Life was difficult for an expat in those days. A simple example: We had no telephones! No, I don't mean mobile phones but simple, ordinary, land based line telephones. Not just at home but even at the office.

We were inundated by mosquitoes and had scores of anti-mosquito fume machines, which were almost more dangerous for us than the mosquitoes. I killed some 30-40 mosquitoes with a swatter each and every night before going to bed!

Electricity was lost almost daily. Then you drove up to the power bureau and with hand gestures convinced an engineer to come with you in your car to fix the main cables (again -and again -and again).

And the ants! We spent two months and numerous trips to Europe to little by little painstakingly bring the basic ingredients for a birthday cake to Egypt. Annette spent a whole morning making the cake and left it in the kitchen for half an hour to cool. When she returned half the cake had been devoured by millions of tiny ants. I came home to a crying wife.

Then there was the day I came home from the office to find the apartment empty but with blood all over the kitchen floor! Since we had no telephones I ran to the nearest EDC expat family to find out what had happened? As it turned out our maid had dropped something heavy on her foot and my wife had taken her to the hospital.

Assassination: We had a prime view on our rooftop watching the military jets stream overhead, practicing for the upcoming annual military parade. But on the day of the parade they abruptly terminated the program(?) Only later did we learn that President Anwar Sadat had been assassinated at the parade grandstand. To make room for foreign statesmen attending the funeral all hotel guests were summarily thrown out of their hotel rooms so we had several lodgers for a while in our apartment.

Or the riots? When they broke out all our wives and kids were urgently evacuated and rushed to the airport and put on any airplane for which we could get a ticket out of Egypt. My Danish wife wound up in Australia! For a couple of weeks we worked at night and stayed at home indoors during the day.

So who were the people around us in Egypt? These were early days so it was mostly colleagues from EDC or a handful of private, local friends, some of whom were part Danish.

Richard Self, an American, was managing director. He was married to Italian descent Maria and they had a little girl together. Richard was a big man whereas Maria was on the petite side.

Henrik Baller was a rig superintendent married to a lady from Columbia. Henrik made a fortune speculating in gold.

The other rig superintendent was Norwegian Evan Krogh, married to a lady from South Korea and with a cute offspring. Evan came from our operations in Brazil where he was involved in a self-defense shoot out and had to leave the country rather hastily.

It was incredibly rewarding to work with our Egyptian colleagues. Riad Warda, my chief accountant, Mustafa Badr, our personnel manager, and Hosni, our procurement manager just to mention a few. I often miss the good times we spent together despite all the difficulties we faced.

The photos is a mix of different events. Most of the close-ups are from a EDC employee party held in a desert tent, but others are from a business party and others yet from our annual, private Christmas parties at home.

There is a neat photo of both Maj-Britt and me smoking cigarettes at EDC's customer party -a habit we have both kicked since then.

Note the special atmosphere of having a party in a makeshift tent in the desert. the camels just accentuate the difference with the West.

The belly dancer is dressed more respectfully than normal since this was also a party for children.

The rare photo of O.Z. Cooper is a gem. "O.Z." actually wasn't short for anything -his parents simply named him O.Z. and that's how he wanted to be addressed.

The beer cans (Coors and Kronenburg) may appear "normal", but it was actually quite difficult for us to obtain any alcohol in this muslim country, so we truly enjoyed our beer and saved them for special occasions.