sorry about not posting more frequently but these coming months are the busiest and i am working with a lot of people jumping in and out of meetings at the office and then preparing for the builds coming up. I will however give you a small story that happened while my parents were here.
So one of the things to accomplish while my parents were here was to get me a national Egyptian ID so that i dont have to pay a ridiculous amount when using the train or wanting to go to a tourist attraction (as i once said its 50 pounds for a foreigner and 1 or 2 pounds for an Egyptian with an ID). So yeah that was thank God accomplished with relative ease (thats a story for another time) but my aunt also said it would be good if i got an Egyptian passport. So we applied for one and after much and much stress and waiting it seemed to be going well until i had to prove i was the only son so i wouldnt be forced to join the Egyptian army. Haha, i am pleased to say i am not going to the army but here is what happened one day....
I was in the office preparing for a big meeting for a build thats coming up when i get a call on my mobile; its my father. I go "hello father how are you doing?" my father replies "andrew you have to come here right now." and i go "umm...what?" basically my dad was at this huge administrative building called "el Mogaama" (eh mo-gamma) which is Tahir Square (tah-phlegm-eer square) that is about an hours away from my office. But i had to first get my American passport that was in my room in the seminary which is another 20 minutes away. So i had to apologize for skipping my meeting and run to a taxi and get my passport, then i run to take another taxi to the metro and go all the way to the mogaama. When we get there there was some represenative for whatever and he looks at my passport for about 3 seconds before he says we need to go to Helwan....haha oh boy. Ok so let me explain some geography first with a little Mspaint drawing.
so the way it works is on the metro the last stop is this place called Helwan, why do i need to go to Helwan? haha because on my Egyptian ID my address is that of my grandfather and he lives in Helwan so i need to go to the police station in Helwan to get this formed signed so i can come back to el Mogaama to finally get the passport authenticated...So my dad, this guy, and I get on a metro and ride for about an hour till we get to Helwan and we go to the police station. We talk to them for awhile and apparently there is this 3 digit number that i need first before they can give us the form and we first need to go to a place called Mohandehsin (moh-han-deh-seen) which is about 20 minutes East of my office...haha that means we have to go travel for about 2 hours get a silly number go back another 2 hours to get the form signed. So we start walking back towards the Metro (oh yeah the guy who was with us left since he lives in Helwan too) and then my Dad finds the 3 digit number we need! apparently we were given it just we didnt know. So we go back to the police station and are like here you go. After arguing with them that this was in fact the actualy 3 digit number and not use just attempting to skip a step the guy at the desk eventually says "sorry we dont have any more forms" we go "uhhh WHAT?" basically they ran out of forms as in no more physical forms they ran out haha. So my dad is like "are you kidding me look here maybe one fell on the floor or something we dont want to have to do this all over again!" and then the guy at the desk says "even if i find a form it wont work since the person with the stamp or whatever left for the day...come back sunday" haha that was it. My dad and I decided right then and there its just not worth it so we go back defeated by the Egyptian system...
haha but thats ok because like they say there is always a silver lining in every cloud. My silver lining was that i got to spend a lot (and i mean A LOT) of time with my father. It was nice just walking around with him and being together. After that ordeal we visited his uncle (my grandfather's brother) and it was cool going with my dad and having him say "this is my son" haha i know it sounds silly or something but it was a really cool feeling that i enjoyed. So though i missed my meeting, though i did a lot of traveling and was extremely physically tired it was great being iwth my dad. Since I knew how much more of an effort my dad was putting trying to get this passport for me so it was very much appreciated. Anyway that was a really long day. Haha but its something that will be looked back on and laughed at which is always a plus. And the experience gave me another story to tell you all so huzzah to looking at the bright side of life!
Have a good day everyone.
I hope Joe got to read this
haha but thats ok because like they say there is always a silver lining in every cloud. My silver lining was that i got to spend a lot (and i mean A LOT) of time with my father. It was nice just walking around with him and being together. After that ordeal we visited his uncle (my grandfather's brother) and it was cool going with my dad and having him say "this is my son" haha i know it sounds silly or something but it was a really cool feeling that i enjoyed. So though i missed my meeting, though i did a lot of traveling and was extremely physically tired it was great being iwth my dad. Since I knew how much more of an effort my dad was putting trying to get this passport for me so it was very much appreciated. Anyway that was a really long day. Haha but its something that will be looked back on and laughed at which is always a plus. And the experience gave me another story to tell you all so huzzah to looking at the bright side of life!
Have a good day everyone.
I hope Joe got to read this
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