I'm here at the farm again. Hopefully this will be the last time for a long time. I've brought my new camera with me too. So hopefully, there'll be lots of pictures to post.
Sunday, February 07, 2010
At The Farm Again!
Jobs In Baghdad
So I've been looking for a job and I've found a few links to job postings that might be useful to other Iraqis that have a good working knowledge in English and fluent Arabic (what I don't have).
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Karada Market
Waking up in the middle day, that's a luxury! I just woke up and had my dump with a cigarette. Fixed up my Zippo, the one that my friends in Lebanon gave me about ten years ago for my Birthday.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
400 Posts or Why I'm Afraid To Go Back To The UK
Having a British passport and staying in Iraq is one of those things that people find strange in Iraq. Nearly everyone's asked me why do I stay. I've come up with a million different excuses to tell people some maybe true, most of them probably not. I'm not even sure which ones are true anymore.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Get a Job?
My dad let me have some money, not much compared to what I was expecting from our agreement that he's chosen to ignore. As a result, I don't feel myself obligated to the plantation any longer. And so, I'm supposed to be looking for a job now and a whole bunch of other things such as, the trouble is that I'm high. Right now I am.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Happy New Year!
The club was fun. I saw women! I also popped into the bar every other moment to grab a drink. Later hanged out with Od and Zaif. We took a drive around and got a bite to eat. Poor Od's got to go to work in the hospital tomorrow.
The curfew tonight's still midnight. One would of thought that they'd make an exception on New Year's! So here I am back home, it's midnight... Happy New Year!
Getting Close to Number 400
The sun's about to set on this last day. Keeping it going with the nostalgia, I've got my old laptop playing old songs that I haven't heard in a long time. A lot of which I listened to while smoking up copiously such as I did ten years ago and that I'm now. The speakers on this old thing are so much nicer to that that I've been accustomed to. I've barely done any work ever since ending the harvest and I've been getting high instead. I must take down a notch the getting high act, but for now I'll leave that till next year. Maz just called, we're going to go to the local social club. Might see women there! Haven't seen them for a while.
Something To Work On
Got some stuff to fry up for a meal. It's been a struggle to feed since I'm in Baghdad and Nahida's still at the plantation. Nostalgia's good. I'm working my old laptop now. Most of my blog has been done on this little one. It's hard disk growls these days, angry that it's been woken up. I hate my other laptop that I've been using for the past year and so. It's got Vista. It's also larger, heavier and has bad speakers.
I wonder what I would have blogged ten years ago. My life seemed like a big mess around about back then, and it's funny to see after all this time, I'm suddenly finding myself in a big mess again with no idea what to do with myself. I know I'm going to do something silly over the next four months or so. But for now, I've turned myself back into a glorious sloth again.
The electricity is back and it's time to start frying food...
Still no improvement on my puff pastry frying skills. The pastries nearly look burned on the outside but there's a big layer of pastry on the inside that isn't getting cooked.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
I Love My Dad
I can't sleep. But looking at this page is having is starting to make me a little sleepier. It could also be because I just smoked some hash I carefully scrapped from an asthma inhaler that was not big enough to hide some hash and had some bits still stuck on the inside. Yes I've run out of hash for the first time in over a month and I might be feeling some withdrawal.
Had the most annoying phone conversation with my brother; annoying, because the line kept dropping. I've mentioned that I had made an agreement with my father for 30% of the plantation profits. Now my father, is backpedaling on the deal. That's not unexpected of my dad, even my brother told me to make sure I get the cash.
My brother is now acting as an intermediary between my father and I, and we spoke today. The conversation was filled with some very good jokes. Such as dad's carrot on a stick or his offer of either a dick in your mouth or a dick in your ass. My brother added a hand job from a leper as an another alternative.
In each of their prolonged NEET-ish lives my siblings have ultimately been disowned by my father. The best thing to happen to them I think. My brother for example, was promised it all, a house, a new car, financial support and then ended up marrying the girl he loved penniless. Sure enough I've been hearing the same promises and now, he's offering ten million dinars instead of the instead of 30% of the profits for the work I've done for the past year or to take a hike.
The sun's come up. Sleep will set in soon.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Beans
It was a long harvest, 30 days long. Thankfully, heavy rains didn't come pouring down till the night of the day we finished. Sure enough, I was on my way back to Baghdad the next day. After doing some quick sums, it looks like our sales of our crops are going to double this year.
Coming back to Baghdad after such a long time at the plantation made me notice a few changes. Such as the traffic is now even more horrendous than before I left. It took me over an hour to drive into my own neighbourhood and to my house the day I arrived.
Od arrived from Lebanon the same day as me to hear that one of his classmates got shot while riding with someone else who seemed to be the target. He also got engaged to what seems as like someone that can cut through his bullshit which is a good thing. Every guy needs a woman like that.
It's very early in the morning now, I'm hungry and I think that Qaddori's opens at 6:30 AM. So I better hurry up this post to get there and eat some beans. One other change that's taken place in Baghdad is the popping up of small take away pizza places. There might be two or three in my neighbourhood. Up until now, nearly all burger/pizza restaurants have had sit-in areas. They still have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the pizza however.
Ever since coming back, I've kept myself busy. During the day I've been getting things done. The first thing I did was go to the phone company to pay my phone bill which for last month was about 160 bucks chargeable to the plantation. The girl that prints out the bill is so cute. She looks like she's in perpetual mourning because she's been wearing black for the three months since I started with my billed line. She was also not wearing any make-up and she doesn't need to because she has pouty lips and rosie cheeks which is something somewhat rare here. She was the first pretty woman I got to see for over a month.
There's something wrong with the SIM cards we get. They've got no theft protection at all. You might know that if you type in the wrong PIN number several times that it'll then stop asking for the PIN number and won't work unless you type in the PUK number. I've learned that the PUK of all 078 numbers is eight zeros, thereby defeating the purpose of the PIN number and there's no way to change the PUK number either.
For a change, I'm not feeling bored. Instead, after coming back, I got swept by a big sensation of loneliness. I guess I've been lonely most of my life and that most of the time I'm just used to it. I'm thinking that as soon as I've cleared up all immediate work related to wrapping up the rice season that I might go take a vacation and see my family back in England.
I'm getting too hungry to continue this post. I'm going to roll myself a joint and go get me some beans.