The Chicken Joke

I never thought I’d say this but I really miss Cairo… parts of it anyways. I developed so many bad habits in the Egyptian city that life on the straight and narrow in the Real World is driving me crazy. Of course, my walking in front of moving cars is probably making the drivers in Auckland a little crazy too.

Crossing the street in Cairo is like playing a real life game of Frogger. You wait for the moment when at least two lanes are clear and then walk sedately forward weaving, dodging, yelling, waiting, and occasionally hitting the fronts of cars as you go. The point of the game, obviously, is not just to get to the other side but also to do so in one piece. Sure, there were the occasional traffic lights (like the ones near the Institute’s old base), but people usually just crossed the road wherever the mood struck.

Now that I have returned to the Developed World, people seem to frown on jaywalking and walking in front of moving vehicles. See, what I didn’t mention before is that despite the fun of dodging and weaving around moving cars in Cairo the drivers usually know well enough to slow down or at least not aim for you. Here in Auckland, I swear I’ve had at least two people speed up when I dared to walk out in traffic.

Sadly, this means that I’m stuck waiting for traffic lights to tell me when I can and can’t cross the street. The other day, for example, I stood for three hours minutes waiting for the happy green walk sign to appear while watching a street that was practically devoid of cars. The fact I waited just proves that I’m slipping.

While my car dodging habits are making me twitchy in this law abiding new life, they aren’t the only skills that are growing rusty. Ever since those first shopping days in India, I perfected my negotiation skills and became something of an expert at bartering for everything from cloth for new shirts to taxi rides across town. Sadly, it turns out that when you get into a taxi in London they expect you to pay what’s on the meter and don’t believe in finding a middle ground between what’s in your pocket and their exorbitant fees.

I’m sure there are other questionable habits and skills I picked up over the last five years but I have to admit that negotiating the price of dinner dinner and playing chicken with buses are two of the things I find myself missing most here in the boring old, law abiding Real World. I guess that means that I’m simply going to have to go out and find some locals to corrupt to my way of thinking. After all, positive changes like these can only happen one person at a time.