Dahab Diving, Day 3

I'm out of energy, so I really can't come up with a clever title for this post.

It was bound to happen: today I had a lousy dive.

We got up following the daylight savings clock change with an extra hour of sleep, which should have set me up for a good day right there.

Problem was, it was windy. Windy as hell. The windsurfers and kitesurfers were thrilled, but it was not a great morning for diving.

Jack, the divemaster, and I set out for Islands at the same time as always. We geared up in the shop so we just had to walk from the jeep to the entry. We also managed to convince the driver to head straight onto the sand so we could make things even easier. In fact, we tried to convince him to drive out into the water so we could roll from the back of the jeep into (about six inches of rock-bottomed) water, but he wasn't buying it.

Turned out the entry was a lot tougher than I was expecting. We had to walk on the reef table (rock, no proper corals) for what felt like an eternity but was maybe 50 meters? 75 meters? I'm not sure. (Why do women always park so close to the curb ...?).

Imagine wearing your bikini, your full-body swimsuit, your full-body 3 mm wetsuit, a heavy aluminum tank, your buoyance compensator (with an extra 4 kgs of lead stuffed into the pockets). You've got one mask hooked over your left forearm, another mask clipped into your bc strap (because you're a moron and you're trying out a new mask), and two big fins in your right hand. You're trudging across schmutz-covered rocks that are about a foot and a half underwater - just out of sight, but far enough if you fall, you're falling onto rocks and not really water. It's hot as hell, there's a very stiff crossbreeze, and the whitecaps are strong enough to push you sideways onto the rocks on top of your metal cylinder. And imagine you're me - small, with the weight you're carrying representing a significant portion of your bodyweight.

And you're not even in the water yet.

We finally got to the proper entry point, which was a hole in the rocks that I could stretch my arms across. I tried to sit on the ledge and get my fins/mask on while being banged around by the surge, taking the occasional faceful of water. The divemaster slid into the water, made eye contact, and then dropped out of sight.

I knew I'd be making the entry from the crack into a small lagoon by swimming through a small rock tunnel. So I [fell] into the crack and attempted to submerge.

I couldn't get under the water.

I kept getting banged against the rocks, and since the water was so rough, I couldn't see anything - not the stone tunnel, and definitely not the divemaster I was supposed to be following.

At this point, I got upset. Which meant it was even harder for me to get underwater against the surge.

The divemaster reappeared and handed me another kg of lead, which I managed to get into my bc pocket without looking. Finally I was able to drop into the stone tunnel, where I was almost completely blind. I was getting thrown against the rocks, so I had to hold my hands out to stop myself. Touching your surroundings - especially underwater - is a very bad idea. But then again, so is cracking your head and drowning in 6 feet of water. Off to my right I caught a flicker of yellow - the divemaster's fin, disappearing into the murk. If she hadn't worn those yellow fins today, I would have lost her 30 seconds into the dive.

Fortunately the whole dive wasn't miserable. We saw three very large schools of juvenile barracuda, which came surprisingly close. At one point I crested a reef saddle and found a ball of barracuda waiting for me. I swam through them and nobody made any sudden moves, so everything was fine. That was very cool.


We also went through a huge section of coral that had been toppled sideways in an earthquake, creating a "labyrinth." The coral was very good on this dive - and would've been very colorful, if the visibility had been good enough (we eventually got about 10-12 m vis, which is not great but a hell of a lot better than the entry vis). I also had a startling encounter with a grouper - I'd been drifting along on my side, playing with a cleaner wrasse. When I faced forward again, BAM! There was a grouper right in my face, eyeing me with a what the hell are you doing? expression on its face.

The exit was more misery like the entry. At one point I had to stop and really look for the yellow fins, I was so blind in the murk.

We were totally wrung out by this dive, so we skipped an afternoon dive. The wind dropped a little, but I figured I'd rather dive another day (ie, tomorrow) rather than push it today while I was exhausted and displeased.

Maelesh. Insha'allah tomorrow will be better - maybe another trip back to Blue Hole.

Guess I'd better start praying for that whale shark again. Or maybe just for a windless last day.

Dahab Diving, Day Due

That's doo-ay, btw.

Day two of diving Dahab and I'm having more fun than should be legal. Seriously.

Today I dove the Bells to enter the Blue Hole. Second dive was to the Canyon.

A few highlights:

• I saw THREE octopi today! One I saw descending the Bells, it just swam past my face. Very surprising. The second was sleeping (?) on some coral and I got within 6 inches of it. I hung upside down and watched it for about 7 minutes. Every once in awhile it fluttered its skin color or texture, as if to remind me that it knew I was there and I wasn't fooling it a bit.
• A spotted eagle ray (my first!) cruised past me in the blue just ouside the Bells.
• A fire urchin, which was less than pleased when Kaddee brushed water over it. I laughed through my regulator, breaking the seal on my mask and flooding my face with water.
• I got the inside of my mouth cleaned by two cleaner wrasses! I almost drowned, holding my breath and trying not to laugh. They cleaned the back of my teeth and nibbled on the inside of my mouth and the back of my lips. Hilarious!

I can't believe I don't have my camera!!!

No whale sharks today, despite my intensive overnight prayers. I guess God sent us the eagle ray instead.

And if anyone can catch fish-in-mouth disease, I'm sure I can.

Dahab Diving, Day ... (what's a word for one that starts with D?)

Got to Dahab yesterday (no problems!), met up with my friends, and started off a few days diving well. I had a little trouble sleeping last night because the neighboring goats apparently don't sleep through the night - they also get up and chew something (anything?) every once in a while. Like every time I'm juuuuuuuust nodding off. Maelesh.

I'm diving with Sinai Divers (Backpacker) and I have to say it's more my speed; I was the only customer on today's dives (there were only four of us total).

We did two dives today, one at Moray Garden and one at Umm Sid.

And I forgot my underwater camera IN THE UNITED STATES!! ARRRRGHGHGHG! Although maybe it's better this way - it's possible I'm more observant without worrying about the camera.

So I'll put some pics here on the blog that other people have taken (thank you, Google Images). But the diving was fantastic today and I'm really pleased. Really really pleased. No big animals, only one blue-spotted ray, two eels (and some garden eels). But gagillions of fish - real beauties, unicornfish, goatfish, lionfish, anthias (pink and orange), on and on and on. Clownfish in anemones with anemone partner shrimp. The friendliest fish I've ever met, a broomtail wrasse that followed for ages and played with us. Black and yellow delicate pyjama chromodorid, and fugly spiked sea cucumbers. A shrimpgoby (a fish) with its partner shrimp busily excavating its burrow while the goby stood watch. And more kinds of coral than you can shake a fin at.

Tomorrow we're going to the Blue Hole, insha'allah. And a place called Canyons.


Left: gobyshrimp and partner.


Right: pyjama chromodorid.





Left: broomtail wrasse.

Shoura fire

To my intense surprise, I've just discovered there was a massive fire last week that destroyed an old building in Downtown that houses Egypt's Parliament. (The picture is from Reuters)

While I'm not terribly surprised that it took Egyptian firefighters at least 45 minutes to even reach the scene, I'm very sorry to see such a lovely landmark destroyed.

And I use "to see" loosely, because today I walked right past the site and didn't notice a thing. I don't mean this jokingly - I know Cairo always looks like it's about to crumble - but I'm amazed that I was so locked into my own little world, marching down Qasr Al Aini, that I didn't even notice that the building was destroyed.

Since this is Egypt, of course, the whole thing has turned into politics. Looks like the government censored newspaper coverage of the event - and, coincidentally, some damaging papers may have gone up in flames.

While I was reading about this just now, I found a blog written by a 26-year-old Egyptian woman. Some people posted comments to the effect that the Parliament might have best - and for once - served its people by being in the building during the fire. She was distressed by these comments, and seems to be questioning whether Egyptians love their country anymore - or even view it as theirs.

Excellent questions.

Back blog: Italy

Be still my beating heart! Can it be, a post from the other author of this blog, he who mandates the "s" in the URL?

I can't tell you how pleased I am that his first post places excrement in a prominent position. And since he blithely mentions "hookers in Milan" toward the end, I realize that it's time to finish off my story about our June with the third trip in our voyagers' hat-trick: our 10-day stint in Italy.

We went to Italy in the first place to attend a friend's fabulous wedding in Tuscany, held in a lovely villa that was at least one zero out of our price range. But we figured, when in Rome ... see the rest of the damned country. Or at least as much as we could manage, given the abysmal exchange rate of $1.67 to 1 euro. KC really ran the show on planning our itinerary, and an ambitious plan it was, full of derring-do, long hauls, and the only reasonably-priced, lice-free (bathroom-free, a/c-free) accomodations to be had in Italy.


To be perfectly honest, the trip wasn't the whirlwind romantic tour we'd been hoping for. It was god-awful, hideously hot, prices were obscene, we felt nickel-and-dimed to death, there are a million things you're not allowed to do in Italy (and no one conveniently nearby to bribe). On my last trip I'd seen no evidence of the shocking lack of manners we encountered from the majority of Italians we interacted with. All of these things combined to make us crankier than is normally our wont when traveling.

We flew into Rome, checked into our hotel near the Spanish Steps, then met some friends for dinner. KC and I had both been to Rome before, so we limited the next day to the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum (a first for both of us), the Palatine hill, the Forum, and the Pantheon (click here for someone else's hard work on describing these places).










We grabbed our rental car from the train station (far more difficult than it should've been) and headed out to Tuscany. For the next few days we based ourselves in Villa a Sesta, a charming alternative to the extravagant villa. We hit a local grocery store to make things even more affordable, so we spent the next few days eating meat, cheese, bread, vegetables, and pesto - supplemented by fresh herbs I gathered by wandering out our front door. It wasn't all grocery eating, though - we had a fantastic dinner at La Bottega del 30, a one-Michelin-starred restaurant two minutes up the hill from our hotel. When we showed up and saw the surprise on the staff's faces, we knew something was wrong. Since KC'd booked so far in advance, and they hadn't heard from us in 2 months, they'd assumed we weren't coming ... and the restaurant was closed for a private party. We must've looked especially pathetic, because the chef sat us in the garden with the cats and proceeded to dictate every delicious molecule of food that passed our lips for the next 3 hours.

While in Tuscany, we visited Montevarchi (the Prada outlet, where I bought - wait for it! - three pairs of shoes!!!!), Florence (where I bought a wallet and a purse from the same place I'd bought my last wallet 10 years ago - to the hilarity of the salesmen - but the damned History of Science Museum was closed and there was no one to bribe), Siena (no race, alas), and San Gimignano (the towers are prettier from far away, and the Torture Museum is disturbing).

We left Tuscany after the wedding and headed for La Cinque Terra, a new stop for both of us. Cinque Terra was hot as hell, crowded, expensive, but fantastically beautiful. We spent two nights, hit all five towns, hiked a few legs of the famous trail and trained the others. The seafood and the private beaches are perfectly lovely, although the "famous" raisin wine leaves a bit to be desired, in my opinion.

On the way to Cinque Terra we'd stopped off in Pisa and forked over an unbelievable 15 euros each to get to the top of the Leaning Tower. Yes, it leans. A lot. The angle becomes more and more alarming as you ascend the stairs through the tiers to get to your precarious perch on the top of the tower. I teach a bit of Galileo in my Scientific Thinking course, and after standing there, I've become even more convinced that the famous story of Galileo dropping objects off the Tower to measure the acceleration due to gravity is a bunch of revisionist hooey. No way did he do this. It does make a good story, like Newton and the apple, I admit. But it's crap. Trust me. And yes, we took a bunch of dumb tourist pictures of us holding up the tower, which you can see on my Snapfish site.

After Cinque Terra we hit the road again and made the long drive to Padua. On the way we stopped off in Parma to visit the prosciutto museum (are you surprised?) but it was closed. We did manage to acquire a kilo of parmesan from a farm where we had a 30 minute conversation with a woman who didn't speak a word of English. Funny how that works. We were heading to Padua because we literally could not find a single place in Venice that we could afford. Not one. We were getting ready to sleep in the car when a friend of mine suggested we check out Padua. And he was right - Padua was fantastic. I'll skip over the ordeal we had finding our B&B (apparently the owner deliberately marked it wrong on the map), but it turned out well in the end. We had two really exceptional meals (including horse meat!) - we even left Venice early to go back to Padua the second day.

My only request in Venice was to ride a vaporetto down the Grand Canal. Of course we couldn't afford the kind with the guy in the stripey shirt and the straw hat (all of whom I think are Eastern European, oddly), so we rode the mass transit, which was perfectly fine. I'd packed a loaf of bread in my purse, and KC was really surprised when I pulled it out to feed those hideous filthy vulture-pigeons in St. Mark's square. Dreadful creatures, putting their scaly little feet all over me! I think KC really enjoyed himself, though. Ugh.









Of course we went to the Doge's Palace, which was quite stunning, but overall I thought Venice was like Disneyland. It was god-awful, hideously hot, prices were obscene (do you sense a theme here?), and I swear I didn't see a single real Italian. Everyone was American. I've heard that Venice is much nicer at Christmas and Carnival, so maybe I should be willing to give La Serenissima another go sometime. When the dollar recovers. Or hell freezes over. Whichever.

Finally we made our last dash to Milan. I've already written about the thrill of seeing The Last Supper - especially since I didn't have a prebooked ticket. For my birthday KC had bought us tickets to La Scala to see La Traviata. He'd bought the tickets in Istanbul, and it was a big ordeal that almost ended in us having no tickets because they simply sold out so fast. After a dreadful day of driving around Milan, trying desperately to not wander into a no-drive-70-euro-fine zone, we were exhausted, sweat-soaked, frustrated, and I was near tears. We finally found a metro stop, changed our clothes in the parking garage, and took the train as close as we could get to the opera. We stopped at a bar and had a low-cost happy hour meal served to us by a green-eyed Egyptian waiter. Then it was off to the theater.

Five minutes before the performance began, we discovered that the website had sold us tickets that were not together - despite KC's meticulous perusal of the seating charts. I could see the vein throbbing in his head as he charged out of the building to the ticket office. I sat quietly in the lobby, clutching my 15 euro program and trying to resign myself to the inevitable. To my surprise, three minutes later he came running back into the lobby, grabbed my hand, and pulled me through the doors into the theater. KC had stormed into the ticket office shouting, and the overburdened ticket sellers had thrown a pair of tickets at him to placate him (the website had fouled up a lot of orders). So instead of our 80 euro seats, we had sixth-row orchestra seats - the "best seats" in the house. The performance was flawless, the theater was magical, and I couldn't believe our incredible luck - twice in one day.










Our luck ran out after the performance, though - and here's where the hookers come in. We spent a dreadful post-midnight hour trying to find a place to buy gas before returning the rental car. Then, we found gas stations lining a long, shabby road just outside the autostrade. Problem was, we couldn't actually pay for any of the gas - the machines didn't take our cards. So we backtracked down the road to a long string of ATMs - and hookers. Lots of hookers. Naked hookers. Ugly hookers. Naked ugly hookers just waiting outside the ATMs where KC was trying to get money to pay for gas. I was sure he was going to get knifed - or syphilis. I figured since everyone else was naked, I might as well change my clothes on the street too. But there was no money to be had, so we ended up counting our last euro pennies out on the autostrade. We were so distressed that we missed the airport exit, drove another 30 km to the next exit, and made the unbelievable mistake of trying to find back roads to the airport at 2 am using a dying GPS unit and incomprehensible Italian signs. In our defense, we couldn't go back on the highway - no money! I can't believe we're not still driving around, lost, on gas fumes, surrounded by ugly naked hookers staking out ATM machines that don't work.

ilhamdu'allah!

Sudokus

Hello world. I’ve been promising to post on this blog for a year now, and I already feel certain that I will not live up to the high standard that Tiff has set with her posts. I mean, I haven’t been cooking fresh rabbit, I have yet to strike up a friendship with a scientific attaché from any embassy, I haven’t been hit on by Egyptian taxi drivers (aside from the old guy who placed his hand uncomfortably high on my leg)…

That’s not to say life hasn’t been interesting. As you probably know from reading our blog, Tiffany and I have been racking up frequent flyer miles at a dizzying rate, and since I’m not in the Princeton area code enough to make an apartment worthwhile, I’ve been mooching off our friends Helen and Charlie for the past year. I’ve gotten more work done than I expected to be able to and less work done than I wanted. I’ve seen more of Tiffany than I expected, and FAR less than I wanted. I (we) have one cat more than I expected, and perhaps one less than I want (stay tuned). All of this adds up to a certain disequilibrium that has been a little unsettling in recent months.

You may think to yourself, “come on!” You’ve been scuba diving, traipsing through Italy, causing international incidents in Jordan: just enjoy yourself. It’s true that I have no real complaints, but here is a story that explains a little of my frustration…

From the tender age when I was weaned off diapers, I quickly learned that the bathroom is a place to be entertained, not a dreary closet where you do your business and move on to greener pastures. Perhaps a novel, or the latest Sports Illustrated, or nowadays my laptop playing the latest episode of the Office. But in the past few years one activity has come to trump all the rest: I refer, of course, to doing a Sudoku. In fact, when I was visiting my friend Tristan in LA, I would frequently excuse myself to “go do a Sudoku.” Tristan, not realizing that I had a printed stack in ready supply, assumed that this was a euphemism for doing a number 2, and adopted the phrase for his own personal use. (This terminology has spread like wildfire: Mats’ parents, upon hearing this story, immediately started using it, and I hoping the rest of Scandinavia will follow).

Anyway, I was sitting in our Bed and Breakfast in Long Island last weekend, doing a Sudoku in both senses, and I got stuck. It was rated “Normal” in difficulty, which I usually find straightforward, but I was sitting there trying to fill in numbers until my legs went dead. Finally resorting to trial and error, I realized that there were in fact TWO solutions to the puzzle! That’s criminal! (To make it more difficult, I didn’t bother reflecting the picture below ☺)

All of this is meant to say that things have not been working out quite right the last few months (e.g., hookers in Milan or getting stuck on a rock in Jerusalem). I fly home from Sweden on Wednesday, and the movers come to pack and load our stuff for Stanford on Thursday, and all I can say is I don’t want any surprises. Despite my gripes in this post, one very very good thing worked out just right this summer. Here’s hoping the wedding will be as wonderful.

Back blog: Marsa Alam

Trip number two in June's travel trifecta was to Marsa Alam, a resort town on the Egyptian coast. Waaay down near the Sudan. Unless you're an Italian and into topless sunbathing and overeating, there's one and only one thing to do in Marsa Alam: scuba dive.


It's even stranger than that, actually. KC and I are really not resort people. Really really. So our last day we got out of the resort and looked for the town. You know. To see Egyptians. Turns out there isn't a town in Marsa Alam. Nothing was there before. A Kuwaiti woke up one day and decided to build a harbor, so he did. It's eerie, actually; the harbor looks like those Caribbean waterfronts that are built to service cruise ships. Problem is, there are no cruise ships in Marsa Alam. So there's a big shopping district with no stores in it. Very, very strange.

We dove with Emperor Divers and stayed at the Coral Beach Marina Lodge (terrible name, I can get all the words in but not in the right order). Very nice hotel, without us asking they upgraded us to the honeymoon suite - a great room, but the bathroom door wouldn't close. Not exactly tres romantique, non? Our dinners were included, which was good because a) the food was good and b) there was nowhere else to go. The hotel was about 90% empty and just about every other guest was a diver.

We signed up for three days diving, including one special dive the last day to Abu Dabab to look for the elusive dugong Dennis. Dennis eluded us the whole day, and if we hadn't been looking for the damned dugong, we would've said it was a great dive. The dives were shore-entry over sea grass; shallow but with a bit of a current; and simply crawling with enormous sea turtles and snorkelers (the topless sunbathing Italians mentioned above). We had phenomenal encounters with the giant sea turtles, which were feeding and were obviously used to snorkelers and divers. I knelt on the bottom to watch one, and the thing grazed so close to me it actually pushed against my leg to get to the grass! I committed the terrible sin of putting my hand on its shell, but I couldn't help it; it was so close!


Our other dives were quite nice too. The reefs are right up against the shore. Most of the resorts are being built next to these "house reefs," and I have no doubt than in 10 years they'll be completely ruined. The coral was exquisitely healthy now, and though we didn't see any large animals (except for the turtles) and still no sharks (!!!), the diving was excellent.











We have to go back to Marsa Alam because we missed a spectacular dive at Dolphin House, a sunken reef where about 50 spinner dolphins have decided to raise their little dolphin babies (check out this video). Apparently they love divers and are very playful. Next time I think we'll fly into Hurghada and just get a car south instead of using the dreadfully scheduled EgyptAir flights directly into Marsa Alam.


I love diving! It's part of the reason I took this job in the first place. And on Tuesday I'm leaving for a few days in Dahab. I saw from a blog that they've been seeing whale sharks (a diver's unicorn) and a thresher shark - a bit dangerous, but I'd be thrilled to finally see a shark in the Red Sea.

Back in the nuthouse

Ugh. I feel like death warmed over. Why is the jet-lag so much worse coming in this direction?

Yes, I'm back safe and sound in Cairo. Transit was basically fine, no serious debacles, reroutes, or security issues. I'm really starting to think it's only the US transport system that's in the toilet.

Yesterday (was it only yesterday????) the stewardess came on over the intercom and announced in Lufthansan accents that we'd be passing over the "pie-ra-meeds." Once I deconvoluted that statement, I thought, No way. How many times have I flown into this airport? Never once have I seen the pyramids!

On our way to Sharm last year we did fly north out of Cairo and we passed all four sets of pyramids, which was super cool. But coming in internationally, I've seen nary a pyramid in the last year.

So imagine my shock when my rowmate (a Canadian running a school here) leaned across me, pointed, and said, "Hey, we are over Giza!" I glanced down and promptly banged my head against the glass.

We flew straight between Khufu's and Khafre's pyramids - the two big ones - and I held my breath as Menkaure's pyramid obligingly popped into view from behind our wing. I could not believe that we were so close to them!

I've been grumbling a lot lately about having to take guests to the pyramids so many times. And believe me, I'm not about to go running off to Giza any time soon. But flying a scant 1000 feet or so over the last Ancient Wonder really brought it back to me. The wonder, that is.

I'm settling back in - Cairo traffic yesterday was just what I'd expected. My apartment was sparkling clean, waiting for me, and my internet connection (knock on wood) seems to performing mightily. I was happy to be back here - is this home yet? What does that really mean?

I sat awake between 2 am and 5 am, trying to fight the jet-lag but failing miserably. I'd set my alarm for 8:30, and I remember it going off, but when I got out of bed this morning, somehow it was already 11 am.

Now it's about 4:30 and I know I'm back in the nuthouse. This morning I bought tickets to fly to Sharm so I can squeeze in a dive trip in Dahab before the semester starts. My friend Kaddee and her husband rented a house there, so I'm planning to mooch off them.

Excrutiatingly long story short, I booked the tickets ok (I even saved LE 100!), but then made the catastrophic mistake of planning to drop by the Zamalek EgyptAir branch on my way to the supermarket. I spent about an hour walking up and down 26th July street, dodging cars, asking passersby for help, and frantically calling the office. In an incredible coincidence, their phone number "stopped working" the third time I called - I bet they just took the phone off the hook. It turns out the "Zamalek" branch is actually in Mohandessin - kudos to the people at Diwan bookstore for saving the day. Rather than go back to Tahrir, I took another 2 cab rides and ended up getting the damned tickets. I was almost in tears by the end of the thing.

But I perked up at Alfa, because Ramadan starts week after next and the market was stuffed with goodies. I finally bought a fanoos - a special lamp for Ramadan. I was sorely tempted by the big cheap ones, but in the end I purchased a tiny beaded lamp that unfortunately doesn't light up. I might go back and buy one of the kind that plugs in - Cairenes take note, upstairs at the front of the store they've got some hemp-and-tentmakers-cloth lamps with colored glass panes that light up. Not cheap, but a nice alternative to the plastic ones. They also have some lovely woven baskets also containing tentmakers' cloth - I'm now the proud owner of two, and I might go back. Christmas gifts, perhaps?

T minus 24 hours and counting

Well, it's that time ... I get on my plane tomorrow evening at this time.

I feel like I've gone through a whole cycle with this summer-home-stay (which, incidentally, disqualified me for a tax-free 2007). Last month NJ was driving me nuts and I couldn't wait to get back to Egypt. A week ago I started feeling anxious about heading back - not the travel itself. But more of a what the hell am I doing with my life? kind of anxiety.

I certainly didn't get as much work done this summer as I'd wanted. I'd intended to plan out to the short hairs an undergrad bioinformatics course for this fall. Problem is, I may or may not be teaching it, as the department may or may not be offering the course, and the students may or may not want to sign up for it. Not so motivating, huh? Plus, I found Doug Brutlag's brilliant course website complete with lecture videos. I also found an exam repository from another course that looks good. As long as the students aren't clever enough to find these links (or this blog, for that matter), I'm golden.

Things I did manage to accomplish this summer?

1. Renewed my New Jersey driver's license - just in time to plan to move to California.
2. Got my manuscript submitted to Nature.
3. Got my manuscript rejected by Nature.
4. Gave a reasonably good talk at a meeting.
5. Participated in a wedding with all the trappings - bachelorette party, bridal shower, weekend out on Long Island - as a bridesmaid.
6. Spent lots of good time with my friends and family.
7. Went outlet shopping to get some new clothes (Egypt is really rough on clothing).
8. Loaded my Kindle up with lots of books, thanks to my marvelous friend Melinda.
9. Applied for three or four jobs - not that I've heard from any of them.
10. I got engaged!

Now I'm heading back to Egypt tomorrow ... time to get back in the saddle.

Hope to see you soon - in Egypt!

Come on, Continental

I'm sitting in the Albuqurque airport, hoping Continental can better itself - when we flew here last week, our flight was delayed FIVE HOURS.

I wish I could say this was the first time something like this has happened, but, well, I'd be lying. Last summer when we flew to Portland, Oregon, we ended up sleeping on the filthy floor in freezing cold Newark Airport, only to get bumped from 5 flights the next day. We had to fly to Seattle, then try to get standby on a commuter flight to Portland. It took 4 tries.

Anyway, last week, there was a storm in Chicago, so our flight was delayed in Newark waiting for the airplane. There were plenty of other planes sitting on the tarmac at midnight on a Monday. And seriously, there wasn't one other damned pilot who knew how to get to ABQ and wanted to make some extra money?

Between the screw-ups and the ridiculous charges for checking baggage, we don't check bags anymore. Just in case. And yet again, here's my refrain of the last few weeks:

This would never happen in Egypt.

Something is seriously wrong in the world when EgyptAir is my world paragon of transport excellence.

We're on our way back from the Q-bio 2008 conference in Santa Fe. It's still a mystery, but for some reason my abstract was accepted for a talk here. My talk went pretty well - I don't think I said anything unacceptably stupid - and last night I had the hilarous experience of hearing someone else talk about my work.

It was the banquet, and I was about 6 glasses of wine in (they were serving Charles Shaw!). Suddenly the speaker flashed a slide up that said "Motifs as discoverable objects - Bonneau, Gardner, Vora."

My immediate reaction was, there's someone else named Vora in this field?

My tablemates made inquiring gestures towards me, like, "Why didn't you tell us you'd published with these famous people?"

I shrugged and blearily copied down the reference in my moleskin, determined, once I'd sobered up, to figure out who the hell this other Vora was that was publishing in my field.

Right, so it turned out he was talking about me. Having someone else tell you what you think - and you not recognizing it - is one of those funny things in life.

There are a lot of funny things in my life.

A lot.

Good news - a sociological experiment

I've got some good news, and we thought posting it on this blog would be an interesting sociological experiment.

Yesterday KC and I spent a beautiful day in New York City - possibly my last for a long time, sadly. We went up to the Cloisters specifically to see The Cloisters Cross. I've just finished a book by Thomas Hoving about the cross and its acquisition by the Met. Speaking of Hoving, I started another book of his called Tutankhamun: The Untold Story. Sensational title aside, I'm really enjoying taking yet another look at the Carter excavation of Tut's tomb.

After the Cloisters, we went down to the Met's main building to check out a few special exhibits. Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy was totally absurd; we should have been clued in by Giorgio Armani's sponsorship. Seriously, I didn't know ithyphallic was a real word - thank God KC's cell phone has internet access.


Somewhat less hilarious were the astounding pietre dure exhibit, Jeff Koon's whimsical sculptures on the roof, and the highly informative exhibit on Chinese paintings. I'd been wanting to see the Chinese exhibit since last year, and it was lovely.

After getting thrown out of the museum at closing time (this seems to happen to us a lot!) we headed down to my old stomping ground for dinner at the Union Square Cafe. I've wanted to try this restaurant for years, and KC had gotten reservations as a surprise for me. (Eventually we had the calamari with spicy anchovy mayo, the osso buco, and lasagne with foie gras, squab, and some sort of mild cherry sauce, if you're interested.)

There was another surprise too. After we were seated, the waitress came over, greeted us, and asked if we wanted "bottled or local water?"

I smirked. On one of our very first dates at the Lawrenceville Inn (oddly converted now to a private-parties-only establishment), a waitress who couldn't have been more than 14 asked me the same questions. I laughed through the entire meal - what a ridiculous euphamism for tap water! I told our waitress that local water was just fine, then jokingly asked KC if he'd paid her to say that as a joke.

The waitress returned with two glasses and a metal pitcher. She plunked them down on the table and walked away. What the hell kind of restaurant is this? I thought. You have to pour your own water here? At these prices?

KC and I looked at each other for a minute over the table, and then he said, "Pour the water."

I lifted the water pitcher. The damn thing was empty to boot!

I set it back down and said (stupidly), "There's no water."

Another pause. Finally KC said, "Just look inside."

And of course, there was a small box tucked down in the bottom of the empty pitcher - and the box held a ring.

My pre-emptive apologies to any of you who felt this news should have been delivered in person, over the phone, or at the very least in a private email. We thought it'd be interesting to post this story here and see what happens.

And I said yes, incidentally.