Trigger thumb, mosquito bites and other assorted minor ailments

I had a look at my blog post list a minute ago, and discovered to my total amazement that my blogs have been read exactly 3000 times. I'm overwhelmed and delighted about this. As I haven't written one for a while, this prompted me to get my ass in gear. So here is the news.

I was meant to start my new job with the British Council on 3rd January, but a comedy of errors ensued and I didn't start until the 6th January. I arrived back from the UK late afternoon on 2nd, and dutifully texted my new boss to ask what time he wanted me to start the following day. "Oh are you starting tomorrow?" he replied. "I thought you were starting on 5th!" I asked if he wanted me to start on the 5th, secretly relieved, as I felt pretty knackered from the journey. We agreed I would start on the 5th. It was not to be. I spent the whole of the night of the 4th and the morning of the 5th throwing up. I did actually consider trying to drag myself out of bed to go to work, but decided that having to rush to the loo every five minutes was not the first impression I wanted to create. So I reluctantly let them know I wasn't going to make it in. Luckily I felt too ill to be worried about how this would look.

I still felt pretty crap on the 6th, but I had at least stopped throwing up. Unfortunately, on the night of the 5th, a mosquito had snuck into our bedroom unnoticed by me (I'm usually pretty good at spotting the little f***ers but I can only assume one of them took advantage of my distressed situation) and had to go to work with my top lip and left eye swollen and red. God knows what they thought. Botox gone horribly wrong maybe? I really wasn't myself that day but luckily most of it was spent doing administration type stuff and observing a training session. Then the 7th January was a national holiday for Coptic Christmas, so my first week at work ended up being one day long.

I really needed the three days off because then I caught the worst cold ever in the history of colds. It also progressed backwards - it started with a cough, then a sore throat, then a runny nose and sneezing. I think I must be run down or something because I don't normally get colds. I still haven't got rid of it in fact. Added to this list of minor ailments and mosquito bites, I have also got a condition called trigger thumb. I'm absolutely convinced this was caused by a mad cleaning session I had in the apartment just before I went back to the UK. I always knew cleaning was bad for you. I've got to go to the hospital tomorrow to have that looked at, because it's really painful when I write, which is a bit of problem when you need to write down a lot of new stuff because you've just started a new job.

But wait! There's more. I went to my dentist in Scotland while I was back because I had an abscess. I've got a bridge over a two-tooth gap, and apparently the roots in the two retaining teeth at one end of it have died. As it was Christmas week, I couldn't get it done in Scotland, so I had the daunting prospect of finding a dentist in Cairo. This turned out not to be as hard as I thought it would be. There's a dentist opposite the hostel called (wait for it) George Edwards, who is, in fact, Egyptian. He was lovely, and a great dentist. So out of all these ailments, the teeth turned out to be the easiest to resolve.

I came to the conclusion that things could only get better on the job front, after starting a day late with an upset stomach, unfortunately located mosquito bites, trigger thumb, a hideous cold and a huge abcess in my mouth. Sure enough, I started afresh on the Sunday, and this week has been really good. The people seem to be lovely, the office is great, the job so far is well within my sphere of expertise, and I can sit out in the sun to eat my lunch. So I am feeling positive about it and hopefully this will continue. Insha'Allah as we say over here.

I'm also going to start an English class tomorrow to keep my hand in with the teaching. They are a lovely group of people and I think they'll be good fun to teach. The slight issue is that our dining table and chairs haven't arrived so my classroom will be a bit makeshift. They were supposed to arrive on Tuesday. In a totally unsurprising turn of events, they didn't. And I STILL don't have a dishwasher, or a phone line. On the plus side I do have some lounge furniture, so we don't have to use plastic garden chairs and a plastic stool as a table any more. As it happens, the couch is also meant for the terrace, but as we're still waiting for the other couches, we're using it instead. Our coffee table is traditional arab style and is hand crafted to an original design. You can see it in the photo. At least when stuff does eventually arrive it's of great quality. We are getting there slowly.

That's pretty much all of my news. My next blog post will be about the things I have learned about myself in the last 12 months. I didn't think I had much more to learn about myself, but moving to Cairo has proved me wrong.