Worth Every Penny

The best part of any holiday is always the journey home. (Hubby edit: it is? Remember the baggage disaster of August 2007?) While coming back to Cairo and seeing Hubby after a long absence was certainly a joyful occasion, the reason I was psyched about my trip home was because I was about to embark on a dream flight. Thanks to the careful hoarding of airmiles, I was able to upgrade to business on my flight from New York to Dubai. Better yet, I was going to fly on the top of the bus on an Airbus A380!

As someone who geekily follows travel news, I was psyched when I saw the A380’s reviews upon its release last year. I immediately told Hubby that I had to fly on this huge plane and that I was not going to do so in “steerage” as he calls economy. Several things stood in the way of this dream not the least of which was that business class tickets are ridiculously expensive.

Thanks to the Emirates airmiles Hubby generously shared with me, I was able to fulfill this dream to fly at the (almost) front of the bus on this 14-hour flight. The first difference with the A380 is that business and first class passengers board from the upstairs lounge. So after enjoying a glass of champagne, mushroom ravioli, and a plate of profita rolls and chocolate covered strawberries, I leisurely boarded on the upper deck of the A380.

At this juncture, I should probably admit that I was being a huge nerd from the moment I stepped foot on the plane. I walked back to my seat with my jaw literally agape at the impressive appointments on this plane. I clicked away on my little pink camera and was caught by one of the amazingly nice flight attendants. “Your first A380?” she asked kindly. I nodded dumbly. “After we’ve taken off, make sure you visit the bar and I’ll make you a Grey Goose Cosmo!”

Before I could fully register the presence of a fully working bar (with numerous plates of canapés, and Godiva chocolates to nibble on) I noticed that my seat had its own mini bar.

After 8 hours of sleep, I can attest that the lie-flat seats were incredibly comfortable. Interestingly, the blankets and pillows provided were a better quality than those normally found in Emirates business class. The food also was a notch up from their normally tasty fare. I have frequently bragged that the food on Emirates is some of the only airline food I will eat but the choices and quality on the A380 exceeded even their usual high quality.

Dinner, which I slept through, started with caviar and included choices ranging from lamb to freshly tossed chicken Caesar salad. The snack options were also different than those found on most Emirates flights and allowed me to try a very tasty, fresh tasting hamburger shortly after I awoke. My breakfast started with a fresh strawberry smoothie and was followed by thick, fluffy, restaurant-quality apple pancakes, accompanied by Vermont maple syrup.

I was lucky that I had sufficient airmiles to allow me to fly on the top floor, so I decided to take a quick visit downstairs to see how I would have been flying were it not for Hubby’s generosity. In comparison to Business Class’s four seats across, Economy packed 10 seats across three rows in a 3-4-3 arrangement.

Sadly, one thing I noticed in both Economy and Business was the dearth of passengers. Downstairs, most people were able to stretch out across several seats when they slept. Upstairs in Business, at least half the seats were empty. Since there are multiple flights a day between JFK and Dubai, I’m not sure if this was a result of people not wanting to take the later flight, or an indicator of a lack of interest for travel between these two cities.

I was never able to visit the very front of the bus and see the famous showers but I can hardly credit that First Class could improve upon the service and comfort of Business on the A380. From lounging in the bar area with my fellow travelers to being urged by the wonderful flight crew to pose behind the bar for photos, I can now say that I am officially impressed. The first time Hubby upgraded me to Business I told him my days of flying Economy were over. Well, Hubby, I have bad news for you because from now on I’m only flying A380 Business!

All the Gang at 42nd Street

To say that I enjoyed my dinner at Babbo would not fully express how amazing the food was that night. I literally still carry the menu, bill, and coaster from Babbo in my purse to this day.

Even before arriving at Babbo, I had decided to order the pasta tasting menu. According to the website, "the entire table" is required to order a tasting menu so I was worried about whether or not I would be allowed to do so since I was dining at the bar. Thankfully, the very kind bartender assured me that my gastronomic dreams could be fulfilled at the bar without any problems. Phew!

Including an amuse bouche and cookies, I was presented with nine courses for $69. While I enjoyed my blood orange mimosa, I was presented with a chickpea bruchetta, which was nice but I felt that if you didn’t really like chickpeas the flavour could easily have become overwhelming.

Next up was Black Tagliatelle with Peas and Parmigiano. I had no idea what peas were supposed to taste like before this meal. Who knew that these amazing little green spheres were so blissfully flavorsome?

“Casunzei” with Poppy Seeds was pockets of pasta filled with beets. This isn’t the first restaurant I’ve been to lately that highlighted beets on its menu but I have to say that Mario proved why he’s the big name chef, and the rest of us are mere poseurs. Even people who don’t like beets would have enjoyed this plate, which was highlighted with nice peppery arugula.

The flavours that assault you while you eat Gargnelli with “Funghi Trifolati” are divine. First you taste the mushrooms. Then the fresh taste of parsley. Then both together. And just when you think you’ve got the flavors under control the mushrooms hit you again. I’m not a huge parsley fan as I find it rather boring and often substitute cilantro instead but this dish has definitely converted me.

Normally when I dine alone, I bring a book and read between courses. This night I was too busy enjoying the food and anticipating what was to come next to have time for reading. Sadly though, the next course was a bit of a let down. Domingo’s Pyramids with “Passato di Pomodoro” was interesting but didn’t wow me the same way that the previous courses had.

A traditional Pappardelle Bolognese was my final pasta course and definitely showed me where I needed to improve my own Bolognese in the future. The use of pancetta in the sauce was brilliant. On the downside, this final pasta course was served too hot and the portion was too large considering this was fifth plate of pasta I had enjoyed.

Now that my dessert courses were starting, the bartender recommended a Moscato as my final beverage for the evening. I’m not typically a big dessert wine girl but this Moscato was beyond lovely and I have looked for a bottle of it to purchase since that evening. This is also the point in the evening when I actually overheard the following statement, “Your relationship with your therapist says a lot about you and how you relate to the people in your life.”

First up after my mains was the “Frittelle di Caprino” with Warm Honey. After one bite I literally said, “Foodgasm!!” On its own, the fried balls of cheese were ok, but the addition of warm honey brought it to a whole new level. I may have even put my finger through the left over bits of honey on my plate when no one was looking.

I wasn’t looking forward to the Toasted Sesame Panna Cotta since I am not a huge fan of panna cotta in general. And I’m still not a huge fan. Sorry, Mario. While this would make a lovely palette cleanser with its rich sesame flavours and clean mouth taste, it simply wasn’t my thing.

The final dessert course was a Chocolate Delizia with Vanilla Zabaione. The incredibly rich chocolate cake was accompanied by a non-traditional zabaione that was simply delightfully decadent and tasty.

When the cookies arrived with my bill, the bartender kindly topped up my Moscato and recommended that I dip the biscotti in the wine. Keep in mind that this was my ninth course over a two and a half hour period of time so the cookies were slightly overkill – tasty but overkill. The previous week, my parents and I ate at George on Queen Street East in Toronto. One of the innovations I liked at this restaurant was that cookies were given to us in prettily decorated cellophane packages so we could take them home. We weren’t pressured into eating the yummy cookies while we were still full and were able to appreciate them at our leisure. I would like to see this done at more top class restaurants in the future.

And that, my friends, was one of the best meals of my life. Sadly I enjoyed it alone, surrounded by strangers but I’m glad I was able to enjoy the memories of that fabulous evening with you, my Friends and Devoted Readers.

Remember me to Herald Square

I have a confession to make: I am a Food Network junkie. I could spend days watching other people cook food with exotic ingredients. I have spent hundreds of dollars on celebrity chef cookbooks, and hours attempting to recreate the amazing dishes I saw on television. My ultimate celebrity chef crush is Jamie Oliver but he doesn’t have a New York City restaurant yet so I was “stuck” with Mario Batali. It really is tough to be me sometimes.

Before I even booked a flight to New York, I started perusing the menus at Mario’s various restaurants. After a great deal of inner debate, and a very generous gift from my foodie parents, my plan was set: lunch at Lupa and dinner at Babbo.

I’m glad I chose Lupa for lunch since the pasta, while tasty, was not the dream meal I had been envisioning. That said, I will never be able to eat Spaghetti Carbonara again now that I’ve had it at Lupa. So often Carbonara is served as a creamy, heavy mass of pasta. This was so light, and well seasoned I could happily eat it every day for lunch and never get tired.

Before I start gushing about Babbo I want to comment on the amazing service at both of these restaurants. I take customer service very seriously and was incredibly impressed by everyone from the hostess and coat check girl to the bartenders and wait staff during both of my dining experiences. They were polite, knowledgeable, and really very personable. Most importantly, I didn’t feel rushed at either restaurant and was left to enjoy my meal at my own leisurely pace.

Now onto the main event! Sadly I was not able to get reservations for Babbo since I wanted a table for one, but was assured that I would be able to order anything I wanted if I sat at the bar. The original draft of this post ran over four pages long which is a little excessive even by my standards. So you’ll have to come back tomorrow to find out about my brilliant meal at Babbo.

Give My Regards Broadway

I am the original Broadway baby. I grew up watching musicals and have been known to break out into song at the least provocation. So you can imagine how excited I was when I first stepped foot on the real Broadway, looked up and down the street, and saw all the theatres where I once foresaw myself treading the boards.

My plans of world domination through drama may have fallen short but that didn’t mean that I was going to miss out on my chance to see a musical on Broadway. That, of course, left me with the dilemma of what to see. After much hemming and hawing, I narrowed it down to Wicked and Guys and Dolls starring Mama Gilmore, Lauren Graham.The deciding factor was finally that I know every single song from G&D by heart and wasn’t as familiar with Wicked.

I booked my ticket while I was still in Toronto and could only hope that my seat 118S would have good site lines. The online theater map of the Gershwin made it look like my seat would be good but I was still anxious since this was my big Broadway splurge. In the end, my seat was almost dead centre and at good distance from the stage.

There is something about live theatre that makes my skin feel electric. After giving my ticket to the guy at the door I stood and stared at the stage with the large dragon sitting atop it and had to physically restrain myself from breaking out into the few lines of song I knew thanks to Kat at Sunshine and Lemonade.

The title of today’s post was going to be “Simply Wicked” because that’s what it was – wicked awesome! I loved the seamless way the traditional story of the Wizard of Oz was woven into the plot and left you thinking, “Oh, now that makes sense! Of course she wanted the shoes back!”

From the music to the sets to the performances themselves, the entire night was magical. I used to attend live theatre quite frequently but must admit that seeing Wicked on Broadway somehow made it even more special. A number of obvious fans were wearing green in honour of the musical’s heroine, and I was able to see several people mouthing along with the players during several songs.

(And now for the cheesy final number…) Wicked absolutely defied my expectations and deserves to be as popular it is. When the lights eventually go dark on this masterpiece, I won’t be the only one mourning the Wicked.

But the Battery’s Down

Those of you who know me well won’t be surprised to hear that I could often be found singing Broadway tunes on the streets of New York. Did I care that people thought I was crazy? Not even during my “Singing in the Rain” dance number at the corner of Broadway and 42nd.

One of the few times I stopped singing was to listen to the various tour guides on the Grey Line bus. This, in my opinion, was one of the best deals I found in New York. For $54 I could ride all three of the Line’s buses and had on and off privileges for 48 hours. This meant that I had one day of guided tours and one day of free taxi service throughout the city. With only 15 to 20 minutes between buses, the taxi service was a great value during my rainy days of shopping.

I should note that not all the guides on these buses were interesting or knowledgeable. Luckily, the nature of the service meant that I was able to ditch lame guides and wait a few minutes for the next bus. In two days of bussing it, my best experience was on the uptown tour where the guide was so good I stayed on long past my scheduled stop.

The other downside of the Grey Line was the tip grubbing on the part of the guides. It was one thing to hear a request for tips once every few stops, but one guide literally spent five minutes telling his passengers how he and the driver don’t earn much in salary and depend on tips to survive.

Despite these two points I would gladly buy tickets for the Grey Line again. The buses took me from one end of New York City to the other with dozens of points in between. Between the bus and the map I had plotted out before I left Toronto, I was able to see everything I had planned and several places I had previously assumed were too far out of the way.

I know I sound like an ad for the Grey Line but this bus tour was truly a great find for a girl wandering New York alone. I had so much fun walking around the city and this gave me a great way to get from the Staten Island Ferry back up Central Park without having to walk in the rain for an hour, or pay a fortune for a taxi. And a dollar saved on a taxi is a dollar more I could spend on fantastic meals!

The Bronx is Up

I have dreamed about going to New York since I was old enough to compose my first Tony/Emmy/Oscar acceptance speech. I planned to live in SoHo, work on Broadway, and shop on Madison. When Hubby and I married all those years ago, he promised me a trip to New York City as my wedding gift.

It only took 11 years but Hubby finally took me to New York. Of course, he didn’t go with me but he is keen to point out that since he set forth a generous budget it should still count. That is how I found myself on the direct Toronto to Cairo flight via New York and Dubai.

My hotel was located in the heart of Times Square which may seem touristy but was perfectly situated for the site-seeing, shopping, and theatre-going I had in mind. One of the first things New Yorkers warned me of when they heard where I was staying was to avoid eating anywhere near Times Square since the prices would be double what could be found only a handful of blocks away. I heeded this fine piece of advice and soon found myself enjoying an amazingly yummy cup of Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serendipity 3. Yes, it was still touristy and probably over-priced but it was worth every penny!

I received lots of great money saving tips from locals during my trip. Suggestions like taking the free Staten Island Ferry to float past the Statue of Liberty saved me about $20 and an hour of standing in the rain. The oft-heard suggestion from the guides on the Grey Line to avoid the Empire State Building and head for Top of the Rock instead sounded less and less sincere each subsequent telling, however.

Speaking of rain, it rained virtually every moment I was in New York and since I’m the world’s most stubborn blogger, I refused to buy an umbrella during my first day in the city. “I don’t melt!” I would laugh to the vendors. Five hours and countless miles of walking later, I sloshed into my hotel room and realized why I was on the receiving end of such pitying looks. To say I looked like a drowned rat was an insult to drowned rats (needless to say, I broke down and bought an umbrella the next day).

The great thing about New York is that in just a handful of days I was able to dine at a four star restaurant, take in a Broadway play, buy yarn at a knitting landmark, and still have time left over to do some damage to my credit cards. And in those stores where I couldn’t afford to shop, I took photos of things I would have bought!

Stay tuned over the next few days as I gush about the fabulous meal I enjoyed on Monday night, the amazing musical I took in on Wednesday night, and how I spent the various hours in between.

I’ll Be Back

I know that when I go away on trips, it usually means days (or months) of silence on the blog. Well, not this time! Even as you read this, I am currently on my way to Norway for a business trip with Hubby. While I’m gone, I will have lots of great posts about my trip to New York lined up. Best of all, when I get back, I’m finally going to catch up on all of your blogs! Traveling around the world isn’t nearly as much fun as traveling around the blogoverse!

Chick Chat in Cairo

Welcome to this week’s installment of Chick Chat! For those of you who aren’t familiar with this fabulous idea, Chick Chat is brought to us by the ladies from Three Bay B Chicks and Hot Chocolate Caramel Mocha. The idea is to get ladies filming themselves (or their pet cheetahs) talking about a variety of topics. This week’s video series is all about the places we live.

The other ladies getting up close and personal with their video cameras this week are the fabulous bloggers from My Home Wellingtontown, Under the Sheets… Shhhh, and The Misplaced Americans. I encourage you stop by all of their blogs because in addition to being incredibly interesting, I’m fairly certain their videos will have better production values than the one I’ve linked to below.

Today’s post officially marks my first Vlog so please be kind and remember that despite what Hubby says my voice sounds nothing like this, and the original version clocked in at twice as long as the one you’ll be watching.

Many thanks to the Eetahs and Hubby for their help in the making of this video!

Want to join in on the fun and participate in an upcoming Chick Chat? Let us know by sending an e-mail to contactchickchat@gmail.com. The Three Bay B Chicks are always looking for participants and topic suggestions.

A Plague of Pitfalls

By Special Guest Blogger Merthyrmum
(aka Typ0’s mother)

Earlier in the year, my husband and I went on a two-month trip that included Ireland, Egypt, and Jordan. The following is a simple recipe for resolving the potential disasters that often arise during such trips.

The first potential disaster we encountered occurred at Pearson International Airport in Toronto. As I watched all the fools repacking their baggage so that they weren’t overweight, I found myself sneering in a rather superior manner. When we reached the front desk I discovered that my bags, which I had carefully weighed just a few short hours earlier, were now 5 pounds overweight. I was given the option of joining the humiliating throngs repacking their bags or simply paying $100 and swallowing my pride. With my face hidden so no one would see what I was doing, I handed over my credit card and mentally apologized to Typ0 for not buying her anything in Ireland since I had just spent her shopping budget on my suitcases.

Our second incident occurred after we departed Ireland for Egypt. We had decided to diversify and have three underweight bags rather than two that could have been deemed too heavy. I don’t think anyone who has flown recently would be surprised to hear the result of this brilliant idea was that our third bag was lost by the airline somewhere between Dublin and Cairo.

Luckily for us our brilliant daughter had arranged for someone to meet us at the airport and walk us through immigration and customs. The kind gentleman quickly took matters in hand and before we could even text Typ0 to bemoan the loss of our duffle bag, Hamoud had filled out paperwork to trace our suitcase and ensure its delivery to Typ0’s flat immediately upon its arrival.

I wish I could say that the arrival of our small green bag two days later marked the end of our travel related disasters but I can’t. The morning that Merthyrdad, Typ0, and I left for our Nile cruise we arrived at the airport at 5 am to discover that the travel agent had completely messed up our flight to Luxor to the point where we were in danger of missing the cruise entirely. We had been routed through Aswan to Luxor with no flight from Aswan to Luxor!

Once again our brilliant daughter came to our rescue. (Typ0, btw, is not at all helping in the editing of today’s post. Not in the slightest.) Typ0 sat her father and me down with a cup of coffee and approached the check-in desk on her own. Thirty minutes and several Egyptian pounds later Typ0 returned to our table with a grin on her face and three new boarding passes in her hand. Although she never explained how she accomplished the feat, she turned our roundabout route into a direct flight scheduled to leave within the hour.

The hiccups that befell us during our lengthy vacation didn’t end at the airport. We almost lost everything from cartouches to sheets but perhaps the greatest disaster was happening miles away from Egypt in our home. With only a few days left to us in Cairo, we learned that some rather inept criminals had broken into our house in Toronto, and that some rather kind neighbours had reported the crime and secured our home for us. But that is a tale for another day.

More news of our fantastic holiday later!

- merthyrmum

Kith and Kin

Tomorrow I will be posting a blog my mother wrote about her visit to Cairo. She wrote this post in March shortly after I arrived in Toronto but I never got around to posting it because I’m a git. Before I share her wonderfully witty words, I wanted to take a moment to comment on how grateful I am to have such an understanding family.

I have always been the first person to joke that the reason my family gets along so well is that we all live so far apart. In fact, day before I left Toronto was the first time that my family has been together in the same place at the same time in almost 11 years. But what I realized as my brothers and I joked around, insulted each other, and were generally pains in the butt to my parents was that family is a pretty cool thing to have around.

You see, I showed up at my parent’s doorstep with literally 24 hours notice and asked them not to ask too many questions. And you know what? They welcomed me home, fed me amazingly yummy food, went shopping with me, watched countless hours of CSI with me, and didn’t ask too many questions.

My take home lesson from the past two months is that you never, ever stop being a parent no matter how much you may want to take a vacation. I listened to my mother fret about my brothers and while she worried over me, and was forced to laugh at those people who think that parenting ends when your child turns 18 and goes off to college. Eighteen, it turns out, is merely when the problems turn from teenage woes into full-blown, adult-sized issues.

So I’d like to take this moment to thank my parents for tidying up the guest room, ignoring my melancholic angst, breaking their diets, and generally putting up with my nonsense. I know that I’m vaguely annoying, annoyingly vague, and a royal pain in the knitting bag, yet you still put up my fabulous self. Thank you for not looking too relieved when I said was going back home to Cairo. And thank you for being my parents.

Ribbit

In honour of my mother, who is currently attending her monthly Knitting Night, I thought I would blog about all the knitting I did while I was in Toronto. You see, while the past several years have proven that I am incapable of blogging from Toronto there is one thing I do there without fail. Lest any of you gutter-minded types think you know the answer allow me to remind you that I was staying with my parents! Nope, whenever I visit my childhood home my mother and I hit our local yarn shop – Mary’s Yarns – and I pick up my needles and get to knitting.

The impressively large stash I keep in the corner of our guest room might suggest that I do little more than knit all year round, but the truth of the matter is that once I finish a project I tend to put my needles and notions aside and mange, somehow, to forget just how much I love the craft of knitting. (I won’t even mention how I have considered this a useful skill in case I am thrown back in time or find myself transported to a post-apocalyptic world and need to clothe myself.)

But get me to Toronto and the memories come flooding back. Mary’s in Unionville is the haven where my mother and I feed our rampant need for massive amounts of yarn. Lest you think I am gushing for no reason, I even met a fellow Mary Worshiper on my flight to New York! How’s that for random?

The first project I started was a stuffed animal later gifted to my friend Adelpha who was busy stuffed animal sitting for me back in Cairo. After a few days of flipping through my mother’s pattern books I found an adorable frog in Puddle Jumper by Elite Classic Yarns. After studying the pattern for a few minutes, I realized that the design was so basic that even a flat knitting freak like myself could knit this up fairly quickly.

Ribbit, as I dubbed him, knitted up in less than a week. The knitting and sewing up took exactly two balls of Royal Tweed – I literally had to go through the trash to find a one-inch sample of yarn to include in my finished projects book.

The scarf is not included in the original pattern but I decided to include it since Ribbit seemed rather naked. The scarf was knitted “wrong ways” and cast on 100 stitches allowing me to knit only 10 rows. I had so much fun with the scarf that I bought extra balls of these two yarns so I can knit myself a full sized-scarf later.

My latest project/obsession is a log cabin blanket that I am knitting in Cascade 220. This is another one of those projects that seems to grow a little bit every time I pick it up. I thought about doing a classic log cabin since I didn’t like the “Moderne” but eventually decided to find a happy medium simply do my round of five colours until I run out of yarn. My plan is to eventually finish the blanket with a black border but knowing me I’m still ages and ages from that stage. In the mean time, I am greatly enjoying taking a break from the computer to pick up my needle and get my knit on.

The Long Way Around

I know I keep apologizing for my long silences and many of you are probably ready to give up on me, write me off, stop reading, or worse - stop commenting. I have no grounds to ask this of you but I will attempt to appeal to you none-the-less: Please give me another chance! Again.

Moreover, I beg your indulgence for my two month long Canadian silence. I wasn’t buried in snow banks, or even kept prisoner in my childhood room with its thirty-year-old baby wallpaper. But to say I was hibernating would not be inaccurate. In addition to temporarily silencing this blog, I was also unconscionably silent to good friends in Toronto who sought me out – and those whom I should have sought out on my own. I stayed hidden within the comforting cocoon of my family and used the time to try to pull myself together.

And that, my Devoted Readers and Friends, is closer to the truth than I gave even those closest to me. Not that I lied to anyone about the reasons for my disappearance from the Cairo scene – everything I said was true – just different shades of the truth.

It is my fervent hope that I am now back for good. (Well, other than brief trip to Oslo, Norway next weekend.) The upside of all this is that I now have oodles of tales to tell. From shopping and knitting, to Mario Batali and Wicked; I’ve had a busy spring and I can’t wait to tell you all about it!

Freezing in the Snow

Yesterday I promised to explain my recent absence from the blogosphere and now I’m ready to confess the truth. For those of you wondering if I am pregnant – you people have sick imaginations! Stop wishing such horrible fates on me! No, the truth is far less scary than the image of me changing diapers: I’m in Toronto!

Last week, I hopped aboard an Emirates flight in Cairo and found myself in Canada by dinner the next day. Luckily, my parents are well used to my erratic ways and didn’t seem too put out by my sudden arrival at their front door. After all, March is the perfect time to visit Toronto when you don’t own a winter coat and 90% of your shoes are sandals.

Ok, so I didn’t put a lot of forethought into my trip home but I’m here and I’m ready to put as much effort into blogging as I will into shopping! Sadly, I have do have important jobs to complete during my time here in the Real World but I promise to put those off for as long as possible so that I can spend my free time catching up on all your wonderful blogs!

Bienvenue au Canada, mes amies!

My Type of Person

You always hear about people being “morning people” or “night owls.” I’ve never really understood either creature. The former enjoys getting up at the crack of dawn and is immediately chipper and human to all whom they see. My response to these freaks of nature is, in the infamous words of Gabrielle, “I will rise, but I refuse to shine!”

Then you have the types of people who are awake at 5 a.m. because they still haven’t gone to bed from the night before. They are worse than morning people because they look disdainfully at you when you ask to bow out for the night at the reasonable hour of 1 a.m. Most people go through their 20s as night owls. I have never been a night owl because I enjoy sleeping too much.

Given that I don’t fall into either of these well known categories you are likely thinking that I am one of those rare “day creatures” who is chipper and productive during normal daylight hours. Day creatures enjoy a good cup of coffee in the morning, go to work, eat lunch, finish work for the day, and then go home full of vim and vigor for their families. They don’t start yawning at the dinner table are perfectly happy to snuggle with their sweetie and watch a movie before heading to bed.

I’m not one of those people either.

I am a new breed of person: I am a “between 1:00 and 2:00 person.” Allow me to explain. I don’t like mornings because they remind me that I could be asleep or at least curled up under my duvet reading a good book. Around lunch I perk up because I am being fed – and I like being fed. After lunch and the rush of nutrients has worn off the only thing to get me through my day is thoughts of the wonderful things waiting for me at home like cookies, the shrimp I’m preparing for dinner, or ice cream. Oh and Hubby, he’s important too! But after a long day of working, blogging, and being cheerful I’m exhausted when I get home.

I don’t like waking up early. I am physically incapable of staying up late. Yet being a day person means having to put far more effort into life than I am willing exert. Instead I’m going to stick with my one hour of bliss a day. Sure, everyone else has to live with my crabby tired morning self, and my crabby tired night self. But for those people lucky enough to find me during my one hour of non-crabbiness each day – well, I’m sure they’re counting their blessings and hoping they’re not invited over later tonight.

PS: Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been visiting around the blogosphere for the last few days. Stay tuned for visits and news in a few days!

Perspective

I have lived in fairly conservative countries for almost four years now. During those four years now I have made an effort to dress in such a way as to not cause any raised eyebrows. I hadn’t realized how much “covered up” had come to be my definition of normal until last week when I saw this photo on DRL’s blog Daily Life in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.


My first thought at looking as I gazed at the people in the photo was, “These people are naked!” I know they were there to celebrate Carnival but that sort of attire – or lack thereof – hardly seemed appropriate.

That’s when I realized they were all wearing shorts and tank tops. Everyone was dressed in perfectly respectable clothing. No one was naked.

A few years ago I would have thought nothing of seeing men and women dressed like that. Heck, most people I know dress like that – just not here. Here everyone tends to cover up a little more.

I think I need time away from the Middle East for a few weeks so can get my perspective back. People wearing shorts aren’t naked. I’m almost positive of that.

I Almost Forgot

When people get older, they are allowed to blame their advanced age on random slips of the memory. Children can get away with it because they’re young and don’t know any better. So what excuse can a not quite middle-aged hottie blogger use when she looks back on her life and realizes that the old adage, “If you head wasn’t screwed on, you’d probably lose it” should be embroidered, framed, and hung around her conveniently attached neck.

Once when I was fourteen, I forgot my incredibly spectacular black purse on a TTC bus. Moron that I am, I didn’t realize it for another 15 minutes at which point I ran to my brother, BBA, in tears begging him to resolve this latest crisis in my life. BBA may have been a pain when I was 16, and he’s probably a bigger pain now but that day he was world’s most awesome brother. We piled into my parents’ 1981 Toyota Celica and chased the bus looking for my purse.

I was lucky that day: a Good Samaritan had handed my purse in to the bus driver and I had an awesome brother who was willing to chase random buses for thirty minutes through suburbia. The following year, proving that I never, ever learn my lesson, I lost my wallet on the bus. About a month or so later I received a package in the mail from another Good Samaritan.

Sadly, my teens were not the end of my stupid, forgetful years. Over the years I have forgotten jackets in restaurants, books on airplanes, and bags at the grocery store after I’ve paid for them.

Last week may have been the pinnacle of my forgetfulness. I was in the library reading various blogs and texting my friend Adelpha at the same time. Each time finished with the phone, I tucked it on the big comfy chair next to me and continued with my reading. At 4:30 p.m. I packed everything and walked leisurely to the bus stop, barely even pausing in front of the McDonald’s before boarding the bus.

Seated comfortably in a window seat, I reached into my purse for my cell phone to call Hubby. It was around this moment that I began hyperventilating. “Oh great freaked frak, I just lost my phone!” I whispered, my voice quivering.

I tore off the bus; terrified my phone was gone – stolen. Then became even more terrified because that meant I would have no way of keeping in touch with Hubby while he was in the UK. Then I realized I would have to tell Hubby I had lost my phone. “Crap!” I started to walk as quickly and with as much dignity as possible back to the library.

On my way, I saw Miss Four to whom I was embarrassingly rude in my quest to find my phone. By the time I reached my seat in the library I realized that the delay of finding my phone meant that I would probably miss my bus on top of everything else. That’s when I saw it sitting there looking all lonely and forlorn. “Thank God!” I said rather loudly. When several people looked at me I showed them the phone and they just smiled in sympathy.

I am fairly certain after all these years that I have a guardian angel whose sole job is to make sure I don’t lose anything important. I keep him employed fulltime and I’m fairly certain that he wants a day or two off from his duties of keeping me in line. I appreciate my Forgetfulness Angel more than you can imagine because I can’t blame age, pregnancy, or even disease on my bad memory. Maybe it’s part of my charm?

How the Wandering Began

Last week, I received a comment from 3 Bay B Chicks asking, “How did this all start?” Since I’m assuming she understands the creation of the universe and how to make babies, I figured that she was curious about how Hubby and I got started on this life of Wandering. The story of how Hubby and I became Hubby and I is a tale for another day, so in the meantime I’ll tell the story of the how’s and why’s behind our nomadic existence.

Even before Hubby and I started “dating,” I knew he was interested in the developing world. The third foreign country he ever stuck a pin in (after Canada and Mexico) was Vietnam where he spent several weeks on a business trip. His Master’s thesis included research on the economic reform process in a few African countries, and the honeymoon he planned for us was in Thailand.

I obviously entered into this marriage with a vague idea that we would travel to far-flung places in our free time. I also understood that his work would take him all over Africa, Asia, and South America. In 2002, we left Washington, DC so that Hubby could start down the road of finally fulfilling a dream he always had: earning a PhD.

Hubby’s studies and research took him back to South America and steered him towards a career that would finally bring to fruition all his plans for the future. (Can I be more vague?) With his specialties, combined with his sincere interest in the developing world, it was only a matter of time before we finally packed up to leave the comforts of the Real World.

Our first choice was between Inverness, Scotland and New Delhi, India. I realize that Scotland isn’t actually a developing nation but the work they wanted him to do would still have dealt with that realm. We debated for ages over the pros and cons of each location before finally settling on India.

For me, India was a no brainier: my Irish grandmother married my Indian grandfather and lived in Wales; my Welsh-born mother married my Irish father and lived in Canada. It only seemed right that this Canuck and her Yankee husband should complete the circle and head back to India.

Shortly after arriving in Delhi, I decided to start this blog to tell people at home about what I was doing and what life in India was like. Back then I was lucky if I had three hits a day – my mother, and me checking twice to see if I had any hits. Despite the lack of a following, I realized that I loved blogging and loved writing about our weird adventures in this new expat life.

Sadly, India wasn’t the dream job Hubby had been hoping for. A year after unpacking, settling down, and making incredibly wonderful friends, we packed up our things and headed to Nairobi, Kenya where Hubby would work for the Organization. We spent two amazing years in Kenya before packing our things once again – this time for Cairo, Egypt, and a job with the Institution.

Between the years in the Real World and the countries we’ve called home, Hubby and I have always made each other a priority. Luckily, two of our greatest loves (outside of each other, of course) have always been food and travel. We have always tried to combine these loves, which meant as many fantastic trips as our credit cards would allow.

We Wander the World together because seeing it any other way would be dull and lonely. Who knows when Hubby’s employment whims will take us to a new destination, or when my need to see more of the world will find us in an airplane heading off to goodness knows where. But rest assured no matter what we do, or where we do it, I will always share those stories with you.

My Portable Life

Like most women, I carry a rather large chunk of my life in my purse. In addition to my own essentials, I am required to carry things that Hubby might need. Despite the fact that I am his favorite pack animal, Hubby derides my need to carry a purse everywhere. This past fall, I decided that I needed a newer, bigger purse so that I could carry my essentials without having to burst the seams on my lovely Tribe leather Roots purse.

Hubby says that I own a “ridiculous” number of purses and am a “purse whore.” As I prepared this post I realized the truth: I don’t have a purse issue – he does! The gorgeous red silk creation in the middle of the above photo was a gift from Vietnam. The small hand tooled, brown leather purse was a gift from Argentina. The traditional woven purse in the back was a gift from Kenya on the occasion of his first trip there. His kind gifts account for three of the seven purses I own.

I’ve already mentioned my big brown purse, and I honestly don’t remember where the little brown one came from. The small black purse is probably my favorite and certainly oldest. I bought it on the spur of the moment during a trip to Minneapolis when I was 16. Behind the soft leather is an entire wallet complete with mirror and credit card slots. It is barely big enough to hold my cell phone and keys but has been my go-to purse for special occasions for over a decade now.

No discussion about my purses would be complete, however, without a mention of my current Roots bag. Back in the fall, I blogged about how much I coveted this purse. Thanks to Hubby, fate, and the fiancé of a friend of mine, I owned this purse a few short weeks later.

So I own seven purses, does that make me a bad purse-on? (Sorry couldn’t resist the pun.) Hubby owns more flash drives than that (Hubby Edit: At last count I own only five of those!)! Purses are more than a fashion accessory -- they are a life necessity for carrying around all the scraps of essentials that Hubby and I need on a daily basis. Anyone else buy that? No, I didn’t think so…

The Courage of My Convictions

Someone I know recently wrote some rather derogatory remarks about bloggers in general. When I read his comments, I wrote a rather scathing response and reminded him that bloggers often speak for those who cannot. And many of those people do so at great risk to not only their own lives but also those of their families and friends.

Even as I hit send on that response I wondered if I was really the right person to be saying them. A few months ago, this blog was criticized for not being more politically active and vocal. At the time, I defended my editorial right to live in a country more than a handful of months before I passed judgment on its regime. But now more months have passed and still my pen is still silent.

When elections were held in Kenya in December, 2007, I used this blog to share my views and observations with the world. In the days, weeks, and months that followed I tried to be the eyes and ears of people on the other side of the world to tell them what was going on from my rather narrow point of view. I didn’t pretend to know even a fraction of what was truly happening to Kenyans on the ground but I tried to report the truth as I saw it and to turn people onto local Kenyan bloggers whom I knew were doing the same. My blog wasn’t as widely read or heralded as some but I tried to keep up the stream of information as best possible.

I have now successfully lived in Egypt for over six months without ever once telling the world what I thought (or didn’t think) about the government here. Due to the fact that Hubby and I are guests in the countries we have chosen to call home for the last four years, I have always made it a policy not to ruffle feathers with this blog. The story of Phillip Rizk shines a light on my personal cowardice.

Phillip is a graduate student at one of the local universities here in Cairo and during his spare time is a freelance journalist, filmmaker, and maintains a blog. In recent months he has written about his opinion of, among other things, the Egyptian government and its stance during the recent bombings of Palestine by Israel. For putting thoughts like these out into the ether of the Internet, Phillip was taken by the police during a peaceful protest in early February. This German-Egyptian man was later released from custody but not before his family home in Maadi had been searched.

The case of this and other bloggers being taken by officials in Egypt due to the content and views expressed on their blogs is the reason I find myself unable to comment on political issues while we continue to live here. While I may wish to rush to print such stories I know that my place here is as an observer. Perhaps when we leave I will feel more comfortable expressing any such views but until then I must respect not only my husband but also his employers here in Egypt.

My silence has been paid for. My convictions have been rocked. My belief in myself that I would always do what was right has been tested. And I have failed.