill in the forms online, but in my move I’d thrown away my login details for the tax office. I’d had a pretty extensive clear out before I came here and I could have predicted that a few essential things would go missing.

There’s no way now that my tax return will get there by October 30th, but I’m hoping that if the postmark is before then, the tax office will offer me some leniency. Anyway, I thought it best to get it off as soon as possible.  In Egypt Sunday is a normal working day, so at least I had an extra day to play with from a UK perspective.

I’d already arranged to go snorkeling with Tom and Kath the next day, meeting at 11am, so that meant I would have to get to the post office for 10am, when it opened, if my social agenda was going to work out. This called for some organisation and at first it went well.

I prepared my boiled egg for my sandwiches the night before, did my tax return, put it into an envelope and addressed it, wrote a letter to UBS to request to close my account (finally all Swiss admin, apart from this, is completed!), put that in an envelope and addressed it. Everything was ready for me to post the next day.

The morning started off as planned – I made my sandwich and put it in the fridge ready. Then off I went to the post office. I was a bit worried it would be closed as Sisi had ordered three days of mourning for the deaths in the Sinai, but it was open on time and the guy cleaning the floors let me in.

It was a fairly typical Egyptian encounter. The guy serving me asked me if I wanted to send the mail by normal or express post. I was a bit surprised, since I hadn't been asked this before, but said I’d have one express and one normal, to which he said that they didn’t do express post. Ha! I didn’t bother arguing.

After handing the items over for posting, I went back. This was obviously enough efficiency for me for one day, because this is where it all started to go horribly wrong.

I packed my lunch – sandwiches, snickers, two cans of diet coke – in my cool bag. I packed my snorkeling gear. I checked that I had my camera and then realised I’d forgotten to recharge the battery. That was annoying because I’d thought about it the night before and it had promptly escaped my mind.

I only had five minutes left at this point, but decided that those five minutes would be better than nothing, since the battery was low, not dead.

I packed my towel, grabbed my sunglasses, then put the battery and memory card back in my camera and packed it in my bag.

I thought I was doing really well. I went to meet Kath and Tom, but as I got there, I realised I’d forgotten my swimming shoes. Back I went.

We made it to the beach, we put our towels down. I went to take my dress off and then realised with a shock that I had forgotten to put my swimming costume on. So, ten minutes walk back to the flat, a quick change, and then a ten minute walk back to the beach.

So, basically, I’d packed everything apart from what I needed to get in the water. Doh!

We had a great time snorkeling. When I got back home, I decided to cook myself fish (I did feel a bit bad about that, having just enjoyed watching all the underwater life).

I chopped the onion, left it to fry, but got too involved at looking at my photographs, so the onions burnt.

I added in the aubergine and put the pasta on to boil. I then got a bit sidetracked as to how exactly I was going to cook it all and decided on using some red wine (I know it should be white for fish, but I only had red available). The aubergines seemed to guzzle the wine up.

I was about to mix it all in with the pasta, which was now ready, when I spotted the fish sitting all nicely defrosted on my kitchen table. Doh!

So, I had to wait another 15 minutes for my fish to cook. The vegetables had all goodness sucked out of them by the end.

I hope today will be better.

El Andalous - Formatting

Finally Released!

My New Year’s Resolutions (NYR) series of books is somewhat time-dependent, so since I returned from my travels in August, I’ve been focusing fairly hard on getting NYR Cats! ready for release. I hope some of you managed to pick it up for free on Saturday.

The book itself doesn’t take that long to write, it’s all the other stuff that requires so much time.

Locating pictures that I can use is more difficult than writing the book. For NYR Cats! I got most of the photographs first and used them to give me ideas for the resolutions, whereas with NYR Dogs! I had the resolutions first and then got the photographs. The latter was the more difficult way as it’s sometimes hard to find a fitting picture for my preconceived idea.

However, I rarely learn from myself and as I write this blog, I realise that for NYR Fish! (next year’s book) I’ve got the resolutions in place before looking for the accompanying photographs and I can already sense that I’m going to run into trouble on NYR Fish! in that regard. The advantage of writing the resolutions first is that you start with the knowledge that you have the ideas in hand. If you search for photographs, you could end up with a wasted journey because you still don't get enough inspiration. So, each approach has its risks and benefits!

Another thing with the photographs is the cost. I don’t expect to make much money from the books and I look upon them as a fun project to do more than anything else (of course, it would be nice if they became a cult series and on everyone’s wish list each Christmas, but I’m being realistic instead). So, to keep costs down, I try to find photographs that are under the creative commons license. You can’t just pick any photo from the internet and publish it; you have to have permission to reuse it. Of course, this limits the pictures available to me. Many people post photos on the internet and then just disappear (there’s a brilliant photograph that I’d love to use for NYR Fish! but it was posted on a fish forum 8 years ago, so the chances of that person still posting there is close to zero).

Another option is to purchase a license to use a photograph commercially. It’s not a lot, but at ten GBP per picture for 25 resolutions, it could get expensive (in Egypt, 250 GBP can keep me alive for quite a while). This is why I try to find photographs under some kind of creative commons license that permit you commercial use for no fee.

Because I Iive in Egypt, looking for pictures also costs me in terms of internet usage, since I pay per month according to how much I download. My usage goes up a lot (and hence my internet costs increase) when I’m searching and downloading lots of images.

The photographs also make the book more difficult to format. Some pictures are vertical (portrait) and others are horizontal (landscape), but if you tweak the formatting to ensure that all pictures are sized correctly for each available device (eg, kindle paperwhite, ipad, kindle fire...), all the vertical pictures take up an entire page instead of one-third.

After a bit of searching, I discovered that I needed to put my vertical pictures on a transparent border (more research to find out how to do that) so that they would become horizontal. I won’t bore you with the details, but this then threw up other problems, which I also had to solve. They make self-publishing on kindle sound so easy, but really it’s not always so straightforward!

I write the text using Word, which is another thing that brings its own difficulties with it. The kindle instructions don’t tell you that you have to do strange workarounds to avoid having spaces inserted between paragraphs, that you need to use the Title heading for your title or it will appear wrong on the ipad, or that sometimes Word will do something strange. In NYR Cats! it took me a while to realise that my Acknowledgement heading was too far down the page because for some reason Word had added in an extra (invisible) heading command in the html that only the ipad and iphone seemed to pay any attention to.

Also, I tried to be clever (which is always a mistake, but, as I said, I never learn) and attempted to insert some code to get the “Beginning” hyperlink to start where I thought it was appropriate for readers to begin rather than where it was predetermined by kindle/amazon. However, each time my "cleverly" inserted link took readers to the second page of my Contents, which wasn’t what I wanted. Again, after some searching, I discovered that kindle has decided that if people try to define where the book should start, they will default it to the page after the Contents. So, for many people, this means the second page of Contents. There’s nothing you can do about this, so I had to abandon that idea in the end.

All this and I hadn’t even designed the cover yet. That’s another story altogether.

So, if you’re wondering what I’m doing with my time, that gives you a little taster!

El Andalous - Celebrations

Ocean Breeze, Sahl Hasheesh - Tom the Tortoise

The joy and sadness of living here as a permanent resident is that most people come over just for holidays, which means that you are just getting to know people when they go again. However, since people are owners, you tend to see them at regular intervals, so it’s a bit like a constant stream of friends coming (joy) and going (sadness).

Anyway, Mondays is a popular departures and arrivals day. I’d spent much of my last week exploring snorkelling areas in Sahl Hasheesh with Jack, Rosario, Jeff, and Nessi. Sometimes we were also joined by Kath and Tom or Ajay.

We finally made it back to the “dangerous” snorkelling area and this time I made it over the reef. It’s true, you have to breathe in and pray that you don’t scrape yourself on the corals and then suddenly it’s just a blue expanse of sea below you and a mountain of coral facing you. It is quite spectacular. Further exploration is required to see if there’s an easier way to get there.

We also went to the Tropitel pier, where I’d been last year. This is probably the best place for snorkelling. This time, before we went, we popped into Ocean Breeze to visit Tom, the resident tortoise of indeterminate age.

And then on another day we tried the “ramp” area where there are lots of bundles of coral just close to the shore. It’s a very easy swim and on low tide, you could probably see it all without even having to float on top of the water. I’m convinced I saw a barracuda.

Anyway, a week of this and then Jeff, Nessi, Jackster and Rosario all had to go home today. Consequently, I invited them and some other folk round for drinks and cupcakes (and burnt shortbread) on Sunday evening. It was partly because Jeff seemed to think I should have a year’s anniversary celebration (thank you Kathleen for the lovely card you made me!) and it was also, from my point of view, a chance to say goodbye / thank you / come and have a look at my flat to those about to leave. I'd had a meal with Safi on Friday to celebrate already (thank you, Safi!).

It was a lovely evening; Jac and Chris turned up and even Ajay popped his head in for a minute before he went for his Arabic lessons. Jackster, a professional musician, brought his guitar along and we were privileged to have him play a few of his songs for us as we all sat out on the balcony (it was a bit of a squeeze, but it worked out fine). I sat there counting my blessings thinking that this really is my ideal life (it was a shame Safi and Nicole didn’t come!). Thank you to everyone for making it work!

Although today is a sad day, with these four people leaving, there is also some joy because tonight Kathryn and Stephen arrive, so I can’t complain too loudly. It’s just nice to know that we have some great people here in El Andalous.

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PS. On an unrelated note, 25 New Year's Resolutions--for Cats! should be available by the end of this week, all going well. I should be offering it for free download on amazon on Saturday 18th October, so save the date and get yourself a free copy! Also watch out for my article in Your Cat magazine in the next few months.

El Andalous - My First Year

Sahl Hasheesh at Sundown

Well, believe it or not, from tomorrow (10th Oct), I will have been here a year.

Each year goes past faster than the last one – I think it’s because the longer you live, the smaller a proportion of your life a year becomes. There’s always that sense of panic as a year goes by and you wonder what you’ve done with it, but actually, I’m pretty happy.

In some ways, those early days seem like a lifetime ago. I arrived with a frozen shoulder and added a broken foot to that within the space of two weeks. I was probably 8kg heavier at that point (I’d already lost a few kilos before moving over here) than I am now.

Then I had the rats to contend with, I had to barter with taxi drivers, including getting into unmarked taxis. We didn’t even have our own beach at El Andalous and I walked up to Palm Beach every day. In the early days, I didn’t even do this; I just wandered around finding the nearest bit of sand that I fancied using.

So, within the space of a year, quite a lot has changed. I am (for now, at any rate!) healthy, swim every day on the El Andalous beach, I regard Esmat as a friend and not just as a taxi driver, I’ve met and made friends with some wonderful people who live or own properties here who all show me such kindness. I’ve been writing weekly newsletters for the owners club so that I feel I am doing my bit.

I’ve completed two books (25 New Year’s Resolutions – for Dogs! and 25 New Year’s Resolutions – for Cats! (out next week)); I’ve worked on two novels and am fairly well progressed with both. Thanks to Geraldine, I now have an illustrator for my German False Friends book (still deciding on the title!) and he and I hope to release that next year.

I’ve learned a bit of Arabic – but a bit of a slap on the wrist there for me, since I’ve neglected it in recent times and my reading ability is probably diminishing. But I was making progress.

I don’t regret leaving work, and it’s just as well I’m of a calm disposition because the value of my shares has greatly reduced since I’ve been here and they are supposed to be funding my existence at some point. But I have faith that all will come good in the end. Or blind optimism. Or sheer foolhardiness. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

It’s been good to have had some visitors – Holger, Snejana, Lena – and am looking forward to more to come (hello Geraldine!).

So, for a quiet life, it’s been fairly busy. I’m by no means fully settled in and I’m sure I’ll have more adventures in the next year. However, I sometimes struggle to find something to write twice a week here on my blog, so I will now reduce the frequency to Mondays only. I’m not sure I can even fill that, but life is unpredictable. If I have nothing to write, I’ll just stick a photo up so that you all know I’m still alive.

I’ve also reduced my El Andalous newsletters from once a week to once a month – isn’t that ridiculous, you don’t work anymore and you still feel that you have too much to do!

Have a good weekend everyone and I’ll be back on Monday!

Sahl Hasheesh - Exploring

Chevron Butterflyfish

Now that it’s October, quite a few of the owners at El Andalous are returning for longish stays. This is nice for me, because it means it’s more sociable. It’s dark here now at 6pm, though, so the days are short.

Anyway, I hate to admit it, but I’m a bit of a creature of habit. Although I like travelling and experiencing new things, somehow I end up just doing the same things all the time. Possibly part of it is that I feel that once I’ve found something I like, I don’t want to risk trying anything else in case I’ve wasted time somewhere that’s not so good.

Once I’d settled here in El Andalous and got my bearings, I ended up only ever using two of the many beaches – the two that have free sunbeds for residents (ha! There’s one reason for my lack of adventure. I’m a cheapskate). Fortunately, having others around pushes me into broadening my horizons a bit.

I’d heard a few people talk about a really good place for snorkelling just past the Pyramisa hotel next door. However, I’d been told that you can’t really go on your own. It’s a shallow bay and then a huge drop, which is where you can view the reef. If the tide goes out, you can’t get back into the shallow bay and you’re trapped. Also, the sea can be quite rough. Consequently, you can only go in the short period of time when it’s full tide. All in all, that sounded too scary.

However, Jeff and Vanessa were here and they persuaded me to give it a go. They had a spare set of flippers (I was reluctant, but they insisted I would need them), so off we went. It was a bit of a failure.

First of all, my snorkelling gear broke as soon as I got in the water. I was also the complete novice out of the three of us; I was pretty clueless about what to do when wearing flippers. Jeff and Vanessa advised me just to push myself into the water and somehow this took me some time as I couldn’t work out how to manoeuvre myself properly with those huge things on my feet.

We were only knee high in the water, but the waves were too strong to get very far out. We tried standing up and walking, but I kept on getting knocked down by the waves each time I stood up. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I felt like a right plonker and must have guzzled gallons of sea water in the process.

In the end we gave up as none of us could make it out to the reef, even just in the shallow water. We sat by the water’s edge for a while hoping that the tide would turn and the waves would subside, but it just didn’t happen.

On the way back, we stopped off at another empty part of the beach where the water was calmer and very shallow. It was also very warm, so when winter comes, I may take myself off to this part of the bay for more manageable temperatures (I’m a wimp).

Anyway, although it was shallow for quite a distance (which makes me nervous as I swim because I don’t really want to scrape along the bottom), it was actually brilliant to experience a new area of water with some different fish from what I normally see. Apparently, there were seahorses, but I didn’t get to see them. I did see a different type of butterflyfish from what I usually see at El Andalous and quite a few other species that were new to me of various colours, shapes and patterns.

To my immense surprise when I got back to my flat and changed, a whole load of sand dropped out of my swimming costume as I took it off. Honestly, there was almost a whole beach full of the stuff. Even as I dried myself off after my shower, sand kept on dropping down into the shower as the towel dislodged the grains. I guess those strong waves just forced bits of sand everywhere on my body.

It was also painful to sit in the evening as my bum hurt after my many falls from trying to stand up against the waves.

However, despite the failure, I felt like an intrepid explorer and it was exhilarating to be somewhere different. I really don’t know why I haven’t explored more or tried out other parts of Sahl Hasheesh. We plan to go somewhere else later this week, but even if we don’t, I will have to kick myself into ensuring I do this anyway!

Hurghada - Communication Problems

Sand Sculpture of Isis at Sand City

I’ve been busy working on my books over the last month or so, so have temporarily dropped my learning of Egyptian Arabic. Anyway, my last trip into Hurghada reminded me that I do need to continue learning Arabic and, actually, I need to pluck up the courage to practice it a bit.

I went into town to get my hair cut – it was in a beauty salon run by a German woman, so for once I wasn’t sitting wondering what was going to happen and I could explain (in English) what I wanted done in some detail. There was a lot of chat in the background in German, so it almost felt like a kind of “home”.

But afterwards, I was out in the big wide world of Hurghada. The next stop was to EgyptAir to enquire about flights to New Zealand. I was a bit apprehensive as my request was a bit complicated – I wanted to know which routes were possible to get to New Zealand, whether I could have stopovers, and whether I could pay for it all in airmiles or whether only certain flights were available for me to use my airmiles. Anything less than straightforward is quite difficult over here, but people had told me that the staff spoke good English at EgyptAir.

The EgyptAir office was fairly busy, so I had to wait to be served, which wasn’t a problem. But you know things aren’t going to go well when you start off saying “I need to go to New Zealand...” and the person replies that they have never heard of New Zealand. I guess it’s not exactly a common destination for Egyptians.

I explained that it was near Australia and finally spelled out Auckland and Christchurch for him to locate on the computer. He then said I could fly Emirates, which I pointed out wasn’t Star Alliance and I needed a Star Alliance flight. Following this, he suggested another route, but said that there weren’t any partner airlines going to New Zealand. I was probably hugely irritating to him, as I informed him that I knew there were routes using Star Alliance members and listed one. He looked it up and I asked for the times of the planes (which I hadn’t found online).

Anyway, after all that faffing about, it ended up that I couldn’t book using my airmiles from the Swiss partner airline in the EgyptAir office; I would have to book the flight via the Swss office. That was a bit annoying! I guess I was probably a bit of an irritating know-it-all customer in my frustration and the conversation ended him with asking me if I needed anything else because he had a lot of customers waiting. I decided to take the hint and left, but without a lot more information than when I entered, really.

Wishing to make the most of my time, I did some shopping and thought I would go into a cafe while I waited for Esmat to come with the taxi. I tried ordering a chocolate milk shake (I’m a child at heart), but the waiter confused it for “milk tea”. This was understandable, since tea is shay in Arabic, so he’d obviously heard “milk shay”.

Anyway, at least the misunderstanding was caught before the drink arrived. I established that I wanted a chocolate milk shake and then he asked which flavour I wanted. I requested chocolate and then he informed me that they had only vanilla and chocolate. On saying chocolate for the fourth time, he understood me.

I’m not saying this to mock the guy, as I am aware that I should be speaking their language and not vice versa, but it’s an illustration of how difficult it can be sometimes when you aren’t making the effort to speak the language yourself.

I asked for the bill straight away, since I didn’t want Esmat to have to wait for me when he arrived. I made a little sign of writing to help explain what I wanted. I even said “Faktura” which is bill in Arabic. The waiter asked me if I wanted paper. I was a bit puzzled by this, but assumed he was asking if I wanted a written receipt or just to pay directly to him. I thought I may as well go for a written receipt to save any misunderstandings about what I owed.

But my assumption was wrong. He’d understood me as requesting a sheet of paper to write on, so he came up to me with a blank sheet of A4.

In the end, I did pay, and actually it was a reasonable price. Meanwhile, Esmat had phoned me to ask me where I was. It turned out that he’d understood me as saying I was in Sheraton Road rather than in El Kawser. Maybe I was mumbling the whole day or something?

Finally, I arrived back home, but it reminded me that every trip into Hurghada is a bit of an effort.