I made two commitments yesterday (March 5), and I’m feeling much better for it.

First, I joined a gym — the one at the Marriott, Zamalek Island’s swankiest hotel. The gym is basically a large garden with a huge pool in the middle, half covered and half outdoors, with a weights room attached. You have to apply to the gym, though the main criterium for acceptance seems to be an ability to pay. In any case, I didn’t have to wait for a response to my application; I was allowed a provisional swim and workout. This did wonders to my increasingly bedraggled physique. Cairo is many things, but a park it is not.

Also today I paid a deposit reserving my room in a shared flat, into which I will move as soon as I am back from my trip to Sweden and Budapest at the end of March (for meetings). One flatmate is a Croatian woman studying Arabic; the other is an Italian woman. The languages we all have in common, more or less, are Italian and English, so I am looking forward to resuscitating my ailing Italian skills.

The apartment is massive by Swedish standards, on the first floor of a four-floor building in a very short street and quiet, across from a small local hospital. A week ago, I would have called the state of the building dishevelled. But that would have been before I arrived in Cairo. Now I think it is clean.

Tomorrow, I will make another commitment: I will order a 2-mbps broadband connection for the apartment, which conveniently will take as long to install as it will take me to move in.

So, how much does all this set me back? Here it gets interesting (sorry if it wasn’t before) because the prices are a good indication of Egypt’s relative scarcities: For the gym, I will pay EUR 110 per month. The shared apartment? EUR 150 per month. The broadband, which is the absolute fastest you can get here: EUR 90 per month. A grand total of EUR 350 per month.

Comparing to Stockholm: Apartment: EUR 700. Gym: EUR 65. Internet: EUR 30 (and for a godlike 100 mbps). A total of EUR 800. That leaves EUR 550 extra per month i savings to spend on flights to Europe, which I might if work weren’t paying for those.

I intend to get a tutor for learning Arabic, but my main constraint is time. There is so much to do, both for work and outside it, and just 24 hours in a day.

I know, I know, no photos. I will remedy that at the earliest opportunity, and georeference the pics in Google Earth