You spin me round?

When I took on the role of Director of Studies (by default at being the only one arsed to try and clean up the mess the department was in at the beginning), I had no idea my patience would be tested quite so dramatically by both teachers and students. We're running three different courses with 600 students spread over six faculties and 4 year groups. It's an absolute nightmare to organise, and not helped by a student appearing every 90 seconds to complain about a scheduling conflict or to register (now three weeks late) for a course. Add in a teacher who would rather have a chat and a fag with the students rather than actually plan a lesson, and I was as close today as I've ever been to actually snapping. My old boss Ferhana (who was exceptional at this job, and whom I have tried to model a lot of things on) told me a while back that the job would bring many challenges, which I would learn a lot from. She was so right.

Later in the day, after being summoned to The President's office, I met someone who was, apparently, the most amazing thing to happen to the American University in Cairo. Within a minute or two of shaking hands, she felt the need to impress me with her witless spraffing about how clever and great she was. She also banged on and on about how fantastic Egypt is, about the 'magic' and 'feeling' and all sorts of other guff. Christ, she even went on to say she'd never met a single expatriate who didn't think Egypt was the best place ever to live and work.

"You have now", I said.

Her business card has been filed under 'Twat'.

In other news, I had the best laugh of the month courtesy of an unfortunately short-lived carrot.