THURSDAY THIRTEEN - Egypt Hotel adventures

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13 surprising things happening in our hotel

Our Hotel unfortunately had made a contract with a Russian travel agency, not thinking that these people couldn't leave their country for decades and have no education at all. Of course not all of them but certainly 80 %. They had to line up to get the simplest things and also had not much to eat. That's why they think when they payed for "all inclusive" all is inclusive.

Hurghada is a very cheap tourist place for sea, sun and good food we only payed 950 € for 2 weeks, flight and half board included. That's why Russia discovered Egypt because it is affordable. Yesterday I met two Canadian couples, and we have a little group of friends from Germany, Sweden and Finland too.

1. At the beginning we wondered that there were no coffee spoons until we were informed that the Russian tourists took them with them to furnish their home in Russia.

2. One day there are no cups, one day there are no saucers

3. They permanently run out of dishes, they are stolen and the Hotel can't follow with ordering new once

4. Napkins are a seldom luxury because the once in fabric disappear immediately and packets of paper napkins are taken away for other purposes

5.. If you don't arrive early in the restaurant, you will never find a knife, fork or spoon. They land misteriously in some pockets.

6. You will find twice salt in the holder or twice pepper but seldom pepper and salt. It must be the same for them

7. Glases have various forms. Or they are so big that they look like a bucket or so small like a mustard glass

8. Tea bags you only get on request, because when they were laying on the table they disappeared too. They probably think that as they payed for "All inclusive" they can take them home.

9. Be careful when you line up at the buffet, because they overrun you and push you aside to shuffle food on their plates. It doesn't matter what it is, fish, chicken, meat spaghettis, potatoes rice all together on one plate.

10. Beach beds can brake down under you due to the weight of a big Russian guy who used it before

11. Toilet paper, is something rare and only available on request. I don't know what they do with it

12. As they are not used to a toilet with a water container and flush, they pulled the whole cover out and broke it in the entrance hall restrooms.

13. Of course I first complained about this leak of service in a 4 * hotel, but when I heard that they can't buy quickly enough new plates and cuttlery because they disappear permanently , or repair broken things, I rather pittied them and laughed and told them that at least it's not boring here.

Since then we get first class service as soon as we show up, have own cuttlery, plates, tea bags big smiles and waiters dancing around us ! First class service and I have something to write for my blog !


and last but not least sunshine warm weather, palm trees and the blue sea !

Our "home sweet home" ! We prepare a drink in our (unused) kitchen ! We got a new sofa !

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

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13 funny Headlines

1. College Opens Doors to Hearing

2. Old School Pillars are Replaced by Alumni

3. Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

4. Bank Drive-in Window Blocked by Board

5. British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands

6. Air Head Fired Steals Clock, Faces Time

7. Lung Cancer in Women Mushrooms

8. Farmer Bill Dies in House

9. Teacher Strikes Idle Kids

10.Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash

11.Probe Told Miners Refuse to Work after Death

12.Drunken Drivers Paid £1000

13.Man Minus Ear Waives Hearing Deaf

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

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13 funny News headlines

1. Something Went Wrong in Plane Crash, Expert Says

2. Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures

3. Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

4. Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft

5. Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors

6. Miner Refuses to Work after Death

7. Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge

8. Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over

9. New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group

10. Kids Make Nutritious Snacks

11.Enfield ( London ) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide

12.Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers

13.War Dims Hope for Peace

THURSDAY THIRTEEN - Funny Gardening quotes

As in my part of the world spring finally shows up, I thought about

13 Quotes about gardens

1. My green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant's point of view.

2. Gardening requires lots of water - most of it in the form of perspiration.

3. What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.

4. There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.

5. Gardening is a matter of your enthusiasm holding up until your back gets used to it.

6. Weather means more when you have a garden. There's nothing like listening to a shower and thinking how it is soaking in around your green beans.

7. God made rainy days so gardeners could get the housework done

8. Don't wear perfume in the garden - unless you want to be pollinated by bees.

9. Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots.

10. Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden.

11. You can bury a lot of troubles digging in the dirt of your garden

12. Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise.

13. The best way to garden is to put on a wide-brimmed straw hat
and some old clothes. And with a hoe in one hand and a cold
drink in the other, tell somebody else where to dig.

THURSDAY THIRTEEN - Spring

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13 Signs of spring

1. The litterbox in the garage is less dirty

2. Cat Arthur started to check the neighbor gardens to see if somebody is working. He loves to help

3. I suddenly feel as if I have nothing to wear

4. I looked for shoes and trousers, eventually new jeans

5. The cashier girl who never talks and treats you as non existing, informs me suddenly that finally spring is coming and I can hear that she has a voice !

6. Dogs escape their homes and run free following their spring feelings

7. People are running around and ask where their dogs are

8. A magpie puts every day a little branch in my neighbor's stuck. I have to inform her.

9. Motor saws are singing all around

10. Women wash their curtains

11. Men wash their cars or let it wash

12. Garden shops are crowded as if everything was free

13. The air has a special smell

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

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13 things you don't want to hear during surgery:

As Mr. Gattino had surgery and feels well like a fish in water now, these quotes he certainly didn't want to hear !


1. Better save that. We'll need it for the autopsy.

2. Someone call the janitor - we're going to need a mop.

3. Spot! Spot! Come back with that! Bad Dog!

4. Hand me that...uh...that...uh.....thingie.

5. Oh no! I just lost my Rolex.

6. Oops! Hey, has anyone ever survived 500ml of this stuff before?

7. Damn, there go the lights again...

8. You know, there's big money in kidneys. Heck, the guy's got two of them."

9. Everybody stand back! I lost my contact lens!

10. Could you stop that thing from beating; it's throwing my concentration off.

11. What do you mean he wasn't in for a sex change...!

12. Anyone see where I left that scalpel ?

13. Don't worry; I think it's sharp enough.

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

13 Valentine Quotes

1. When love is not madness, it is not love

2. Loving is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction.

3. I don't understand why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine's Day. When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon.

4. Love - a wildly misunderstood although highly desirable malfunction of the heart which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow, blood pressure to rise and the lips to pucker.

5. Anyone can catch your eye, but it takes someone special to catch your heart.

6. If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

7. Take away love and our earth is a tomb.

8. anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.

9. Love is the greatest refreshment in life. (Picasso)

10. What the world really needs is more love and less paper work.

11. Like I've always said, love wouldn't be blind if the braille weren't so damned much fun.

12. A kiss is the shortest distance between two.

13. Love is the history of a woman's life; it is an episode in man's.

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

13 things I remember on Christmas

1. When my 3 year old son got an electric train and put his guinea pig in a wagon to have him "travel" ! Pitsou (guinea pig) liked to turn in circles !

2. When my darling 7 year old son put firecrackers in our open fire because he wanted that we had fun, we had fun indeed but not as he expected.

3. When my father (mother always agreed) grumbled about the electric candles on the Christmas tree instead of real once, the fact that we had a 1 year old boy who had just started to walk wasn't an excusable reason to him.

3. When he (mother agreed) also grumbled about the Christmas tree decoration because it was colorful and had a lot of funny cute little things for little son, to him it looked too common and not sober enough.

4. When I spend Christmas eve with my parents pretended to be sick at 8 pm and hurried home to (not yet) Mr. Gattino where we had a cute little tree and spend our first Christmas together.

5. When I saw Mr. Gattino's Nativity scene for the first time and thought it would take the whole living room when he started to put up alll the houses and figures !

6. When during the Christmas eve supper my mother always cried and left the table because my father showed his "caring love" by insulting her.

7. The face he made when my little son told him that he is very very naughty

8. The Italian swearwords I learned when Mr. Gattino put up the tree

9. When at the first Christmas in our new house the heating broke down and we were freezing and waited for somebody to come to repair it on Christmas Eve ! But somebody came !

10. When our dog ate Baby Jesus in marzipan every day and we didn't know who it was !

11. When I was wearing a long dress, stepped on the seam and fell in the tree.

12. When I saw the first Christmas tree my son had made up in London and pushed a scream when I saw it. It was the biggest and tallest tree I had ever seen in a private home !

13. The faces my men made when they stormed in to see what had happened to me !

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

You probably have met some blogging cats during your walks through Blogville. They really exist ! There are cats here in Blogworld who have their own blog and write about their lives with their humans. They sometimes have a very own language which is hard to understand for me, since a dictionary "cat english" doesn't exist yet. The blogging cats also have special names to call the humans they live with. Here are 13 examples !

1. Mom & Dad (about 80 % of the cats have forgotten their birth parents and call humans now mom and dad)

2. Can opener (very logical)

3. The Big Thing (from a cat view, yes)

4. Beans, Mom bean, Baby bean etc (A mistery to me why beans ? I even looked it up in Wikipedia and only found this explanation : Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants, broad beans having been grown at least since ancient Egypt, the common bean for six thousand years in the Americas)

5. my servants (logic)

6. my staff (fully agree)

7. The food lady (right)

8. OTW- Opposable Thumb Wench. (no comment)

9. Mrs Nice (would fit on me)

10. My butler (posh !)

11. My humans (that can't be denied)

12. Milady (very posh !)

13. And to give you an example of the cat language : "U wook vewy cyoot in ur santy paws owtfyt! (mommie finawy splaind da chrissymas ting to me) Maybeee ur mommie culd use sum matchink yarns to help wit da bewwy stwap. Den no wun notyce it dunnot fits ryt. Hopes u gots yummi tweets fur ur ferst modling jobbie!" (My excuses to the concerned cat, I stole it from her blog !)

I only wonder why all cats speaking cat language apparently have no teeth ! They say fankyou, and fink about a fing.
Fortunately my cats are too lazy to use their paws on a keyboard for typing (for walking on it, yes) and I have to tell their stories.

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

Usually in the evening we have our supper while watching TV. When you have a good "chance" then you can watch a CSI series. In French it's called "The Experts from ... (Las Vegas, Miami, New York etc) I like these series because it shows what today's science allows to solve a crime, e.g. to find a murderer just with a little piece of a toenail. I also admire this ultra modern scientifical instruments. The only problem is that you better not watch when you eat. For some people it could be dramatic ! Here is the description of one evening :

13 things while watching a CSI series

1. When cutting off a little piece of my steak and put it in my mouth, a car explodes on the screen. While I am masticating I see a completely burnt person looking like a too much grilled part of a barbecue with pieces of skin hanging from his face and other body parts. Big zoom on the burnt face to make it more fascinating.

2. While I swallow my piece of meat, big zoom on another face, even more spectular, no lips anymore and pieces of raw pink skin are visible. Apparently that makes it more colorful for the film director.

3. I take a little of the roasted potatoes, that fits in the movie. Suddenly in the to black burnt head 2 eyes open wide ! They look horrible without eyelashes. I swallow my potatoe, the eyes were blue.

3. My eyes still fixed on the screen, and masticating mecanicaly, I am now in the pathology and the burnt corpse lies naked (except the private parts of course, the film could be forbidden) on a table but you had the satisfaction to see all other burnt parts in all details.

4. The pathologist opened the chest with something I had missed, because I had cut another piece of my steak.

5. He tores the cut appart and I had the opportunity to see a lot of in blood swimming mashed things. That makes me think that I have to buy ketchup.

6. While I am busy with my vegetables, the pathologist announces that he has to amputate the fingers of the still living person. Meanwhile they had found out that it was a woman something was missing.

7. Unfortunately I missed the amputation because something felt off my fork. But then I saw one of the CSI man holding the cut fingers in his hand and big zoom for the watching public. They looked like burnt hot dogs.

8. Meanwhile the pathologist had found out that the dead person had been shot before he had burnt in the car

9. To make sure that everybody could see exactly where the bullet went in and where it came out he took a long stick and put it through the two holes. From the back to the chest. I masticated my steak, unfortunately no en brochettes, that would have been more adequate.

10. The woman had been rolled up in bandages and looked like a mummy. Big zoom again on the open naked eyes in the white wrapped head. I took another piece of roasted potatoes.

11. While I ate peacefully, the mummy was unrolled and lie now in full view on the operating table

12. The pathologist pulled off the burnt skin with a pair of tweezers and again a big zoom on the raw flesh.

13. The movie continued that way and after exactly 45 min the killer was found. (And our supper finished)



Moral of this TT for all Americans and Canadians celebrating Thanksgiving, don't eat your turkey when you watch a CSI series on TV!

I personally don't understand why it is necessary to show all these disgusting details ? The series would be much nicer without. Not everybody is able to make the difference between reality and fiction.

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

13 Things about my holiday location Hurghada in Egypt at the Red sea
1. Hurghada is an artificial town not older than 20 years. It really started in the 90th.

2. Built in the dessert around a very little fisher village

3. all hotels are built like little villages surrounded by a wall. The entrance is everywhere like a check luggage point in an airport. Tourist police is everywhere and in every hotel. Egypt is one of the safest countries for tourists.

4. There are to 90 % only 5 * hotels. All are looking like oriental palaces.

5. There are many jeweleries, more than food shops

6. A big airconditionned shopping mall has everything a tourist heart can wish and to very cheap prices.

7. The main street is very large and looks like a Christmas decoration in the evening

8. You can visit and eat in the restaurants of the different hotels and also attend the shows.

9. There is nothing historical in this area

10. You can make quite a lot of excursions, a ride on a camel and watch the sunset in the dessert, join a submarine by boat and admire the coral riffs and colored fishes, or make an one day excursion to Luxor and visit all the temples and historical sites.

11. In our hotel is as everywhere a program to entertain the guests the whole day with gymnastic, watergym, waterpolo, belly dancing and a lot of other things.

12. The food is excellent everywhere in all hotels and you have a lot of choice. For a real good menu with drinks you can count around 7 euros ! It is cheaper than eating at home.

13. I just watch the belly dancing women, one had just her breasts jumping out of her bikini top and I have to stop I laugh too much !





The tourists, Ilona, Chantal and I

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

For other Horror Stories please go to Mrs. Lifecruiser"

These are 13 very scary events happening in one night !




I think there are a lot of people having the same problem. They lay in bed and with open eyes they listen to a noise, a very special noise, it first sounds like a light tiger's purr, then like a defect car motor and then like a power saw ! From patient listening you suddenly develop murderous intents : Your parner snores !

1. You whistle. Your partner stops for a second, and continues

2. You push him with your ellbow he stops and growls and .... continues

3. You use your ellbow again a little stronger, he stops growls and turns around ... silence and then starts again

4. You sigh and think about times when your partner slept like an angel with a peaceful happy face and didn't make any noise besides a soft breathing

5. You can't do anything else but listening and it gets louder and louder. You kick your partner with your foot, hard ! He grumbles, sighs and turns around

6. You start to get angry you can't sleep. You throw the covers away and get up. No changement. You go into the kitchen and drink some water

7. You come back, the noise is still there. You jump in the bed, he jumps too stops a second and continues

8. You take your pillow and put it over your ear. Nothing to do the noise has increased slightly

9. You take a book and slam it on your partner"s head. He stops opens one eye and asks you "Is there something darling ?"

10. You mumble a negative answer lay down, sigh and try to sleep but your ears are watching for a noise

11. It starts again ! He snores and snores peacefully and from time to time he champs with satisfaction

12. It gets louder and louder now the level on "power saw". With rage you take your pillow and a blanket and flee to the living room on the couch. But you still hear the noise in your mind ...

13. In the morning you sit at the breakfast table with dark rings under your eyes and a pale face you yawn and feel so tired. He comes in looking fresh and rested and asks "Did you sleep well Darling ?"

That's enough !!!

You jump up, take the bread knife and stab him. Now he lays on the white kitchen floor in a big pool of blood the knife in his chest his fresh looking face now white, just like yours.... He will never snore again ! *

*Don't worry this "happy" end is only for Halloween

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

13 nicknames for the neighbors

Now that I am not working anymore I have time enough to listen to gossips and here are 13 names given by children or others to neighbors which I repeat with my venomous tongue !

1. Children call one neighbor "the old asshole" because he always shouts at them and chases them away

2. There is one who is called the "Elephant" because when he sneezes the whole neigborhood is jumping into the air

3. One is called "the draft" because she always is in a hurry

4. One is called "the tattletale" because he is aware of everything and everybody and if you meet him you have at least for half an hour to listen to his news.

5. There also is a man called "The Newspaper" because he informs you of everything going on in the neighborhood.

6. Children call a woman "The boat" because when she walks she swings from one side to the other and is quite fat.

7. They also call another one "The wine bottle" because every morning she goes out for buying cigarettes and comes back with a bottle of wine

8. There is also one they call "The high fart" because she is very snobbish and doesn't look at anybody

9. We also have a "mother hen" because she is always busy to look after her children and of course bothers the others

10. "The beauty" is a man who takes himself for a superstar and makes everybody laugh

11. "The busy bee" is a woman who is cleaning all the time, especially her garden so that everybody can see her

12. "The accountant" is a man who always wears a suit even when he mows his lawn

13. Children also baptisized a man "the ape" because he is quite hairy

Unfortunately I don't know how they call me !!!