Birthday Bonanza II (Gettin' busy chile)
June 26, 2004
Ooo...so many things I want to write about, but somehow I never have any time to just sit my ass down and write it. I think I've sent off birthday pictures to most of you (if you want to see them go here), but I still haven't given the story of my own birthday celebrations - which were pretty fun and apparently still talked about around town...hmm. So, my birthday was last Wednesday, and my mom and sister were going to be out of town, though my dad and brother stayed behind to be with me on my birthday (I had to stay in Cairo for work and classes). On the day of my birthday they took me out for a really nice lunch on one of the Nile restaurant boats, and a good time was had by all despite the increased humidity & still breeze. I went straight from lunch to my class at 3:30 where my classmates had planned a little surprise cake thing for me (as well as an impromptu screaming match between the one guy in the class and the really high-strung Jordanian girl in the class). But maybe more about that later. After class I rushed home, got changed and packed some clothes for spending the night at Mini�s as we had arranged on Sunday night. I felt kind of bad leaving my dad at home especially as he�d stayed in Cairo just for me, but I left the house late enough that he was on his way to bed anyway. So I met up with Mini & Co. at this open-air caf� called Andrea where they had just finished watching the Greek v. Spain match (tied, much to the relief of PG and Luka who are half-Greek and half-Spanish respectively, and who were both there). I remember thinking to myself as I walked up to their table �I hope that PG brought Janice along tonight, cause she would really complete the evening.� Janice � so named because in personality and intonation she resembles Chandler�s ex-girlfriend on Friends � is a girl that PG introduced us to a couple of weeks ago from �DEHr-Win� (that�s Darwin) Australia. As nice as this girl is, and as interesting, she just doesn�t shut up and what�s worse she has an extremely nasal, Australian monotone. When telling a story she eventually ends up sounding like Charlie Brown�s teacher from the animated Peanuts. While I consider myself and my group of friends to be a nice bunch of people, I will admit that we are extremely cruel when it comes to Janice, and we love to have her around for the amusement she provides. (God, I�m horrible�) In any case, sure enough Janice was there at Andrea along with PG, Mini, Luka, and Smin. So we sat there for another 20 minutes or so, and then got up to head to the Cairo Jazz Club where on Wednesday nights they play a lot of goodies from the 70�s and 80�s. We hadn't been in the club for two minutes when PG comes up to me and says "What are you drinking?" I hadn't realized that people were going to be buying me drinks, and I'd pretty much brought a lot of money thinking that we were going to all sort of chill. But I was so wrong. For the rest of the evening whiskey & cokes kept coming my way. As soon as one was empty, someone in the group would get up and get me another. A couple of times I tried to sneak off and get my own drink, because mixed drinks are really expensive here and I felt bad, but both times PG caught me, sat me down in my seat and went and got what always seemed to be a doubly strong drink. By the end of the night I'd had about 6-8 (can't be exactly sure...)Whiskey &Cokes, easy on the cokes.Mo, a good friend from back in the day in Kuwait cut up the dance floor, and we all joined him. That boy can work it, but he was having a little bit too much fun slapping my ass. Hmm... Anyway, the highlight of the evening (at least for everyone else) came when I took Janice's cane (her foot's in a cast) and started to belly dance with it. Now, while Di and I were known to do this at the drop of a hat back in Philly, this is just something that's not done here in posh Egyptian clubs. Such behavior is reserved for Ruby, Egypt's answer to Britney Spears. Anyway, so there I am dancing, everyone staring at me in amazment/amusement. Everytime I remember it I shudder, but Mini assures me that she would have stopped me if I was being totally inappropriate and that by that time everyone in the club was so far gone it didn't matter.Of course she tells me this after telling me that I did my routine a little too well, sort of implying that I should quit my day job and become a worker of the night� Pretty soon after that, around 2 am, they decided to get me out of there and whisked me off for a faluka (sailboat) ride on the Nile. So it was me, PG, Petey, Mini, Mo and N. (my secret, sorta crush) off for a beautiful, middle of the night ride on the water. It was really nice, except I had to pee like a racehorse so the ride wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been. We ended up cutting the ride a bit short since Petey and I had to go, and we weren't down with everyone's suggestion of hanging off the side of the faluka and taking care of our business.
Anyway, eventually we parted ways, with Mo driving me and Mini back to her place � leading me straight into the hands of Mini's mom who loves loves loves to catch me off guard. At one point I heard her asking Mini if she should come kiss me hello. Thankfully, Mini told her it was better not to.
Despite sleeping at 4:30 am Mini got up for a job at 7:30, and I woke up soon after still a little bit spinny, but happily not hungover. I ended up feeling really ill (like my cold came back strong) for the rest of the day and I spent the weekend with my family on the North Coast, nursing my cold, and butting heads with my sister's friends.
tada. the end.