day 1

Just got into our hotel here in Cairo. It's a little past midnight local time. It's 5:42pm in New York...

Got in fine. No issues with luggage or getting in. Had a good time haggling with people for a ride to our hotel. Saved E£5 or spent an extra EL15 depending on the point if view. People here so far are friendly, as long as you play along. We are willing to play along. (-; We're also speaking more Chinese for more private conversations. Good times.

We almost got a room on the fourth floor. Instead, we're staying in room 28!

welcome to cairo

Our room at the Windsor Hotel.

welcome to europe

Exchange rate now at about $1.50 for €1. That $12 burger wasn't even
that good.

prospect park

still looking for those pyramids!

these don't look like pyramids!

Cavs against the NY Knicks at Madison Square Garden.

goodbye, new haven

I'm on my way. Heading to NYC on the Metro-North. GO CAVS!!!

packing list

For comparison purposes, the Chile/Argentina trip:

packing

Planning on packing even lighter this time. This trip's packing list (excluding camera and bathroom stuff):

• Three pairs of cotton boxers
  I feel like I can get away with two. Three makes me feel more civilized, and serves as insurance against equipment failure (remember Janet?).
  
• One pair of synthetic boxers
  These kind of suck, but are good for swimming (with shorts), running, and hiking.
  
• Two pairs of synthetic socks
  They dry quickly. Nice.
  
• One pair of jammy pants
  
• One pair of shorts
  In case I decide to run or take a swim
  
• Two pairs of linen pants
  
• Two linen shirts
  
• One synthetic t-shirt
  Might be sleepwear, or day use, or hike use, or bus use, or train use. It's comfy, and cleans up well.
  
• Two cotton undershirts
  One for sleepwear, the other as a potential pillowcase, towel, whatever.
  
• Merrell Jungle Mocs
  
• Nike Sandals
  

The following stuff is for the day in New York City and the night hike up Mount Sinai:

• Wind breaker
• Long sleeve cotton tee
• Fleece vest
• Jeans
• Cheap-ass gloves
• Hat
• Flashlight (one set of batteries)
  

I'm assuming Patrick will be bringing:

• Camera charger
• Sunscreen
• Shaving cream

Common stuff I'll be bringing:

• Power adapters (the round pins)
• iPod charger
  

our hotel in luxor

http://www.luxorhappyland.com/

plans plans plans

I wake up this morning with an unsettled stomach from last night. (Happy Birthday, Patrick!) Yesterday was a great day and we got a lot of stuff done. I still have an 8-10 page paper to write that I haven't yet started, but we made a lot of progress in planning out things that need to be done between now and graduation.

• Watching a New York Knicks game (NYC)
  This will be done Wednesday by leaving immediately after a meeting to catch the 4:24 Metro-North train to New York. Go Cavs!
• Watching a New York Yankees game (NYC)
  Done last year. Might go again in May after classes end.
• Watching a New York Mets game (NYC)
  Tickets booked for April 13th.
• Watching a Red Sox Game (Boston)
  Discussion in progress with my peeps in Boston
• Performance at Sprague Hall (NYC)
  Done. Although I wouldn't mind another one.
• Performance at Woolsey Hall (NYC)
  Missed out on this one. I'm out of town the weekend of the last performance of the year (April 26).
• Yale Repertory Theater (New Haven)
  Need to organize a group, but they're around till May 16th, so this is an after-classes-end activity.
• Shubert Theater (New Haven)
  Might check out Hairspray when it comes to town later this year.
• Yale Symphony Orchestra (New Haven)
  Planning on attending the free concert the weekend of commencement.
• Visiting random Yale buildings (New Haven)
  Will do some random Friday with Klee?
• Group outing to Chinatown (NYC)
  Will be combined with the Mets game, and all other excursions to NYC.

In addition to figuring all this out yesterday, we also managed to plan out a few other trips this weekend. Finally did planning for the Egypt trip (since we'll be there four days from now) and initial planning for three other trips - another drive across the country, attending a wedding, and going to Cleveland right after classes end to catch an Indians game (and visit the fam, or course).

Perhaps I should do some class work now?

the plan

oh. hi.

is it just me, or did some academic have fun with choosing variable names?

what happens when you lay out on the ice without gloves

seems like perfectly good frisbee weather

more credit cards

For some reason I'm looking at credit cards. Perhaps it's because my Citi Rewards card sucks internationally (fees).

Amex still sucks (unless you charge well over $10,000 a year)
Discover still sucks, except for the occasional 5% categories
Citi still rocks, but not as much as before
Chase has the best offer, but still has the international fee rape like Citi. Damn.

What does Chase have? 3% reward on three categories (the three you spend the most on in a given month) and 1% on everything else.

One weird thing - Citi and Chase don't like online purchases or warehouse clubs. Amex doesn't seem to care - but that 0.5% reward kinda sucks.

I'm going to bed.

chillin' in the er waiting area

So I've been here for the last six hours or so, accompanying a buddy
of mine to the hospital. It's more of a precautionary visit, so
hopefully everything is ok. Basically, I'm getting bored. Brought a
binder full of readings and I just finished what I needed to read for
tomorrow (mostly).

So a rough timeline:
6:22 Arrival
7? Triage
7:55 I leave to go get dinner @ Aladdin's
9:45 Gets checked out
12:35 Done!

I hope I don't get sick from all these people coughing around me.

i'm amused

cons of the west coast

Sometimes I stay up late at night doing weird things like TAXES, and I find that sites start going down for routine maintenance at 1am or so. Knowing that I'll be moving to the west coast shortly, I'm going to start running into this problem three hours earlier. Why don't companies just do the maintenance starting at 3am or so? Sure, that doesn't really give you as much time, but I don't want stuff to be shutting down at 10pm!

Now that I think about it, I do recall that happening to me a few times. Annoying. Tonight's culprit? TurboTax. Somehow the site seems to be worse than what they had last year and two years ago. Lame. If Vanguard, Fidelity, and T. Rowe Price can port their data over, I may just leave!

Speaking of leaving, I'm getting more and more tempted to leave my trusty First Internet Bank of Indiana, who I've been with since 1999. I still love how they reimburse ATM fees (now including international fees!), but this whole credit card fiasco has me irked. The thing doesn't show up when I'm online, so I miss the statement. Yeah... I know. They send me e-mails about statements. But seriously, you expect me to go look at the statement when I can just see everything online? Oh yeah... I also can't pay my credit card since it's not showing up on the Web site. Can't transfer funds online if it doesn't have an account to transfer to! Top candidate to take the job: Everbank.