Conversations, conversations

*Me and Sally talking yesterday!* Me: I need to get drunk tonight. I am feeling depressed Sally: Why? What's wrong? Me: Well, it's the referendum thing. (confused silence) Have you read my blog Today? Sally: Nope! Me: Well, it went badly. NDP people attacked Kifaya demonstrators, some of them were police in civilian cloths; they attacked foreign press people, and beat up women and tore their cloths off. It was nasty. Sally: Well! Ehh, what did you expect? I mean , did you expect it to go smoothly and for it to be really democratic and stuff? Come on, you know better then that. Me: No, no, I didn’t expect it to go smoothly. I knew that shit like that was gonna happen. It's just… Sally: What? Me: They beat up women. They beat them up and tore up their cloths . That never happened here before. I mean, this is Egypt, we don’t do things like that to women in public. It was never this low, you know? And that's what's depressing me. You know? Sally: I know.. I know!

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*Me and Emi walking from Sequoia to the car last week* Emi: Yes, I am a socialist democrat, and I am proud to be. I even worked for Paul Wellstone. How do you like that Mr. Heartless libertarian man? Me: you worked for Paul Wellstone? Really? Isn’t that the dude that died? Emi: Yes, and I even worked on the Mondale Campaign. Me: Mondale? The geezer? really? LoL. Emi: Don't smirk like that. We are right and you are wrong, and one day everyone will know it. Me: Oh, really. Ok. Hold on one second. (Calling for the kid walking behind us) Yanz, Yanz. Come here for a second. (He comes over) Yanz, this is Emi. Emi, this is Yanz. Yanz is from East Germany, so he lived half of his life under communism, and the other half he has been living in unified Germany as its government became more and more socialist, so you can say he knows all about this from First-hand experience. Yanz, Emi is a socialist and she thinks everyone should become socialist. You two talk now. ( I ran forward, and I almost fell on the floor laughing when I heard Yanz scream..) Yanz: COMMMIEEEEEEEE!

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*Me and My Aunt today* Aunt: Did you hear? They announced the results of the referendum. 83% said yes, not like before when it was like 97% and 98%. This means this thing was legitimate. I am so glad. Me: Allright, I will ignore the legitimate part this time and let's assume that 83% really said yes. 83% of what exactly? Do you know? Aunt: 83% of the people who voted. Me: well, how many are those exactly? Do you know? Aunt: to be honest, No! Me: OK, there was 53% turn out in this referendum, so the 83% you are referring to is 83% of the 53% turn out. You follow me so far? Ok. In this referendum the government says that there was 23 Million registered voters, because most of us couldn’t get registered anyway, and 53% of those 23 Million showed up at the polls. Out of those 53% who showed up, 83% voted yes. So in Reality, its more like 9 million people saying yes, and speaking for the 72 million of Egyptians in this country. That's slightly more the 10 % of the population deciding for the rest. Aunt: Oh. Me: It doesn’t look that good when I put it this way, huh?

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I need to take a break from politics, cause I talk about it way too much. Hmm…