El Andalous - Blog Holiday

Christmas Tree Worm

Hiding! (Porcupine Fish)

Tolerated Togetherness (Blacktip Grouper and Hawkfish)

I meant to write last week that I was taking 2 weeks' blog holiday - all is well and I'm celebrating all the festivities here in Egypt. The blog should resume next week as usual, assuming nothing goes horribly wrong! Meanwhile, I'm attaching some amusing / favorite fish photos.

Wishing everyone all the best for 2019 - don't forget to buy your cat / dog / fish their 25 New Year's Resolutions book.

El Andalous - Remembering Habits Old and New

Party Preparations for Army Day

There are always things I forget about being back in Egypt.

One of the most frustrating things – because it’s my own fault – is that it’s very easy to settle into a life of relaxation and to lose the impetus to do anything very much. Therefore, for those who come over here for a week or two, it can be surprising to find that those who are here all the time don’t necessarily have a clue what’s going on. We’ve settled into our home beach routine and often don’t go much further afield.

This also holds for the events that are held here. Since I’ve returned, there’s been a party on the pier for Army Day, a car festival, a trathle and a triathlon. I did actually wander down to see the triathle (it’s a sports discipline in its own right, but is really preparation for a pentathlon; the one at Sahl Hasheesh was swimming, running, and shooting). Admittedly, I only went because Horst and Hilda told me they’d been and I felt ashamed that this was on my doorstep and I hadn’t even bothered to stroll along the bay to take a look.

Galina posted photographs of the motor car event on facebook, but again, I never saw any of it. It looked really good and I could kick myself for not making the effort.

I did look at the entrance to the party on the pier for the army celebrations and it wasn’t until a few days later that I realized I could have actually gone in (I thought it was invitation only). It was someone who was only staying for a short while who had found that out. See what I mean?

I’m not sure why apathy overcomes me when I’m here; it’s somehow just so pleasant on the beach and anything else feels like a tremendous and completely unnecessary upheaval. It’s not just this year; it’s whenever I’m here, and it happens to others too!

I wonder whether it’s a phenomenon similar to how living close to work often makes you arrive later than those who live some distance away because there’s no sense of urgency regarding traffic or transport. Or maybe it’s like the way people often never visit places close to home because you think there’s always time (and then others come over and see all sorts of things that you’ve missed). It does seem a bit extreme over here, though, because we’re talking about things that take just 10 minutes’ walk to get to.

I was dynamic enough on first coming back to make myself some hummus and tahini. It always seems really easy when I read the recipe, but each time I try it, I make the same mistakes (I never learn). One of the things that I always forget is that there are two almost identical jugs on my blender, but they are in fact different. I end up mismatching the connectors and getting a squidgy mess coming out of the blender. Thus, what was supposed to be a quick blending job ends up taking hours on end as I have so much cleaning up to do (and then I have to start again, and look up the instructions for the blender). This time, because I’ve been making a lot of falafel in Switzerland, I’d also forgotten to cook the chickpeas before making the hummus, so I had to yank them all out of the blender where they were with all the other ingredients, so that I could cook them. That was also a messy task. I’m sure it shouldn’t really be that hard.

Now that it’s December, the sea is definitely getting a bit colder (but still perfectly OK for swimming, once I’ve plunged in). However, October was still very hot and I again forgot just how much water I drink and how much my consumption of water correlates with the heat outside. I’m not a big water drinker usually, so I’m always a bit astounded at how much I have when I’m here.

This year, I’ve bought myself a swimming buoy so that I’m visible to the boats when I swim. This was partly inspired by my swimming holiday a year or two ago and partly inspired by seeing some girls using them in the lake in Zurich. I’ve often wished I could somehow be more visible as the boats can come quite close (I don’t think they see me) and the buoy, which ties round my waist and floats behind me as I swim, is bright orange and can be seen from some distance.

I’ve done a fairly good job of remembering to take it with me, but once when I went snorkeling in a more remote part of Sahl Hasheesh, it really irritated me as it was always getting tied up in my legs. I was cursing to myself thinking it didn’t live up to its description of not interfering with your swimming. When I turned to move it out of the way, I saw that, in my eagerness to get in the water and start snorkeling, I’d forgotten to blow it up. Doh. There’s so much to think about even just to go swimming or snorkeling!

El Andalous - My Mohammed is Different

Lionfish - Attractive but Dangerous!

Lots of people ask me if I’ve got an Egyptian boyfriend / partner or if I came over to Egypt because of love. Others ask me if I’d be interested in an Egyptian boyfriend. The Egyptian males, of course, are always asking me to be their girlfriend or to marry them (that’s how it is). Well, I’m maybe exaggerating, but at least when I first got here, before I knew anyone, every taxi driver would want to hook up with me and the occasional shopkeeper. It doesn’t happen so much now that I’m settled and have my own circle of friends.

Anyway, “My Mohammed is Different” is a well-known one-line joke in Egypt among the expats. I’ll start with the caveat that there are crooks and scams in every country; in Egypt you get the Mohammeds and in Europe you get phishing and other frauds.

Anyway, Egyptians are very good at playing the long game. You’ll pair up with an Egyptian man, who will pay you loads of attention, make you feel fabulous, introduce you to his family. The cleverer ones will wait a few years and then ask you to marry them. The not-so-clever ones will ask you to marry them after the first date (or maybe even before!). Maybe you’ll be befriended by their sister, who will make you feel safe and comfortable and like you really belong to the family. You get married and then a number of things can happen, depending on the scam or the mentality of the Egyptian playing the game.

The not-so-bad scenario is just that the Mohammed (because many Egyptians are called Mohammed; they don’t actually have to be called Mohammed, of course) is either already married (they can take several wives) and is really just using you to finance the lifestyle he wants with his other wife, or he takes another wife or lover later and doesn’t tell you because he wants to keep you (and your money) sweet. This is why you can see 20-year old Egyptians with women in their 50s, 60s, or above.

Another thing to be aware of is that the Egyptian may ask you to marry him, but actually all he’s talking about is an Orfi certificate (colloquially known over here as a bonking certificate), which isn’t anything legally binding. It just allows you to be married in the eyes of God, so that if the man has sexual relations, he isn’t going against his religion (which doesn’t permit sex before marriage). So, you may think you’re married, but you’re not. The man may have numerous Orfis.

A worse scenario is that once you’re legally married, they’ll ask for divorce. In Egypt, all the wife is entitled to by law is around 10 GBP and the man is entitled to all the money and possessions – regardless of to whom the finances initially belonged. Thus, the whole family is sometimes involved in the scam, which is why you felt so accepted by them. There have been women stranded in Egypt without even enough money to return to their home country.

I have heard stories that are far worse than the above, but it’s not my place go give out others’ personal experiences. I guess, in order to protect yourself, you could have a prenuptial agreement that in case of divorce you get to keep your money, but battling my way though the Egyptian law system is not something I would like to do!

Many people are aware of these scenarios, but when they get into a relationship, they always think that this won’t happen to them, because their “Mohammed is different”. Stephen Lawley is going to write about this, so watch out for his next book when it comes out!

Of course, there are very successful marriages between Egyptians and Europeans which are genuine and just as successful as any other marriages out there. Nevertheless, “My Mohammed is Different” is a much more common scam here than the frauds we’re used to in Europe. Be warned!

El Andalous - Swimming Frustrations

El Andalous Beach - Unusually Rough Waters

Having taken swimming lessons in Switzlerand and Mallorca (how cosmopolitan!), you’d think I’d be zooming ahead. It has, however, been a little bit depressing.

After my lessons in Mallorca, I felt confirmed in my decision to change my crawl technique to a more “catchup” style (where you always have at least one arm stretched out in front rather than windmilling).

I think the two most useful things I took away with me from the Mallorca lessons were that (i) I needed to focus on getting the “over” water stroke right first (ie, using the catchup style, high arm recovery) before thinking about the catch and pull through “under” the water stroke and (ii) my arm was always dropping on my breathing stroke resulting in me losing out on an entire stroke a third of the time (which is quite a lot, as my trainer said).

The problem with watching swimming videos online is that there’s so much you could focus on, you are never very sure where to start, so at least the Mallorca lessons gave me a focus point and some kind of order of learning. When I asked how I could train in open water, she suggested I stop each time I feel myself starting to do it wrong.

I took this advice on board, but found I could swim only short distances. I had to focus so hard on what I was doing that it took up an immense amount of energy and I was exhausted. This in turn chipped at my confidence levels and I began to think I’d never swim longer distances again. Doubt ate at me. Even before Mallorca I’d started to wonder whether training myself to swim faster and faster was just too much effort and taking away from my enjoyment of swimming; now I was struggling to swim 50m. It was depressing. My confidence was in shatters. I’d lost everything I’d been working on – my speed and my endurance!

I persevered. After about 5 weeks of practicing my breathing stroke and employing a catchup style (daily, and in the sea), I decided to try and work my way up to an entire km. I put the pressure off myself to go fast, so I did it as relaxed as I could to give myself more confidence with the longer distances. I was able to achieve this, but my swimming speed went right down to 3:09-3:12.

I wished I had a personal coach who could give me some encouragement that my style was indeed improving when all my data showed me that I was declining dramatically. My original aim was to attain the average swimming speed, which is 2:00 minutes per 100m, and sustain it with ease over 1km; after my first set of lessons in Switzerland, I’d originally worked my speed up to 2:16 for 1km in a pool, but now, here I was, taking up to 3:12 minutes (albeit in open water)! I was a snail. I did feel I was swimming more correctly, but I began to wonder whether there was any point to it or indeed if I was deluding myself about my improved style when my stats were so bad. Confirmation from somewhere that I was doing the right thing would have been good.

My subjective impression is that my catch and pull improved as I worked on my stroke timing and breathing stroke without even having to think about it. I wasn’t able to put the two together in Mallorca, but as I got used to the new style, I was somehow able to put some other bits into place, too. I was a bit scared that I would drift back into my old style of swimming, but on each swim I did try to focus on a single aspect of my style to improve on and sometimes (time permitting) I would do drills afterwards.

After a while of acclimatizing myself to a slow 1km swim, and getting rather despondent about my lack of speed, I decided maybe I was slow because I was no longer putting in so much effort (since I was building up my confidence for the distance and focusing on improving style rather than thinking about speed and strength).

From there I almost immediately increased my speed to 2:48-2:55 per 100m for a sustained 1km, which for the first time in a long time was a measurable improvement and a lot better than my previous 3:12. This speed isn’t so far off where I was in May (my open-water 1km speeds then seemed to be about 2:38 to 2:48 and 2:57 for 2km). Only now, in order to achieve that speed , I’m needing only 20 strokes per minute, whereas before I used 27 strokes per minute. My swimming must have become more efficient! That, at least, is some reward.

I am continuing to focus on my style rather than increasing my strokes per minute at this stage, though, because I know from seeing other people’s data that it’s possible to swim at my target speed with 20 strokes per minute, so my style obviously still has some major flaws (and I can think of plenty of things to work on!). But at least, finally, I’m able to feel that I’ve made some progress even if I’m only just returning to my original starting point.