El Andalous - Power Cuts

My Lounge During a Power Cut

I’d noted to someone the other day that when I first came over here, power cuts were common. Indeed, when I first arrived in Hurghada to move over here, there was a power cut at the airport stopping the luggage carousels from working (what kind of country is this, I thought at the time). Now, however, we don’t really have them anymore.

Of course, as soon as I said that, we had two power cuts, two days running. They were only in El Andalous and the resort, respectively, though, I think, so more a fault in our electricity than to do with government cutting it.

The first one was right in the middle of me cooking my dinner. I’d taken out some frozen chilli con carne that I’d made on a previous occasion (it had frozen a bit peculiarly because it was very flat), poured a little bit of water over it since the sauce is usually a bit dry when it comes out of the freezer, and stuck it in the microwave and put the rice on to boil. A nice easy dinner that shouldn’t take long to prepare.

The chilli con carne was just whirring round in the microwave and the rice was just coming to the boil when the electricity went. It’s not so bad these days, as I’m prepared. I located my two solar lights – one I use for the bathroom which is pitch black when there’s no electricity, and the other one casts a reasonable amount of light in my lounge. I lit my candles, kicked my feet up on the sofa and read on my kindle.

There’s always a background Angst about whether the electricity will come on again at all and whether I’ll get to eat. Every time I put my supper on, I suddenly get really hungry, so with the power cut, I become acutely aware that I haven’t eaten and start fretting.

I’m not sure how long it took, maybe a couple of hours, but the electricity did come back on. I switched on the microwave, turned the ring on the hob back on to cook my rice. Ping! The microwave had finished its initial allocated time. I took out the chilli to see how it was doing only to find that it was actually a piece of steak steaming in residual water! How I can mistake a piece of steak for chilli con carne, I’m really not sure.

I didn’t want to waste the steak (I get really good steak from the butcher here), but it looked really pale and yucky. I wouldn’t normally have steak with rice, either. But I had to make do. I fried the steak and actually it came up not bad at all in the end. I added a healthy dosing of mixed herbs to the rice to make it a little less bland, and in the end it was a half-decent supper.

And then, the next morning, we had another unplanned power cut; this time it was our monthly planned cut while the resort has its electricity check, but they’d forgotten to tell us about it on this occasion. After the previous night’s events, I’d not thought to recharge my laptop, so it was rather annoying not to be able to spend my morning writing, which is my standard routine these days.

I thought I’d go round and pay a visit to Stephen and Kathryn, so I cycled over. Their car was outside, so it seemed they were in. I rang the doorbell. No reply. I tried again. No reply. I yelled. Nothing. I rang the doorbell. No reply. The security guard watched me and then explained that there was a power cut so the bell wouldn’t be working. Doh. I cycled back. At least I’d got some good exercise.

Since then, we haven’t had any more unforeseen cuts, but now I’ve said that, who knows!

El Andalous - Rash Vest

Time for a Swim

In addition to my new Garmin Swim 2 watch, I’ve bought a rash vest (a long-sleeved light top to wear over my swimming costume).

Since I’ve been back in Egypt, I regularly swim into invisible stinging algae. It’s distracting (I always stop swimming), and it’s irritating to have the hives and itchiness afterwards. I’m also always worrying that maybe it was actually a dangerous fish of some kind that stung me (I always stick my head in the water to have a look around immediately after it happens, but it’s always clear) and that I’ll die. So, the aim of buying the rash vest was to protect myself against the stinging algae. It will also help me not to burn during the summer when I swim as the vests are designed to offer SP50 protection; I don’t burn these days, but in summer my skin can get very dark even though I’m staying in the shade (and, of course, I’m in the sun when I swim).

The rash vest wasn’t something I wanted to buy online, as I felt I needed to try it on. So, on one of my post-KFC visits to Senzo Mall, I searched around for one. The new sports shop didn’t seem to have it, but I did eventually find one in Billabong. Trying to get the guy at the counter to understand what I was looking for, however, was a bit of a challenge.

He was eager to help, but was showing me all the wrong things – swimming suits, swimming shorts, t-shirts, bikini tops. I said in the end I would look myself. I’d have rather spent a bit more time just browsing, but he followed me round (probably curious to see what it was I wanted). I thought I’d spotted them when I first came in, but they seemed to be in the men’s section, so I wasn’t too sure and had also wondered if they had prettier ones in the women’s section.

So, I went back to rifle through the ones I’d noticed before the guy had come up to try to help me (I’ve never seen a rash vest myself, so wasn’t 100% sure that the ones I’d seen were indeed rash vests). However, as I did so, the sales assistant immediately started to hand them out to me one by one, so it was hard to have a proper look at my leisure. In the corner of my eye, I spotted that one he was holding out said “rash vest” (but I never saw that label again) and so I asked him for a small size, since they looked like men’s wear. The guy serving seemed happy finally to have a clear instruction.

I tried it on and decided I may as well buy it, although it was (I thought) very expensive at around 40 GBP. For some reason, he was eager to have cash and said he couldn’t take cards, so I declined and said I’d buy it next time I was in. Then, all of a sudden, the point of sale machine that takes cards was perfectly functional. I’m not sure what was going on there!

A bit like my swimming buoy, my rash vest has created some attention when I went out for my swim. Sometimes, I think I should get paid for wearing things like that family did in the film The Joneses. The rash vest has actually had some additional benefits; when there’s a wind (which is quite often), it doesn’t feel quite so cold as I walk out into the sea; it gives me extra incentive to pluck up the courage to get into the water. I’m not sure if it keeps me a bit warmer when I swim. I did think that having a wet shirt clinging to me as I came out of the sea might be rather chilling, but even that seems to be better than my naked arms against the wind and it’s a lot easier to remove than a wetsuit.

I don’t know yet if it slows my swimming down as I have yet to do one with a swimming watch. I feel as if the swims are more of an effort, but it could be purely psychological. And if the rash vest does slow me down, well, it’s probably giving me a better workout (I find that wearing it makes it more noticeable to me when I’m not stretching my arms out fully enough as I swim). All in all, it was a good purchase

El Andalous - To Swim or Not to Swim

Unusually Rough Day at the Beach

I’ve been swimming pretty much every day since October, but we’ve just hit a cold patch, or maybe even a cold couple of months, so I’m not sure if I’ll be doing much exercise for a while. I’m not usually this wimpy, as every other year I’ve swum all year round, but at this time of year, I do question my sanity. By cold, I mean that the outdoor temperature is supposed to be around 18 degrees with quite gusty winds during the day, then going down to about 8 degrees at night. The sea will just get colder and colder. Help!

I'm a bit frustrated at the moment with my swimming. For some reason, I can’t seem to be bothered to do a non-stop distance swim anymore; I stop whenever I feel like it. I think this has come about because I’d heard that you should not practice a bad stroke; you should stop, recalibrate, and practice better style and have your body remember that.

So, I’ve got used to resting now whenever I feel like it. And then I reason to myself that I’m not training for anything; it’s supposed to be for fun. But afterwards, I feel  annoyed with myself. And I'm also frustrated with myself for being so wimpy about getting in the water, too, and even opting out altogether.

On the plus side, I’m probably swimming further in total as I’ve targeted to stop swimming one hotel further along now from previously (and then there are the rest periods where I’m treading water, so also using up some energy compared to just sitting around). One day, an Egyptian guy offered to tow me back on his windsurfer, saying it was his taxi service!

Annoyingly, my Garmin watch started to malfunction. It kept on switching to the wrong time (what’s the point of a watch that doesn’t tell the time!). At one point, it buzzed in the middle of a swim and then suddenly changed my location to about a few kilometers further away. I was suddenly better than an Olympic swimmer. On another swim, I was apparently zig-zagging about at some amazing pace as well. It went through a phase where it wouldn’t upload my data. And eventually, it just gave up. It was fully charged, but didn’t turn on or else it would hang in cyberspace.

I’d only had my Garmin for about two years, so I wasn’t impressed. I was also annoyed that it doesn’t provide you with your personal bests for open water swimming – only for lap swimming. My Suunto was far better from the point of view of usable statistical analysis of your data.

I’ve dithered for a while about what watch to buy to replace it. I didn’t want to get Garmin again, but annoyingly (fortunately?) they have recently brought out an updated version of their dedicated swimming watch (my one had been all-purpose sports), which got great reviews. I’d wanted to buy Suunto, but it seemed that the watch I had four years ago was still up there as among their best for open water swimming, but I was worried that it would soon be replaced by something better; I also felt it should have moved on by now.

So, reluctantly, I’ve ordered the Garmin Swim 2. It should arrive this week. Since I’ve been without my watch, I’ve extended my daily swim to that extra hotel along to ensure that I don’t get lazy. It would be tempting to swim less now that I’m not uploading my swim data for the total distance competitions on the Garmin Groups. I’m curious to know how much further I’m swimming, but if I had to guess, I would say I’m probably doing a total of around 1.8km each day. Not too shabby, but I’d be happier with myself if it were non-stop!

El Andalous - Eating Pigeon

Pigeon

I’m really back to my desired routine now – well, I’m not fitting everything in, but generally I’m writing in the morning, swimming in the afternoon, and reading in the evening. If I have enough energy, I’ll do some Arabic, but up to now I’ve usually been waylaid by other things (writing, admin, TV, going out).

I’ve had a few meals out. One characteristic of eating out here is that there are still not so many tourists, so it’s hard for restaurants to keep a full menu going. After my visa woes, and getting only six months instead of a year, Horst and Hilde decided we should go and have an ice cream in town to cheer ourselves up (well, to cheer me up, and I guess for them to sit back and relax). There are surprisingly few places to sit and eat ice cream. Anyway, we sat down and ordered and then watched the guy go out shopping to buy the ingredients (ie, a tub of ice cream from across the road)! In the UK, if something is taking a long time, you might joke that they’re still trying to kill the chicken. Over here, that’s not a joke; it’s the state of reality.

This isn’t the first time it’s happened. It’s now closed, but when Chez Paul was in business, we ordered some wine. Instead of saying they didn’t have any, they went all the way into Hurgada to get it (so we waited for about an hour) and then charged as an astronomical figure for it. They went out of business two days later, so it was probably their last chance to make some money. It was annoying at the time but quite funny when you look back on it.

More recently, a group of us went to eat at Fishawy (a local restaurant). They are situated on the same road as BestWay in Sahl Hasheesh, so we ordered and then saw one of the guys go out and then return with a whole load of bags from BestWay. I guess it’s better than the food being out of date.

I have also finally tried one of the major local dishes – stuffed pigeon. I only had it because the restaurant didn’t have any duck (and were clearly not able to run out and buy some). Stuffed pigeon was a pretty good bet as it’s very popular here and is unlikely to have been hanging around. As it was, it was cooked fresh for me.

I’m glad I’ve tried it and I believe they did it very well as it was nicely presented and they made a big fuss of how they’d cooked it from scratch for me. I’ve also been puzzled as to how many you should eat as a main course; mine was two and that seemed fine.

My main impression was that there was very little meat; so little that I’m not even sure I can tell you what it tastes like. It was also astonishing as to just how much rice they can cram into such a small space. It seemed to go on forever. The meal was fairly spicy, but not hot spicy. Picking at the meat was quite an exercise. In the end, I would rather have duck. If you’ve never had it, though, you should definitely give it a try.