Cairo without any police on the street, coming out of 30 years of repressive control and a state media that told a controlled story is a city that is a hive of rumours and speculation. Imagine if any news story you heard on TV or radio was known to be only half true at best you would start to interpret everything. Well we can see that in egypt at the moment. The street do have a sense of normality (minus the odd tank) but there are no police and criminality is bubbling just under the surface - whether it is instigated by the currently unemployed secret police or not is up for debate.
So whilst we are told Maadi is fine, city Stars and Heliopolis are safe, and generally I believe they are, crimes against the person, relatively unheard of before are on the rise, muggings, car jackings, just taxi-driver fisty-cuffs. Let see how the next few weeks pan out as the votes for the new consitution ramp up.
A typically egyptian affair is happening with our TV coverage. In short, Showtime/Orbit sold TV rights to football to ADMC. AMDC say you need new satellite box and card to recieve - this was two weeks before season started (Sept). No new boxes in the country and the season is almost over. In addition the slightly illegal "dreambox", a unit over dragging signal from internet, was taking Showitmes remaining programming (CSI, Bones, Sky news, etc), so Showtime decide to bring in new HD box to screw up all the dreambox users stealing their signal. So Showtime switch off access to showtime users, and tell people to get new box and card - and again - none in the country. Leaving legal Showtime subscribers with no progamming and dreambox viewers happily watching everything!! Luckily we stocked up on DVDs when back in the UK.....should all be sorted out soon - yeah!
Other news been playing a lot of golf (had a 315m drive on the 15th at Kattameya), not many holes you can do that on. Although took young J out the day before and he beat all the men - so he is banned. With the lack of shopping activities even Mrs T is getting better at golf. Lots of parties around anyway.
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