Patio

Yawn. Get a drink... Got drink and got a couch out onto the patio. Also got some bird seeds, the kind that Remy was addicted to, that Miz left over when he had lunch at my place today.

Nahida woke me up today to get some petrol. There's been somewhat of a petrol crisis for the past week and I haven't been bothered to get into any extra long queues preferring rather to take cabs should I need to go some place instead. Petrol is also needed to run the generator. A day can go by without any electricity from the government these days. I can't remember how long it's been since I last I had a shower. Which aside from the sometimes itchy scalp, isn't much of a big deal since the weather isn't so hot as to cause profuse perspiration. For the past few days we've been using black market petrol for the generator. Can't use black market petrol in my car because every time I did it screwed up the injection system in my car.

Oh crap! the generator ran out of fuel just now and my stereo stopped too. And I can't hear the birds chirping any more. Instead I can hear the sound of the neighbour's generator, the distant mosques yelping and rounds being fired. Oh here's a little bird, it's got a black head and white cheeks and it's friend is here too. Got to feel sorry for the birds with having to put up with all the noise we make.

So after Nahida and I spent over half an hour queuing for some petrol and got home, Miz called and then came over. I told him that the queue at the petrol station wasn't long, so we went off to fill up his car too. Came back, had lunch, watched an anime together and the beginning of The Machinist. And then it was time for Miz to go back home so we copied The Machinist to his portable hard disk along with a bunch of other movies before he left.

Ran out of battery charge but now I'm back. Still outside, it's night time now and I've got the driveway lights on. My generator and the other neighbourhood generators are on, but I can still hear my stereo from the living room. My stereo which is my iPod connected to half of my Creative speakers. I must say it's nice to be outside. The weather is only a tiny bit cold, but the whiskey in turn compensates for it. The setting reminds me of the one time I made a house party at my place. Sure enough all those people that came are no longer in the country and having a house party is no longer possible.

Some punk just threw a handful of pebbles into my driveway. First time that ever happens. And I didn't pop my head over the gate straight away because of the possibility that the punk is carrying a gun. I turned off my music went back outside and shouted 'speak cowards' with no answer. Then went upstairs to tell Nahida and her brother what had happened, they came down to take a look at the street with me. The street was empty.

Well on one hand it could be considered insensitive that I'm sitting listening to loud music on a day when Shiites are mourning for the death of some dude over a thousand years ago which in my opinion would of course be better spent mourning for the Iraqis killed daily. But the music isn't so loud as to be considered disturbing the peace. Nahida's brother concluded that it's just a youngster that peeked over my gate and thought it'd be fun to startle me with some pebbles. Nahida is on the other hand is freaking out a bit because it's the first time something like this has happened in the nearly 30 years that she's lived in the house. But sure enough during the past few years a lot of my neighbours have left and have been replaced with dodgy folk.

Well anyway, screw all that. I'm still outside drinking and listening to music but with only one driveway light on. Sure wished there was a gun in the house though even it was just for the sake of just scaring such a punk away like Nahida's brother suggested.

Oh well it's been a couple hours since the pebble throwing incident now. I'm hungry and sleepy now so I'm going to drag my comfy seat inside and get warm. I wonder if Nahida's started making me food or not.

I'm now thinking that I'd fit in quite well with those apocalyptic folk down south. The ones that are suggested to be the ones that were thought yesterday by the government. Because they're all about committing sin to bring forth judgement day. And in a muslim perspective I'm really good at that.

Iraqis Have Trouble Distinguishing Ps and Bs

The weather has become much warmer since Thursday. Good thing. Some time during the past week a petrol crisis began again. Bad thing. I haven't electricity since yesterday morning. Bad thing number two. But there is a bright side to not having electricity and no petrol to run the generator: I'm getting time to practise my guitar exercises.

Not much I want to vent out today. I spent last night complaining to Nahida that I need to get myself a couple of whores. She's generally against the idea but I went on and on anyway.

I've had tests everyday of the past week. So far I've failed one and passed another from the week before. I've got another test on Sunday. Everyday of last week I went to Dudu's house to study. One time I came back at around six in the evening, when I got home Nahida and her brother had a quick rant at me of how dangerous it is to be out so late.

Yesterday I spent some time with that girl I mentioned a couple posts ago. This time we exchanged numbers and I got her name by asking what to add her as to my phone's contact list. She wasn't reminding me of some pretty girl this time, this time I was focused oh some stubble above her lip and her chubby fingers. Last night 'Rea' sent me a SMS message saying: "Good night, my pest freand.". Now why the hell did I ask for her number?

There's this other girl at college that I've had my eye on for a month, and I've been making a lot of eye contact with her. On Wednesday, she was standing on her own and I kept walking towards and away from her too shy to go up to her to say something. So when I got home I decided that the next time I see her I'll go ahead with it, I even had an idea of what to say after talking to a couple of friends. What those ideas were, I can't remember now. One thing I have decided is that I'll be aiming just to making a new friend.

A bunch of things are bothering me about myself of late, and it's really hard to confront myself about them. Things like not being able to pick up on my own emotions and those of others and failing to act in the moment.

Teacher's Lesson

Yay I'm drunk again.

Well to get a couple of things out of the way: Had a big fit with Nahida when she said she wouldn't allow a classmate come over to my place because of where he lived. And India didn't go to Germany to do a training course but instead bounced to Sweden to seek asylum. Someday I might be bothered to elaborate on those two.

I called up Hans a little earlier since he's my favourite to get drunk with. He's been on my case for months now trying to convince to leave Iraq and come back to the UK. He's so worried about me that he called up my mother to check I didn't get blown up in the Mustansiriya slaughter. I explained to him that as long as he was getting any sex in London, I can be assured I'm not missing out. Explained to him that I'd seriously consider leaving if the civil war comes to my neighbourhood which involves people getting kicked out of their homes based on their sect.

I need some more chilled out music. I'm listening to some of the tracks of the Donnie Darko film score. Need to get some more music like that. The point of what Zed and I were trying last time was to figure out some way of downloading torrents from a remote computer so that my ISP wouldn't complain about overloading the server. I'm thinking of making a couple of stops near some music shops in the days to come, I hope to find something.

Over the past year, different people have made the same remarks about me that I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with. One of them is that I'm sneaky. The second is that it's hard to tell if I'm telling the truth. The third is that I have no emotions. The fourth I'm not really sure about, but it's something to do with insisting that I'm right sometimes.

The third one: feeling no emotions, is I guess the one that leads to the others. I could probably count the number of times I felt a pure emotion during the past year with my fingers. I mean for example I couldn't feel anything when I heard one of my classmates died in a car accident on his way back from Syria a couple of months ago.

Of the moments I did feel an emotion, saying good-bye to Hans at the train station when I visited him in Sweden. I'm not sure why that happened. I had met up with him in a bad state. Being with my family in the UK prior to seeing him wasn't a good thing for me. Sweden that summer was the furthest point of my travels and as I was on my way back to the UK I saw the UK as one stop before coming back to Baghdad.

One bitter-sweet moment was when India chatted to me for the first time from Sweden. I was happy for him to have finally made it there with the hope that he'd make for himself a new and better life than anything he could have hoped for here. It was also then that I told him out of my blog which of course he already knew about.

Bleach episode 111 has finished downloading, so that's it from me. I'm going to watch it and go to sleep. Was supposed to have a test tomorrow for which I'm not entirely prepared for but a bunch of classmates contacted me to tell me that we're not supposed to show up tomorrow so as to avoid and the test and have it postponed.

I'm Fine

I wasn't going to make a post but Zed chat messaged me and then another kind reader e-mailed me to check if I was okay. So to keep anyone else from holding their breath, I'm posting to say I'm fine. It wasn't my college that got blown up, it was Miz's. Miz is fine though because he left before it happened. He tells me that it was the evening class students that got hit. I didn't even hear about what happened till I chatted with my mum a few hours ago and she told me about it and then another friend in Dubai told me about it and the number of people that died and injured which was when I remember to call Miz to see if he's okay. Then India came on-line from Sweden. I assured him that Miz was fine. I'll get back to India in my next post since I also forgot to mention him in my last post. What struck me about today's bombing was that there was that flyer being e-mailed around about a month ago that warned people not to go to college because they'll be attacked, well they took their fucking time to carry out the attack didn't they, so much time that myself and I imagine everyone else thought that the warning had expired. Well I'm exhausted now, I was planning to study hours ago for tomorrow's test but people kept showing up on-line one after the other and I was compelled to chat with them. I just spent the last hour and a half with Zed with him explaining to me what VPN is and all sorts, we even had a go at some program called Hamachi which worked but then not really since I've got such a pathetic internet connection. Oh no I can't believe it there's a random Skype contact that just added me now.

Tad Late

Write a post or practise guitar exercises (something I haven't been doing enough of)? Write post first.

Saturday: Nahida and I picked up my aunt and grandma and took them to my dad's friend who owns the crummiest excuse for a hospital. The benefit of which was that should the need ever occur we'd have established a relationship so that we could if there need be in the future have one of his doctors come to and visit my grandma at her place which is very close to the hospital. Grandma turned out to not have anything serious we even had her take an x-ray just to make sure. We then dropped her off at her place.

My aunt wanted us to leave herself there and then come back and pick her up again. I had prior plans to have lunch with Od and Naffer and Nahida wanted to get back home too for what reason I forgot. The idea of coming back to my grandma's which is a long drive away was a bit inconsiderate. So my aunt didn't stay at my grandma's and came along with us. And to further assert that I wasn't her driver, after we had picked up the electric generator from the repair shop, Nahida came up with an extra chore that involved driving about near the green zone looking for a house. Driving around near the green zone is something anybody would rather avoid. We even came up with another little extra detour just before getting home too.

Unfortunately lunch with Od and Naffer didn't happen because Od got busy repairing his car near his home and Naffer thought that since Od was in the middle of getting his car repaired we wouldn't make it in time to get home safely. I was really looking forward to having lunch with the two since I don't often get the chance to meet up with them and they're the last two old school friends I have left here. Later that night I had a fit at Nahida who in effect controls my life since I'm not responsible enough for myself in my father's eyes (which is a fair judgement). I told her that I wanted to go to Amman for a week and see my friends. I was regretting not having gone with India to Amman as he had suggested. My idea was that if I'd have that little vacation I might be able to break out of this bad run of procrastination (which is pissing me off) before my mid-year exams start. I then also suggested to her a cheaper option of giving me money to get a couple of expensive prostitutes. She ended up giving me an empty promise of getting me some whiskey the next day.

Sunday: I had an economics test for which I didn't study. Before the test I revised some stuff that I had studied maybe over five years ago. Luckily for me there were two questions in the test and that was one of them. On the other hand, I had no idea what the answer to the other question was about and all that it involved was writing down four memorized lines. The teacher had dictated the questions to us and I couldn't keep up with him so I asked for him to repeat them to me after I wrote down the one answer I knew. He firmly placed his handwritten questions along with another a paper underneath on my desk. I struggled to make sense of his handwriting and I didn't really bother copying the questions down but rather just checked that I answered every part of the one question. I was sitting in the front row so when I was finished with it I slipped it back on his desk. The teacher then comes back to me and asks if he I looked at the paper underneath which I didn't. I shook my head and with a blank face said no. He then tells me out loud that the answers were on that paper and I'm not sure because I don't understand Arabic sarcasm very well but I think he then suggested that I was stupid not to have taken a look.

Later that day, the human resource teacher showed up to tell us some new handouts were at the photocopy centre for us to pick up. She also told me that I was the only one that failed last week's test and that I should do tomorrow's re-test with the rest of the class that didn't show up that day. She also told my classmates that they should help me out and do study sleepovers. So after uni a Dudu, Jumbo and me got some take-away burgers and went to Dudu's to study. Jumbo who hadn't been showing up for the past few weeks neither wasn't interested in studying, but Dudu did a great job explaing to me and helped me memorize the first page and a half of the nine page handout for tomorrow's test. Then we had some tea and Dudu got Jumbo to teach him some weight lifting exercises. Soon enough it was nearly four in the afternoon and we had to get on our way home. I got Dudu to give to fill up my empty can of Coke with some Arak, that today I realised made me drive rather recklessly on my way back home. I think I can handle some drinking and driving fine, but I'm now coming to the conclusion that I should draw the line at Arak no matter how small the quantity.

On the main road near my house ahead of me, I saw a bunch of cars waiting for two police trucks to turn around and drive off. When I got to the point where the police cars were there was a car that had seemed to have crashed from the front end and had a splat of blood splattered across the wind shield. It was hard for me to tell if it was a car accident or something else. I was just surprised at how the splat was centred in the middle of the wind shield.

When I got home I had a fit with Nahida again for pressuring me with phone calls to come back home early at the expense of having some more material explained to me by Dudu. She said that something happened and then told me that a relative of mine's husband got kidnapped. What she didn't know that was that I knew that that person got kidnapped over a week ago and thus had an extra reason to have a fit at her for lying to me. And I didn't mention the car that I saw in the street, because I don't want to give her more reason to get anxious for my sake, even though I was curious to have her find out what it was about.

Later in the evening, Suzy spent an hour with me explaining me some of the rest of the material for the test.

Today: Five minutes after leaving my home my car broke down on my to college. I was hoping to make it to college early so that Suzy could go over the material with me. I wasted over half an hour in the street with an engine that would not start.

I had Nahida come over because I couldn't just leave the car unattended because people would then think that it's a car bomb. When Nahida came to me, we called up her brother. And it was then that I figured what that the piece of hardware called the 'Katef' that regulates the fuel pump in the car was the problem since I had a new installed just a week or two ago. It's a recurring problem with my car since according to Nahida's brother is a hard piece to find for my specific car and we're having to make do with that of a similar model. So I got out the little plug with which I can replace the 'Katef' that I was given if I should it ever stop working, plugged it in and it worked.

Got lucky again and the stuff that Dudu explained to me on the first page was one of the two questions on the test. I also didn't know the answer to the other question but I copied some of the answer from Suzy who was sitting next to me and was urging me to take a look at her paper. The other question was one of things that Suzy had explained to me the night before over the phone but that I still didn't quite understand and didn't bother memorizing after hanging up.

Last night I had begun researching on the net about how to flirt using Bluetooth enabled phones. I even scoured and collected a bunch of romantic pictures to send. So I was really looking forward to try it out today. Yeah well, it didn't work out since apparently the whole craze is over already or so I'm told (maybe even a year or two ago). I did think it was odd when browsing last night that the couple of forums I visited hadn't had a new post since 2004. It was still weird today, yesterday loads of phones showed up when I searched for Bluetooth devices, but today I could only find two or three at a time. I'll give it another try tomorrow, we've planned to ditch our classes to not have another test. And so I'll be able to try out the cafeteria which I'm told is the best place to try flirting with Bluetooth.

I did bump into that name-less girl I mentioned in the post before last today. I just had a couple of minutes with her. As I came to say hi to her she brought out her hand for a handshake, which is weird. I don't like handshaking much for one, and there's a girl in my class for example that thinks it's indecent to even shake hands with a guy. But in general a girl leading a handshake is pretty awkward. Her friend who was standing by her then left us alone. She was acting anxious and I asked her if she was waiting for someone, she said that she had to get some notes from somebody and excused herself. After seeing her and not getting neither her name or phone number, I wondered to myself why I spent so much effort thinking about her in that previous post. Now I'm thinking that it wasn't so much her that pre-occupied me but the prospect of meeting someone new and on how to deal with the situation.

Now I've got to try downloading the latest episode of Bleach, something I've been having trouble for no reason obvious to me.

Chronic Procastination

Friday evening. What to do? I'm awfully lazy these days. I can't be troubled to get any studying done. I'm not even in the mood of mucking about with the guitar. I think I want to crawl into bed and spend the rest of the evening day dreaming. Which isn't a bad idea since I did go to sleep late and woke up early to pick up my grandma with my aunt.

My grandma is sick, she's having trouble breathing, her back aches and she's limping. It seems doctors have stopped making house calls because of the security situation. And since today is Friday, there's a traffic ban most of the day on Fridays, most doctors don't go to their clinics or their hospitals. So tomorrow morning I'll pick my aunt and my grandma who is spending the night at her place tonight to take her to a doctor.

I've lost track of all the pseudo names I've been using for my friends. Trying to find if I've already made one up for someone. So I'm now quickly going through all of my posts starting from the beginning to make a list of all the pseudo names I've been using. In one case I've used more than one pseudo name for the same person.

Okay I've gone through all of the posts and I'm exhausted now.

Got A New Phone

Just had a shower, something that's rather rare these days. Since the weather is cold there's not much need to wash away accumulated salt deposits on one's skin as a result of perpetuating sweat. I've also become lazy in regards to taking showers. But now that I've only been getting one hour of electricity a day to work the water heater and that's making it much harder to get that shower.

So I got my new phone. It's a Sony Ericsson W810i, it looks and feels nice, surprisingly light too. The interface isn't slow like on a lot of Nokias I've tried. I think the guy who sold it to me pulled a sly one on me and gave me a fake battery and headphones with it. I went back to him and he insisted that they were the originals. Before going back to him I thought one side of the earphones wasn't working too, but when I went to his shop they started working again and at that point I gave up trying to get the whole thing replaced. He suggested that I was anxious and that was the reason for my thinking that they're fake. Well in any case I'm happy to have it now. Oh and it does have a really good flashlight.

The only problem I have with it so far are the ringtones: they're not loud enough. But so far nobody's called me. Except Nahida from upstairs and there was one phone call from abroad that I didn't make it in time to pick it up and whose number was withheld, it might of been India whose number I lost.

I was sure that I read the Wikipedia article about the phone before I bought it. After I bought it I realise it says there that there's a hissing noise when it plays mp3s and that people have managed to change the internal software to fix the problem. So I spent all of last night going through forums trying to understand how to change the firmware and the drivers in the phone, and it's all very confusing since most of the talk isn't restricted to the one type of phone I have. The risk of playing with the firmware is that it might turn the phone into 'an expensive paperweight'. But it doesn't seem like I'll be trying to attempt to do so any time soon since the only website that provides the firmwares is under maintenance and I'm still wondering if they by any chance have the Middle-East version. The other problem I'm facing and the one that takes the mickey is that the process takes several hours and I can't be certain that my generator won't break down while I'm at it.

I went to college on Monday this week. Nahida woke me up a bit late on Tuesday, it was too cold to get out of bed and I figured that I won't make it in time to go before rush hour so I decided to stay in. That day the Haifa St. operation went down and I was glad that I had stayed home because I'm sure it would've made getting back home a very long trip since most of the roads were blocked off as a result. And since that shit happened on Tuesday, I thought that the same could go on the next day so I stayed home Wednesday too.

Well anyway, on Monday the one day that I did go to college, while I was waiting in the corridor for a lecture that wasn't going to happen there was a frustrated girl staring at the closed door of another room. I asked her if she had left her books inside. She nodded and then asked me if I had lived abroad, surprised I answered yes and asked her how the did she notice so fast. She explained that she had come to that assumption a while ago and then went on to tell me that she had lived in the UK for a couple years herself but when she was a baby and showed me a collection of family pictures. I had nobody else to hang out with that day so when she invited me to come downstairs with her, I went along. She introduced me to a couple of her classmates and we walked all together. She then led herself and I away from the pack to talk chat on our own some more. We sat on a bench for a short while until I spotted the lecturer on his way to give my class a lesson and she was about to get picked up.

Now I wish I could remember her name, but she couldn't remember the names of her classmates either which is really cool. She's not hot unfortunately, she's on the chubby side, but she has a face that reminds me of a cute girl I knew. When she told me that her dad had died during the Iran-Iraq war, I began asking myself if there's something about me that attracts girls with deceased fathers to me. Well after hearing her life story and it all, I don't think I share much with her and she doesn't strike me as someone especially interesting. But since she's forgetful with names she might be more like-minded than other girls.

Maybe I'm setting myself up for defeat already. I don't want the same thing I had going with Suzy to happen with this girl again. The whole time I spent with her, I was debating with myself if the girl's worth a shot and how much she resembled that other girl I knew. Looking back at my stoner days there were a few girls with whom I think I had a chance but didn't take. I did take the decision in light of those stoner days a long time ago to give things a shot regardless of whatever lame excuse I came up with. But having a relationship here is so messed up since it's practically impossible to have some personal time to spend together. And I know that I can't be able to be so emotional as nearly any girl expects me to be.

I got her Yahoo ID because I insisted on exchanging them even after she told me that she doesn't have a PC at home, and the ID doesn't make reference to her name and so still no clue on her name. Well I wasn't going to ask her her phone number because I knew that I would lose it since I didn't have a phone on me. Oh dear, I've spent a whole lot of time thinking about this. I'll get her phone number and see what happens from there and will have to try not to repeat the same mistakes I made with Suzy.

I went to take a leak and saw that the national electricity was on. I thought I heard a beep from upstairs a while ago, I thought that Nahida would tell me to go turn off the generator but she didn't and it slipped my mind. I wonder what that beep is in the first place. Oh it's the microwave. Anyway so now that I've switched to the national grid it's probably going to switch off any minute now. Oh but wait let's see, the last time it came it was 5:15 PM (odd since it wasn't on the hour) and cut-off at 6:15 PM, and now it's 11:00 PM, so if it came at around 10:15 PM (a quarter past just like it did last time), it should go off in 15 minutes. So if this new schedule sticks, we should be getting one hour of electricity for every five hours of no electricity.

Still waiting for it to cut-off... it just did at 11:35 PM, maybe it came later than 10:15 PM. It's messed up today.

KitKat - Globalisation's Victim

Not feeling so great, I think I've eaten too much and haven't eaten enough fruits. It's moments like these that I remember that I decided to limit myself to water and fruits whenever I get the munchies. But of course I didn't have the munchies today, got no weed to do that. I was just pigging out.

I'm sure I must've once mentioned a year or two ago how great KitKats are, I mean were. Because for me Bounty bars are now the my favourite chocolate bar. I think I ate four or five of them today. They must be the healthiest of the common lot. It contains something real: coconuts. 21% desiccated coconuts is what it says on the wrapper. I'm thinking that there's less guilt associated with a Bounty than a Mars bar.

Oh and the subject, beware of the Chinese made KitKats that are appearing in the shops these days. They're disgusting and a travesty to Mr. Rowntree's legacy.

Yesterday I got a new generator. It's smaller than the old one that's got a damaged piston ring. The new one is super cool. It's got a remote to turn on and off the engine. The remote ON function is a bit stupid since one still has to bend over next to it to turn the choke on and then off as it starts. But it's nifty when one just wants to turn it off without having to nip out in the cold in the middle of the night.

Tomorrow I'm going to get my new phone. Just a couple more shops were open today, and one of them had the phone I wanted. But I insisted on going back to the other shop across the street where I found it during the holidays just because he had the decency to open during the holidays. But that guy said he had sold a couple days ago and that he could get it for me tomorrow. Well I've been waiting for a week, I could wait another day, besides he's offering to sell it for cheaper and he doesn't look so dodgy.

I didn't go to college today. Most of the roads leading out of the neighbourhood were blocked off, leaving all the cars to go through my usual route and creating a one hour jam just like the one that nearly led me to a nervous breakdown a couple weeks ago. So I just drove home and thought this would be a good opportunity to get that studying that I was supposed to have been doing for the past couple of weeks.

Last night, I actually got down for nearly an hour trying to understand a photocopied handout from a textbook in English that a teacher gave me to explain some mathematical kind of material that I missed in class. It's amazing how the teacher manages to dumb down the material for us, because even though the stuff was in English, I struggled to make any sense out of it.

So because I didn't go to college today, I was supposed to get some studying done? I've even got a test tomorrow. No I haven't studied anything today. A few hours ago, Nahida came down to tell me that tomorrow will be a day-off. I was so relieved. She came down an hour ago again, to tell me that the prime minister spoke and said that only a bunch of provinces in the south will have a day-off tomorrow.

I've been playing poker on my DS a lot lately (been stuck at the same level for a couple days now). And it's an interesting game and one day will lead me to victory the next time I play poker with Hans. I never began to imagine how Texas hold 'em can pit you against yourself whilst trying to decide whether to call or to fold. Well as far as studying is concerned I'm calling. I might just win if the teacher doesn't show up tomorrow which is quite likely if there's a jam such as today's. On the other hand, I just wouldn't mind getting the bad mark and have it done with. I need a bad mark to put me in my place.

I installed OpenOffice on my laptop today. It looks nice, it's free, legal and opens MS office files too. I don't need it but I don't have Microsoft Office and there are many times when I wish I did have Word. And I don't want to put any dodgy pirated Office on my laptop since I do have an original copy of Windows installed. I've had my laptop for nearly a year maybe and I haven't had to format it once, something that's pretty unheard of in Iraq since that's the most common solution to a faulty PC. A solution that often leads to a modem not working because the drivers went missing.

Two weeks I've been without a drink. I'm definitely getting some tomorrow on my way back from college tomorrow. I've been coming to the conclusion that it's my lack of booze that's driving my productivity down. There's a positive correlation between alcohol consumption and productivity isn't there?

Ati's coming down the stairs very slowly. Could he be bringing me some tea and being careful not spill it? Oh my! Yes he is, lovely jubely. And he comes bearing a message from Nahida: "Study and go to sleep early". Right.

Laptops are such a blessing in the cold. They're the most functional lap warmer ever conceived. Oh but I now I need to take a dump. It's so painful using a bidet pouring ice-cold water.

Why FMMM?

It's been another wasted day today. Got pretty much nothing done except fuelled my car and got ripped for a coupled of dollars by the guy at the pump. In case you're wondering why I keep re-fuelling my car, it's because I use the fuel to run my generator.

So just now I was sitting on my couch facing the tellie and it occurred to me that it's been a while since I've last jerked off (maybe a day or two at the most). So I dig out the unencrypted hardcore porn channel that runs little clips in ads to join to get all 18 channels! God knows why one would need all 18 channels, when just 15 minutes of porn would do the job.

And as usual I turn to the channel to find a rather hot chick sucking dick and within a minute it switches to the ads. And the ads aren't any good. So I flip through some more channels till the ads finish. There are loads of channels advertising sex hot lines. And what might seem surprising is that most of them are targeted at Arabs. Oh and just so you know it's a European satellite that I'm switched to because the Arab ones wouldn't have any of that.

Anyway so I switch back to the free hardcore channel and there's a rather okay girl with her knickers off and she's feeling herself up. I'm thinking to myself that this is good. I grab the box of tissues sit in the corner so that nobody can see without me sensing their approach first. I unzip my pants, pull my dick and just after a few seconds of warming up, three guys and their weeners walk into the frame. My dick shrivels back in and I zip up my pants, turn off the tellie and sit back on my couch.

India left to Amman today. He's off to do some training course in Germany. He had the airport cab pick him up from my house since his house (which is closer to the airport than mine) was in a neighbourhood too dangerous for the driver. The funny part was when Nahida woke me up in the morning and told me that his family was coming along with him to my house. I freaked out because I knew I had left the living room a mess before going to sleep and when I walked into it, it reeked of cigarettes. But Nahida was on top of things and I quickly had no reason to freak out besides that it's the first time ever in the 12 years that this house has been mine that one of my friend's family comes over.

And that's one more friend of mine, one of my closest ones, that's gone. And it's dawning on me that I need new friends. This is such a pathetic predicament.

Waaaaa

I'm waiting for my lunch right now: barbecued kebab and meat tikka.

A couple days ago, I spent the afternoon with Nahida's brother to fix my generator and fill up the car. He got the generator working just by adding some oil and an oil thickener. Nahida's brother explained to me that a ring inside one of the cylinders is bust and so oil is seeping into the combustion area which in turn is burning away the oil, which is why so much exhaust fumes are coming out of the engine.

Food's here already.

I would've fuelled up my car on my own, but that day was odds and my car is evens. He was driving, so as he approached the petrol station he prepared one thousand and a half dinars. So he drives up to the entrance and the FPS (the Iraqi government security force in charge of protecting ministerial interests) guy blocks our path and signals us to go drive back out. Nahida's brother drives up to the guy and tells him to take the money. I was thinking to myself that one thousand and a half dinars (just over one dollar) wasn't enough to bribe him. And the guy was very reluctant to take it, but then Nahida's brother started to act angry and insisted that the guy takes the money and the guy did.

Ah and the after meal tea is here.

While Nahida's brother was filling up the car, a man in a suit with a walkie talkie showed up looking at our license plate and had a go at the FPS, which it seemed accumulated to nothing but a slap on the wrist. As we drove out the FPS guy whined that he got told off because of us and Nahida's brother shouted with a big smile that he was a hero. I was just glad that the petrol station we went to wasn't the one I regularly go to. But to think that an Iraqi's integrity could be sold for just over a dollar, doesn't give much hope that this country will ever come to any good. I don't imagine integrity is a word that runs much through the mind's of Iraqis.

Last night or the night before I had what I hope was the conclusive conversation about our relationship. It turned I was right in thinking that I was potentially her first love. I told her again that I didn't have any true feelings for her, and she said she didn't want to get involved if I didn't have mutual feelings for her. So after an hour of being on the phone, I told her that I really want to put the matter to a close because it's been dragging on for way too long now. So that was that. I did try to convince her that she wasn't really in love with me and that all she had was an infatuation or that she in love with love itself, but she didn't buy it. To prove my point I asked her why she loved me, her best response was that I was a rare person. I also selfishly tried to convince her that we ought to just have a relationship for the fun of it and for the sake of the experience but she didn't buy that either.

Aside from studying for my upcoming tests. I've got a homework assignment: make ten questions and answer them. I had six prepared last week and I did one today. Just got three more to go. It's bad, I'm going to really screw up on the upcoming tests. I can't seem to get myself motivated enough to start making sense of the material. It looks like hieroglyphics to me. And memorizing lists of lines that I don't understand is too troublesome. I'm now thinking that it's okay if I don't perform well in the beginning, it's not a bad thing if I show bad results in the beginning and thus setting the standard very low so that when I do put in an effort into it, the improvement would seem so substantial that I would deserve more merit.

I still didn't get a new mobile phone. Most of the shops in my neighbourhood are still closed. For the past three days and today, I've been going out for a drive in the neighbourhood to find some shops other than the four that I've already checked a few days ago. One of those four that I checked did have the Sony Ericsson W810i that I've chosen to get for 285 dollars, but I want to be able to just see it available in another shop or two just to assure myself that I'm not getting ripped off. I was thinking of getting the K780a after reading a review of it on the net, but I think it's price isn't within my budget and I've yet to find a shop selling it. One sorry excuse for a mobile phone shop today told me that I'd have to wait till Sunday for all the shops to open up again, I guess he's right. I'd either have to wait or go to another neighbourhood where they're not so afraid to open.

It sucks how their isn't a one stop shop where you can see all the mobiles on the market here. It seems that all the shops only stock a few models, the most I've seen in one shop is about 30 models. It's strange how up until now we don't have and major chains of stores of any kind nor we do have any really big department stores. But come to think of it they do in the north. They've got malls with nicely polished floors and well dressed people spending their new found disposable income, it's sad we don't have the same here in Baghdad where if anybody has any disposable income they'd use it to bugger off somewhere else.

This Year's Going To Be A Blast

Happy New Year tonight is something else tonight. Three hours ago it was midnight, and there were some celebratory rounds being shot in the air. But as of an hour or so ago they seem to have taken it a step further with heavy artillery, rockets and mortars. I've never heard this so much shit so close to my home. I'm sure it's still rather far off anyway.

First thing I did this morning was download that video clip of Saddam's execution. Okay so the dude is very dead now, but the moon landing didn't happen. Oh but the indecency of the procedure was horrific. How they were calling the name of Muqtada as they were just about to hang him made it so apparent how rotten the deal was.

Sure American policy is a load of crap, they opened the door for the Iranians and their Iraqi-national cronies to take over for crying out loud. But in seems all to clear to me that Iran's the one who wanted this execution more than anyone else. I'm too much in a rush to actually get the idea across. It just ticks me off to hear people (especially Arabs) saying that it is America that's fighting the Arabs making reference to Saddam being executed under their occupation for example when to me it seems that it is Iran that's the instigator of so much instability in the Middle East including Iraq right now.

So anyway after downloading that video clip. Went off to the petrol station to refuel my car, but there was a queue. Hadn't seen a queue ever since I came back from the UK this summer. So I decided to just forget it and got on my way to pick up my Aunt so I could get my membership ID card from the club.

I think the Americans have joined the fight since I'm hearing something that I think sounds familiar from the war days.

My UPS just died. My generator isn't working today. I'm not going to be able to post this till tomorrow then. Oh Well.

Then I came back home to pick up Nahida so that we go pick up Od since yesterday she suggested that I invite him over for lunch today. Od's too scared to come out on his own. But having Nahida with us didn't stop us getting stopped at a checkpoint on our way back to drop him back home. When the soldier asked where do I live, I answered the truth and she the idiot paranoid schizo woman gave a different answer. It was so freaking dodgy. But after Nahida continued her spastications the soldier let us go.

There's more war going on right now than there was during the war. I'm sure it's been like this in other neighbourhoods for months, but to be able to hear it myself it becomes that tad more real.

Last night I finished off all my phone credit talking to my dad. So when I got back home I called up my brother's house and I wished my bro's wife Happy Eid, she made me realise that today was the 31st too and that it meant we should wish each other Happy New Year too. Then I called my bro to do the same, and then my mum. Yeah I was saving the best for last.

This New Year hasn't been festive at all. I can barely believe it. And it's not just New Year it's also Eid. This is supposed uber-festive time, but Saddam's execution really knocked out any sense of festivity. I don't like the guy but sure I miss him in a nostalgic way. But for crying out loud, killing him off on Eid, where's the holiness in that? Didn't they have thirty days to do him? I guess the advantage of having done it when they did means that there might be enough time for things to cool down before the holiday ends.

Suzy called me after midnight. She on the other hand had her cousins over and was very festive. We had a bland chat and that Sandy was on hold on her phone, and I made my escape, told her to talk to Sandy and that I'd call her back later. I didn't call back. I bet she had booze to drink.

Oh yeah this a booze free New Year's night for me. Don't worry I'm not getting all religious, I just thought it was too depressing to soak my self in firewater. But sure as hell if I had something decent to drink at home I would've drunk it. But all I've got is some shit vinegar tasting Jordanian wine and the cheapest and dodgiest whiskey in the world. I think it's the same whiskey that Dick brought over nearly a year ago.

It's quieted down out there. I think that means I could go to sleep now. Umm, I think I spoke too soon. It's started again. But seriously that shit isn't going to keep me awake, it's not that bad.

I wonder if I squeeze out enough juice from my UPS to make this post if I turn it on or off. No it didn't work. Crap. Well I'll leave to tomorrow then.