DSL, Porn and Bureaucracy

Here's some stuff that's been happening to me:

1)I tried to purchase DSL for my apartment. They had English speaking people working their phonelines so I was able to order it easily enough. Unfortunately it gets much more complex after that. First they send a "bill collector" to your house to collect the money and sign a contract. Then they mail you your router/DSL stuff, then they activate the DSL at some mysterious date. Anyway, so a few days after I bought the DSL I get a phone call that goes something like this:

Egyptian Guy: 3 minute long monologue in Arabic w/ the words "Link DSL" thrown in
Me: Enta Fayn? (where are you?)
Egyptian Guy:Another 3 minute long monologue where I only understood words like "street" and "where"
Me: Enta Fayn?
This was repeated for like another 10 minutes until I had to go to class. Then I just gave up and hung up.

An hour later an English speaking guy calls me and tells me that the guy with the contract is waiting for me outside a mosque near my house, and is wearing a black shirt and has a briefcase.
Since there were like 20 people meeting this description, I kept walking up to people and doing sort of a half-nod until I finally found the guy. Then I handed him the money and signed the contract on the hood of a car outside the mosque. And now I'm still waiting for my internet to get turned on.

2)I went to the Suez Canal last weekend. The town itself was pretty boring and I mainly just walked around. But since I had already been to the Panama Canal and the Erie Canal I felt like I had to complete the Canal trifecta. But the highlight of the trip was on the bus ride back, when I look over and the guy sitting next to me, is just chilling, watching pretty hardcore porn on his phone. It took like a triple take before I could confirm this. The other funny part, was the guy was evidently really into it and didn't realize when we stopped at a military checkpoint. So the guy looks up, sees a soldier standing over him, and hurriedly throws the phone in his pocket with a really guilty look on his face. I almost burst out laughing. But this brought up a number of questions: What's the motivation for looking at porn in a crowded bus? If you're going to look at porn, why not put on headphones and get the full experience? In a country where I haven't seen a girl dressed slutily in weeks, how is this possibly acceptable?

3)This morning I went to the mogamma, which is the place where you get anything bureaucratic done in Cairo (I had to get my visa extended.) It's like a super-DMV. I went with other people, and I'm 100% sure that if I hadn't I would've gotten horribly lost. First, the entrance is just a constant stream of people from the Metro Stop into the building. If anyones seen Joe vs. The Volcano (the random old Tom Hanks movie) it's something like the opening scene when people are filing into the factory. Then inside there's just an endless series of dingy hallways on like 8 or 10 different floors. To get our visas renewed, we had to go to like 6 different desks on 2 different floors. It took over an hour (which is also why I decided to skip class today.)

So that's about it. My dad's coming tomorrow for 5 days. So that should be interesting.

Good luck at all New Englands. Though I guess the Brom's competing athlete count is dwindling fast.

Sam