It’s just not fair to have a place’s reputation affected by how the observer feels at the time of the “observing”. And so, I should not let my personal (positive) feelings reflect positively on Cairo – but last Saturday was the finest day that I have had here in five weeks. Beautiful blue skies, pretty much clear of haze, perfect temperature, neither hot nor cold, and Cairo just seemed (for Cairo) “peaceful”. Was this only because my world was looking bright in many other ways?

Cathy joined me in Cairo on Saturday and that is just fan-@@@@-tastic! She safely made the long and exhausting journey and is now installed here for a while. Our good friend came with her and she will be with us for a while also – so a double treat. Also, a number of work colleagues have arrived or are about to arrive from Rome, so things are really “bopping” now.

As is the wont of our unpredictable lives, all my plans to meet the two girls from Brisbane at the airport came unravelled at the last moment when I received an invitation to a weekend work meeting that I couldn’t refuse and that coincided with the time Cathy was touching down in Cairo. So I sent a car out from the hotel. They were great and have given us very good treatment.

The other reason that I am “cock-a-hoop” is that the meeting was crucial to my time here and went far better than anticipated. In fact it was all but perfect. This means that the remaining time I have here will be much more productive and I can really see us getting somewhere.

But I still think that the air was clear and the sky was blue by anyone’s measure.

I dined out a bit last week and enjoyed some new experiences. We also visited Khan el-Kahlili bazaar, a popular haunt for the tourists. The bazaar is tourist-centric but still fascinating with a huge network of shops spread out over a large area but with extremely narrow alleyways. There are loads of shishas, scarves, jewellery (variable in quality and cost but including solid gold), brassware, perfumes and ornate perfume bottles, galabyas, and antiques. The most delightful of these are the spice shops with their fragrant aromas and bright colours. The bazaar also includes what I am told is the oldest, continuously operating coffee shop in the world – El Fishawy – variously reputed to be between 300 and 600 years old with continuous service as a coffee shop. How about that! It is a Mecca for tourists who want to boast of a Turkish coffee at El Fishawy’s.

The bazaars or souks are institutions of “haggling”. The process usually goes something like this – “I give you a good price – come in and have a look” or “Where you from?” for every possible answer the inquirer has a cousin who lives there - most commonly for us, Melbourne or Sydney. John Howard might be keen to see Australians taught history, but the geography of the touts in the souks is pretty good. They do get a bit stumped with answers like “Bulgaria” or the “Falkland Islands”. The slightest hesitation to look at something for sale marks you as a “mark”. A machine gun of sales pitches follows until you ask “How much for this?”. Expect to hear an amount that is about three times what you would need to pay. Idle inquiries when you have no intention of buying usually expose something like the true price as you walk away. A series of discount price offers will follow you. But it is a bit hard to pursue the haggling too much because, at any of the prices, most items are cheap.

On the night we went to the souk the shopkeepers seemed in holiday mode with very little banter coming from them and what there was often was just playfulness. Did I previously mention in my blogs that the Egyptians generally have good senses of humour and enjoy a laugh with you? So some of the statements were “Come in here and give me all your money” or “Come, take a look everything is free today”.

Nearby are the more orthodox markets where the day to day necessities are actually bought. The butcher shops with the carcases halved or quartered and hanging on hooks outside. The poulterer who will sell you a chook that you can have a conversation with before you depart and it departs – killed and prepared to your instructions. Tailors, tinkers, interspersed with mobile phone shops to bring one back into the 21st century with a thud.

And always there are young men rushing earnestly with a tray carrying two or three glasses of tea or pots of Turkish coffee. I never see where they come from or end up. They are surely not doing it for exercise but clearly there is some form of cafeteria delivery service near every street corner. Incidentally, the offices here (my office certainly) have cafeterias on site where a range of food s and beverages are provided. A quick phone call with have it delivered to your desk and a bill appears once a week. Better service than most Brisbane office blocks, what!

A long walk along the Corniche on Saturday night to show the newcomers Cairo by night (before they collapsed with jetlag), a day’s outing for them to the oldest of the pyramids, and dinner with a group of 8 on the “Blue Nile” a floating restaurant (or series of restaurants) completed the week.

So, will my bride’s presence distract me from blogging to you? Hopefully not. Maybe I can convince her to contribute her experiences to the Douglas Report.