Back in Bath

I've made it back to Bath. It's been four years since I've been here on a visit. Mum convinced me to come here after the new manager at the company I was hoping to work at decided to stop hiring new people. My dad's paying for my visit so that I get some therapy because I'm so angry around him.

The idea was that I go stay in my dad's apartment, but he's changed his mind about that and my brother's pointed out that it's too far from town anyway. My dad also suggested he give me a 150 pound allowance a week but that's dropped to 80 from which 30 will go to my mum for food.

It's my brother's birthday today, which makes my arrival good timing. We're probably going to go to a nightclub tonight. He loves the cheap thrill of rubbing against all the girls at the clubs. His two kids have grown up. The elder one's smart and not as materialistic as I remember him last. The younger one's still a little attention seeking devil but is smart and kind-hearted if he wasn't so naughty.

It's a shock being here, but so far everyone's treating me like a good old rural boy from some foreign land, which I guess is what I've become. As soon as we arrived mum wanted me to chat up a girl standing by us while we were waiting for my brother to pick us up. I don't know how to chat up girls. There might have been a time when I could do it without trying but I know I've totally lost whatever game I had ages ago.

I'm hoping to try to find a job here somehow, but as my brother explains to me, the prospects of getting anything other than manual labour are very slim. I'll just try doing as many different avenues as possible. Hopefully temping will work out for me somehow. I don't want to stay idle, so I'll try giving volunteer work a go too in the likely-hood that I won't get a job. Also having failed to fully integrate in Iraq, I want to prove to myself that I can do so here.

On the bright side, it's raining here and it's bleeding hot in Baghdad from what I hear.

Fwd: On The Coach

I'm on the coach with my mum heading to Syria right now. Wish I had bought a cheap mp3 player or brought that ancient walkman that
appeared a few days ago.
Oh good, it's only been over an hour since we've been on the road and the urge to pee is slight and I'm getting sleepy. Maybe I should have brought a pillow with me.
Earlier today, together with nahida and mum went out for a drive to pick up some documents from the car showroom and to visit grandma one
more time. But on the way they saw a big commotion outside Allawi's
headquarters and insisted they go congratulate him.
Mum and got me to do a radio yay Allawi thing before entering (I
regret not mentioning more freedom for the people and press). We then
sat waiting in a hall for a press conference in which he was to
appear. It all seemed to be going normal until the drum guys appeared
and did their anthems. By the time Allawi arrived, nearly everyone was
singing or clapping to the songs and half the room was standing on the
tables. Nahida disappeared past the crowd while my mum stayed behind
seated with me with our views with people and press that wouldn't get
off the tables and we weren't able to hear anything that was said
because the drumming and the singing was still going on behind us.
After the event we found nahida all happy that she got to speak to
allawi after he got off the stage. She even gave him a kiss. Both her and my mum then went to look for some guy so that they could write letters for a favour from Allawi. Nahida asked for a job for her sister and my mum one for me.
Damn no smoking coach. I know I'm supposed to quit but we're still in Iraq! I think my mum's lying about the no smoking rule and about the
man smoking behind me.
It's been four years since I've left Iraq. I've completely forgotten
how troublesome travelling is. It's only been four hours since we've
been on the road, sorry two hours that feel like four. It's a ten hour
drive according to mum. Will my phone survive the way to the borders?
I'm going to try to nap till the next stop.

High Estrodil

I popped the zit in my ear, but it's not draining! Why? I was going to talk about how fear is the root of all evil and if you ask what the cause of something bad in the world is enought times by asking "why?" enough times that it'll eventually come down to simple fear. But why isn't the zit draining? Maybe the zit isn't evil, or maybe the acme's afraid to come out.

Looking back on these 'philosophies' of mine. It looks like they tend to be very Buddhist-like thoughts. I'm not convinced of the whole re-incarnation thing (are they vegetarian too?), but otherwise I've always found Buddhism the most attractive of religions. I once went to a local Buddhist club thing in Bath which was cool. There were only four or five of us there, but during the chants one of them made the most unworldly sounds.

My lab results came back in. Turns out I've got too much estrodil which I think indicates I've got too much estrogen. The jokes on that keep rolling in. I've been taking medication for a few days, and haven't noticed much of a difference except for a better boner or maybe that's because of the sweet porno I downloaded the other day. Oh and I think I had a wet dream the first night I took the medicine too. What was crazy about it is that I woke up in the dream and then I woke up for real. I thought that kind of thing only happens in movies.

I'm at the farm again and going back to Baghdad tomorrow. I finally did the thing that I've been wanting to do for ages and that's give the local deaf kid a laptop. Hopefully, he'll figure it out, get a net connection and maybe then I could communicate with him and also if he learns how to use Microsoft Excel he could help me out with the farm records in the future. I'm counting a lot on the fact that he's probably a lot smarter than most since he's deaf.

Oh no, Nahida went to sleep and I wanted her to make me some tea. Fozzy and her are obligated to help out my dad with the plantation and the rice mill now that I've withdrawn myself from it all. I wonder if he'll put some new people in charge to help out when he gets here in a couple of weeks. I never did check what the difference between what arrived in our store rooms which is about 370 tonnes of rice and how much we ended up selling to the government. There usually is a difference because of moisture, filth and theft. I think anything above 5-6% is considered moisture maybe and the rest is theft.

I know what I want to do next year, I want to on one of those Buddhist vacations to the far east. Remy might be up for that, he did kung-fu and he buys into the meditation thing in a big way. He did say the hard part was not masturbating though. It is something to look forward to however and I think it's worthy to be on my list of things I would say I wanted to do before I die.

What's up with my dealer? I wanted to take a break from getting high, but it's been over a month he hasn't been able to hook Od and I up with some stash.

All That's Down There

Baghdad's hot again! It didn't take long. I've got the air conditioning running in the car and in my room when electricity permits. We're in mid-March, you'd think that would be a bit too early for hot sweaty weather. It's going to be a hot summer this year from the looks of it.

Grooming's always been one of those things I'm no good at. I was the last one in high school to figure out that the deodorant can that I had bought in England just before coming to Iraq wasn't something to be used only on occasion. The majority of Iraqis at the times seemed not to use deodorant during those sanction days and the most horrible thing about going to a busy government office was putting up with the smell of armpits.

A while back, my friend and I got a couple of prostitutes. I keep telling myself that it'll be the last time. It always ends up being a bad experience. This one oddly insisted that I join her in the shower before going to sleep, not a pretty site. But before that, in the bedroom, the girl told me that I should shave my pubic hair, showing off her own private area which to me looked like a whole lot of stubble. I personally think that porn stars look best when they have their pubic hair neatly trimmed. Totally hairless, is of course better, but that stubble's going to re-appear after the movie's over isn't.

The thought of shaving my pubic hair stuck in my mind. Maybe it's those things that everyone does. I remember one of my religious friends told me it was the Islamic thing to do. Islam's big on being clean, shame they don't preach more about it and on how to keep your city clean. At home, mum mentioned how men use hair removal products to rid themselves of their body hair these days. So bored at my Nais's house, I did a quick search about it, didn't find much material. One article mentioned using a clipper to remove armpit hair. Never tried removing my arm pit hair either. The article said it keeps the body cooler and saves on deodorant.

So I gave it a shot, I used a clipper to remove my arm pit and pubic hairs. First thing I noticed was that the skin folding under my armpits was a bit sticky, quickly solved with a t-shirt, and then I realised that shaving one's pubic hair takes out all the fun out of putting one's hand down his pants. There was also a sense of emptiness down there too, the cushioning fluff was gone. I'm not totally convinced that I'm going to save on deodorant however, I think I'm using more now as a result.

It took me a while to get used to having my pubic hair gone in the sense that I didn't masturbate for a while. I'm over that now and I'm downloading some porn with lots of shaved pussy. There's also No More Heroes 2 to play too.

The Glorious TGV

This morning, I went to take a blood test. I thought it might be a good idea to make sure that all my hormones are in order and not the cause of some mental unease.

Later in the day, I went to visit a woman relative's house, her husband the director general of one of the state companies and is some kind of a genius. I might have mentioned my last visit to their house because of their very cute daughter. Didn't get a chance to play Wii with her this time unfortunately, but her eldest sister was there. Her eldest sister's looking good, and she has a two and a half year old son that's adorably living in his own world. I had only planned to go there for an hour or so to drop off some Wii discs, but their dad kept me talking.

Then when I got back home, I felt down. I'm not sure why maybe because the guy there expressed how he too wished for me to maintain a presence at the farm (a lot of people keep doing that to me). So after mucking around with my classic guitar for a while, I poured myself a good old TGV with the Tequila that Maz brought over, the often missing gin that I bought last night as well as the bottle of Smirnoff that Od brought over last night. The TGV, in case you don't know is Shaggy's trademark drink, followed with a beer provides the most perfect intoxication.

Sitting in my room drinking with my TGV, I could hear my mum recount my early childhood to Nahida. How when I was eight she had left England and went to Iraq for a reason that I couldn't make out and during which my father maneuvered his lawyer to take custody over me and then moved me with him to Paris where after a couple of years he left me in the care of a nanny and then with my brother and then my sister and then a Morrocan guy. I used to fly planes on my own between England and France when I was younger than twelve years old.

Followed by a couple years living in Baghdad, came the time I spent in Lebanon where my father left me in a desolate mountain hotel to finish my last two years of high school. The last year of which I spent broke in a dormitory because my money got stolen twice and I was too ashamed to tell my dad who in turn punished me by cutting my allowance because of my apparent mismanagement of money.

In the end, I think it might be foolish of me to think that my hormones are the cause of the mess in my head and that it all just comes down to the messed up childhood I had.

Of Heaven and Hell

Continuing with my personal philosophies of life and stuff. Today it's going to be my version of what heaven and hell means to me.


To me, an afterlife doesn't exist. A heaven and hell in the afterlife is a good way to try to keep the masses from doing evil and to encourage them to be good, but I don't think it's so effective in making people do good or make people encourage others to do good. To be good would be to not to do anything bad. To do good would be to help others for example. To encourage others to do good, that would be to encourage other people to do good things for others. 

That's not to say that I don't believe that heaven and hell exist at all. For me, heaven and hell exist in the now, within us and maybe around us. I expect good people to be happier and that good things may come to them easier or at least the ability to appreciate things would be greater, ultimately they're happier. Bad people, even though they may not consciously bear any feelings of guilt will feel unhappy.


That's not a very elaborate description of the idea, but that's all there is to it. The simpler the better.

To Want

Yeah so, this blogging thing is getting pretty lame now. A few days ago, I came across this option to get a soft cover print copy of it and it came out to over 400 pages long and would cost me about 150 dollars, there's a file version for 7 dollars which is very tempting. I've been packing up all my stuff for the past month. Now, I'm considering giving this blog a wrap, not that it's the first time I think of it. Before I do though, I'm thinking that it would be nice to put down my philosophies of life here.

I remember one thing from Disney's animated version of Alladin, the last animated Disney movie I enjoyed. The part I remember is that of the genie explaining the rules of the three wishes to Alladin and one of those rules was that he couldn't get anyone to love him.

I believe that if I want anything enough, that I can get it. Of course, to get what I want, I'd have to put the required effort and time. For example, if I wanted to become a doctor, I could. It would just require me to spend so many years to become one. If I wanted to get rid of my belly enough, I'd do sit-ups until it's gone, but I'm too lazy.

There are other constraints too, if all I wanted was just one thing then I could probably achieve it, but I don't want just one thing. I can't become a doctor and back pack Asia at the same time. I can't make 30,000 dollars in a year working a government job or get a decent university degree and get high off the finest skunk everyday.

Just like in the story, wishes can backfire. One of the reasons that I left Iraq and moved to Lebanon was because the girl I had a crush on was moving there. The other reason was that everybody seemed to want to leave Iraq, and when offered the chance I took it. It was just my luck that she ended up going back to Iraq and I ended up getting stuck there in Lebanon.

The best part of all this is that in retrospect, it's easier this way to blame yourself and only yourself for everything in your life and even the things that are larger than yourself because it's futile to blame others. Sometimes you might want something but not want to admit it to yourself or just simply to ignorant to know better. I can blame myself for the invasion of Iraq. When 9/11 happened, I was working in my brother's grocery shop in Bath and a friendly customer who had come to live with her English husband came in with her eyes full of tears and I didn't have it in me to tell her that I was sorry.

There is just one thing that drives me crazy and that disproves this whole philosophy for me, is that for years I've been trying to learn how to play the guitar, but it's impossible. I can't get my head around it, no matter how much I try but I still do even though I'm tone-deaf and have no sense of rhythm.