Pop Tarts and Their Mystical Powers

I walked very casually into the Quick store. Just browsing, nothing more.

Their vast array of imported sweets, candy, snacks and cereal proves to be irresistably tempting more times than not, but after much effort and wasteful money spending, I had finally taught myself how to resist the irresistable. So now I just walk in very casually, buy a pack of Egyptian made gum for 1 pound 75 pt and just as casually walk out. This time, however, something happened that made the system I had programmed myself on go haywire. There it was, sitting innocently on a shelf was a box of pop tarts... not just any pop tarts: S'mores Poptarts!

Now, I'm not a poptart fan or anything; wrapped toaster baked thingies don't really get to me; it was the word "S'more" that did me in.

20 pounds later, I walked out of there with a memory in my pocket.

here

First time I tasted s'mores was almost a year and half ago during my first ever All-American camp night and I have to admit they were sensational. Who could ever say no to fire roasted marshmellows sandwiched between biscuits and melted chocolate?

S'mores American National Holiday!

            Recipe with a "Skinny" twist              

That specific camp night is one to be cherished, not only for this exquisite introduction to what may very well be the most delicious dessert on Earth, or the magnificent view and open greenfields I have never seen in my life before, but also for the spectacular introduction to fireflies!

Lake Elmo

Like most people I've heard plenty of stories and songs about fireflies, -mostly about how people try to catch them and put them in jars- so when I first saw some light blinking about 2 meters away from where I was sitting after night fell on the camp sight and the camp fire was almost out, I had to blink twice and register what I just saw. However, seeing how "out of it" I was at that moment due to a sever case of s'mores-over-consumption, what I registered was that someone was walking the distant trail with a flashlight and that they weren't 2 meters away at all, more like 200.

...not very bright with too much chocolate and marshmellows in my system it seems... it took me at least another 5 minutes and 10 more blinking fireflies to realize what I was looking at.

Getting up ever so slowly, I walked closer to where they were.. or at least I tried. Fireflies are mischevious creatures, they flash their fancy lights, and just when you think you know where they are the go dim and reappear 50 meters away, how on Earth people manage to catch them still baffles me to this day. The thing is, the more you concentrate, the more you can see them; you could be walking right through them while immersed in a conversation with someone and you won't even notice they exist, but if you're out there in the wilderness with the soul purpose of finding them, you'll find them every where you turn.

After some chasing, I decided to stop. Watching them dance around me was beautiful enough, there was no need to waste so much energy and breath in trying to catch something better left alone: wild, free and provocatively stunning.

And in that I learnt the most important lesson of my life.

Borrowed from Postsecret

The poptarts didn't taste so good afterall, but the forgotten memories and lesson were definitely worth every piaster..

To Learn and To Label: Venturing Into Delta

Almost a month ago, I -finally- found a project-based job that I consider to be appropriate for someone aspiring to be a respectful economist; I'm now part of a team working on a development plan for one of Egypt's new yet run-down cities (to me it isn't just a worthy job, it's one I could've killed for, for many many reasons; working with a multinational highest-ranked consultancy firm being one).

In addition to some economic research, analysis and reviews of 442 638 pages of strategic development reports, this new job requires that I sometimes make short one-day business trips outside of Cairo, usually to Delta region cities, seeing as it is the main region we're concerned with.

Delta Fields (pictures I took)

Now, as an upper-middle class young woman who was raised in Cairo and has only ever been to the beaches and tourisitic cities outside of Cairo, having to make business trips to cities like those in the Delta was a huge step outside of a certain bubble I grew up in... not to mention of course an enormous step outside my comfort zone.

First time they asked me to go? Almost cried trying to find an excuse to get out of it. I didn't want to travel 2 hours by car to some rural, run down city and I definitely did not want to go meet a bunch of old Eyptian bureaucrats who'd most probably regard me with disdain seeing as I'm a woman with no scarf on her head covering her hair.

End result? I found no excuses. I ended up going. I also ended up enjoying the experience, the exposure, the ride, the company and the lunch we had on the way back.

The second time I was asked, it was a different situation and a different city and it was by far more intense than the first. This city is one of the biggest cities in the Delta with almost 200,000 inhabitants and being the capital of the governorate.

I called every single sane person I know trying to find only one who would tell me not to go and not to waste my breath even considering it.

...

I ended up going after all; my curiosity peaked one hour before we were supposed to move out and as usual it had to be satisfied. So again it turned out that I enjoyed the experience, the exposure, the lessons learnt, the ride, the company and the lunch on the way back even more than the first time, even though admittedly this time I sensed a certain odd vibe from officials and people on the streets.

A gas pump on the side walk... right next to a qahwa!

(Our French co-worker made fun of me for acting like a tourist and taking this pic)

 The whole city is one big informal settlement

Last time they announced an upcoming trip to that city? I was all for it. I wanted to go. I needed to go. I knew I would learn more if I go, I knew I would have a chance to discuss things about my work there and I knew that I could have had a lot to offer in the discussions and findings because I know I worked hard preparing for it.

End result? I never went.

This specific business trip included -among other more important meetings and discussions with officials- piloting a quantitative survey. In plain English, we would've had to walk around the city and ask random people specific questions that we need answers to.

What happened? Well...I got a phone call the night before:

"I don't think you should come along with us this time, even though we really need you there"

Why?

"Because we'll be out on the street, and it wouldn't be safe for you"

Because I'm a girl?

"Yes, and not what people there are used to typically seeing"

Typically?

"You see... your hair isn't covered and you significantly look like you're from out of town...and that might attract unwanted attention."

Unwanted attention. Interesting what young female Egyptian aspiring economists can be labeled as sometimes.

** Links are from wikipedia (which is shameful) but no other website has any info on any of those places!

Lame John

At the age of 12 my mother handed me down 2 Beatle's tapes. Having been bought in the 70's and survived almost 3 decades, I guess it's safe to say they're vintage.

(Bad image but it's mine!)

I still listen to them daily, and I still sing along with every single song. Honestly, you can't help not sing to those ballads. The songs are short and to the point, usually with the same verse being repeated over and over and over, so it isn't that difficult to know every song by heart.

I had a friend in the car one day as the cassette played and she made a comment that immediately rang truth: "those songs are made for simpler times and a simpler world".
Well... it isn't entirely true seeing as the Vietnam war was underway, Japan was still going through its post A-Bomb reconstruction and Egypt was still in a state of War with you-know-who and had just witnessed its greatest defeat at their hand. "A simpler world" isn't really the right description, but we get the gist of the comment: musical tastes were simpler and music itself was more to the point.

Take the song Michelle for instance: who on our planet today could ever get away with a song in which the chorus says "I love you, I love you, I love you" in the cheesiest way possible? Some might... but I doubt they'd win a Grammy for it and I guess it would hardly ever be the 42nd most played song in the world.

Rumor has it was John Lennon who suggested this "I love you" bridge to McCartney (who was the mastermind behind the song that was intended originally as a slight mockery of the French Rive Gauche culture that was taking England by storm).

Oh John... how lame!

(better image)

Never Mix Sheep and Mental Notes

Don't you just hate it when you're itching to write something and its just. not. coming. to. you.? I find it quite despicable. What's more sickening is how often it happens to me.

The bigger problem is, however, when all the inspired ideas and topics gracefully arrive in the middle of my nightly ritual of counting sheep. All day I rack my brains out trying to tame the words and compose the structure with no sucess, and then I actually get a decent idea with the right formulation of words in the middle of the night?! Outrageous!

All the same, I try to get around that problem through the masterful utilization of what is generally knows as "mental notes". See, I always had the strong belief that mental notes are better and more comfortable than real tangible ones; you do not have to go through the hassle of finding a piece of paper and a good pen that actually works in the middle of the night, nor keep looking for that piece of paper the next morning for at least an hour before you give up and eventually find it a month later in the middle of a stack of rubbish you were about to throw out. Mental notes are simply easier and better: you just tell your mind to remember it and there you go, the thought/idea is safe and sound.

I absolutely completely believe in them... I even test myself every once in a while to prove it.

I focus real hard on a specific moment so that next day when I try to remember what it was I was thinking about, I can easily trace it back from that sole moment I focused on. After many self-tests and trials, there appeared to be one hiccup in the "mental note" plan: 8 times out of 10 it doesn't work.

That does not mean however that I ever learnt the lesson.

So last night when I was hit  by a wave of inspiration as I watched the pretty sheep jump the fence, I decided to make a small mental note to remember whatever genius idea occured to me and to not to forget to put it down on my green book's slightly yellowed paper the next morning. But of course to no avail. I woke up with a vague recollection of an idea and of my constructing a mental note. What the note said however had completely vanished from my memory.

Allow me to illustrate:

1 sheep. 2 sheep. 3 sheep. I hate not having good ideas. 4 sheep. 5 sheep. 6 sheep. 7 sheep. They're pretty jumping that fence, thank God they don't lock sheep up in zoos. 8 sheep. 9 sheep. 10 sheep. 11 sheep. I can't find anything to write about. 12 sheep. 13 sheep. Ouh animal abuse is a good idea. 14 sheep. 15 sheep. Or maybe how some people like to use overcomplicated words with no real point or substance. 16 sheep. 17 sheep. That's a good idea I should remember that when morning comes. I won't forget. 18 sheep. 19 sheep. 20....

*Poof* the idea is lost for good.

Hmph. That darned sheep ran away with it.

And That Applies to Blank White Pages Too!

I've gone white. I think it's more healthy. And besides I've always made it a point to reflect my inner and outer states in everything I do. 

Right now I'm trying to be healthier: I always wear at least one white item rather than the mainly black clothes I'd been more fond of the past year, I work out, I keep in touch with people I want to stay in touch with, I'm making the kind of friends I'd like to make, I'm sticking to my roots, I sleep early, I wake up early and I'm not keeping myself too busy all the time.

I think that last one is the most important of them all; if I keep myself too busy most of the time...well... I'd never be able to do any of the previously mentioned things, the same way I haven't been able to for a really really long time.

So.. I've gone white.

A Nation-Wide Lack of Demand... for Economists?!

As I go round that last roundabout my mind is racing. Quite furiously too. I park quite randomly, violently pull the hand break, get out of the car, slam the door shut and stomp up the stairs. Apartment door effectively slammed, I barge in on the woman carrying her child putting him to bed and that’s when the disbelieving wrathful rant begins.

Really, even though she saw it coming, my sister could not have possibly done anything to prevent this. Neither could have my 3 month old nephew. Even with all his attempts at distracting cute smiles and gurgles. The rant had already started on the way home in my mind and it needed to get out into the world.

I had just come out of my 3rd job interview and even though that’s not a big number (…more like the tiniest number of interviews I’ve heard of recently) I was starting to become quite frustrated with the state of the labor market. No wrong ideas please; there are plenty of jobs available and plenty of firms and companies recruiting and hiring, unlike what most of my graduating class expected, but my frustration is a symptom of another quite unexpected disease. My frustration stems from the fact that there seems to be quite limited room for poor ickle aspiring economists such as myself in this supposedly booming economy.
Now thus far I have not been able to delve into studying the matter deeper and I may as well end up terribly mistaken, but I cannot help this ugly impression right this instant…

I think accidentally ending up interviewing for one more marketing and sales job when I at first had the distinct impression that the office I was interviewing at was actually involved with coordinating between private and public sectors for the sake of the greater good of Egyptian welfare and the Egyptian economy did that for me. Hmph. Let’s just say that’s just 5% of the rant my mother and sister and friends and family and anyone on the street who is showed the tiniest interest had to bear.

With all those marketing and sales jobs out running about looking for someone to get them done I began to wonder what in heaven and hell are all those people selling and more importantly: to whom?! Everybody seems to be selling something to someone, and I really cannot help the disbelieving resentful facial expression I’ve been wearing around. Because honest to God, I thought before looking for people to sell and market –sometimes- non-existent (and quite “developed country” like) products to quite delusional buyers*, this market would be looking for qualified and willing people to help develop the effing non-existent structure the economy is supposed to be operating with.
Has this attempting-to-be-“free market” been like this for a while? Or did I have higher expectations than supposed?


I guess part of the problem will always lie in the fact that public institutions and offices will always say that they’re looking to recruit fresh blood that would bring in new ideas and help get out of that ridiculous rut resulting from the stupid bureaucratic details, but in reality do nothing about it.
I don’t blame them a 100% (“them” being the highly qualified personnel working the public sector). I only blame them for the part where they don’t try to put themselves out there and start respectable organized recruitment campaigns. They don’t even check their HR emails for heaven’s sake. How else can a fresh graduate with high hopes and ambitions get her resume in to the director in charge? I bet we all know the answer to that one don’t we?

But let’s not be unfair, there are those public institutions that successfully surpassed all the unmistakable faults of the public sector and evolve into the perfect “private-structured public institution”; the Egyptian Competition Authority (ECA) being one. At least I’d secretly like to believe that, and please, even if I’m wrong this time do not correct me.

There are of course different things that economists can do that would not require them to completely stray off their intended course: may it be financial analysis, working the securities and investment field, research and academics (I willingly count marketing research as one of those fields, because it admittedly does require a certain amount of economic background) or conducting highly economic feasibility studies for private sector projects.

All the same, do those few sectors and the few opportunities they offer and provide suffice? Can they possibly absorb the almost 2,500 economists graduating economists per year? Can they help encourage high aspirations for fresh graduates and supply them with sufficiently challenging environments that are needed in order to ensure that the ranks of “crème de la crème” students remain as such and not be drowned with the routinic down slope of the working life? Have I been successful in concealing my overflowing disappointment?

I recognize that not all the graduates from my school and the other private schools offering majors in economics are looking specifically to work within the specified fields of economics; some of them don’t care what they do as long as they do something, anything. Others don’t mind drifting into the banking sector, or the advertising, marketing and sales sector I have come to despise… but that’s their conscious choice to wander off from the field they’ve supposedly been preparing themselves for for 4 years.

It’s not my choice… and may I be damned I shall not give up. And no nation-wide lack of demand for economists shall come in my way.

At least I hope so.





* I understand that marketing and sales could involve material physical products as well and I have no problem with that, but the fast growing market for abstract products and services is becoming quite the problematic issue. At time the fact that products could be abstract helps in completely wrecking the concept. That is in the likes of “convincing CEOs to sponsor attempts at creating conferences and events in different and multiple areas of economic interest with the façade of the economy’s greater good but in truth just hoping to inflate both our egos and our bank accounts”.

They Lied! Mosaic Is Much More Than Just Pretty Art.

We’ve all been told stories growing up, whether they were bed time stories, stories of princes and princesses relayed as cartoon, stories of suspenseful and quite lame vampire fiction as teenagers, or the more drama-filled stories we read as adults. The one thing in common between each tale we are told of is this: they all have just one story in its folds. One hero, one heroine, one happily ever after or one tragic ending. Those protagonists had a story told about their lives. One story.

That’s exactly where the story tellers lied. And that is one heck of a lie; it is so immaculately weaved to the extent that we get systemized to it since the youngest age possible and then we can hardly see the problem with it when we grow up… until it hits you straight in the face of course.
Taking the lead from those nice fairy tales we admired so much as kids, we all tend to think of our life as just one big, really long story that we might be able to tell our grandchildren when we’re 75 and slightly senile. Fiction is one thing but in reality this cannot be farther from the truth. We might be able to tell those little brats things, but we won’t tell them just one story; we’ll tell them stories.

So how did I come to realize this very obvious yet quite elusive grand charade that I and most of the people I know are living? Well… It did more than just hit me in the face; it tripped me over. But then its light and breezy consequences lift me up right away.
I’ve spent almost the entirety of the past 21 years searching for my story: looking for the perfect prince, the perfect kingdom and yearning for the perfect ending (and of course timidly fearing that fate holds an ugly one for me instead). At some point I was quite sure I found it and that this was IT!
….
Okay… I lie; at multiple points of my life I was quite sure that it was it! And every time it slipped away the sadness set in instead and so did the disappointment. I always felt entirely thwarted whenever something ended and I reprimanded myself for being so deluded as to think that “it was it”, because it so obviously wasn’t! Every time I promise myself I’ll be wiser next time and more careful, and that I’ll judge the situation with a more mature perspective, only because I cannot afford anymore bad aims. Time was running out and I needed my story. I needed it when I could still call myself young… those were always the nicest stories.

It was not until the few days before my birthday that it hit me. Seeing as I was turning 21 during the holy month, my thoughts were less fixated on the big party that would not exist and more on what the past 21 years meant. The more I thought about it the clearer it became: I’ve done everything, I’ve been everything, and I’ve been through every kind of story line known to Cairo. I failed miserably at finding something that I feel I had missed out on so far!

I have so many stories to tell about the things I’ve been through to the extent I am sure I could easily write an entire series of books and still won’t run out of tales. And through simple math, I recognized that I’ll still have more stories to tell as the years go by. That could only mean one thing: I should not be looking for “my story”; I have plenty already and there is more yet to come. It’s all about accepting the idea that this so called “one big story” –that is actually none other than “life”- is actually compromised of small miniature plots and subplots that may, or may not, have their own little consequences on the future ones. The trick is to treat past stories -whether comedies or tragedies- as compost to be used to feed and nourish future ones.

The implications of this realization -to me at least- are “Major. Huge!” as my mom said the night I turned legal. Now that I have finally caught that lie red-handed and now that I fully understand the “mosaic theory” of life, I quiver with anticipation at the prospect of the next story... or the one I’m already inadvertently in the middle of.