A about two weeks ago, me and my friend, Ahmed Farrag, ran into this very cool group of foreign students; Bernice and Elroy from Singapore and a bunch of Japanese students. Fortunately, they were all leaving Egypt on the same day. Farrag managed to contact them and knew when they were leaving and wanted to go say goodbye at the airport.
The two friends from Singapore were leaving at 12:30 PM. Farrag went and I really wanted to but I could not cause I had important stuff to do. He was able to find them and talked to them but in the strangest way.
They were already past the customs check point when he called them and because he couldn't pass over they had to talk to each other with the luggage scanner in the middle :D He even put the souvenirs he had for them in the scanner and let it pass to their side so they could take them.
The Japs were leaving at 5 and Farrag decided to wait at the airport until they have arrived. I thought maybe I could finish my stuff and go wait with them and that's what I did. It took me so long to get to the airport because it was so crowded. I had my laptop with me so I thought why not bring it up and do some work and for the first time I used my laptop on a bus. It was good to make use of the time I spent on the bus actually but the road was like lumpy and my laptop was shaking too much.
I finished some good amount of work though and I was happy about that.I arrived at the airport at 4:30 -too late- and found Farrag gone (He had to leave to work). The problem was his phone battery died earlier in the morning and there was no way to get hold of him or for him to tell me he would leave.
We were supposed to meet at the airport, meet the Japanese, go back to his work place where they were throwing him (Farrag) a welcome party to which he could invite people (me) and then go out. I ruined the first part of the plan by arriving the airport so late but I did not want to ruin the whole thing. I decided to go to Farrag's work place. I did know the where abouts of where he works but I did not know the exact address. I called a common friend and asked him and he told me where the building was. I went thinking I would ask what floor the company is when I reach the building and somebody would have the answer .
To my surprise, the building was composed of four different towers that just share one ground floor. Additionally, no one seemed to know what company I was talking about. Farrag's phone was still unreachable and the only way to find the place was to google it. I called my sister at home, gave her the name of the company and she googled it. She gave me an address and a phone number that turned out to be the ones I wanted. I called and talked to Farrag, finally. He came down to tell me that the party was over ( my second failure of the day). We then went up cause I wanted to
see what the place was like.
I met his boss and the company's co-owner, AUC computer science graduate, Mr. Ahmed Marzouk. He was very friendly and a very interesting person to meet actually. We had an interesting talk about computer careers. I told him about my decreasing interest in working in the field of my study, CS, and he was telling me I should stick to what I have been studying for five year now. He referred me to Islam, a co-worker of his and maybe a co-owner to whom I am to see him some time in the near future, hopefully.
We left, me and Farrag to where we did not know but we were going to hang out somewhere. We walked up a bridge that goes over the Nile to stand by its fence for a little bit and enjoy the scenery. Ahmed was wearing leather/classic shoes and he did not want to walk or stand anymore so we went to El Sawy Culture Wheel, a culture center, which was right beneath the bridge we were at. You can have a nice view of the Nile from there, too.
We went inside and ran into two high school friends of his, both named Ahmed, too :). They were attending this concert at the place and I was not interested so we left them. We sat down and talked and then his two friends came out, they were not so keen on staying till the end of the concert. We all sat down chatting about random stuff. They were from different back grounds, mass media and pharmacy but it was good talking with them both.
I don't know if that sounded like an interesting day to you, but it totally was for me. I liked how my day was totally spontaneous; when I woke up I was not thinking I would have such a a series of event in my day.
I met three new "potential" friends, had fun talking to Farrag, and I went to and back from the airport, like 32-kilometer ride, almost in vain but I did not beat myself up much about it (that's weird for me)..
P.S. A few paragraphs of this post were written on a subway ride to college...I think I began to type on the laptop in pub. transportation :D
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