Up At Night Again

I'm so bored right now. I'm having a bad time using Azureus to download torrents. My anti-virus program might be blocking it, it's been giving me warnings. So I've de-activated it for now. So either Azureus will work better or I'll get hit with a virus. It's lame to even try to download stuff with the connection I've got. But after three days I did download a whole Blur album, I just made the mistake of downloading one of the crappy ones. The gimmick should work better when I get that UPS back. Takes the piss to be able to seed for others but not to leech back. If I was coming close to my upload limit that might of been a problem. I don't really know what my upload limit is from my ISP.

I've got some port problem too. Mar might be able to fix that since he works in a company that provides internet to internet providers. He's invited me to come over to his office and slap on my list of requested torrents there.

I've been going to the loo alot today. Don't know what's up with that. I think I'm just having trouble holding it in. I'm sleepy too. Eyelids are heavy. I wonder how I'd feel after letting a poo loose.

I'm going to go crawl into my bed with my guitar and strum randomly for a bit and fall asleep. Things to do tomorrow: Fuel the car, take pics of bro's house under-construction and study for Sunday's risk-management test.

Taguchi

Friday Morning, woke up during a dream about not having enough time. Looking back at yesterday, I'm still finding it hard to believe that all I ate was shawerma sandwich, and I'm still not hungry. I've been falling asleep with no trouble at all lately. The night before last, I just fell asleep sitting with my feet up on my couch.

Fortunatly the commercial law teacher didn't show up yesterday but did have my total quality management test. All the teacher gave us was two questions. And I had think I had most of the material down, except the subject relating to the first question (What's the Taguchi method, it's principles and shortcomings) which after speaking to the teacher I had understood wrong. I even cheated in the exam, and ever so blatantly. Fortunately I didn't catch the teachers glance of disapproval because that would've made me feel bad. But the friend from whom I was copying did. And he said it was funny. Unlike everybody else in the class, I'm not so discreet about cheating because of my lack of experience.

I spoke to the teacher after the exam, I told her I was worried about not being able to pass her subjects (total quality management and marketing). She seemed to be surprised that I was worried. And she basically said that she'll help me out with my grades. I also got her to explain me that Taguchi method stuff.

After that my database teacher wanted to have a word with me about my Arabic. She told me that while reading my enigmatic test paper, she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. My general excuse for not being able to learn Arabic, is that Arabic is bleeding hard language and the unavailability of any courses designed to teach Arabic as a second language anywhere in Iraq. But I can honestly say that I give it the effort that I should. The simplest thing I could do is read the newspaper, but I can't be bothered.

Okay I'm hungry now, I better get myself something simple to eat cause I should be having lunch with Od and his old school gang. And oh my god I've got a risk management test after tomorrow.

Before I Go To College

Don't have much to say. I couldn't be bothered to take a shower this morning so I've got a few extra minutes of free time before I go to college.

My motivation to study is awfully low. I went over to Enie's, one of my classmates, yesterday so that he'd teach me the material for tomorrow's commercial law test. We read through a couple of pages and then called Suzy to ask her something about the material. She told me that somebody said that the test got postponed. We called up different people, nobody seemed to have heard that the test did get postponed but everyone we had spoke to did want the test postponed. Well that was the last little push for me to not to bother studying.

I've been speaking to Enie about what's going on between Suzy and me. He's been under the impression that we're a couple. I myself don't know what Suzy and I are towards each other, certainly without any kind of physical relationship (i.e. I haven't even kissed her) it seems pretty hard for me to say that we are a couple. And then she sent me a generic sms message saying that I've been 'loaded into her heart'. At the time she had asked me what I thought of it, I replied that it was cute. Enie thinks that was my chance to crystallize the relationship.

When I ask her about us ever wanting to go out together to a restaurant or something even if it did include her brother and other friends, she tells me that she'd never. What's the point of a girlfriend if you can't spend a good time with her? Enie suggested that Suzy and I might have been wanting/expecting different things entering the relationship. Well wherever the two of us are in regards to each other I don't want to tamper with it until perhaps the end of the year.

I've also got a total quality management test tomorrow. Haven't been able to bother myself memorizing the material. I have to memorize it because I don't have the language skills to express in my own words. It would've been a piece of cake otherwise. So far all I've done is read through the material once. And there a few things that I didn't understand.

Dissolute Diarrhea

Shat on myself as I was waking up yesterday. Diarrhea. Freaked out this morning when I found out that I still had it. I went to a street where more than half of the shops were pharmacies to get some Imodium. It was nearly 9 O'Clock in the morning and every single one of them pharmacies were closed. Mobile phone shops and grocery shops were open, but god forbid that a pharmacist should get out of bed to open his store. It's like Fridays, pharmacies are closed on Fridays here too, where's the sense in that? Iraqis must obviously not get sick on Fridays. Well I did end up finding a pharmacy open in my own neighbourhood and luckily enough it had some Imodium.

Since I was incarcerated at home yesterday (because of the diarrhea), I spent most of the day practising on my guitar using on-line resources. I spent alot of time looking for something that I could find useful, eventually I ended settling for GuitarNoise.com. I copied some chords into a notebook and practised them. I also tried taking the lesson on how to play "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd, but gave up because I couldn't figure out which way to strum.

So I got to college in time for the second period and didn't miss anything in the first period because it was used to give some of the students a chance to take a test they had missed during Easter. I'm so overwhelmed by all the material I ought to study by the end of the week. They don't give us alot but it's in Arabic and it takes me ages and ages for me to study something in Arabic. I'm not so confident about passing this year.

After college I dropped off my faulty UPS thingie for the second time, picked up some pizzas and went to see K. It's a shame I've only seen him once since he got here about a month ago, and he'll be leaving again in a week. We talked over a few games of poorly played pool. It's sneaky how K would tell the most important things about himself by the by. I think it was while we were talking about Tania (my junior-high crush) that he told me he's planning to marry that girl that lives in Germany he got to know on-line a couple or so years back. He's gone so far as to introduce the mothers.

Regarding Tania he had caught her on-line and began talking to her by congratulating her on her engagement as a joke, Tania responded with surprise by how he had known that she had indeed got engaged a couple of weeks ago. So yes she's really engaged. K suggested that my chances with her are therefore all over. But to see if I still had a chance, I made a test of fate based on whether I'd get the 8 ball by rebounding it on the opposite end of the table and into the corner pocket. I got the ball in, and therefore proved K wrong.

I've learnt two new words recently that were used to describe me: callous and dissolute. Hans called me callous without meaning it in a bad way and someone who read my blog called me dissolute. I recognize myself as being callous, I just didn't know the word. On the other hand, I'm still trying to deal with dissolute, I'd admit that I've proved to be dissolute on more than one occasion, but I don't enjoy being dissolute. I don't enjoy being callous also, but I don't mind being called callous. Being callous is something I've come to terms with a long time ago. So about being dissolute, I think I've got the choice of trying not to be dissolute or coming to terms that I am dissolute. I guess I'll be thinking about that...

I'm done thinking about it. I'd rather admit being dissolute than make any effort to not continue being dissolute, I just hope that life stops putting me in situations where I'm put to the test.

Grumpy Mornings

During the last week I bought a guitar. A classmate and I are planning to take lessons together. I've got no musical talent whatsoever but I'm up for anything to kill time. A couple days ago a computer virus that I had got bad enough for me to spend a whole day to get rid of it. Interestingly I wasn't the only one infected by it, a couple of friends and an internet cafe had been hit by it too. If you happen to have problems downloading files, computer restarts, your folder options are missing and can't edit your registry you might have the same worm. So here's a link for the Brontok Worm fix.

Nahida has been unbearably annoying lately. Just now she asked me if I was aware of the time. Of course I am I've got a bleeding watch on my wrist that I never ever take off. And during the day she can't go on without yelling my name every half hour. I really wish I could shut her out.

The weather had a little schitzo trip during last week. We had rain, crazy loud thunders storms, painfully warm weather, duststorms and cool overcast days.

Well I'm late for college. There are no classes today (but I didn't tell that to Nahida). The 4th year students are celebrating their graduation today. It doesn't make sense to me cause I don't think they've actually finished yet. But I guess it's a way for those that are going to fail to not feel left out. The rules on the dresscode are going to be relaxed and it might also mean that I can walk in with my camera and take some pics yay.

And It Rained This Morning

Riding in the cab to college this morning I realised that I had forgotten what it was like to watch rain. The feeling of being subdued. The peace that comes along with watching rain. The compulsion to remain silent, and just contemplate the world around you as it deals with it's environment. Some were ignoring the rain, some wore raincoats, some were covering their market stands with clear plastic sheets.

Warm Weather

The weather is beginning to become uncomfortably warm. I turned on the airconditioning in my car today. In my experience it's only effective on highways. It might be time to try to see if dad can afford to buy me another car. Techinically I've never had a car of my own. I've been driving my dad's car. I wouldn't want to imagine what pile of junk my dad would buy for me. And a little voice in the back of my head gets slapped for saying: "If you'd work you'd get a car that you'd be happy with.".

Didn't have time to eat before going to the dentist so I didn't bother going to him.

I really need to get back into the student routine i.e. wake up early and study at home. I really need to grab hold of that marketing teacher for help. I should've gone to college today in the hope of finding her. I have to admit I haven't been so nice to the teacher. I've been venting alot of my frustration from not understanding in her class.

I'm going to grab my notes and read now.

Slow Day

I haven't left the house today. Now it's too late to go out. I should've gone out for a walk. I was so lazy today I even had an afternoon siesta. But I did study some marketing today. I didn't really study, I just tried reading the textbook. It's not making much sense to me. Alot of the time I just guess what is trying to be said in the textbook. How easy it would be to be studying in English. I hope I finish the whole distribution chapter by tonight. You know it's bad when you're hoping for something that's within your power. On second thoughts since it's midnight now, I think I ought to sleep instead.

I just tried calling Farah just now. Her phone was unreachable, sent her an SMS instead. I'm only just starting to make an image of her in my mind. She's been forced to skip alot of the innocence that's usually associated with an Iraqi teenager girl. I don't know what else I can say about her. I don't really want to pass any judgement on her yet. She's great in many ways, I don't think I've yet got to know her as well as I could though. I don't think I'm emotinally attached to her yet, and I don't think that it should become the case considering she's already engaged. Anyway, she's leaving for Syria tomorrow. She invited me over there. But I can't go.

Tomorrow's going to be a fun day I think. I got a dentist appointement. Oh no, that reminds me! I need to get some food down my throat before I go there. I don't want a re-run of the last time, when I went to him on an empty stomach and he told me that I can't eat for the rest of the evening. Come to think of it, he did a really shoddy job of the last filling he gave me. Damn it he destroyed half of one of my teeth in the process. The damn filling wasn't just inside the tooth, it shows from the tooth's side too. Well I ought to call the dentist to tell him I might be late. And I'll need to sort out some food too.

Yay Farah just came on-line. She's not gone yet. And she just got disconnected. And she got disconnected again, she's been having trouble staying connected with it lately.

Oh and yeah apparently AsiaCell does have a GPRS service which makes yahoo chatting work on her smartphone. I'd be tempted to switch but smartphones are too big. Whatever happened to the Motorola StarTac? The last one I saw was tiny. That was a cool phone. All the Iraqis here missed out on all mobile phones produced prior to 2003. Iraqis spend so much money on their mobile phones, especially since they don't get to pay a subsidized price from an operator. They don't remember a time when it was just cool enough to have a mobile phone to make calls with, now it's got to have a camera and play songs out loud.

The electricity has become really bad today. It's like an hour of electricity for every 6 hours. Are people turning on their air-conditioners already? I'm getting hungry. I ought to look for some milk. And damn it's getting late (1:30 AM now).

I Got Played And Survived

Oh yeah! I'm alive and safe. There was nothing to be paranoid about after all. After an hour of being half awake and wondering where the hell was my phone this morning, I got up and found my phone underneath the couch which I've turned into my bed. A few missed calls and a SMS message asking whether I was coming or not that was sent an hour earlier.

So I called up Farah (the chick who left the message and that I was supposed to meet today), I told her that I had just woken up and that I could be on my way over to pick her from her place in an hour. She was cool with that.

Yesterday she had told me that she wouldn't be able to make it because of her period. I told my bro and Kiki, the two people I had told about the story, that it was then off. My bro was surprised to find that all my worrying ended up being worthless, and Kiki was relieved for my sake. However, later yesterday night she had changed her mind, and told me that if she was feeling better tomorrow she'll give me a call to tell me to come over to pick her up.

Since I hadn't updated my bro or Kiki, I called up Od on the way to hers to tell him that I was off to meet some chick and that I just wanted to tell him so that someone knows what I'm up to should the worst arise.

I followed her directions, and wound up in a wide road. I called her up to tell her I was in her street. She told me she just spotted me pass by as I was talking to her so I turned the car around and drove slowly backwards. She popped out of a house and climbed confidently into the car. She seemed quite happy and at ease. She was prettier than her pics of herself that she had sent me.

I thought we were going to have lunch together, but she had already eaten. Which left us with no options that would come to mind as to where we ought to go now. I ended up driving to the other side of Baghdad trying to think of where we could sit and enjoy a coffee. I never thought it would've been that hard. Eventually I gave up and decided to go to some fancy yet low profile restaurant.

The choice of restaurant was a stroke of genius. The last time I had walked in to the restaurant was shortly after the end of the war, my friend and I ordered bottles of wine. That was then, so when I noticed that the men (there were no women there) in the restaurant were drinking tall cans of Heineken I was pleasantly surprised. I ordered a bottle of Lebanese white and we ordered some salads to go along with that.

She drank only half a glass, she had told me that she liked red, but I didn't think that someone liked red would dislike white so much. So either she didn't like the white or she just didn't want to get wasted. I sure as hell got buzzed much faster that I usually do. We didn't eat much of the food, we spent most of the time chatting about school life. I started joking about how if she didn't drink her share of the wine, I'd be drinking hers and would get all drunk and then she'd have to drive. So when the waiter was about to pour me another glass she told him not to.

She then suggested that we leave. That was cool with me even though we left the bottle of wine unfinished. But I did get a bit tipsy and my driving wasn't too great after that. We hadn't planned over the phone what to do after lunch, she had said that she'll make up her mind then. Now we were driving back to our side of Baghdad, I suggested that we go to my place and so we did.

Now what's up with girls handing out chewing gum before making out? I hate chewing gum. And as far as I can tell I don't have bad breath. Sure I smoke but is that such a big deal. Now that I think about it, I don't remember where I chucked my chewing gum.

On s'embrassa beaucoup et pour longtemps, on était les deux hesitant de coucher ensemble à cause de ses règles. Bon on a essayé tout de même et ça n'a pas durer, elle a cru que j'ai eu un problème à le garder soutenu mais c'etait pas ça, j'ai simplement fini très tôt. Comme c'est décevant!

After all that, I drove her back to her neighbourhood and dropped her off near a clinic where her mum was supposed to be to do some tests.

I drove over to Od's after that and since I was starving I took with me to Ali Al-Lami's supermarket/take-away restaurant. We drove up from the opposite side of the street and parked there because there was a car parked in front of the restaurant thought to be a car bomb surrounded by cops and a guy with a body armour vest with Iraqi police EOD (forgot what that stood for).

Od spoke to a shop owner where we had got out of the car. I was drunk and didn't care if there was a car bomb. Od felt that it was safe enough to cross the street and get that sandwich. We got us each a shawerma meat sandwich and ate them in front of the place. Od did a little monologue(if that's what it's called) that went something like this:

How do we live in Iraq? We go to Ali Al-Lami to eat shawerma. There's a possible car bomb parked in front of us. But we've got a bush in between us and the car to protect us.

After we finished our sandwiches, a woman who seemed to be the owner of the car showed up.

I'm Being Played

Alright to be honest, I'm not so cunning with the ladies, matter of fact: I'm bleeding incompetent. To demonstrate how bad I am: I once unwittingly walked out of a threesome. So when a contact on my yahoo list that my sixteen-ish cousin added on my yahoo messenger starts hitting on me, I fall for the bait.

My cousin was her classmate in primary school, but they weren't friends. I think my cousin got her yahoo id from a friend of his. I would say it was a rather routine chat at first until she asked if I could call her and meet her. After chatting some more and then leaving her to chat with Nisrine and some crazy Turk that wanted some business suggestions about what to export to Iraq, I called the chick up. And crikey all that heavy breathing on the phone is such a turn on.

We had a brain dead conversation that was full of her heavy breathing. She speaks some English which was great. She told she was 18, but I'm not buying it. Her yahoo profile says she's 17. But she sounds alot more mature on the phone than that. Or maybe I've got all my bearings wrong. I'm a bit confused about my age myself, hanging out with class that's 5 years younger than you could do that I think. When she said she wants to meet me, that's when it gets too good to be true. We're set to meet on the 9th, still got to arrange all the details.

Okay there's alot that's dodgy about this girl. Her dad died a year ago, she got an arranged engagement following that to some guy that she doesn't want, there's the age stuff. Her mum is sick and therefore she and her mum are going to Syria in a few days so that the mum and can get some medical attetion.

Oh and I think she's lying to me when she's telling me that she's using her AsiaCell mobile phone Nokia 6630 to chat with me. We don't have such phone services here do we? And there's no mobile phone logo next to her name on the yahoo list.

She might be trying to put me in a marriage trap. Or even worse, I've got my bro's wife saying that girls are being used as bait to kidnap or mug boys. I regard my brother's advice very highly. He told me that I should make sure I'm not followed and take an odd route to my house, if I were to bring her to mine. He also suggested that I take her to my dad's empty house, but it's unfurnished.

It really sucks that I have to be paranoid for my life to get some action.

Who In The World Is Nahida?

Well since Anonymous gave me such good advice about what router I ought to have bought, I think I owe him a response to his/her question about Nahida. I was seriously considering getting the Linksys WRT54G. It was the one model I had looked up intensively on the internet. Yet to see if the model available here in the market is pre-version 5. But oh yeah, I'm definitely going to buy it even though I don't really need it any more. I'm thinking of using it to play Mario Kart on the net with my DS, just hope it'll work better than it did with my dial-up connection. And if the Linksys would work with my ISP using a static IP instead of PPPoE, I'll be able to get a slightly better download rate with my present ISP.

Anyway, so who is Nahida? She certainly is an important character in my life here in Baghdad. To be honest I don't really know what the whole deal is with the woman. So don't be asking me questions beyond what I already know.

The house I live in used to belong to my dad's mum. As my grandma was getting old. She decided to rent out the top half of the house to Fozzy and his wife Nahida to have someone to help her out. My family was in the UK when all this was happening. So my grandma passes away sometime in the early 90s while I was living with my dad in Paris. Fozzy and Nahida stay in the house.

Then around the mid-90s my dad decides to returns to Iraq and moves into this house. So to put it simply Fozzy and Nahida just came with the house. Sure enough their relationship towards my grandma had established themselves as friends of the family. I didn't come follow my dad to Baghdad till a year later.

My very first impression at the sight of Nahida was that she was some kind of spy. I was 12 and all my thoughts about Iraq were strongly influenced by the cold war for some reason. Such cold war paranoia wasn't discouraged when people would whisper bad words about Saddam even in their own homes.

During the following 2 and a half years, I had a much more healthy relationship with Nahida than I do now. Sure I'd yell that I'm thirsty all the time and she'd bring me a glass of juice or something. And it came to down to her having motherly feelings towards me since she had no kids of her own (something wrong with Fozzy's willy after a fall from the 3rd floor during some revolution). But we still had a kitchen downstairs and I'd often do what I can with it.

Fozzy and Nahida assisted my dad with a lot of things, and at some point Fozzy became my dad's man at the farm running the whole show. When I came back to Iraq in 2002, I wasn't on good terms with my dad and lived them instead of downstairs with my dad. That's when my relationship began to turn even more uncomfortable with her. The expression 'familiarity breeds contempt' comes to mind.

There are things that really piss me off about Nahida. For example, I hate it that so much of our stuff is tucked up among her things or how she has to influence anything that's going on. She sticks her head into everything and anything. She'll do stuff with my stuff that without my permission. Recently she took some new pants that my dad had brought me that were too big for me to the tailor who did an awful job on them. And she's so unorganized it's crazy, especially in contrast to my own mother. Oh and she's got this obsession about keeping the curtains closed during the night which drove me so crazy that I removed the curtains from my old bedroom upstairs.

Now my whole family is in the UK and Fozzy is at the farm most of the time leaving the house to Nahida and me. I've moved downstairs but half of my stuff is still upstairs. My dad hasn't given me any responsiblities and for good reason too. I've got a strong record of being irresponsible. Therefore Nahida is responsible of managing my money and stuff for example.

Nahida now does alot for me: waking me up and bringing me a mug of coffee in the morning, bringing me food when I'm in jail, cleaning up the house, doing my laundry, processing any of my government documents, bringing gardeners and plumbers, cooks my food, the list can go on and on. It would be easier if I were to mention the few things I do and say she does the rest. I do most of the shopping and I get petrol for the car, she does the rest. Oh and she's got her extended family and the Sudanese dude that lives with us to help her help me.

So why can't I get rid of her? Well I can't kick her out of her home which is the top half of the house. But why don't I limit my dependency? That's actually feasible. I could start doing all those chores that I rely on her to do by myself. But it's too difficult. The lazy side is too strong in me. It's too difficult to give up all this luxury. And I know I'd be a better person if I was to rely more on myself, but I'm too weak. And it's not as if she's encouraging me to be more independent.

Ahhh finally! Nahida got me my food.

PPPoE For Me

After a number of days of fretting about which wireless accees point to get to use as an ethernet client, I got a SMC piece of crap access point for 80 bucks. It turned out that I wasn't fretting over nothing. I spent all of last night trying to get the bleeding thing to work last night. Today I gave up on a simple WLAN connection and tried connecting to the ISPs PPPoE service, called the ISP and asked for a username and password.

My Sudanese buddy just knocked the power cable of the access point, and I got disconnected. This thing doesn't put the mind at ease. And it's so annoying having to dial-up. And it ain't that fast! It's just a little faster than a modem connection. Still it'll save me 50 bucks a month. Paying for dial-up internet top-up cards cost me a hundred bucks for a month of use. This internet service should cost me fifty bucks.

Well as long as I don't ever have too much dialing-up then I guess it's not too much of a big deal for now.

I was going to buy a guitar yesterday but didn't find an electro-accoustic Yamaha. The shop I had went to had mostly some other brand that I had never heard of. There's a Yamaha dealer near my home but he's been closed for days. Maybe I ought to ask the neighbouring shops what the deal is.

Nahida went off to Basrah to go see her brother yesterday. I can't imagine what it's like for him. The summer is coming tooHe's been in American custody for about a year. Well, I always like not having Nahida around. She left me some good Kubba to heat up in the microwave for whenever I'm hungry. The one little hitch is that the power has been scarce of late.

And since Nahida wasn't here, I didn't wake up to go to college today. And I had four classes today!

Oh great the electricity is back and I'm famished.

Gypsies And Palm Readers

I just had a couple of memories. One was of me going or coming back from Jen's place (she wasn't home that day). Her home was in the 'white sands' (I think that's what it translates to in English). I was a bit bummed out. It was raining lightly and sporadically. I was sitting on a concrete bench, when an old gypsy lady came up to me offering to tell me my fortune. I don't really remember the how the dialogue transpired. All I had in my pocket was a five hundred Lebanese Pounds coin (about 30 cents). She agreed to read my fortune in exchange of just that coin.

She looked at my face and maybe my eyes. She took a look at my palm. She had made some pretty good presumptions of who I was. And what I remember her telling me was that a curse had been put on me by the father's side of my family. She told me that she could remove it for 10,000 Lebanese Pounds. I reminded her that I had given her all my money. She told me that I could find her here again if I was to look for her and with that she left.

The other memory took place a few years later, shortly after coming back to Iraq in 2002. I went to a fair at my old school. It was a gorgeous day, I was bumping into old classmates that I hadn't seen in years. I had my hand read by a teacher that I hadn't met before. She told me told me that I'd always have money at hand. That was a comforting thought. Never lifted a finger after that.

Now here's the mystery... why didn't I have the cash to pay that gypsy 10,000 Lebanese Pounds to remove that curse? It frustrates me, because I really do feel that I've been unlucky for quite a long while. I'm still waiting for my luck to turn. Still it's pretty hard to gauge how my luck is. I'm getting no where in my life, but on the other hand, I'm still alive aren't I?

Bullocks! I forgot to call dad and do an April Fool's prank on him. I was going to tell him that I had got married optionally to some girl that I got pregnant. Dina told me not to do it because, my dad at his old age might get a heart attack. I ought to leave out the pregnancy part. Anyway, I'm not going to forget next year. I'm putting a Yahoo! calender reminder.

Marketing

Been studying Marketing all day. I spent alot of time watching the tellie and mucking about on my PC too. Just finished the Pricing chapter in the book, that being the only chapter in the book that I read today. It's not easy for me, I have to keep opening the dictionary to look up words. And sometimes it can get really hard when there are two words in a sentence that have several meanings.

Had a good idea of how to get lots of people to open bank accounts by providing a bargain mobile phone service with the hitch being that you need to open a bank account to pay for it. The idea being a remedy to people's lack of trust in banks as a result of the '91 war and what other naughty things Saddam did. Unfortunately, I don't think the government would accept another mobile phone service provider. Oh and the trick is that the mobile phone company deals exclusively with one bank. That wouldn't be fair of course, but I think you can get away with it here. But you'd be expecting to get exclusive mobile phone banking services, which could be cool.

Wikipedia is a great help trying to understand some of the stuff that's being said in my Marketing book. I'm starting to get suspicious. Maybe all the author did was paraphrase everything from wikipedia. Heck if I was proficient in Arabic, that'd be a good idea to make some money.

Well anyway, since I'm done studying I can finally re-open that bottle of Chivas that I bought yesterday.

A few days ago, I went to get a filling job done on one of my teeth. The dentist was reluctant to do it, saying it was still early and that the filling that I had already on was a super duper one unavailable in Iraq and must've been done abroad. I just wanted to get it over and done with. It came down to me not being a regulart tooth-brusher and on that basis I should get the filling done now. Now what I didn't know is that I was not to be allowed to eat for the remainder of the day. And I just so happened not to have eaten anything up till then. I was shocked when I found out, then I became angry. I wasn't supposed to chew, but while having a fit with the kitchen door I clenched my jaw, and a little later I started to feed thin strips of sliced turkey breasts into the opposite side of my mouth.

Wow! Whiskey tastes so much better with ice.

Saw this Lebanese guy called Amin Maalouf on Hardtalk extra on BBC World today. He seemed to be a really nice guy. He's an author. I'm going to buy one of them next time I have the chance. He was on about how this century is proving to be really depressing. And that this will be a century of 'identity', as oposed to the last century of 'ideology'. The critical difference being that one can't have a debate over identity as one may with identity.

Whiskey really tastes good with ice. I wonder if I'll be able to enjoy it during the summer. I'm sure I will be if I'm not here.