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.