the candle

Candle-making

Last week Nesreen arranged me a meeting with her sister who is an artist and makes great wooden and candle creations. I got a quick lesson how to make candles and yesterday and today I tried my very first candle made from the scratch by me.













The best part is it is actually quite easy to buy your own wax here. We were pointed to Bab Zoweilah, a market in Old Cairo, where Dody and me spent few hours looking for one candle street where we could make such purchase.













On the way home we stopped by the towers with a great view of Cairo.

Stem cell transplants from women raise cancer risk

People who receive stem cell transplants for diseases such as leukaemia appear to face a higher risk of developing secondary cancers, especially if the cells come from a female donor, according to a preliminary study.

The scientists behind the new report caution that future stem cell treatments for ailments such as spinal cord injury and heart failure might also carry a cancer risk. However, experts point out that the study is far from conclusive and more work needs to be done to confirm a link between stem cell transplants and tumours. More

things that drive me crazy

Yesterday I went with my boyfriend to Pizza Hut... before the food came I decided to go to the toilet. The toilet was occupied - one single room with toilet, sink and mirror. Mind I am usually rather patient and polite girl. Within the 10 min of waiting, the anger slowly rose in me to such level that I actually furiously knocked on the door to remind the girl inside that there are others who might want to use the toilet (I never do such things). Some more minutes later I went to the male's toilet. You might say I should have gone straight away to the other toilet but being in Egypt I wanted to be bit culturally sensitive.. but this girl obviously was not sensitive at all to my needs so who cares...

And this leads to my complete astonishment when it comes to girls in Egypt and public toilets. Few weeks ago we were in the cinema and I went to the toilet afterwards. In my country, the toilets are always full, here I found hardly anyone actually using the toilets.. yeay, I thought, how cool, no need to stay in the line. Well, to my astonishment I waited in the crowd later on when I wanted to wash my hands and could not pass through the bunch of girls (read 30 in 3 square metres area) packed around the sinks, staring into the mirrors, correcting their make-up, retying their veils... I was shocked as I had to literally PUSH through them to get to the sink.

I would never think that this is where the cultural differences lie...

I saw Bond, James Bond

and I liked it...

And I definitely was not a fan of Daniel Craig and his looks...

no, no, no, to the right... hehehe... hilarious

Where is my fool?

The peeing wall of Cairo

I know of a peeing wall in Cairo. It is the looong wall on Tahrir street.

Once i was having this nice walk to Dody's work when the smell hit me. But I wonder, nothing strange, I get to smell that quite often in Prague too. I continue walking, the sun is shining, the children are running around, huge traffic passes by, some guy is peeing behind the door of the taxi... oh, wait, that is not normal to see a guy peeing in Cairo at 1pm in the bright light... well, I think, emmergency is same in all parts of the world. So I happily continue walking, I pass the guy, turn to look as some school kids are shouting on the street, I look back on my sidewalk... to face this big white ass stuck out in my direction. I was so shocked, I froze and kept staring at it... then I started to laugh... and then I happily continued walking to Dody's office... another normal day in Cairo.

... and that is what USA is about...

I have a satelite in Egypt. For the past 14 days, I had the TV on few times... and this is what I found out...

What to do if my kids are nasty, beat me, talk back at me, ... I call Super Nanny
My adult "kids" mooch me and I want them out of the house... I ask Dr. Phill
I have not cleaned my house for four years... yuck... I call the cleaning squad
My husband is cheating on me, but still loves me... Dr.Phill, can you help again?
My three weeks old marriage is falling apart... Dr.Phill, can I win a kitchen in your show?
My overweight kids, beware... I know what you ate last summer!

What a great picture of US being shown to the world...

so what do you think Tyra...

shall we flaunt it or hide it??

Rain in Cairo

Yesterday morning I woke up to the sound of water running... since the water hardly works in our appartment we get to hear wobbly dobbly sounds of water here and then, when the tank is pretending to be filled... but this time it was different and unless we were getting new supply of water from the roof, this must have been the rain!

I was happy to see the rain, as it helped the dust of Cairo streets to settle down a bit... I enjoyed watching the rain, till i realized i have clothes on the line, and some part of the clothes was under the edge of the roof, so all the dust was leaking on my freshly washed clothes... nice... at the end I got to feel the rain too, when saving the clothes.