Picking Up Chicks

The fundamentals of the game are the same wherever you go, but the Egyptian game has some striking peculiarities. You might say the difference derives from the contrast of America's free market to the well regulated markets of Egypt.

In the next couple posts, I am going to explore this idea. I didn't post enough stuff to keep people interested in December, so I'm going be like the media and take a sensationalist bias to start up the new year.

What's the relationship between guys and girls in Egypt?

There is no such thing as "just friends" in Egypt. If a guy and girl hang out by themselves, they must be dating. But since dating doesn't exist, the only reasonable conclusion that you can make is that they are on track to get married. 

Guys and girls don't hang out in groups together. There are exceptions to this rule, but this is true 90% of the time. Guys hang with guys and girls hang with girls. Geographically speaking, college kids are doomed. The guys dorms are a couple kilometers away from the girls dorms. But, that's not too important because you would never be able to sneak past the armed guards who stand in front of the only entrance to the fort-like dorms. I'm not talking about sneaking into the dorm after lights out (there's no lights out, but I say that in a figurative way), I'm saying you can't go in the opposite sex's dorm at any time of the day. Furthermore, the girls have a 9:30 curfew everyday of the week, so there's no possibility for social life during the night. 

Why guys and girls still don't try to circumvent these external obstacles? I don't know. You can put it up to the culture, it's just considered completely weird for guys and girls to hang out. Last Thanksgiving, for instance, all the students in the Middlebury abroad program along with our Egyptian hall mates ate dinner in the apartment of our professor's apartment. The Egyptian guys hung out with everyone, and each of them made small talk and treated the girls kindly. On the other hand, the Egyptian girls hung out in a separate room, and they didn't talk with us at all with the exception of one girl who made small talk with a couple guys. I asked one of the guys what his opinion is on hanging out with girls after going out on night, and he told me that he finds it really weird because he just doesn't know what to say to a girl.

Christmas x 2

It turns out they had Christmas in Egypt, it was just a little late -- January 7. That's when the Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas. I went to a Coptic service on Coptic Christmas Eve. I've had never seen a service before, but I knew they were into chanting. After 10 minutes of straight chanting that I couldn't understand, I understood that they are really into chanting, so I bounced. It was interesting to see women in Alexandria without Hijabs (because they weren't Muslims), but other than that, I couldn't get any value out of the service. 

The next day, we had Christmas dinner with the owner of a restaurant along the Corniche whom we befriended in September. She is Coptic and her restaurant was completely decorated with Christmas decorations. The restaurant is actually called Restaurant (مطعم). She served us an awesome mixed drink with mint and lemonade (no kicker though), salad, rice, and turkey and even an after dinner tea all on the house (and this isn't the first time she's done this). We met her uncle, cousin, good friends, and chef throughout the night. So here's a post to the hospitality of Egyptians (احسن ناس).

Bartering

It's 2009, and we're back in action. I just arrived in Cairo International Airport (CAI)  two days ago, and I was warmly welcomed by the typical "Welcome to Egypt..."

"... Would you like a taxi?" 

You have to be careful when catching a taxi at places like train stops or airports because the taxi fare varies greatly depending on who's taxi you enter. At CAI, there are three rounds of taxi cab drivers. The first are the "official" guys, their target is foreigners who didn't plan for limos or tour buses beforehand. These guys work in a kiosk, speak fluent English, and they even have a clipboard full of "official" prices to different destinations within Cairo. His taxi is the most expensive because he seems legitimate, and truth be told, he is a little more legitimate that the others because at least he knows how to work the system. The second line of defenses comes right after I exit the airport. These prices are generally too high, but I just wanted to get to my destination, so we agreed on a price and he took me to the car, but then asked me to wait. He told his buddy to watch me while he looked for another customer. I told him I wasn't going to wait, so I went to the third line of taxis: the guys that just wait in their cars and don't try to play games to entice you into their taxis. These drivers wanted to agree on a price up front, so we agreed on a fair price. 

Here's where we get into the bartering. After I put all my stuff in the taxi, the cabbie told me that I had to pay 5 more pounds (equivalent $1) for the parking ticket. 

I call this request the "Just a Dollar Game." It's a game between Egyptians and foreigners, and it always begins once a sale is made. If you can score an extra dollar for every transaction that you make you are going to be considerably more successful, especially since this is always a bottom line profit. So, this is an important economic game. Usually this game is played in a souk (Arabic marketplace), where you might be bartering over a sweatshirt, soccer jersey, or scarves. There's an initial bartering process that usually begins with two vastly different prices between the customer and merchant. After a couple rounds of converging prices, the merchant will try to close the deal. If he can't simply get the foreigner to pay for his overpriced good/service, then he'll concede to the foreigner's offer. To him, the sale has been made, but instead of just giving up he offers one dollar more than the foreigner's offer. The idea is that the foreigner (untrained in the art of bartering) is happy that they are so close to an agreement that the foreigner might as well just pay the extra one dollar to finalize the transaction. But, if the foreigner is smart, he will know that like him a dollar is just a dollar to the merchant. The merchant would far rather make the transaction than lose a sale because he was stubborn over a dollar. So that's where the "Just a Dollar Game" starts.

"We already agreed on 60 (a really generous price in the first place), so I'm not going to pay an extra dollar" (My lines translated from Arabic)

"You speak Arabic good. Don't worry, one dollar is no big deal"

"Great, then we don't have a problem. The price is 60"

"60 plus 5 is 65"

"55 plus 5 is 60"

"The price of the taxi is 60 plus 5 for the ticket"

"I play basketball and soccer. I don't play the dollar game"

"Ok, no problem..." goes on to talk about how his son teaches Arabic and tells me about his service in the military. You have to have two faces here, the bartering face and the human face; once you get the bartering out of the way, you can just be yourself and meet someone new. 

Christmas Jones

Well, if you combine the titles of my last two posts, you get a pretty cute James Bond girl. 

Quantum of the Solace (the new James Bond movie) came out on November 5th in Egypt. That's 9 days before it came out in America. Yet, while it was being shown all over Cairo, it wasn't shown in a single theater in Alexandria until the 26th.

The 3 week delay in getting the new James Bond movie into theaters in Alexandria just doesn't make sense, and neither does the theater industry in Alexandria.

1) New Releases are not released on time

This turns into a lose-lose-lose situation. The consumers (you and me) have to wait longer for the movie to come out; we can't get the satisfaction that we're on the cutting edge of action pack Hollywood. The theater loses potential profits because people will substitute away from the theaters that are slow to show new releases. The production company loses potential profits because a not as many people will show up for the movie. If it comes out 3 weeks after the initial hype of its release to theaters, than people simply won't be as interested because the hype has already passed. But most importantly, it doesn't cost the theaters or production companies anything more to release movies simultaneously throughout a country, so why not be smart about it. It's not like we need to do a pilot showing for 3 weeks to calibrate distribution in a nearby city.

2) There is no Fandango

People don't know what is playing where. If I don't know what's playing and I have no easy way of finding out, I'm not going to bother with going to the movie theater. If I have a website with the summaries of every movie in theaters and what movies are playing at each theater, I have a better chance of considering going to a movie. I actually found a blog that posts what movies play where in Cairo and Alexandria, and it's great compared to everything else in Egypt, but it's nothing compared to a site like Fandango.

3) All movies start at the same time 3, 6, and 9

This is good because the spread of information is slow in Egypt and a staggered scheme would just be too confusing because 1. no one checks the internet for stuff like show times 2. there is no place on the internet to check for show times. This almost seems like a chicken and egg problem, but once there's a good site in Arabic (English would even be fine) with movie times, people would start checking it (if they haver enough money to watch a movie in theaters, they most likely have internet access).

The theaters need a website to display the different times that the movies are playing to target specific audiences. Staggered movie times are important for optimizing resources and minimizing crowds. With staggered times, 1. more movies can be fit into the schedule 2. More combinations of movies can be fit in (4 James Bonds and 2 Madagascar 2s instead of 3 and 3) 3. Employees can be employed optimally without downtime 4. Food lines will be shorter leading to more people considering purchasing food leading to greater profits (because that's where theaters make profits on popcorn... what do you think the profit margin is on a $6 bag of popcorn?)

4) There's an intermission

I just want to see the movie without stopping. This is just really annoying to me, but I think it actually might be good business. What are you going to do during intermission? Buy another drink and refill your popcorn... $$$ for the theaters. 

Christmas

On the New York Times website on a banner on the top of the website was written "Today's Christmas remember those most in need." The last couple days everyone was running around for their last minute Christmas shopping. The last couple weeks people were buying Christmas trees and decorating their houses. And since Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving), Christmas music has been playing on the radio. This is what's been going on in America. 

In Egypt, life has been continuing as usual. The same songs are playing in the taxis. There are lights up all over the place, but that's not because it's Christmas; colorful lights just tend to light up the many buildings at night. And there are no Christmas Trees. Many people don't even know that Christmas is the 25th of December (although everyone knows about Christmas). Furthermore,  the Coptic Christians -- the only sizeable Christian denomination in Egypt -- celebrate Christmas on the 7th of January. 

Just like Christmas, during Ramadan, families get together, streets and homes are decorated, seasonal television shows and movies are on TV, and people are supposed to remember the needy by giving alms to the poor. 

Our holiday season is Late November to the New Year's, their's is during Ramadan (a month that changes every year because the Islamic calendar doesn't directly correspond to the Gregorian calendar).

It was weird being in Egypt with a lack of Christmas spirit, but it's really not a lack of spirit at all, just a different holiday schedule

Indiana Jones

Traveling means anything and everything can happen. Maybe the boat from Egypt to Jordan is delayed 6 hours or maybe you get food poisoning twice in a week or maybe you meet the first person in the Middle East who tells you he legitimately loves George Bush or maybe you meet some surfers from Hawaii. Anyways, the first stop after Egypt was Petra. It's basically an ancient city that was carved out of rock. The pyramids were awesome, but their wow affect went away after the first hour and 100th time you had to reject a merchant's gift, but Petra had a continual wow factor because the city's walls and monuments just kept going on and on as we walked through the ancient city for hours.

One Huge Flag

The Middle East is not all the same. Everyone knows that Israel is completely different than the rest of the Middle East, but all the Arab countries are not alike. That's such an obvious claim, but I am definitely guilty of taking my experience in Egypt and just assuming that it goes for the rest of the Middle East as well.

Here's a perfect example of two extremely different places in the Middle East. This article from Generation Faithful -- a series of New York Times articles on young Muslims in the Middle East -- reveals the huge difference between life in Dubai and Egypt. 

Jordan was an eye-opening trip because it helped me put Egypt in perspective to the Middle East and not just to America. Egypt's roads are dirty, the drivers are wild, hissing is the normal way to get a waiter's attention, and staring at foreigners is commonplace. The roads in Jordan aren't like the states and the drivers are still absurd compared to America, but compared to Egypt it feels like a huge upgrade. The absence of hissing and staring had a nice refined sense to it. The Jordanians all seemed to love their king, which was a huge contrast to the Egyptians who for the great majority privately hate Mubarak. Jordanian flags are everywhere, and the one in the picture above is really, really big.