That's All?!

The weather's nice. It'd be nice to sit outside I guess, but I've already settled my behind in the living room. Popped open a bottle of beer and the curtains behind me at least. I've been spending the past few days in Baghdad to finish the rice season accounts. Surprisingly enough it did turn a profit, nothing great though about ten or fifteen thousand dollars perhaps. It is evident however, that improvements can be made to boost that figure in future years.

I'm still wondering if it's worth my while. Dad wants to expand and I want to reduce the size of our operation to make a better profit margin and so that I may be able to keep up with everything. My biggest complaint is a lack of an effective administration, funny, that's what the farmers say too. At this stage, since I'm learning, it's not necessarily a bad thing for me to watch over every tiny little thing, but at some stage I do want to delegate some of the work. Trouble is that it seems that I can't find anyone capable.

The new management at my local ISP has changed, and the new guys are such dicks that I've switched to another that allows one to download torrents for now. I've spent an hour or two staring at the demonoid website looking for some music to download but nothing much is catching my eye. Which reminds me that I bought a pack of blank CDs and ought to start burning some CDs for the car. I should plan the playlist this time.

I participated in yesterday's provincial elections. The election organizers gave us the round around. Nahida and I walked to the polling station we went to last where we had voted no on the constitution. They then sent us to another polling station at another school which was quite a walk away. Then when we get there they tell us that we're at another school at which point the car curfew was removed so we walked back home and picked up the car and then spent another half hour looking for our polling station. Eventually we found it and were left very ticked off that they had sent us to a polling station on the opposite edge of the neighbourhood from our home whilst there were at least two that were within a moderate range.

Choosing to vote was kind of a last minute decision for me. I did kind of screw up by not checking out the candidates that were on the list that I was voting for. But I don't think anyone on that list is going to get a seat anyway. What's bothering me more than that is that whilst walking from one polling station to another I noticed a sign suggesting that a bank is going to be built over a public park that's in the middle of a residential area. The park is a mess right now, but it has so much potential, because unlike most other parks it's not in the middle of nowhere or bordered by busy streets. It's also the place where I got high the very first time.

If Iraqis import bananas, why don't they import iceberg lettuce?

Baghdad's more fun... a couple of old Arasat restaurants have re-opened: Reef and Captain (though now it's called Coral Beach I think). Went to Coral Beach with Od and his wife today. It would make a great place to booze up, but they don't serve any. Reef, however, does the best pizza in Baghdad and serves wine too (much much better than Saj-al-Reef). It's now safe to say that you can get a decent pizza in Baghdad. Who knows when it'll be safe to say you can get a decent pepperoni pizza though.

As far as work is concerned, I still some have paperwork to do before we start running the rice mill. I have no idea how long it'll be till we can start operation the mill. I'm expecting a whole load of 'we should've had done that sooner' stuff when it does start. I don't quite see when it is that I'll be able to take a vacation.

I'm boring myself with this blog... I need to do something about it. It feels like I'm talking about the same boring stuff everytime I post. It's tempting to start commenting about politics, but that's just too easy. No it's not easy, but it's not my thing is it. Got to do something to make filling in my blog interesting to me. There are some interesting things going on in my life, for example there's a girl that I'm talking to now that I may sincerely like, but she's showing any mutual feelings towards me. Perhaps I just need to be patient. It feels like I'm not offering her anything. Well I've spoken about that now, so that's done.

Complaining about little things was fun. Lots of channels such as MTV and CNN on my satellite receiver aren't working anymore. So the other night I got online and spent an hour trying to figure out how to update the hacks on my satellite receiver, I then realized that all the updates I was installing were over a year old and that no new ones were being made for the model that I bought back in 2003. Now I need a new receiver.

It's one in the morning now, and the generator line went off. Oh but lucky me the national grid is back on. I ought to brush my teeth and go to bed now because I got to drive back to the plantation tomorrow.