January 30, 2005
This week Microsoft is hosting its Mideast Developer's Conference in
Cairo and Bill Gates is here to give the keynote address. Since registration
was free, I thought it would be interesting to hear Gates in Cairo, so
I went to the conference center in Heliopolis. It was fun to see Gates
although the talk didn't go into anything really new, and was mostly just
a little pep talk for developers to use Microsoft products. I had to get back
to campus quickly for a department meeting, and hailed a taxi outside the
conference center. The first taxi didn't want to go downtown, so I hailed
another one, and asked, with my horrible pronunciation, to go to
Tahrir square downtown, to the American university. The driver nodded and
off we went. I felt we should be turning
the other direction and asked again about Tahrir and the American university,
and the driver happily nodded, indicating that's where we were going.
As airport signs appeared,
I figured we had a serious communication problem, and sure enough, he pulled
up to the airport and let me out. Even when I showed him my card with the
name of AUC, he still pointed to the terminal and said "American". When we
found someone to tell him where I wanted to go, he didn't want to go
there, so I now found myself at the airport, debating whether to chance
another taxi or see if I could get a ticket to a really familiar destination.
I decided to try my luck with another taxi, and this one did take me
downtown to the university. I got to the meeting late, but at least I
arrived.
They really shouldn't let me try to get around this country by myself...
Cairo taxis - you never know where you'll end up.
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