Poink

I live in a shell, oblivious to what's going on outside. The shell has cracks and when I get the time I fill in the gaps. Being at the farm gave me a lot of time to fill in those gaps and now I'm back in Baghdad the gaps are reappearing. Yesterday, I wanted to go to Sana'a street (the computer market). Nahida got me to ask Miz to tag along with me. He came over and we took a cab to go. On our way one of the roads to the Jadriya bridge was blocked, we took another to find a hundred cars stalled stalled at the beginning of the bridge. We let the cab head back without us. We walked ahead, at the end of the jam a checkpoint usually run by the Iraqis was being run by American soldiers. They were searching every single car one by one. A soldier asked Miz and I what was in our pockets and to pull up our trousers whilst gesturing what he was saying. We did as asked without uttering a word and went on. I called Mos once we reached the middle of the bridge he too was stuck in a cab somewhere in the jam behind us on his way to work. We waited for him for a while but he was so far behind and still intended to go to work so we ended up going ahead without him. Miz at this point began complaining about the heat and about the walk. He's not much of a walker and his hair is trimmed very short. Miz and I ended up walking a whole lot that day, after Sana'a street we went to a restaurant nearby and then to Karada and then caught up with Mos at work, where we enjoyed some good old air conditioning. We eventually wound up back at my place for another sleepover, Miz played with Mos' PSP, Mos played Zelda on my Wii for over six hours, and I watched a copy of Die Hard 4 that Mos got from Kala on Mos' laptop, and we all played some dominoes together.

Today I finally got myself to Bab AlShargi and got myself some power adapters for my access point and wireless router. Also got some Wii games which took ages because the shop owner had to make me copies. And the one game: Brain Age, that I really wanted didn't work when I got home.

Just had an excited conversation with my dad, which couldn't be helped since I had just had a drink. He's complaining that I'm still in Baghdad and that I'm carrying out the work he's tasked me too slowly. I'm came back at him, by describing the circumstances I'm having to deal with. He gave me permissions to spend money more freely to get the job done fast. The conversation was a continuation of a previous call which included questions like why didn't I take my our car to go to the farm or why do I need to get a check to make a new passport.