El Andalous - One of Those Weeks

El Andalous - Hiding My Stress!

There seem to be phases in life where everything goes wrong. I had this just before I moved over here and now, four years later, it seems that it’s happening again. I hope that it’s just a week of things not going well and not months on end, like it was before!

I don’t really know where to start. My underwater camera has been playing up recently, so I decided to buy a new one. I thought it would be easy since I bought my last one over here, but it wasn’t. None of the shops seem to sell them any more – presumably due to Egypt’s lack of foreign currency and thus inability to pay for imports.

I eventually found one in a stall in Senzo Mall. On the box, it that that it was a high definition underwater camera, but when I opened it up after buying it, the leaflet inside said that some boxes may hold a low resolution model and this should be discussed with the retailer. What a con! And, guess what? Yes, my camera was a low resolution model.

I decided to buy one online on souq.com (Egyptian site) instead. Even they had only one high resolution underwater camera for sale, but it was the one that all the magazines were recommending, so I was happy and decided to swallow the cost. However, the website rejected all three of my credit cards; I have no idea why. 

Reluctantly, I decided to select the “pay cash on delivery” option and took half of the money out in preparation (it was too expensive for me to take all the money out at once). And then I got a message the next day to say that the item was no longer in stock. Now I had all this money in my flat that I didn’t really want to have in cash!

I took the low resolution camera that I’d bought back the next evening when I was doing my weekly shop via our free bus that runs every Monday at 7pm. I went into Spinneys first, bought some food, got to the counter, opened my purse, only to find that none of my cards were in my purse because I’d tried to use them for my online shopping. 

I scraped every last EGP out of my purse and I was about 7 LE short. It was so ironic considering all the money I had at home. The queue behind me was looking impatient and I was feeling very embarrassed. Someone even offered to pay for me so that it would be quicker! I asked the cashier to take off one of my chocolate bars from the bill, but that required the manager to come over…

The next day I had to have an unwelcome conversation with my manager about a complaint that had been made about me about my work in Zurich (first time in my life that I’ve had a complaint about me!!), but what was worse was that during this conversation, a loud clattering, thumping, and squealing emanated from above my kitchen so that I could barely hear. My rats had chosen that very moment to return. I think one of them must have got caught on one of the sticky mats used to trap them. It was hurtling itself all over the place and then (right in the middle of the conversation with my manager). I heard a squirting sound which I imagine was the rat spraying urine all over the shaft above my kitchen. Horrific!

I’ve also been too busy these last two weeks to be able to go swimming during the week, which annoys me, and then we’ve had cloud, yes, cloud, in Egypt!, over the weekends. I know there’s no sympathy for me to be had here because most of you are in the midst of winter, but I’m feeling quite sorry for myself. On top of that, I had a text from one of my credit cards to say that it’s now been blocked due to suspicious activity in Egypt (that was me!).

Please let this be just a bad week and not a bad month or more!