Category Archives: Humorous

Sep 29 2011
2 Comments
Fiction, Humorous, Two minute read

A Word Problem: Sleep, Hopelessness, or Success

206.26 words…and it’s all in Arabic.

A word problem:

It is 11:50 pm, and an Arabic student has 206.25 words that she must learn for a test that begins the next day at 8:30 am. In order to pass the test, the Arabic student must go through the entire list of words at least three times, weeding out one third of the words each time. In the first round of reviewing, she has gone through 33.33333% of the words in 3 hours.

Currently, she is at 60% wakefulness. This percentage drops by 8% for every 30 minutes of studying.  If at any point her wakefulness drops below 30%, she will need to take a 20 minute coffee break, followed by a nap of desperation and then a slapping fit upon awaking. This will take one hour, and will raise her wakefulness to 70%, but after recommencing her work, she will move at a pace that is 23% less efficient than her original speed. Furthermore, her wakefulness will deteriorate at a new rate of 16% per every 30 minutes of studying.

One minute in every 6 is lost to facebook and email checking. Every 4 hours there is something new on one of these sites, resulting in the loss of an additional 4 minutes. The student must also write one email, which will cost 24 minutes as and result in a 30% decrease in concentration. The equation for calculating efficiency is e=chilz, with c=concentration, h=hunger levels, i=interest level, l=location, and z=zoo location. The email will be written when wakefulness hits 43%, but will also raise wakefulness levels to 55%.

Her current level of hopelessness is at 20%, but this rises exponentially as she continues studying, at a rate of x to the (1.3h). If her hopelessness ever reaches 80%, she will instantly go to sleep. If she sees her bat friend, it will result in a temporary boost of wakefulness and a decrease of hopelessness levels at a flat rate of 5 and 8 percent, respectively.

Will the student finish studying? If so, how many hours of sleep will she get if she wakes up at 7 o’clock in order to enjoy the new brand of granola her roommate bought?

If not, will she be overcome by hopelessness or sleepiness? If she had to complete at least 80% of the original amount of work in order to make an A on the test, with each ten percentage points below that corresponding to a lower letter grade, what will she make on the test?

What are ways she could avoid having this happen to her again, if the words were given to her over the past two weeks at a rate of 20 words per day, and if she is has 7 hours of free time every day?

Choose the answer that is most correct:

a. What was the question again?

b. Get back to work.

c. Really, you should stop blogging and study for your test.

d. Why are you still blogging?

e. All of the above

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Sep 28 2011
6 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, Open Letters, Two minute read

An Open Letter to the Youth Who Said He Loved Me

Who’s that girl?

Dear Motorbike-Riding Youth:

First of all, I would like to thank you for shouting “I love you” at me while I was minding my own business on the side of a narrow road in the mid afternoon autumnal heat. For a moment I had forgotten that I was a foreign woman, and you, having clearly never seen a foreigner or a woman before, were so overcome with true love that it inspired an immediate reaction from you that thankfully reminded me of my feminine, alien, identity. Moreover, I am no stranger to similar feelings of passion, especially for pedestrians, and so I completely sympathize with your socially inappropriate utterance.

However, if you would allow me to critique one aspect of your harassment strategy, I would simply like to point out that your outburst of passion occurred just seconds before you passed me as we were going the same direction. This means that you had only seen the back of my person at the moment you realized you had fallen for me. I, of course, am no Scrooge, and would be the last person to deny the possibility of love at first sight. That being said, in common usage first sight usually indicates some sort of eye contact or facial recognition, which then (if successful) progresses onto the collar bone and shoulder region or whatever pleases the parties involved. In contrast, you were brave enough to display your ardor heedless of what might have appeared on the other side.

I heard your zealous declaration first and then saw you zoom past me, as you continued on into the great wide world of Cairo. Before you turned out of sight, however, you must have realized your mistake. You doubted whether you could you actually love me without seeing my face, my features remaining unknown for eternity. Worse yet, what if I was wholly different than expected? Suppose I were actually an Egyptian man wearing a wig and Chacos? What if I had one large walrus tusk and a furry lip? A unibrow and scaly skin? Three eyes, a peg leg, and tentacles for a nose?

You realized quickly that you could not live with this uncertainty, and so turned around while continuing to move forward, all at once holding onto the past, plowing into the future, and throwing yourself into danger. Once you looked back, you saw that I was a foreign woman, just as you had hoped. It no longer mattered whether or not my features could be considered attractive, since they were non-Egyptian and female. You were content with knowing your love had been real, even if the interaction was all too brief. My advice to you for next time is to be careful of who you fall for, since you never know what they might look like.

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Sep 20 2011
10 Comments
Best blog posts, Humorous, One minute read, Stories

Purchasing and Eating a Sandwich

The time is 10:00 AM, EET. Class is over. I have 45 minutes before “education” begins again. I am hungry.

BOOM! This is me brushing past the security guards and striding down the street. My mind is one purpose. This is me and my stomach is growling, my sense of smell heightened at the expense of both sight and hearing. I am the closest I will ever be to being part of nature: I am the predator. I seek my prey.

The sun is merciless. Men in shirts with fake vests, middle school girls in fluffy white hijabs, middle school boys up to no good— I pass by them all, my mind interpreting their forms as big sandwiches. I come across all the usual obstacles— scalding patch of sand: crossed. Steaming pile of street trash: avoided. Slimy puddle: circumvented. Overheated puppies at the pet store: cooed at.

At last I arrive. I slide into the back of the small mob pressing against a shop no bigger than an Easy Bake Oven. I know this crowd: we sandwich mobbers all want the same thing and will do anything to get it. I edge in, my hackles and elbows raised. My ordering position seems quite poor. I languish in the back; I am in a forest of surrounding men; Arabic is not my first language; I prefer asking for things politely. All indicators point to failure.

However, these are only minor setbacks. I am still foreign, clueless, and girlish. My abject appearance incites pity amongst the lunching crowd. Other patrons ask me what I want or let me get in front of them, showing me where to stand in order to put my order in. Their pity is seasoning for my sandwich. It will salt my lunch.

Today, however, I catch Mr. Man’s eye from the back of the crowd, one lone Oklahoman in a haystack of Cairenes, and he knows exactly what I want. “One?” he says. And I nod. Seconds later his hand reaches across the sea of bobbing heads and I receive my prize: a hot Egyptian falafel sandwich. With my other hand, I submit payment. We nod politely at each other through the human undergrowth. He knows he’ll see me tomorrow.

BAM! I gobble the sandwich down, enter the university gates, and swerve to throw the trash away before heading back to class without ever easing my pace.

Eat fast. Play hard. Love bats. This is my life.

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Sep 15 2011
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Humorous, Lists, One minute read, Travelling

Follow These Rules and We’ll Get Along

all the ingredients for a weekend of fun

Some quick guidelines for my colleagues who are about to travel with me to Ain Sukhna:

1) As mentioned on this blog before, my mouth will gape open when I fall asleep, which will happen frequently and regardless of location. As soon as we enter the bus, I will be slain by the sandman. This will happen again in a much more literal fashion once my feet hit the sand of the beach. Feel free to mock me, because ultimately I know that through my slumber I am adding years to my life which I will use to make myself better than all of you.

2) I will drink coffee at five or six o’clock every day. If this does not happen, then I will become belligerent and refuse to speak. If a state of non-coffee continues to prevail, I will proceed to scream without stopping until coffee is brought and the coffee-hunger is assuaged.

3) On the beach, I will cover myself with a large scarf like a shroud. This is because I burn easily. It will look bizarre, but ultimately it’s a better option than making you stare at me with bubbly, oozy, burn skin.

4) My preferred breakfast partner of choice is my computer, which I will not have with me. Please do not interact with me unless you are first interacted with.

We can all have a more pleasant time together if these simple rules are followed, as well as the dozens that I didn’t have time to write down. Please make no mistakes. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Your colleague, who will be back and blogging come Saturday

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Sep 11 2011
4 Comments
Best blog posts, Fiction, Humorous, Open Letters, Three minute read

I’m Cute and Furry!

I live on Cairo’s streets! Love me!

Hello there! It’s me, your friendly neighborhood Cairo street ferret! You just caught me bounding along effortlessly.

Wasn’t that adorable?  Don’t you just want to die because of how cute I am! Did you see the way my body forms perfect mini-arches with the street as I’m springing along? Weren’t you reminded of the scalloped dye cuts that your mom used when she went through that scrapbooking phase? Some people have described my cutesy antics as magical, ineffable, and transcendental. For me, it’s just my normal life. Do you know what it’s like when people are inspired by even your most ordinary actions? Is anyone moved to tears or laughter at the preparation of your morning coffee? No? Well, this might be something we ferrets alone can understand.

When I saw you leave Cairo Jazz Club, I thought I’d make an appearance so you could know there is something beautiful left in the world. I was just over there by that pile of trash doing dainty ferret things when I sensed a smoky soul in need of a lift and then hop! bounce! There I was! And then I was gone! You don’t have to tell me how much you enjoyed seeing my amiable face and bizarrely flexible body. I’ve heard every praise known to man and ferret, so anything you say will be meaningless anyways. I’m glad to do this merely as a service for those a little bit more burden-laden than the rest of us in this city.

I know you Arabic students have a hard life, trying to make it off of a stipend that only supports a humiliatingly upper-middle class lifestyle, the exorbitantly expensive restaurants, country clubs, and apartments embarrassingly out of reach. You have to deal with nightly homework in a subject you specifically came to Egypt to study. If that isn’t enough, you have class a ridiculous four days a week, and only fourteen weeks of vacation out of the year long fellowship. So I get it.

You and I are not so different. I live off of street trash and car fumes. In fact, after the Ferret Council of 1974, street ferrets decided to evolve and can now digest most forms of Styrofoam and need car exhaust in order to survive. It gives us increased flexibility and fur sootiness. I, like you, also smoke people’s cigarette butts whenever I can find them. If I’m really lucky, I inhale the second hand smoke directly from someone’s mouth. That’s only happened once before and I don’t think the man himself understood why he was laying on the ground smoking a cigarette with a street ferret tickling his whiskers, but it was a pleasant, and maybe once in a lifetime, experience for both of us. I also live my life prancing around the streets of Cairo, my slinky-like body structure allowing me to be run over or stepped on without any damage whatsoever to my person, even though my pride is always hurt. The ferret rage comes afterwards, and sometimes I crawl into the hoods of parked cars and tinker with their engines just to show them. It’s eerie how much satisfaction I get from watching things burn. But that’s what this city does to you.

So…I’m getting bored with this conversation. You Arabic student types aren’t exactly skilled conversationalists, are you? Anyways, I’m glad I could brighten your night a little bit and I hope life gets easier for you. Really, I do. I hope someone finds you and decides to pay you for just being who you are and nothing else, since that’s what everyone deserves. If I’ve learned anything from Cairo’s streets, it’s that everyone is special.

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