El Andalous - Horse Riding

 

Horse Riding, December 2020

Somewhere along the line, I forgot to mention that I went out horse riding before Christmas. Sahl Hasheesh is only small but it has its own stables (I have blogged about them before). Due to coronavirus, it’s been in danger of shutting down, but I think it’s doing okay at the moment.

Anyway, to help it keep in business (and for our own enjoyment, of course), a group of us decided to go horse riding for two hours. The last time I was on a horse was when I took five lessons in Horsham, right when I first moved there, so that must be around eighteen years ago now (yikes!).

I’ve got very nervous as I’ve got older (and I’m not even that old), so I wanted a quiet horse that wouldn’t run away. As it was, I chose the wrong riding hat; it was perched on top of my head rather than fitting down over my head, and I didn’t feel very safe. So, I wasn't up for cantering. Fortunately, I wasn't the only one wanting a slow-paced day.

It was a good fun. We rode over to where the marina is supposed to be (it’s supposed to have been there for about twelve years now and still no sign of anything happening). I’d never been over that far – I’m always a bit aware that if I go too far out on my bicycle and I get a puncture, I’ll be stranded in the middle of nowhere with no-one around to help and it being hours and hours to walk back. See what I said about getting nervous these days?

Afterwards we rode the horses into the sea and along the shore line, coming back at sunset. The more experienced riders cantered. At one point, Kathryn shouted over to me that my horse was having a baby and for one awful moment I thought she meant it was giving birth that very moment (the horse had suddenly stopped and wasn’t moving and I wasn’t sure why). However, it turned out she was just informing me that it was pregnant and only had a few weeks to go before it was due to give birth. Phew.

When finished, we spent some time looking round at the goats, turkeys, horses, dogs and kittens that were roaming about.

All in all, it was great to go somewhere different, have a change of activity, and enjoy the company!

El Andalous - Tax Office

 

I'd Rather be on the Beach

It’s not nice to pay tax at the best of times, but it’s even worse when it eats up all your time. My life should be easier now I don’t have a Swiss tax return.

However, I wanted to switch my stocks and shares account from my Swiss address to my Egyptian address. Last time I tried to do this several years ago (and gave up), they wanted me to provide (i) a residence visa and (ii) an electricity bill with my address on it. However, at the time, my visa was just a tourist visa in Arabic in my passport and my bills didn’t have my address, because they are just given to me by hand. The smallest things over here can get very complicated.

This time, I was more determined. I asked our accountant to change the structure of our water and electricity bills so that they’d show our full address (otherwise they are not recognized by the authorities as proof of residence). He enquired higher up in the company and it was allowed. The change was made. Tick.

Since this year, the visa office supplies us with visa cards which show the validity of the visa and a personal identification number. It’s part in Arabic, part in English, so I was able to use that as my proof of visa as it looks more official than a stamp in Arabic in your passport. Tick.

Unfortunately, although I passed these hurdles, they still said I couldn’t change my address unless I gave them an Egyptian tax number. It’s like a never-ending obstacle race. All I want to do is change my address!

I looked up how to get an Egyptian tax number on the internet, but it said to get a tax number, you had to supply a contract of employment. But I’m not working. I’m living off savings.

There was no way I would be able to get anyone in the tax office to understand this rather complicated state of affairs, so I asked Esmat if he could help. He said his friend who worked in the tax office would sort it for me. One reminder and several weeks of waiting later, nothing happened. Egyptians don’t like to say “no”. This can also make life difficult at times.

In the end I got a lawyer to come with me and sort it out (only I’m not sure it was). It’s never simple over here. I’m not too sure where we went. As with many official buildings, the outside area is just sand and rubble and it’s hard to believe that this is where the tax headquarters is located.

We must have seen three or four separate people. I was a bit freaked out as hardly anyone was wearing a mask. This is in a government building! I’d worn my antiviral mask for the occasion, so I was okay. Anyway, this first building was for paying my overdue property tax. At least that’s done and dusted now.

Our management company said they will pay this tax. I was waiting for them to bill me. Many owners don’t trust them. I’m not too sure what the truth is. I hear the management company still has the title deeds (why?!), in which case, the tax should be payable by them. On the other hand, if I pay the tax, perhaps I have a greater right? It’s difficult (or should I say “impossible”?) to get to the bottom of things over here. Anyway, I had to go to the tax office, so I thought I should just settle it while I was there.

My lawyer joked to one guy that he was on the computer and that things were starting to get modern (he may not have said that at all as the conversation was in Arabic, but that’s what I imagined him saying). Everyone else in the office was working with huge ledgers all stacked up on their tables. They flick through it to the right page (one hopes!), and everything gets recorded there. It seems a miracle that they can track everything like this, but it does seem to work. Even the single computer looked a little old-fashioned!

The next step, my lawyer said, was to fill out a tax declaration form. So off we went to a different building and had to find the right room dealing with Sahl Hasheesh (can you imagine me trying to do this on my own!!). The tax declaration is new and has to be done by end of March this year. If you don’t fill it out, there’s a fine of 5000 LE (around 250 GBP, which is a lot of money over here; and it’s more than the penalty for submitting your tax form late in the UK!). It turned out to be a property tax declaration form. I had to provide various details about my property – the size, the location, number of rooms etc. Out came another ledger.

In return for filling out the form (which was only in Arabic, so my lawyer did it for me), I got a property tax registration number. This is what’s new, I think. Each person has their own number. It’s supposed to be complying with the way things are done in other countries. Egypt is making vast improvements at the moment and things are becoming more and more up to date and really at quite an impressive pace when you think just how much is being done over here.

I asked my lawyer yet again about whether I could get a tax number, but he said it wasn’t possible because I don’t have any business earnings in Egypt. He said my property tax number would do. I am not convinced.

Anyway, I’ve submitted my materials again to my stocks and shares account and I’m hoping they will accept my property tax number as a tax number. To my mind, it’s not really what they want, but I don’t know what else I can possibly do.

I’m still facing massive problems trying to submit my UK tax return this year, but that might have to wait for another blog…

El Andalous - Boat Trip

The Island Where We Moored

All is well here. I must have had about ten days not really seeing anyone much – just writing and swimming (and failing to get into the self-assessment site for my UK tax return)  – so I was pleased to be invited out to a boat trip with some of the Christmas crowd from Sahl Hasheesh. We were on a private boat with just us, so I thought it would be safe. And we’d be in the open air, of course.

We were blessed with a beautiful day – around 27 degrees – and the sea was very calm. When I’ve been on boat trips in the summer, the sea’s been choppier. We left at a reasonable 9.30am, so it wasn’t a horrifically early start and we were a convoy of three or four white cars, so we must have looked very purposeful.

We stopped off to do some fishing (I didn’t fish, and just remained talking to the three people who were on the top deck). They didn’t have much luck so, in the words of the ship’s captain, they decided to move on to somewhere where the fish were less intelligent.

On the next stop, they met with some success. I hope they released the fish; they were putting them in a bucket of water when I looked and someone else was saying she’d make sure they returned them to the sea. I didn’t enquire any further…. Although, to be honest, I wouldn’t blame the crew if they took some for supper.

The following stop was for snorkeling. I wish I’d asked how long we were staying as I’d have snorkeled for longer and it turned out that we moored there for a few hours. If I heard correctly, even the boats have to socially distance these days, so it was nice not to have other people around me while I snorkeled. We were moored by a small island. Coming back, I returned to the wrong ship (but realized before I tried to get on), so in a way I was longer than I meant to be.

Theresa and the daughter of Fran made pizzas on board (there was a small kitchen and a large dining table on the boat). Some people started jumping in the water again. Amazingly, Alexa jumped off from the very top of the boat and she’s going to be 80 years old next birthday. You wouldn’t believe it to look at her and she has more energy than most people I know. She’s such an inspiration. I was quaking at jumping off from the edge of the boat! Needless to say, she gave me some stick for that.

I finally dived from the side and went for a swim. Unfortunately, the boat left, not realizing that I’d not got back on. That’s the second time this has happened to me now. However, this time I didn’t realise. I decided maybe I should turn back and at one point I noticed that the steps to get on the boat had been pulled up, but I just carried on swimming (I’d just have to shout at them to pull them down again, I thought). Apparently, someone asked where I was and they stopped the boat! This resulted in everyone standing by the side of the boat and cheering me on as I swam. I got a load of really nice compliments on my swimming afterwards, so I was completely unfazed by it all.

Next stop was somewhere calm so that we could eat. The pizza was delicious – they made some without cheese for me. I’m not normally a fan of pizza anyway, but the crust (the pizza was all home made) was amazing. I’ve never tasted such a nice crust before. It all had to be eaten up, so by the end I was really stuffed.

We arrived back at sunset. All in all, it was a perfect day and was just what I wanted at this point in time. I am so privileged!

El Andalous - Happy New Year (2021)

 

View from Azzurra

Well, happy new year, everyone. We’ve made it this far.

Even I didn’t do anything to see the new year in. However, I don’t think I did anything last year, either, so maybe it’s not a huge difference.

After Christmas, which was already two days running eating out (not that I’m complaining), I was invited round to a meal on the following Monday and Tuesday, so by the time I’d done all that, I was quite happy to spend some time on my own.

There’s a new set of people in Sahl Hasheesh at the moment. A lot of flats have been sold, new people are moving in, and the social circle is changing.

My first invitation was to Tina’s rental place in Azzurra (another residential block further up the hill from me). Tina’s been here a month and is loving it. She’s very sociable, so she’s made friends with many people, and as a thank you, she invited everyone round for a German meal (red cabbage, goulash, dumplings). It was pretty much the same crowd as at Christmas.

The Azzurra flats are all lovely. Most of them have full views of the sea and quite a few have large roof terraces (as did Tina’s). Consequently, we were mostly sitting up on the outside terrace. You need a jumper this time of year, but it’s still lovely.  I’ll probably put a photo up of the moon over the sea for this blog – that’s the view from Tina’s roof terrace.

I’m not actually that keen on German food, even though I’ve lived there in the past. However, Tina’s food was great. The red cabbage was surprisingly nice and the goulash was wonderful. Apparently, the dumplings needed a special kind of potato that you can’t get over here. That’s always the problem (and joy) here – nothing is ever quite the same. Anyway, they went a bit wrong, but I still ate some.

She bought a lot of beer (I thought that was very German!), but unusually it seemed that everyone wanted to drink a spirit with coke. I’d brought rum with me because I didn’t have any wine at home, plus a couple of cans of diet coke, and it turned out to be quite popular. I think another person brought vodka and that was also chosen by a fair few people.

The next day, my meal was in El Andalous, so that’s like visiting someone in student halls (which seems like another life now). There, I had a wonderful Lebanese cottage pie equivalent with cauliflower cheese without the cheese (I am so awkward to cook for). And some broccoli. It was all wonderful. I somehow drank a bit too much, so didn’t swim the following day.

So, that was my run up to the new year. To see the new year in, I got myself chicken and chips from our local fried chicken place, ate the chocolate cake my brother sent me for Christmas, and pigged out in front of the television with some vodka and coke (since now I no longer have any rum either). It was actually a lovely evening.

My first five hours of 2021, however, were not the best as I had diarrhea. I think it must have been the chicken (I couldn’t think of eating chicken the next day, but my veal was most acceptable). I was up all night until about 5am, but after that was better. A new year’s swim was even possible.

Anyway, I’m enjoying going round saying that I started off 2021 by getting rid of all the crap!

Let’s hope that’s portentous for this coming year! Wishing you all a healthy and happy year ahead.