El Andalous - Swimming Goals

Part of My Swimming Route - El Andalous in Background

It’s been a cold winter this year, which is why I’ve spent so much time on repairs and reorganization. However, when I look at my Suunto Ambit watch it seems that I’ve done a lot more swimming than I feel I have. Although there’s the occasional week where I haven’t been at all, mostly I have managed to go 2-3 times a week. That’s not bad!

I’m sure the water must also be colder than usual, so I’m quite proud of being so hardy. I’m just so determined to make the most of the good weather when it finally happens. Once I’m in, the water isn’t so bad, but it takes me a while to take the plunge. This year, I’m splashing myself with sea water before I swim and getting myself accustomed to it first. That helps. I was quite impressed with myself when I noticed one of the Germans refusing to go in because it was too cold. I think of the Germans as being a pretty hardy bunch, especially compared with me!

At long last, my swimming speed has also marginally improved. Last time I was here, I was trying to swim faster, but my watch kept on telling me I was swimming more and more slowly. It was quite depressing. When I returned this time, I decided to give up swimming any faster, and then promptly my speed went up. Very bizarre.

I used to do about 1.8 or 1.9 km/hour; when I tried to improve, my speed decreased to 1.6 or 1.7 km/hour. I thought I’d tried everything to improve it! I am now steadily managing 2 km/hour; if I’m very lucky, I might get up to 2.1 km /hour. This isn’t anything to shout about, but for me it’s progress. I’ve decided it’s mostly due to doing more strokes per minute. I really need to improve my skill!

My watch now has a new feature where it tells you how you compare with all the other people who are using the watch. It kindly informed me that, for open-water swimming, I am in the top 100%. This made me laugh out loud. That’s a very nice way of telling me that I’m in the bottom 10% (since my next goal is to reach the top 90%). In fact, I’m probably at least in the bottom 5%, but it doesn't go that low!

To achieve the top 90% I need to take 7 minutes off my best time to swim 1.5 km and 3 minutes off my best time to swim 1 km. This all seems impossible to me, but I like to have the goal. For 500 m, I just need to reduce my time by 25 seconds to get to the top 90%. You don’t have to do these separately, so if I swim 1.5 km, it will record my fastest 500 m as well within that distance, and my fastest 1 km, and then decide if it’s faster than any other instance where I’ve swum, eg, at least 500 m.

It’s not even worth my while looking at the average times for my age (which are done by 5-year age group, so  I'm 50-54)), as they are totally out of my grasp. There's no excuse!

I am hoping that maybe once it’s winter in Australia, the averages might go down a bit. I blame all these high goals on the Australians who train ridiculously hard.

Also, the top times by Suunto watch users are not necessarily very accurate. I’ve looked at some other people’s recorded swims and I saw one, for instance, who was allegedly swimming at 15 km/hour for 1 km. This is twice as fast as the Olympic champion, so I can’t help but feel this must have been a wind surfer or something like that using the watch for another purpose.

On some of my swims, my watch has failed to pick up sufficiently good GPS data and the swim has been automatically excluded from the “personal bests”; I feel a bit cheated. I’ve learned to wear my watch a bit tighter so that it doesn’t swivel round to the area near my palm (when it fails to record).

However, these percentage data give me more motivation, a goal, and an additional interest, which I guess is the real point of it all rather than accuracy per se.

All this inspired me to try to find out a bit more about what a reasonable swimming speed is deemed to be. It seems that most swimmers seem to think about 3 km/hour is average (for those who swim regularly), which would explain why I’m so far behind. I now have this as my long-term goal.

I also found out these interesting statistics – Goldfish swim at 1.4 km/ hour; Herring at 6 km/h, Olympic swimmer c 7 km/h, Mackrel 11km/h, Salmon 45 km/h, Tuna 60-80 km/h (depends on species), Swordfish 96 km/h. It just shows you how amazing some fish are! I am beginning to think they really don't need my book 25 New Year's Resolutions - for Fish!

El Andalous - Slowly...

El Andalous Fountain - New Colour!

I have made progress. My bathroom now looks a lot bigger and less like a storage room.

Nevertheless, even though I’ve filled up my new plastic drawers, placed my cereals in the new cabinet where they fit just perfectly, and I’ve fully stocked my wash unit and mirrored cabinet in my bathroom, I still don’t seem to have any spare space.

I understand now that some things were irritating me without me realising. For example, due to lack of space, I was storing spare pens, batteries, and DIY items in with my knives and forks (yes, weird, I know). I now have a drawer for batteries and DIY things and another drawer for pens and sewing stuff. When I open my cutlery drawer now and there’s no “junk” in there, I feel a huge sense of relief. Yet I had no idea before that it even bothered me.

Similarly, some items that I threw out or reorganised are no longer taking up the space beneath my television. Finally, I can dust there!

I have also got a hook now for my key by the door. I used to keep my key in the door all the time so that I don’t lose it, but if I get locked out when the key’s in the door, I’m stuck. Yasser was the only person in the entire building who knew how to open my door with the key still inside (I had to drag him out of his spare time once), and he’s gone, so I really did need to change that habit.

These changes mean, of course, that I need to develop new habits, which will take some time. The extra cabinet gets me confused as to where my glasses are (they used to be in the end cabinet, but with the extra cabinet at the end, they are now effectively in the cabinet second-to-the-end; each time I have to think this all through), the washing machine is where my fridge-freezer used to be, so I’m continually trying to get milk from the washing machine. And sometimes my keys could be anywhere or still in the door. It’s surprising how easy it is to lose things in a relatively small flat.

Some changes for the good have happened without me having to lift a finger. For instance, finally, I am no longer plagued by ants. I should have complained about my ant infestation but I’d felt too defeated (I was convinced they’d never do anything about it). When I got back this time, there were hundreds of dead ants near my patio doors. I caught one infestation swarming near the back of one of my cupboards and sprayed them with an insect killer. After that, I had no more ants, but I suspect they retreated into the Engineering room and they sorted them (I could hear them spraying their office and maybe above my flat). I should have just asked them to sort it in the first place.

The fountain (I sometimes call it the waterfall) next to my flat has been repainted from dark brown to a light pink (it’s better than it sounds!); it is better as the lighter colour brightens up the place, but isn’t anything that I’d thought to complain about, given that we usually have blazing sunshine.

So, all in all, there has been some noticeable progress.

El Andalous - Giving Up (For Now)

Completed - New Bathroom Wash Unit (plus Mirrored Cabinet)

I’m almost done with my reorganization, although that’s a bit of a fateful thing to say. All that’s left to do is to get two new shelves for my kitchen, remove my broken dishwasher, and install a cupboard in its place.

Once again, I asked Medhat to sort a carpenter out for me and once again, he was just too slow. I told him not to bother.

I took a taxi, all the measurements in hand, in order to go to “my” carpenter. The taxi driver decided to speak to me in Arabic – I could understand that he was asking me if I wanted to go to the carpenter, so I confirmed. He said something I didn’t understand, but I guessed he was asking me what I wanted the carpenter to do, so I was able to say “one cabinet and two shelves” (I’d looked up all this vocabulary beforehand). He phoned Esmat and, again, it appeared that Esmat was very concerned about the colour. This time, the taxi driver explained that I’d brought a sample with me.

The taxi driver asked if I had a picture, so I showed him the photograph I’d taken of my existing cabinet and my diagrams with the detailed measurements. He looked at it and asked me (in English, once I couldn’t understand) if I’d measured the items with a tape. I found this highly amusing – as if I’d just guess at the measurements! I know I’m not the most practical of people, but I really wasn’t as incompetent as they were expecting me to be.

We got to the carpenter but when we arrived, his place had been completely cleared out! It looked so different from the bustling place it was before with loads of work ongoing; it was like he’d done a runner. I’ve asked Esmat three times now to find out if he’s back, but Esmat isn’t getting back to me. I’m now beginning to think that I’ll just leave this until I’m back next winter. I’d like some time just to sit back and enjoy life a bit.

One other thing I did get done (sort of, which is always the caveat over here) was to have my lounge walls painted. They were a magnolia colour, which is fine, but it somehow makes the room quite dark. A couple of people have told me that if you paint your walls white, it really lifts them.

So, I decided to have the walls painted white with one feature wall by the patio doors painted the same green as my cushions. This too has taken me months and months until they’ve got round to it.

Ksenia had warned me that when you ask for your walls to be painted, you’ll have one idea in mind and they’ll have another one. Consequently, I explained quite clearly that I wanted the wall to be the muted green of my cushions. They informed me that they’d taken a photograph and would get it digitally matched in town. What could go wrong? What was unclear about that?

To give praise where praise is due, they completed the painting really quickly – the paint dries fast here, which helps. I kept out of it and just sat on my balcony. But when I went in to see the finished product, they’d painted the feature wall a really bright primary green, and they praised me on my good choice of colour!! I didn’t have the energy to argue. Maybe it will grow on me.

I’ll see how I feel when I’m back next winter and if I decide I don’t like it, I’ll have to go into town, buy the paint myself, and ask them to re-do it. We’re finally back to having good weather now for a while and I want to enjoy that. Also, after paying out so many “baksheesh” – I’ve been quite generous since the work has been done for free and I know the men aren’t paid very much (and I’d rather they get the money than the management company) – I’m starting to feel like my money is just draining away before I can even touch it. It’s time for a rest!

El Andalous - More Organisational Woes

Work In Progress

Well, I’ve given you all a few weeks rest from my organizational woes, so I’m now going to return back to them, since this is really taking up most of my life just now.

As I said, I decided to offload all my broken and unwanted stuff on Joke (pronounced Yoka rather than as Joke as in witticism!) to sell to charity. Again, this sounds easy, but it wasn’t. I needed to clear all my files off my laptop before giving it away. This must have taken me at least two days and I began to feel that this was a lot of work to do something where I got no reward!

The main problem was that my laptop screen was no longer functional. I managed to hook it up to the TV, so that I had a proxy screen. Unfortunately, the software that I’d downloaded to remove all the files didn’t automatically execute for some reason. I googled and found a way to get it to execute by going into the BIOS on start-up and changing the start-up command. However, all laptops are apparently set for the BIOS screen only to show on the primary screen, which is the screen on your actual laptop. Therefore, it wouldn’t show on the TV screen. I had to give up.

My old laptop was also very slow, so downloading programmes took forever in itself. I ended up trying to download another programme to remove all my files, but it just wouldn’t ever fully download. In the end, I found yet another programme, but I had to erase most things individually and it took forever.

I made an impulse buy in Spinneys of a set of plastic drawers which I thought would serve well as bathroom storage. However, when I got home, it didn’t fit, so it had to go in the lounge, which wasn’t really where I wanted it. Moreover, I thought the children’s design down the front of the drawers was just a bit of cardboard on the packaging, but it turned out to be the picture on the actual drawers. I didn’t really want a set of drawers with a children’s cartoon emblazoned on it! It was all a bit of a disaster.

I tried to rectify it by buying some sticky-backed plastic (good old Blue Peter!) to hide the garish cartoon. As I’ve said before, I’m not really an arts and crafts type person. Although the covering looks pretty good if you just glance at it, if you pull a drawer out, you can hear the bits of jutting-out plastic scraping against the drawer below. Still, they are functional (for now).

I gave up on Medhat ever finding me a wash unit for my bathroom. I told him to forget it and I confidently strode into town thinking I would just sort this myself. However, instead, I got a bit bamboozled. This often happens when I go into Hurghada.

I got a quote from one place to have one made specifically for me, but then realized there were things I hadn’t thought to consider (I couldn’t remember if my tap went on the basin or if it was fixed on the worktop, I wasn’t sure how the basin was fixed to the worktop, or how large a hole was needed etc). I went to another shop and found a nice self-contained unit for 2000 LE. But when I sat down to order it, it transpired that it actually cost 10,000 LE - I’d completely misheard the price. And then a tap would be an extra 1500 LE. I had no idea that taps were so expensive! This was more than I'd intended to spend, so again I gave up.

Finally, I decided to take the plunge and go back to the first place. However, when I got to the shop, the guy who had served me before wasn’t there and they couldn’t work out what he’d recommended to me. Moreover, it turned out that I had to order the granite top separately from another person; they only did the bottom part of the unit. The granite person would have to come to my house , I’d have to see how long it would take for him to prepare the granite, and then they could do their part of the unit after that. My heart fell – this was getting complicated and beyond my capabilities as a non-Arabic speaker. Yet again, I gave up and went home, feeling frustrated.

Eventually, I spotted Medhat’s manager, Mohamed, and he found me a suitable unit within one day. If only it had been that easy from the start! To install it, though, my pipes in my bathroom had to be moved, meaning the wall tiles had to be broken, and I needed replacement tiles. Fortunately, these were in stock.

It all got done in the end, but it was an uphill battle all the way. I had no idea that getting a new wash stand for the bathroom would be so difficult.

El Andalous - Daily Life

Beachfront from Sahl Hasheesh Old Town

After about two months of unusually cold weather here (I mean windy and around 20 degrees centigrade), we’re finally back to a spell of “normal” weather, perhaps even a little hotter than usual (around 24-26 degrees, calmer). This has made me think a bit about what “normal” life is here.

What’s not been normal is me sitting on my balcony wearing a cardigan, having the heating on at night, wearing bed socks in the evening because my feet are cold…

However, most of my life has, of course, stayed the same. The Egyptians don’t miss much. When I arrived back I walked along the seafront to see if anything had changed and to go to BestWay. I was stopped by one of the shopkeepers and asked where my bicycle was. It appears that my little flying pigeon has become famous in its own right!

The weekly bus to Senzo Mall is still running, so Mondays are defined in my head as “KFC night”. Last time I returned to Egypt, I was joking that even though I’d been away for quite some months, the guy in the KFC recognized me immediately and still knew my order off by heart (“original recipe, no coleslaw, double fries, diet coke” – the irony of double fries paired with diet coke is not lost on me). This time, on my second KFC visit, the guy (a different one) explained that he’d given me 2 small pieces of chicken and was this OK? I said yes, but actually felt a bit miffed. This must have shown on my face, because he took my meal back and told me he’d give me two big pieces instead since I was a regular customer. I smiled broadly in return!

For Europeans, Egyptians can perhaps come across as too over-friendly, but it’s also an attraction to living here. On my way to BestWay, Tony, one of the shopkeepers, stopped me and was eager to tell me all the latest gossip about what was going to happen in Sahl Hasheesh, who he’d talked to, and what he was up to.

When I went to the bank, the security guy at the door recognized me, as did the guy at customer service, and on subsequent visits the security guy reminded me that if I needed any help, I only needed to ask him. Again, my face must give away my true emotions, because I came out of the bank feeling a bit annoyed that I hadn’t really got a resolution of my internet banking issue, and the security guy asked me if I was OK as I was leaving. It at least made me feel that I belonged!

I hired a golf buggy to go to the ERC (resort company) offices to collect my year’s residency card, and an Egyptian guy shouted out to me that the coast was clear. The only problem was that he said it in Arabic and I didn’t have a clue what he was saying, so it was more of a distraction than a help. But it was all resolved with good humour.

Similarly, I was riding along on my bike, and someone (an Egyptian) stopped me to say that I needed to pump up my tyres (that might explain why I was finding it more exhausting to ride my bike recently!). I was at first reticent to listen to him (which I think he sensed), but then I realized he was just trying to be helpful. Really, the people are great!

By contrast, it made me laugh when one of the new staff in El Andalous saw me trying to work out which way to go to get to Kathryn’s old flat and thought I didn’t know where my own flat was. He led me all the way back to my own flat before I realized he’d got the wrong end of the stick!

My Blog - 10,000 Page Views

Entrance Piazza, Sahl Hasheesh

I thought I’d stop and do a geeky summary of my blog so far, now that I’ve passed the landmark number of 10,000 page views since it started (I wanted to write this last week, but I was 3 page views too short!).

A total of 10,000 page views sounds quite an impressive number but, to be honest, I don’t set much store by the accuracy of the figures put out by Google Blogger. They’ve never really matched up – the number of page views by country never matches with the total of page views each week; maybe it counts for each blog read on one counter and by visitor for another, but it’s not very clear. Still, 10,000 sounds good and that’s what’s important.

If you sign up for the blog to be delivered to you by email, you won’t be counted in the statistics that I’m reporting here. I don’t even know how many people have opted to receive it by email. I’m kept completely blind to that side of the blog. So, the statistics here are for visitors to the actual blog page.

I think the most exotic country (a very subjective thing, of course) I can remember reaching was the Solomon Islands. I’ve received the most views from the UK – these outnumber the second country (Switzerland) by about 150%. This probably demonstrates that despite living outside of the UK for coming up to 10 years, I’m still really fairly rooted in my homeland. Countries that came in from 3-10 as being my most frequent visitors, which all in turn fall quite a bit behind Switzerland, are in order: USA, Russia, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Egypt, Germany, and Ireland.

It seems that 30% of you are using Google Chrome (which I use, too). It’s followed closely by Safari (28%) users and then 20% with Explorer. A further 11% use Firefox.

Over half of you (55%) are using Windows. Apple products come next with iPhone (18%), MacIntosh (13%), and iPad (8%). Surprisingly, Android is fairly low, coming in next with 2%.

The search keywords used to land on my blog are fairly predictable; the one that kept me amused for ages, but has now dropped off the top ten list, was “sahl hasheesh naked”. Other than what’s totally predictable (eg, “searchingthedream blog”), “re-entry visa” has featured more than once, and a search for the baron palace hotel, and a search for a massage in Sahl Hasheesh.

My biggest surprise for Referring Sites was the goodreads site (6th in Referring URLs), and I guess this is where most of my US readers have come from (thank you!). Since I really haven’t sold many books, I’m surprised the goodreads site had any impact. I’d also like to thank those from the ShareKnowledge site for their interest (2nd in Referring Sites) – I’m not sure anyone from there is currently reading, but thanks anyway! This is also probably a reason for the high UK readership since most on ShareKnowledge are UK citizens (as far as I know).

My most read posts are hugely influenced by whether anyone has commented or not. If someone makes a comment, the readership for that post usually increases by at least 50% (I guess people go back to the page to read the comment).

Nevertheless my most popular post by quite a bit is Sahl Hasheesh – First Snorkeling on 26 October 2013, despite the fact that it had no comments. I’m very surprised by this, but maybe it’s because it comes just before I broke my foot (Hurghada – First Trip to Hospital on 27 October 2013), which itself comes in at 6th most popular overall or 3rd most popular of those that haven’t received any comments.

The second most popular post (no comments) was Flashback – The Decision (23 Sept 2013), which was about my decision to move to Egypt and is perhaps key to the blog, so not so surprising.

Posts in positions 3-5 all had comments (the ones on Japan were deleted to protect privacy); in order these were: The Netherlands – Renewing a Friendship, Basel – White Dinner, and Japan – Some Sightseeing. This might also have something to do with them being “sociable” posts, where presumably friends of friends mentioned therein may have been pointed to them.

Posts in positions 7-9 all had comments or I’d posted a link to it on facebook: An Awakening (describing my return to Zurich), Egypt – Journey to Luxor, Sheila’s Words – Egypt for the First Time. Well done to Sheila for writing one of the most popular entries!

At place number 10, no comments, and 4th of no comments/promotion posts, was Flashback – The Party. I was quite surprised about this but it supports my conclusion that “sociable” blogs may be passed on to others more.

I thought that my Rats posts would have been popular, since for me that was the most dramatic or stressful time so far in Egypt, but maybe the topic just doesn’t appeal. I can’t understand that at all.

El Andalous - Clear Out

Cupboard - Half Way There; 3 In Order, 1 Cleared, 2 Messy

So, 2017 started off with a manic attempt by me to get organized. As well as reorganizing my kitchen and bathroom a bit, I thought I may as well throw out some items and reallocate places for storing things.

This was also more difficult than I’d anticipated.

I had one shelf in my bedroom that was full of broken electronics (a non-functioning iron, a coffee maker without a jug, a broken laptop, a broken camera). I’d avoided throwing them away because it seemed so wasteful in a country where many people can’t even afford to eat. Besides, I liked the coffee maker but couldn’t find a replacement jug to fit. Somehow, I thought if I just hung onto it, a replacement jug would suddenly magically appear. In the mean time, I’d bought another coffee machine (but not so nice).

As for the iron, I suspected it just needed a fuse, but it had one of those sealed plugs where you can’t really get inside it. I’d bought a new iron, but was reluctant to throw my other one away when I was convinced that it could be so easily brought back into working order.

The camera was still working, it was just that the pictures it took were all out of focus. I know that’s useless, but I’d been fond of the camera when it worked, and just maybe it would spontaneously correct itself.

Anyway, I got all this stuff out and as I looked at it, I could feel my old reluctance to throw them away resurfacing. You can see why I was really into Parapsychology at one point.

I distracted myself by turning to my very dusty shelf below my television where I had all sorts of things that I didn’t really know what to do with. There was an old double cassette recorder / radio player, a bunch of cassettes, a bunch of DVDs, some magazines, and a pile of electronic connectors that I may or may not need.

With a reluctant sigh, I came to the conclusion that I needed to throw all of these out, apart from the connectors (although I’m a bit puzzled at how I ended up with 6 sets of earphones and 4 mini-USB connectors). And then I had the bright idea that I could ask Joke if she wanted to sell the items for charity. At least this way, some good could come out of it. And maybe she could also take my broken electronics (Egyptians are very good at mending things and reusing them until they absolutely cannot be mended any more). I emailed her and she said yes!

This inspired me to check whether I had any clothes that I needed to throw out. I went and retrieved an old favorite dress and favorite cardigan that had both been ruined by some sealant spilling on them. They were my favorite items and I didn’t really want to face up to the fact that I couldn’t wear them any longer.

I got distracted yet again, now in attempting to find on the internet a way to remove the sealant. Full of optimism, I spent quite some time employing a variety of tried-and-tested cleaning methods, all of which failed. I’d been through all this rigmarole before, when I first realized what had happened to my clothes, but somehow I always think that if I try again, it might suddenly work second time round. For someone that studied logic at university, I’m not all that rational.

While I was doing this, I remembered that I'd meant to try cleaning my sofa again, which has got stained with dust and water marks. I went back to the internet to remind myself of what the recommended cleaning methods were. Again, I tried those trusted techniques and failed.

Looking at my flat now, I realized that in my attempt to tidy up, I’d just brought the whole place into complete chaos. All my junk was spread out everywhere. All efforts to fix had failed (I hope you like the F, F, F alliteration). I hadn’t even gone full circle; I’d ended up in reverse.