Cows and Sheep

I'm slowly starting to like going to the farm while at the same time learning new excuses of why I don't want to have anything to do with it.

Nahida and I went off in my dad's car, it was the longest distance I've ever driven. The road was full of checkpoints, all of them Iraqi. A few of them stopped us. One told me not to approach so fast because he would've shot at me, but it was getting ridiculous when one checkpoint was only 10 minutes after a previous checkpoint. A couple checkpoints asked for the car papers. One or two made us open the trunk and open the coolbox. With less than an hour left to reach the farm, the car began to break down but continued to move at a slower speeds, fortunately it got us there, without any discomfort.

The first thing I noticed at the farm was the amazing amount of cows and sheep present. Most of which are owned by travelling shepherds. The shepherds had tents set up. I even caught saw one of them talking to the sheep. They had brought their herds to feed on the stalks on the ground left behind by the combine harvesters.

After we unpacked and cooled off a little Fozzy and I stopped by my uncle's 'wakeel' (The wakeel is the guy that takes charge of a farm when the owner decides not to do it himself. when this takes place the wakeel gets the larger part of the owner's share of the harvest.). In the guest hall of my uncle's wakeel I learnt that alot of the young men in the farm have now got jobs. The uni graduates got government jobs and the strong guys got jobs with the police or the army. As a result of all this employment, the quality of the labourers has gone down, and the price has gone up 3 times.

The guest hall had posters of the Shiite imams and of that Sadr fella. I asked if it was right that to have a graphical depictions of the Shiite imams. They said it was okay. I remarked that old mosques don't have images of the imams built into them. They told me that there was a political element to the images. There was one poster of the young Sadr guy and a militia man with a big machine gun. I wanted to ask what the meaning of that poster was, but didn't.

My dad who's in the UK, wanted me to go see the farm at this time to see how the harvest is performed. Which I got to see as soon as I arrived. A combine harvester dumps about a ton of grain on a spot. Then hired labourers would sack and weigh the grain in 50kg sacks. Once the mat underneath the pile shows they stop and count the number of sacks. Then an old guy would calculate how much of the grain is to be left to the farmer.

First 10% of the grain would be ear-marked for paying the guy who owns and runs the combine harvester. Then the fee for the labourers is subtracted. The group of labourers are paid 2 or 3 dollars for every 100 or 1,000 kilograms. The remainder of the grain is then divided between the farmer in charge of the plot and the owner of the land (I'm the owner). Now we continue subtracting from the half of the farmer the cost of the seeds that we provided, and half of the cost of the fertilizers, and whatever little money that the farmer borrowed from us. And finally we reach the amount of grain that the farmer withholds and the rest of the grain goes to us.

The guy in charge of calculating the shares of grain writes out a piece of paper that states the amount of grain on board the labourer's tractor which is then signed to confirm receipt of the grain at our storage facilities. At the end we pay the combine harvester guy and the labourers in cash.

The crop this season was really bad, producing about 500 kg per 'dohnam' (dohnam is the area unit used here, it's equal to 2500m2), because it was infected by some parasite. In some areas the seeds of a previous and different plant sprouted, which also messed things up. Regarding the parasites, it was explained to me that the government used to spread insecticide with crop dusters, but haven't been for the past 5 years. I'm trying to remember exactly what the matter was but can't. I'll have to get it explained to me again next time. I remember when I was with CBS a CPA officer talked about the problems regarding the use of a crop duster since it doesn't look like a military plane and that forces on the ground would mistake it for an enemy plane.

One of farmers has gone out of line. He withheld his harvest of rice the previous harvest, and took a few sacks of wheat this harvest. Under Saddam's rule not a single farmer would dare to do such a thing since we would tell the authorities and the cops will come along and drag him straight to jail and keep him there till his trial. Now the rules have changed, if anyone accuses someone of theft they're not taken into jail until a trial takes place. Whoever reading this would think that that's a good change, but it really isn't when there's a weak rule of law in the country and the trial's take months to happen. That same farmer is now threatening Fozzy because my dad took filed a complaint.

So now that the government law isn't much help, the matter is being dealt with through the tribal system. Our Sheikh is going to have a word with the farmer's family and hopefully find fix the problem. Hopefully the other farmers will note it as an example and not fuck around anymore than they already do.

I planned to spend only two nights there so in the evening of the second night we went into town to make an appointement to tow the car the next morning. We only found one tow-truck and he wanted to charge us 160,000 I.D.. We were expecting to pay about 75,000 I.D.. So when some guy mentioned that his cousin got a dude from nearby Diwaniyah to come to baghdad and to tow it back to Diwaniyah for 75,000 I.D. we took him and his cousin to take us to the tow-truck dude in Qadissiyah.

On the way, the cousin asked me in a low voice how much the previous tow-truck dude asked for, and I told him. How much I really regret telling him. When we got to Qadissiyah the cousin got out of the car and had a word with the tow-truck guy before us. When we got to speaking about how much he would charge he said 135,000 I.D. Fozzy and I were a bit shocked, and then I got pissed off because I realized what had happened. The cousin had told him how much we had been offered to put him in the know. I accepted anyway, because I didn't want to spend an extra night in the farm. Some suggested that I take the car to Najaf and fix it there instead. But that sounded like a bad idea to me for many reasons.

The next day we towed the car straight to our regular mechanic who quickly found the problem. Apparently there was rust in the fuel injection system.

On the whole the trip was pretty good, I was glad to find the climate there somewhat cooler than here in Baghdad. And that even though the electricity came half the time it comes in Baghdad, it was easier to go to sleep because of the climate, and also because I had those sleeping pills. I'm somewhat looking forward to going back there soon.

Just got back home

I've just returned from the farm and must now release the brown glory that I've been holding in for the past two days.

Happy Place

I stopped using those pills last night. It was so hot last night. Something went wrong with the electricity in the whole neighbourhood. I figured that the Lorazepam pills weren't going to be enough to put me to sleep despite of the heat. Finding out that they belong to the same family of meds as Valium, kind of put me off the idea of swallowing them pills too. On the other hand I just read that of all the benzodiazepines it's the least addictive.

I was supposed to go to the farm tomorrow. But Nahida has decided to delay the trip another day. I should be driving ourselves there since the car seems to be reliabe enough now. I'm not too confident of my highway driving, so I ought to be careful. I'm really going to need those pills when I go to the farm.

I need to make a happy place in my head, just to make these days more bearable. Even though I know that these coming summer months will pass me by just as the many months before, I really want to make them special somehow.

The obvious way to make a summer special is to go on a trip abroad, but the last few trips I've had brought me down. When I see how things are so much nicer abroad, I begin feeling bad about Iraq. Maybe the solution is to visit someplace more screwed up than Iraq. How about the United States? If you'd say that Iraq became a worse place because of the Americans, then shouldn't it follow that the States be much worse due to their longer presence their. Nobody except maybe a Red Indian would agree with that.

I can't afford to travel anyway. What then could I do? I'm definitely going to spend a short time with my cousins in Kurdistan, but that's just as boring as Baghdad but the cooler climate is a big plus.

Slob log 14667

It was one year ago today. That I created my blogspot account. I considered taking oppurtunity of this occasion to do a little retrospective on the last year but considering that I only really started posting in September of last year I won't.

The car is nearly working. It's just leaking a little petrol. Something that should be a problem to fix.

I spoke to my dad a few days ago. He told me that when he comes back to Baghdad he'll write me a right-of-attorney. And then I'll finally take control of what's left of his wealth. Mwhaahaha. He also said that any proceeds from the farm will ultimately wind up into my hands. I think he's encouraging me to go there.

Kiki left a few days ago to Amman for a month, to attend someone's wedding. His on-line girlfriend will be in Alexandria at the same time. Even though I don't think he would, he might go and visit her.

I went to some place with Nahida and the carpenter that's doing our house to buy a couple of sinks for the kitchen. I put to force my opinion and bought a black kitchen sink instead of the very typical aluminium one that's found in every single home in Iraq.

My dad has been spending money on the house we live in for a long time now. And there are so many flaws. I really want to bring down any more spending on it. Nahida is now suggesting that we sell the chairs in the guest hall and make new ones to my taste. And even though they're ugly and uncomfortable I don't want to go ahead with it especially since they're rarely used.

I'm at an internet cafe right now. My internet connection at home hasn't been working for 5 days because of some fault at the server. I tried 3 internet cafes till I got to the one I'm at now.

The first one is just a couple minutes walk away from my home (I don't even need to walk on to the main street). They've good PCs and is usually packed. Today however, they too had a problem with their connection.

The second one I hadn't been to in a long time, it was the first one near my home, and was a bit weird. The management were a bunch of Iraqis from the UK. They had packed the cafe with 40 PCs but somehow never have I seen more than half of them being used at the same time. They had weird PCs on which you couldn't right-click on the taskbar and weren't allowed to download any software onto.

The third one I went to was the first cafe to open up in the neighbourhood. It's a bit of a walk to get to. I was hoping to see the cute chick that used to work there. But instead I found an old woman. There was a little girl of about 15 years of age that I remember seeing from the days that I used to go there. I think she's the owner's daughter. She seemed to be doing all the work. The PC I used sucked. The mouse wasn't optical and for some reason I had to use the keyboard to switch windows. And Yahoo messenger didn't want to sign-in. So I quickly left knowing there a couple more cafes within a minutes reach.

Then I came to this third cafe that I had never been to. Everything's fine except the shakey display. I called these guys up to ask if they offer wireless internet a couple of days ago. I can't remember what these guys said. Somehow the paper I had jotted the responses of the different people I called about the subject got lost. It was either we'll call you back or it costs 50 bucks a month. I already pay $45 bucks and I'm looking for a cheaper alternative.

India found some jokes about whores that Am sent me within the past few days and began wondering how slutty she is. She (Am) gave me a missed call last night. So I called her back. The coversation was boring for me and I really don't understand what the girl wants from me. Of all the girls that want to speak to me it had to be the one with no breasts and a big ass.

Am is a creepy girl, she's the niece of one of my dad's creepy woman-friend. Without prior knowledge of her existence she came into my room 3 years ago. We chatted, she gave me these 'I love you' eyes, I held her hand and wondered why her breasts were so small. On her way out she gave me a quick kiss on the lips and walked out. I was supposed to attend a birthday party of one of her friends the next day. But at the time, I wasn't quite stable in the head and she freaked me out, and so I didn't go after hanging up plenty to times in her face.

She came a couple more times to my house after that. She would take off her hijab because I didn't like it. The second and third time I met her I was more honest with her and so was she. She wanted us to have a relationship that was heading directly for marriage, and that was something I definitely didn't want. After that I didn't hear from her much, until recently.

I've finally solved my sleeping problems with the use of pills. I had some pills that I was supposed to pass onto my senile grandma years ago. They're some kind of anti-anxiety pills. And since I think my trouble going to sleep is anxiety related. I read the pamphlet and it said in case of trouble going to sleep pop 2mg. So I did and it worked.

The cafe is going to close now, it's only 9:30pm. The punks.

With little time left

I think I've only got 20 more minutes till the electricity cuts off. Today I got my car stereo back. Paid 20,000 ID to get it repaired. I didn't bother haggling, and for that Nahida would most certainly have a go at me. She had a go at me saying that they pick out the good parts and swap them for 2nd rate parts. Ah well whatever, it works now.

Last night the guys and I slept over at Fal's to watch the Xbox 360 unveiling party on MTV. We were very disappointed. The electricity was really bad, and it was really hot. We stood out on the street, and then Fal's brother came along and brought out the water hose. It was just a matter of time till we all got sprayed. Some of the guys tried to run, but all got wet eventually.

A few developing oppurtunities of how to spend the summer are sprouting around me. None are for certain, so there's no need to make a choice yet. I was sworn to secrecy in regards to two of the possible summer activities. But everybody knows that I'm awful at keeping a secret. In any case I'll mention all of this matter next time.

Finally Drunk

It took 3 days of drinking, but I'm finally feeling the effects of alcohol. Whoppee.

The car's breaking down again. Things that are still wrong with it:

1. The exhaust pipe sounds like it's broken.
2. The car takes too much time to switch gear.
3. The air-conditioning is bust.
4. The car stereo is still bust.
5. The axle is making noise.
6. When the car comes to a halt the revs go up and down. And as feared the engine is turning off.

Today we got new tires for car, and I was supposed to pick up the car stereo but fell I fell asleep.

Fozzy's back from the farm. And hopefully today I'll finally get to figure out how much profit we made off the farm last year. It's starting to take the piss.

خرب صدام

I think the new electricity schedule is 1 1/2 hours on and 4 1/2 hours off. It's painfully warm. Soon enough it'll be too hot even for the flies and mosquitoes. The electricity has only just come back and now that I have the air-conditioning on the sweat on my forehead is slowly drying up.

I remember when electricity cuts were considered as some kind of punishement handed out by Saddam, we used to joke about it being a matter of time till he cuts off the air to breathe. Constantly flowing electricity is something that alot of people take for granted. But during Saddam's day, it wasn't so much of a inconvenience. We used to use the electricity cuts as an excuse to go to someone else's house. We'd just bounce around town going to friend's houses and then move on when the electricity cuts wherever we were. Of course back then there was no traffic and it was safe to go out whatever the time.

A schedule used to be printed in the newspaper of when the electricity would be cut also. These days it would radically change without warning every week at best. I hear most of the blame is goes to the corruption going on at the electric plants. On the other hand, from time to time I would hear someone say that they heard from a reliable source that the people there are working around the clock to fix the problem. 2 years of this crap, and such rumours become less credible. Somewhere I saw a chart showing that only on one day did the electricity reach pre-war levels.

Today I woke up at 5 pm. I went out and did some groceries. Took the car stereo to the repairs, he told me to come back after 2 hours at 8pm. He said that probably an IC was burnt, and that he had to replace it and that it'll cost 10,000 Iraqi Dinars (7 bucks). When I told Nahida that I had taken it to get repaired she got all excited , telling me that I should'nt of taken it to get repaired because they'll nick the parts inside, and that I should've taken her with me. She wanted to come with me when I pick it up. It really takes the piss when she gives me this kind of attitude. I'll admit that I'm not the saviest of people and probably an imbecile when it comes to dealing with Iraqis. But I've got to learn, and I've got to make mistakes in the process. I yelled back at her and she cooled off quickly enough. When I did go back to the guy he told me that I'd have to come back tomorrow because the tape player was a real mess.

After I get it repaired I'm thinking of getting it replaced. The sound is crap and the radio is doesn't go further than 99 MHz on the FM band because it's from some weird region (maybe the gulf). It would be nice to get a CD player. I could burn CDs and listen to them in the car. Much easier than burning CDs than using the tap deck to record them onto cassettes. Or I could just buy an mp3 player and use a CD car kit.

Kiki came over for a short bit to watch a DVD that contained the CBS report in which he was interviewed. He had told me to come with him on the day of the interview but opted not to since I spent a month working for CBS and therefore didn't feel it was right of me to participate. To be honest I didn't do any work while I was there. I just drank as much of their supply of beer as possible. I later figured that drinking is looked very down upon during work in the US. Anyway, Kiki was quite was disappointed when he saw the report not only did they only use a 30 second sound byte of what he said during an hour long interview, but they also took out of context what he had said. He was describing the presence of American culture before the war, but in the report it's shown to describe the new presence of American culture after the war.

The generator is acting weird. It's working fine but every hour maybe it just dies down and restarts by itself.

So what's in-store for the coming day? Somehow need to get new tires for the car. At the moment I'm cruising about without a spare. And the bolts on the spare are sticking out, making it appear that they're loose and nice people on the street are warning me about them. It's been such a long time since I've driven a car. I feel so clumsy on the road, the car being a '90 300 SEL makes it feel that much awkward. Some guy asked if I wanted to buy it while I was at the car audio repair guy. I replied that it was a pile of shit. Who'd want to buy a car with bullet holes anyway? hehehe.

A look at the mirror

My face is all red! I've only had one beer or maybe it's because I walked a bit in the sunlight today. Maybe my tolerence isn't that high after all. And maybe I've just got a problem appreciating the buzz. But I would like to mention what I did buy. For 25,000 I.D. I purchased 12 bottles of Corona beer, and a half-bottle of some suspicious Grant's whiskey.

Trying to learn how to use CSS is paying off in the smallest ways. I figured how to justify the text in my posts. Yippeee :)

The Right Thing To Do

A couple of nights ago, I bumped into Hans on msn messenger. He was drunk. There was a short time we used to get on-line together and get pissed drunk and re-live the old days when we used to do the same on his balcony at his Beirut appartement. We've known each other for a long time, somewhat by coincidence, we met in Baghdad International School. And we bumped into each other in Lebanon where we both stayed for 5 or so years.

He's been studying 3rd developement in the UK for the past several years. So when I started telling him about my farm in Al-Shamiya and how much of a smelly place it is he got rather excited, realising the potential good that could be done in the community there. So I posed him the question of how do I convince some of the people to make their kids attend school. He certainly enlightened me on how to go about the subject. The only ideas I was able to come up with so far was to find some way to force them to do so. Hans explained to me that I've got to understand why they think school is of no use. Is it because they don't have an example of somebody succeeding through education for example. He even provided me with ways to go about it.

Hans emphasized that what I should be doing is satisfying the wants of the people as opposed to imposing my own opinion of what's best for them.

It's such a shame that I didn't save the conversation, because I can't remember half of what he said, he wasn't that much sense either because he was so drunk and tired hehe. It's a shame I have zero interest in the place and rarely go there. But my dad wants me to get involved in it. I don't know how it's all going to work out.

A day earlier I had downloaded Keyhole and got a free 7 day trial. The bastards had mis-spelt Al-Shamiya. They had spelt it Al-Samiya. It's in between Najaf and Al-Diwaniya btw (something I didn't really know until then).

Yesterday I finally got my dad's car back! First thing I did: buy some booze. I'm drinking much slower than I expected which is a good thing. I'm pretty happy about that. It doesn't seem I'm going to enjoy getting drunk though. I wish I could get drunk but I just seem to be too tolerant.

Call me Sloth

At no point in my life so far have I been so unproductive and aware of it.

The past couple of days Kiki has been over to watch Liverpool and Milan reach the final of the Uefa Cup. Both of them were exciting games, but I wouldn't of watched them had Kiki not been here. We also watched a bunch of DVDs. Most of all though I've been playing Mario 64 on his Nintendo DS. During the past 3 days I've colleted 75 stars and I've got 25 from previous football games.

In regards to how unproductive I am, I'm not referring to the past couple of days but the past couple of months.

The car is still in repairs. How long has it been? It's moments like these I find this blog useful. After I'm done writing this post I could check my archives and see how long the car has been broken down.

Nahida's improved her kebab recipe. Finally they're starting to taste more like the way they should taste.

The other day at a fast food restaurant I bumped into a classmate from the uni that i attended last year. He tells me that half of the students weren't attending this year and that two of the students either got kidnapped or received threats of kidnapping (I was too hungry to pay attention).

If I wasn't such a lazy person, there's a moderate chance that I would've been dead or kidnapped by now. But that doesn't justify being lazy.

I'm so brain dead these days that I've accumulated hours and hours of staring at the google search page or an empty desktop. I'm beginning to think that maybe if I stare at the tv turned off it would provide me with the same amount of entertainement. But seeing the colours on the tellie change is still more entertaining than my reflection on a black screen.

My dad's in the UK now, and I spoke to him on the phone the other day and he confirmed to me that he's decided to move permanently back to London. My mum and bro along with his family are in Bath and my sis is somewhere in the UK. So why the hell am I in Iraq?! People have often asked me that question but now that my dad has moved to the UK, the question of why I'm here is burning my butt-hole more than ever.

I didn't directly ask the question to my dad but he pointed out that I should be learning how to run the farm. Living in Baghdad wears any person down, my farm has the same effect but to a much higher degree. So far all I've done in regards of the farm is type in the expenses of the past 3 months. I still haven't figured how much profit was made last year, because Fozzy hasn't been around and shown me the books.

One problem is that if I don't learn how to run the farm now I'll never learn simply because there'll be no one to show me the ropes apart from Fozzy who's a really old dude who I can't count on being around much longer.

Maybe I should take the initiatve and go back to the UK and get any job possible. I should be able to find some kind of solution there.

For a long while now, I've been thinking about my dual national-identitiy. For years I've considered myself an Iraqi. But that wasn't until I moved here when I was 12. Until the age of 12 I thought of myself as British and eversince I've always said that I'm Iraqi unless in situations I have to present the red passport. And I miss feeling British, there's so much less to get depressed about.

I think I would've still called myself British in the UK if I had a British accent but I lost it in Lebanon. Now when I go to the UK people take guesses of where I got my accent from. I realised that I lost my accent when I went to uni in Lebanon along with whatever intelligence that I was once admired for. But I didn't realise that I had acquired a new accent until someone during my last visit to Lebanon said that I had a Lebanese accent when I talk english.

Wouldn't it be simpler if I called myself a British Iraqi. Yeah, I like that.

An ant with wings is in my room

Today I attended a wedding party. It was pretty nice. The music wasn't as loud as I expected. Usually it's so loud one can't hear oneself think. Another plus was that I wasn't expected to dance. Supposedly men from the bride's side shouldn't dance according to some people which was the card that my friend the brother of the bride was using. And the whole thing lasted less than 4 hours.

There was a strangely funny incident just as the wedding ended and everybody had left. We heard some yelling behind us. The wedding photographer was disputing his fee and had threatened to publish a photograph in a newspaper shouldn't he receive the full amount he asked for. This enraged the people on the groom's behalf. The whole little thing didn't last more than 5 minutes but was quite loud. It's funny because had a photographer offered to show a picture of someone's wedding in some other country it would be most welcomed.

When I got home I found out that the electricity schedule has become 2 hours of electricity for every 6 hours of no electricity. This summer looks like it's going to get really nasty. This bloody ant has got to die, it keeps startling me.

اعلمه الرماية كل يوم, لما أستد ساعه رماني

Last night I slept over at India's place along with Kiki and a couple of other friends. We spent the night playing Mario Party 6 and Mario Kart. As usual my abilities at gaming shone out like light from a blackhole. Today after lunch and another round of Mario Party we got up to leave. Fal asked Kiki to drop him and me home. The wretched Kiki refused to take drive us home. Innumerable times have I, as well as others including Fal, gone out of our way to drive him home. It makes me furious that on the first oppurtunity that he has to return the favour he gives us the finger. I swear not to let him forget this transgression.

I'm hot, I'm sweating a little bit. The generator is feeding me electricity which means I can't turn on the air-conditioner. It's things like this which make me wish I was at home in the UK. My whole family is there now. It's still impossible to get us all in the same room. I wonder when the last time that happened was. I certainly don't remember that ever happening. Maybe my brother does. I wonder if that could ever happen again, it most probably wouldn't.

Growing up as a kid, I don't remember giving much thought to the importance of family. I imagined it was a peripheral part of life, amazing how kids rationalize things. But slowly I guess all these little self-protecting shields wear out, and you come to face the reality of the world. I wonder if I still have any self-protecting shields regarding other aspects of life.

Fish oils are good for you

My arm is fine now. Guess it's time to hurt it again. I think I've sorted out my sleeping schedule. After getting the right-of-attorney thing done yesterday Nahida and I did a tiny bit of shopping. She bought some eggs, bread and mint. I bought some antibiotic cream to deal with those nasty zits I get on my thighs (yuck hehe). I also bought 3 little buddha looking figurines $2 each.

Not all discrimination is bad. Positive discrimination is pretty cool. I saw two examples of it yesterday. One was at the bakery where there are two vending windows, one for women and one for men. Sometimes there's a big queue at the bakery at that moment in time there was nobody.

The other instance was when I went to the courts to get that right-of-attorney processed. There was a long queue of men standing outside of the office and a security officer standing at the door. Nahida being a woman went straight through. She then told the cop to let me in pretending I'm her son. And so I got to skip the long queue and save myself at least half an hour of waiting. And now that I look back every official that I had to go through to get the right-of-attorney processed was a woman.

Something suprised me a few days ago. Female contraception pills are rumoured to help grow cannabis so while I was out one day looking for that cream I bought yesterday. I went into a pharmacy and asked for some contraception pills. I didn't know what they were called so it took a few stumbled suggestions till the pharmacist understood what I said. When the man finally understood what I was aksing for he acted a bit suprised but without asking any questions he sold them to me. And they were really cheap too (about a dollar for a month's worth. I imagined that you had to get a prescription to get such medicine.

Must stay awake

I just took a little walk inside the house. The walk consisted of leaving my room and entering Nahida's 3 meters away. Bloody flies and mosquitoes are in my room. I'm trying to evaluate which are more annoying. So far today it's been the flies.

I woke up at 4 in the afternoon yesterday, which is rather normal for me. Now it's 9 AM and I'm going to try to stay awake throughout the day. Still have to sign that right-of-attorney for a lawyer to deal with that case filed against me and my family. I think I've mentioned it in a previous post.

I still can't extend my left arm from a little dumbell lifting a couple of nights ago. I should've warmed up and down. I'm getting so much junk mail in my hotmail inbox these days.

Crap I got to take a shower to get the day started.

Sadly

Marla Ruzicka died.

Not in the mood to post

I was supposed to sign a right-of-attorney today for a lawyer to deal with a complaint filed by the family that we bought land from before the war; but I overslept. They're claiming that the person that sold us the land had forged their identity to sell us the land, and thus the sale was illegal. They've already taken us to court before the war on a different premise and lost the case. Afterwards my dad got some document to prevent further complaints signed by someone in the ministry. All in all, I don't think they're going to get anywhere. I think a lawyer probably suckered them into it. There is that chance that they pay for a verdict, but I feel that's very unlikely.

I asked Nahida when would the air-conditioner will get cleaned so I could use it. She told me that it was cleaned infront of me, which was a couple of weeks ago. It's a window-type air-conditioner and all they did was remove the front panel and wipe the grill that sucks the air. I thought there was more to it. I'm using it now, I did miss the smell of air-conditioning.

I think I might of killed my plant last night. I was chatting to Zed in Bulgaria and he told me that his friend Georgi's plants which were planted about the same time as mine had grown to 7 inches while mine is still only 1 inch. So I did like he told me and put the plant underneath a 100 watt light bulb. But I did one thing wrong which was that I put it too close. After an hour or two, I took a look at the plant and they leaves were pointing straight up. I was impressed at the effect of the light bulb, but a little later I realized that the leaves were shriveling and turning brown and that it was very warm. I'm not sure what to do now, only one of the leaves looks partially healthy (the biggest one out of 4).

Kiki and India slept over last night. We spent the night watching movies on the tube. When I woke up Kiki had left. Omar whose dad owns the restaurant on the main street near my house, came over a few hours later Mar came and the subject of Kiki's on-line romance with a Canadian-Egyptian girl living in Canada came up. India made me call Kiki to get permission to fill me in. Kiki wants to marry her, to the point that he's told his parents. His mum told him no straight up. The plan so far is that Kiki is going to go Alexandria in Egypt during the summer to meet her with her parents and without his parents support that's very unlikely to happen.

Ha Ha Ha. I saved the post as a draft moments before the electricity went out. But I'm not adding anything after all except a title.

133 entries later

Finally finished the farm accounts with Nahida! That must've taken at least 6 hours. What a marathon. Must get food and rest.

One Beer

One beer is not enough. 2 would not be enough for that matter. What I want is that one beer and that drink that when I was a teenager would regurlarly drink at bars: The TGV, french for High Speed Train, a part each of Tequila, Gin and Vodka with ice in a glass. That is what I want right now. But god help me I don't want to drink another one of those again.

CSS isn't the end

So nothing new in my life right now. Woke up late, had the intention of doing the accounts for the farm. I'm supposed to type the accounts written by Fozzy into the PC. The only problem is that I don't understand what he's written very neatly. So I need Nahida to read them out to me. She had been very busy while I was asleep and called it a day, so our work is postponed till tomorrow.

I gently burnt a patch of psoriasis on my finger with my cigarette today. Hoping that it would do something. So far it looks like it's going to turn into a little blister. Maybe I should try it on a more developed patch.

What I'm doing is pretty useless really. I've made a column each for the date, a description and an amount in Excel and I'm going to fill 'em up. The only thing I'll be able to do with the information is add it up. Which I guess is pretty cool. It's a start and Fozzy thinks that I'm doing something helpful, maybe he knows something I don't. I am however learning to type in arabic and working on my spelling. I've been at the microsoft site going through access tutorials thinking that it might help me do something useful in regards to the accounts of the farm.

The weather indoors is nice, not so warm as to make me sweat yet. I'm going to need a fan in my room. Kiki keeps telling me to get a fan installed into the ceiling of my room. I hate fans. I don't know why, but I hate them. I can't turn on the air conditioner yet because it needs to be cleaned. I wonder how they do that. The voices of many people echo in the back of my head crying out: "You idiot!"

I also spent the last couple of days trying to learn CSS from w3schools.com . I went through the whole thing, I didn't understand all of it, I can't memorize one bit of it, I don't know how I'm going to make use of it. Okay I'm going to try and turn the dark red titles on my posts to another colour right now! I've chosen an egg yolk colour instead. Yippee, I've done something. I also made some star appear when the mouse hoves over the title but undid it because it looked messy.

I've realised that I over-use some words. Such as 'really'. I think I'm using words without actually meaning them. My language skills are rotting I know it. I've spent too much time today in front of the computer screen. Must walk away. Oh yeah, there's a beer in my fridge. I bought it with Wazy a couple of nights ago. That container in Maamoun that was selling beer moved into a make shift store at the same location. It must be reaping loads of money, being the only booze store in the neighbourhood. Good for them.

Zelda completed

I cheated, shame on me. But I really did get sick of playing that game every waking hour. That's one barrier preventing me from venturing into the outside world. It's been a whole week since I've left the house.

I stink again. This time of barbequed kebab. Now why did I participate in that? Got to take a shower now. Just checked, Damn it the water heater was off all this time and the electricity is going to cut-off in half an hour.

M6 Music Monday Nights

The number of time I left the house since I got the GameCube is still one. I think I'm close to completing Zelda afterwhich I swear not to play another game for a month.

A weak dust storm is blowing through the air tonight. It made me sneeze a couple of times.

The plant in the cup is doing alright. It produced a couple of round leaves and a couple tiny spikey ones. It's over an inch tall now. I hope it turns out to be a female. Because otherwise I'm screwed. If it's a female I would be able to clone it and produce more plants out of it, it also can produce a male organ at some point.

Bitten

The mosquitoes are back. I thought there were two in my room until I killed one. It's not so disgusting squating a mosquito with your hand when you know that it's your own blood getting smeared in the process.

Sniff

I stink.

Withdrawal

It's 5:30 AM, it's been a while since I've been up this late. To be honest, it's only been a few days, probably not even a week that I haven't been up this late. But for a long moment it felt nostalgic. Memories of long nights chatting with mates, getting drunk and surrendering to sleep at the sight of the morning light. I also like that false energy buzz that I get around the same time. Doesn't last too long though.

Spent all day and all night playing Zelda. Nahida's regretting buying the thing. She know sees that because of it, there's no way to get me out of the house. I'm not even doing any trips to the shops, as a consequence, my meals are starting to get nastier by the day because Nahida's doing the shopping.

I should write up a stock list of foods to be kept at home. So as to have choices available at home. I just wish my dad's car would repair itself. Then I could do some heavy shopping. And I miss going out in the car. Even though the traffic is really lousy these days from what I hear.

I really miss alchohol. Let's see I haven't had a good piss up in a long time. I can't drink like I used to. I used to binge until I puke. I still would puke, but I'd probably fall asleep first. That's my problem now, I just get really sleepy. And I'm convinced that it's true that every piss up will never be as good as the last. I'm pretty certain that was the unacheivable goal I was trying to fulfill for many years. I deserve merit for trying hard.

The moon's gone now, and the electricity is back. Got to turn off the generator.

Wind Waking

I've tried to post a couple of times over the past few days. But somehow the electric generator has slowed down, and can't give enough juice to the pc for long enough. I would be in the middle of my post and phishhhh. I'm on national electricity now so as long as it stays on schedule I've got half an hour to finish this post.

I think all the seeds are dead, if not because overwatering then my obsession with taking a peek and moving the seeds about everyday. I've misplaced two in the garden, they therefore might have a chance. And there's one in the cup noodle pot that's grown a white thing (I lifted the dirt from above it to see).

Nahida got me to buy a Nintendo GameCube to kill my time with. She's been wanting to buy me a games console for the past few months. When I heard that there was a second-hand GameCube for 45$ for sell I figured that would shut her up. I borrowed Zelda from a friend. And I'm playing that now like a crazed kid on a saturday. I'm hitting the bed exhausted.

I've been going into yahoo chat rooms and trying to learn to type in arabic. It's going alright so far. I've learnt where a few of the letters are. One problem is that I don't know how to spell in arabic. So I'm spending a little time copying what other people in the rooms are saying. Turns out I didn't know how to spell al salam aleikum (may peace be upon you - Hello).

Kiki spent the night at my place to watch football games on tv. I spent the whole time sweating over his Nintendo DS. I got 17 stars in Mario. He says he's got 22 now. It's a really neat thing the Nintendo DS. Kiki's preaching allegiance to the DS and is opposed to the new Sony PSP. The PSP movie feature is stupid since you can't use that same disc to watch the movie on TV, and it's too big, and the screeen is going to get scratched, and so on...

Time's nearly up, publish post.

Idle Hands

I've been typing during the past 2 hours and the crap electricity went out. And I didn't save throughout it all. It makes me feel that whatever I had typed was meaningless.

Summary of what I had typed and lost:

The Incredibles: Great
Ocean's Twelve: Beh
The Whole Ten Yards: Beh
Soul Plane: Good, but the movie kept pausing every 10 minutes because the bloody disc was scratched.
Bite Me!: Why did they bother making this one? I fast forwarded through the movie. It had alot of tits, but didn't qualify as porn.

My internet connection hadn't been working for the past 2 days because of some problem with the servers Satlink. I've got a stupid wifi setup according to my Bulgarian friend. I think I pay too much for my internet service (45$ a month - 92 kilobits/second) and maybe should switch provider.

Without the internet, my life changed somewhat. I spent alot of the past 2 days watching TV. Spending 2 days searching on the internet for software to crack my satellite receiver to open scrambled channels for free paid off when I watched a movie on Multivison and if the internet hadn't worked today I would've ended up watching a French movie called Double-Zero.

I dug out some of the weeds (the unwanted kind) in the lawn. Which led me to plant 5 of the 10 cannabis seeds I bought the day before I left Bath. On tuesday I planted one in the garden, one in a pot that I left outside, and one in a glass of water which I think is already dead. Today, I planted one in an ashtray filled with wet cotton wool that I put in an unplugged fridge; and I made a pot out of styrofoam Nissin Cup Noodle container, filled it with dirt and water and planted one in it and put it by the window. It's the first time I ever try to grow a plant. I hope one makes it.

By the way, Iraq is not all desert. It does have a very hot and dry climate but it also has 2 big rivers running through it. Which I think makes it ideal for growing cannabis (the best weed I've smoked was grown in Iraq). Oh and it snows up in the northern parts of Iraq (Kurdistanland).

During Saddam's rule, conventional drugs such as (cannabis, heroin and cocaine) were practically impossible to get hold of. The average cop wouldn't recognize the smell of burning cannabis.

And so, Iraqi drug abusers relied on pharmaceutical drugs instead. Besides painkillers, one famous drug was called 'Artin' (also called Benzexhol I think), this would cause visual hallucinations that would creep up on you (i.e. you wouldn't realize that you were tripping), it also left you shaking and an incomplete memory of what happened during the experience.

Street urchins are known for consuming something called 'Cycotin' (I think it's a solvent) in a plastic bag that they would breathe in and out of. These kids end up throwing alot of bricks in different directions, at a shop window or a windshield for example.

Skunk isn't to be found here. However, I do hear of hash made availabe these days, but mostly for the consumption of foreigners, especially considering the prices at which it's sold are still too high compared to Iraqi salaries. Also I expect the dealers aren't willing to deal to Iraqis for fear of getting caught.

Earlier today, Od came by; while he was here the internet started working. Od nearly drove into a convoy of humvees earlier, his friend sitting beside him was telling him to watch out. Od thought his friend was referring to the barriers on the road and hadn't noticed the convoy crossing infront of him. It became pretty close when he finally noticed them and slammed the breaks. Something similar has happened to me before. I attribute it to the camouflaging colour of the humvees. After waiting for Baldie to come for a couple of hours, we called him at home and then went in Od's car to pick him up.

We went to Lami's a small supermarket/takeaway in Jadriya. Nahida wanted me to do some shopping for her so she gave me some money to treat the guys with some food so that we go there. Od had a meat shawerma sandwich and Baldie and I had egg-basterma sandwiches that took forever to prepare. Basterma is one of those old recipes to preserve meat, I think it's of Armenian origin. Anyway it's really filling, and I can still feel it's weight in my stomach.

We then went to the closest gas station, but it had 'normal' petrol, so Od drove through it and we went to another, one that had 'improved' petrol. There wasn't much of a queue, and soon enough we were entering the gas station. But then a cop carrying an AK signaled us to stop and reverse. He place a barrier ahead of us and began to walk away. We were confused as to whether the gas station was closing or whether we had to wait our turn to get in. Baldie got out of the car and figured that it was closed.

I've wondered what it would feel like to be the next guy in line that's then denied entry when the gas station closes. Od didn't mind much he had half a tank left which was enough to last him till after tomorrow (petrol stations permit cars according to their license plates; one day evens, one day odds).

Oh the electricity is back. 2 hours do go by quick.

Lots of DVDs to watch tonight

Had trouble sleeping last night, didn't go to bed until 7:30 AM. I woke up today at around 5:30 PM and had Nahida barbeque me some Kebab. Then I took a walk and bought some pirated DVDs. Let's see what I got...

Ocean's Twelve
The Incredibles
The Whole Nine Yards/The Whole Ten Yards
Undercover Brother/ Soul Plane
Frankenfish/Bite Me!

Some of the Discs have 2 movies on them. There are also double sided DVDs that have 4 movies on them. They're all pirated. Each disc costs 2 dollars from the local shop, but at Bab Al-Shargi market they're even cheaper. What sometimes really sucks, really really sucks, is when you get a copy that been recorder using camcorder in a cinema. That usually happens if the copy was in the market really early. And there's no certain way of knowing if you bought one of those. But in such a case one could always swap it back for another movie if upon purchase you specifically asked if it wasn't a cinema taped copy.

I think I'll start tonight with The Incredibles.

Become what?

Maybe I should become a politician. I'm not into politics, it bores me like so many other things. But it's one of the few well paying jobs that don't need a degree heheheee. I just need a lot of grade 'A' skunk to get me in the right mind set hmmm. And alot of Visine(tm) too.

Blanks

I've been feeling crap for the past 5 months. Most likely caused because of the reduced number of sunlight during the winter and definitely not because of the situation in Iraq (the things that have to be added for the viewers). It gets me down when someone asks me what I'm doing with my life, am I a student or do I work. I do neither, I just sit at home and go out from time to time to shop for groceries or see a friend.

The feeling is compounded when I'm listening to some guy speak of what he's up to. Like a relative I met for the first time a couple of days ago(he says it's the second time, anyway) he's got business stuff going on in Dubai, Kuwait, Lebanon and the UK. He's got a wife and a couple of little kids. Or when my buddy gets interviewed for the hundredth time by some news corporation representing a typical young iraqi citizen. I don't envy the dude, if anything I'm happy for him.

About 4 years ago, life was going pretty well for me, although doomed it was heading in the right direction. I was beginning a new life for me in the UK, living with my mother, working with my brother and studying at college to get into uni. Then something happened, I lost my mind. And 1 or 2 months later I come out of my state of delirium and find myself in Iraq. I had lost my way. And everyday since, I curse at the events that led up to that point. I try not to blame anybody for my misfortune, knowing that that won't resolve anything. A lesson learnt: the lives we create for ourselves are very fragile.

But 4 years have passed since then and I've yet to pick up the pieces of my life and put it back together. I took IT courses once for a couple of weeks and then gave that up. Had I continued maybe I could've put those skills to work. I went to uni here in Baghdad last year and passed the first year of Busi Admin. This year, however, I postponed and I'm not looking forward to returning to it. My number 1 obstacle of getting a job here is my difficulty with arabic.

People that I meet get the impression that I'm intelligent. I don't believe they realize that alot of the time I don't understand what they're saying. At age 16 I remember being able to pick up new skills and learning things without even trying. Now, I can't get my head round chapter 2. I always understand chapter 1 though. Maybe it's because by the time I reach chapter 2 I lose interest or I keep getting beginner's luck. I'm not a disciplined person either and even less so than I was. I remember when I was 14 I was much more capable of monitoring my spending than I do now (I also had a bigger budget), I was also able to wake up for school everyday on my own.

I see myself getting older, deteriorating perpetually along with everything around me.

Everybody I meet tells me to start doing something or to get married. I personally think that I should get my act together before I get married. They explain to me that I should just do something I find interesting or good at. I don't find anything excitingly appealing. I'm just a mediocre person, jack of some trades - master of none kind of person.

Splash that backside

What happened during my trip to the farm?

I made another attempt to quit smoking so with a nicotine patch on my back and no cigarettes or lighter, Fozzy and I made our way to the farm by cabs. Lots of work was being done regarding the maintenance of the plantation.

One of the things that was being fixed was the irrigation and drainage streams, using a hydraulic excavator. Everybody there seemed pretty excited about it. Lots of people were wondering why I didn't bring my camera. I don't have a camera so click on the links a few thousand times for me please.

Some of the water coming out of the pumps is leaking through the brick work back into the river, that means they're going to have to do the brickwork all over. It's amazing that this is probably the first time they're going to have to do since my grandpa was around. The roof over one of the pumps collapsed a while ago too. That means that will have to be done also.

We hired a cleric to come to our Motheef (guest hall) to do readings for the hussein guy that got killed over a thousand years ago, and for who the shiites start crying and get masochistic over. During one of the readings I heard one of the guests sobbing with his hand over his face. The readings take place over 5 consecutive days and are done throughout the month of Ashoura. Only a few people showed up for our readings, maybe because we're the stingiest ones offering only tea and biscuits for the guests (I smoke the cigarettes we had bought for the guests hehehe) or more probably because of the incovenient time we held the readings.

At around 1 PM, the cleric comes for an hour the first half hour of which he spends chatting with us casually and during the second half hour he gives us a sermon through a PA even though we're less than 10 and right next to him. We pay the cleric 10,000 dinars for each reading and there are 5 of these readings so that comes up to 50.000 ID which is about 35$. He might be doing about 7 of these a day, which would mean about 40$ per day. And this he does throughout a lunar month. I have no clue how long a lunar month is.

I met alot of people while I was there and I tried really hard to remember their names and I think I did a pretty good job. I learnt at least 10 names over 3 days. Ever since uni and cannabis I've been unable to store new names in my head without great difficulty.

Around about this time, we're supposed to be milling rice at the farm. What we do is we take the grain from the state company's silos and give it back as rice but apparently the state company has been suffering corruption problems. Traders have been bribing the people in the state company to buy their flawed grain, as a result the state company has bad grains mixed up with the good grains in their silos. What the state company's manager has told Fozzy, is that he's unwilling to give us grain to mill, because he expects clean rice in return and that can't be done if he the supplier of the grain is supplying bad grain.

We've got two new guards at the mill. Actually they're not new, it's just that it's the first time I meet them since I haven't visited the plantation in years. Anyway, one of them has a girl aged 8 and a boy a few years younger. I noticed that they're always about, and asked them if they go to school. They don't. I asked their father, the guard, why. He told me that it was their choice. I later asked Fozzy the day I left what was the deal with that. Fozzy told me that my dad had agreed to pay for clothing and had appointed the kids to school when we hired him and they did go to school for a year or two, but then the parents made them quit. Damn that guy should be fired.

The locals around the farm made a protest of disapproval at the Jordanian government for letting a family celebrate the death of one of their own. According to some news broadcast a Jordanian was one of the suicide bombers in the recent Hilla suicide bombing, and showed the man's family celebrating the deed. I also understood that their religion really hates Shiites and honoured the act. I spoke to my uncle yesterday and he told me that the news broadcast was flawed, I didn't quite understand the truth of the matter from him, I think it was something like the son got killed in Mosul and what was shown on the broadcast was a funeral .I'll ask him next time I see him and correct this paragraph next time. I didn't even see the broadcast for that matter. But it just goes to show that the arab media isn't very responsible.

The way back was somewhat of a pain. I came back accompanied with Fozzy's mechanic in a mini bus. The trip is supposed to take 2 hours. There were several check points on the way. At one of them we were told to get down and they took a look at our IDs. They also felt my bag without opening it, not a very thorough method of checking if you ask me, but what the heck. After moving for 2 hours Americans blocked the road so we went off-road not really sure where we were going for about an hour till we came to some other city and were back on the highway. Just after we entered Baghdad the 100-year old woman with leathered skin dressed in her black synthetic cloth started puking spit on to the floor right next to me. She only was a gross sight, to have gob out all that spit was really uncalled for. Fortunately, a few minutes later a couple of the passengers got off and I moved into another chair.

Today I didn't do anything besides doing a little grocery shopping and watching The Terminal. Hans tells me the story is based on the true story of an Iranian who got stuck in Stansted Airport and is now stuck in Amsterdam. I told him about the arab thing of rinsing one's bottom after a poo with water instead of just wiping it with toilet paper. There's something about how the backside so that when you pour water on it the water doesn't pour all the way to one's crotch which otherwise would've made it a really messy business. I've only recently converted to using a bidet myself. And I've even gone a step further by using soap. Afterwards I'd use toilet paper to dry my butt. Actually I don't have a bidet in my toilet because there's not enough space, but there's a hole inside the loo that squirts water not as convenient as a seperate bidet but just as useful.

Back from the farm

I'm back. The trip on the whole went pretty well, better than I expected. I lasted 3 days, and I wasn't really dying to come back, but I thought it best that I leave while I still held a favourable opinion to the place.

Going to the farm today.

I got woken up at around 6 PM, and I went off to get some food for my trip to the farm. I think I bought enough food to last me 5 days. A big bar of swiss bittersweet chocolate and a bunch of tinned soups, tinned tuna salads, peanut butter, and jam.

I was talking to Nahida's husband who's got my dad's right of attorney and runs things there, asking him what's there to eat. He tells me that he buys roasted chickens or barbequed fish which he makes sure is still alive before being cooked from the town and takes it home. There's also a variety of fruit and veg in the market other than that there's nothing, no processed except maybe for some corned beef, yuck! I asked him if we could barbeque at home, and he said that would be impossible since farmers would smell the food being cooked, come over and impose.

It's going to be painful being there with no computer or satellite tv. Maybe I could get a newspaper and an arabic-english dictionary to work my arabic. I don't imagine there's an internet cafe there either. I'm really wondering how long I'll last out there, at least the climate is on my side. Nahida's husband has a copy of Titanic there, maybe I'm going to be so desperately bored for some form of escape that I'll go so far as to watch, something which I've yet to do.

Attention

7 am, and I haven't slept all night again. God I hate that. The suns out, the sky is partially cloudy, with a few of them grey. I can smell breakfast cooking, and I'm asking myself if I want some. I've got 4 packs of Gauloises Ultra Lights, all of them empty. I had the last one a few minutes ago. I've got one cigarette left in my pack of Dunhill Lights. It's calling for me. But first I've got to make some decisions, like am I going to go to sleep right now, have breakfast first, or shall I go out and take a walk in the hope that there's some fool that's selling cigarettes at this hour. One thing I do have to do right now, is get some Rennies from the other side of my room.

Last night's leftover pizza is still lying on the table as well as the toast from yesterday's breakfast which was too crunchy to eat without scraping the inside of my mouth. That last cigarette. Sugar! I want to quit.

So my blog got put on the 'Iraqi Blog Count'. Should I be yippeeing or not. I hate change. But after some short lived attention, I hope it would become just another link on a list.

I really don't see myself representing anything genuinely Iraqi. It can be granted that I'm Iraqi and that I'm living in Baghdad, but it ends there. Taking a quick glance at some of the other blogs, they're serious pieces of work and they do more to portray the situation in Iraq and the effects it has on their lives.

As for myself, the idea of this blog is more personal. It's supposed to be healthy to express one's thoughts and that's what I sometimes do with my blog. Other times, I'm just recording events that I go through which I would otherwise forget. And above all, I'm just using this as a way to kill time.

That smell of breakfast just won't go away. I'm not really hungry. I'm not really sleepy. But I really want to smoke that cigarette. Gauloises are a really crap cigarette, all the cigarettes here are crap. If they're good, they're expense. If they're expensive, they rot on the shelves. And the quality of a brand varies over time. One year Marlboro's are good, then they're not. There was a time when Aspen and Viceroy were the brands to smoke. Then there was a time when Craven 'A' was good, but then they turned bad. It's not a fashion thing, the quality really does change.

Dunhill Light's are good again. There's also the confusing matter of a brand with two types of quality. In the present case with Dunhill lights there's a pack with a health warning in arabic and english on the side selling for 1000 Iraqi Dinars, and there's another pack on the market, also Dunhill Lights, identical to the previously mentioned one but instead of an arabic and english health warning there's one in english, which sells for 2000 Iraqi Dinars. Regarding Gauloises Ultra Lights, you've got ones with Made In the EU printed on them and ones with Made in France printed on them. The ones Made in France are supposed to be the good ones, they better be they cost twice the ones Made in the EU.

What is it that I'm going to do after I smoke my cigarette, I can't make my mind up. When's the car going to get fixed, I need to haul my lazy ass around a little.

It finally ended

After about 20 hours, the electricity went out at 6 PM today. The telephone line also went bust. My street is flooded with rain water. I'm hungry.

It's still on

I gave in a couple of hours after my last post by falling asleep.

I just woke up, and would you believe it the electricity cut off just moments after I woke up. But within a minute it came back. Incredible.

Over 6 hours of electricity.

Allah is truly merciful. Yeah well it's pretty incredible, it's too good to be true, I don't want to wake up in the hope that it would still be on, so I'm going to stay awake till it goes off.

Over 4 hours of continuous electricity!

I'm only guessing according to what the status of my internet connection. But I've had more than 4 hours continuous electricity. That hasn't happened in a long long time maybe even years. Maybe it's because it's not cold enough for people to turn on their electric heaters and not hot enough for people to turn on their air conditioners.

I drank two tall glasses of milk wow.

Bugger!

Turns out that was the second comment posted. Ah well. I don't really feel I've got any fresh views about the situation here in Iraq. I kind of regret reading that comment to which I made a long reply to because I feel I'm wasting the reader's time. Hmm, I'm I should proof read it anyway. I must've made plenty of mistakes. Well that's the last time I'm answering those kind of boring questions. Back to my normal blogging...

Wow the electricity hasn't cut off in ages.

I've disliked milk all my life, but I've come to like over the past couple of days. Something must be wrong with me.

Yippee, I got my first comment :D

The first person to post a comment on my blog had some questions. Which I feel obliged to try to answer.

1st. What does my dad do?

My dad owns a rice plantation in a place near Diwaniya and Hilla (2 hours south of Baghdad). The plantation grows rice and wheat. His latest project is the publishing of a book about my grandfather Rayih.

After nearly getting getting shot dead a couple of times. Once by the americans as he was entering Baghdad on the highway a humvee parked ahead of him shot at the headlights of his car, my dad slammed the breaks, and veered off. Bystanders told him he was more fortunate than the last guy who they pointed out lying dead in his car. Apparently, one of the humvees ahead had been hit by a suicide car bomber, and were fearing that another would come.

There was the other time by iraqis which I mention in a post back in December. We haven't bothered getting the bullet holes made by the iraqis repaired yet hehe, they're still there. I've grown fond of that car, and don't want to sell it or anything. Some say that it is it that attracts the bullets, but I believe that it is it that has saved our lives.

2nd. Was I in Iraq doing the war?

Yes I was, but strangely enough there's not much to remember. It didn't last very long and annoyingly so. My dad wanted me to go to the farm with him and my cousin and told me to stay in Baghdad was suicide. But in my head I'd rather die than go to that smelly plantation. Anyway, I stayed in Baghdad and stayed alive. All the shops closed up and everybody went home before nightfall. Sometimes I would sleep over at friend's place that we nickname India, because he used to live there. India lives in Khadraa near the Airport, we used to spend the nights unable to sleep due to the heat, so we'd sit outside in the garden and gaze at the sky trying to spot bombers. I try to remember how we went through some of the nasty parts of the war such as after the electricity station got hit and days later the water stopped flowing to our taps as since there was no electricity to pump the water. The war wasn't scary as much as it was exciting for me, you could say I've got a few screws loose.

3rd. Any stories?

I've only once brushed death. A couple of months after the war ended, I took the car out to go to a friend's house. I had ran out of cigarettes before leaving the house, and Nahida warned me not to buy cigarettes from a stalls by the roads out of fear of car-jackers. But as I drove onto the main street, there were a few humvees parked on the main road. After U-turning, onto the other side of the street, I see a cigarette stall on the street. I think to myself if the americans are on the other side then there's little chance of me being car-jacked. It's worth mentioning that this took place at around 2pm in the summer at which time there are few people on the streets due to the uncomfortable heat. I park my car by the stand and without switching the car off or getting out, I tell the kid what brand of cigarettes I wanted and was starting to count the cash, then I look up in front of me and there's a red brazili (volksvagen passat from the 80s produced in Brazil purchased by the government as part of an arms deal) parked sideways and a dude coming out of the back seat with AK47 in his hands. It took me a split second to realise what was happening and without thinking I put my car in drive and press the gas with caution instead of slamming it down out of fear that it would break down when most incovenient. The brazili wasn't parked so near as to block my path and I drove off as the man with the AK yelled 'STOP' in arabic repeatedly. After I had passed him he shot at my car. A guy with a white Kia mini-van caught up with me and told me to go tell the traffic cop at the end of the street to speak to the cop. The guy took the cop and we drove around the street, but the red brazili had run away by then. In hindsight, I've got no clue what the cop would've done since they hadn't even been issued guns yet. I then went over to where the americans were, I didn't want to go straight home just in case they the red brazili was following me from a distance. The americans explained to me that they thought that it was they who were under attack - the poor sods. Later on a bullet was found in the gas tank. I don't know if I was lucky the car didn't blow up or if Hollywood has been lying to me all this time.

4th. Is it as unsafe in Iraq as the american media makes it to be?

Well that's a hard question to answer. The media those give an image of how dangerous Iraq is, but I'm not really sure how that image is interpreted in the minds of the viewers. I could make a list of all the things that do make it dangerous.

• Getting shot by Americans or Iraqis because you approached a checkpoint or a convoy at a high speed or came too close. This is pretty annoying because sometimes it's hard to notice them.
• Getting Car-jacked, this is very rare nowadays.
• You could get kidnapped if you have a reputation for being wealthy. The threat of which comes from someone that you casually know such as a previous driver or the guy that installed your new kitchen.
• Targetted by insurgents if you have affiliations with the government or occupying forces.
• You could get killed as a result of a family feud or out of vengence, this is much less random, but could've been avoided if there were rule of law.
• A car or suicide bomber if you're standing in the wrong place such as near army recruitement center or something religious.
• If you're an arab foreigner you could be wrongly sentenced to death. Something Nahida worries about for Attiyeh our Sudanese helper who lives with us. Sudanese people here have been here for a long time, doing the work that Iraqis don't want to do for cheap.
• If you're a foreigner, you could be put on tv, and video clips on the net will show your head being chopped off.
• If you sell alcohol or consume it in public.
• If you hang out with a person of the opposite sex on a romantic spot by the river.
  

Those are all the ways I can think of right now. There are probably more. So is it Iraq less or more dangerous than the media makes it out to be. After thinking about it. I would say it is or even more so.

But to live in danger isn't the only thing that really sucks about living in Iraq. It's the overwhelming degrading quality of life which is for the most part because of the security problem.

Before the war, we used to stay out very late at night. There were prostitutes on the streets that could give you a blowjob for a few bucks. There was booze in the stores. There was locally made beer that everybody had a suspicion that it was spiked. When I was in school in the mid 90s we used to make house parties, boys and girls would come over and we'd go home around midnight.

Now, we're all home by 9pm and the prostitutes all left to other countries to make more money or aren't able to work on the streets anymore because of punk zealots. All the booze shops got closed down because of the same psycho zealots that threatened to blown them up and in many cases they did. I think the local beer factory got blown up by the americans because they thought it was a chemical arms plant I think. And because of the security situation parents are very fearful of letting their girls go out of the house except if it is to go to school or work (the religious-social norms-wholesome-decency thing comes into play here too strengthened by the fear created by the psycho zealots).

There, I'm done :p

Don't press SHIFT for too long

This is a great oppurtunity, every day is a great oppurtunity, and I'm ungrateful for it. Why the hell did I have to sleep late last night. I've had lots of ideas of what I wanted to write here while I was sitting in a back seat of a car. But those ideas escape me now. That often happens to me.

I've got to call mum, and see what she wants to do. Electriciy is a little better. I really need to go crrraap. Eventually I will, that's for sure. The electricity which comes for 2 continuous hours at a time will cut off under 20 minutes. If I choose to wait much longer I'll have to also go outside the house turn off the electricity from the switchboard, turn off the fridge, water cooler, water heater and then turn on the generator.

I'll go now.

Toilet Troubles

Early morning, and I've yet to go to sleep. I wish I could just leave the TV and close my eyes and try to doze off. But I can't do that because I'm using the electric generator which I have to turn off before I go to sleep. And it's not that I'm scared of the dark, but I get anxious and the complaining about the electricity routine starts running through my mind along with the all the other things I usually complaining to myself about.

Nahida has been moody ever since I got back. I hope she stays like that, I can't stand her most of the time when she's perky. Her brother got sent to jail by the Americans shortly after I left to Lebanon. Her sister was here a couple of days ago. He's allowed a 55 minute visit once a week. He's being kept in a tent in Baghdad Int. Airport or what I think is referred to as the red zone. Or is the red zone all that's not the greenzone. Or maybe there's no red zone and I just made that up. It's a big place from what I hear. Some guy told the americans that he makes car bombs. And just because some dude accused him of that, the americans took him. His sister says that it gets very cold at night where he stays. I'll ask him what it was like after he gets out. Now I'm going to watch south park.

I once spent a few days in an iraqi jail. It wasn't traumatising, I think everybody around me was bribed. Nahida brought me my meals every day. When I got sent there I was very drunk and woke up with a terrible hang-over. Those were the days I used to pop 4 prozacs a day and get drunk off whiskey. It's lame, how far I have to go to learn a lesson. Anyway, that following morning, I puked my guts out in the toilet and then wanted to take a dump, but the toilets weren't your regular stools. Nope it had to be... the dreaded hole in the ground deal. Uptil then I had somehow avoided making use of them. So with a full fledged hangover and my pants pulled down I crouched above the unflushable hole and missed some. I actually shat on my pants. A year later, I had to make use of one of those toilets again in a mosque in Kurdistan near the turkish border. It was a nice place beside a clear river.

Finally found my lighter

These nicotine patches seemed to work in the beginning, but now I'm having my doubts. Maybe it's because of the cheap cigarettes that contain really nasty additives made in a place with no regulatory body supervises.

Fozzy went to the farm while I was out this morning, I thought my dad, nahida and I were going to go back with him. What I'm wondering is whether I would've gone with him had I had the chance. I really have to go there. There's no reason why I should stay here in Baghdad.

A couple of days ago I heard that barbers have been threatened if they use their hair plucking with a string technique. The consequences of such a threat involves the barber's shop getting blown up. They use the technique to remove the upper cheak of a man's beard, I tried once a long time ago and it's really painful, so painful I couldn't let the barber finish off.

Yagga Yagga Yagga

The day after my last post we left to Baghdad again. It was a smooth trip on the whole, meaning we didn't spend hours without moving. But as we approached Fallujah which is on the way to Baghdad, a large convoy of lorrys accompanied by US forces were getting onto the highway and we had to stop for over half an hour till they all got on. We then continued to follow the convoy at half the speed we usually travel for the remainder of the way to Baghdad, by the time the convoy got out of our way, it had bottle-necked all the traffic coming from Syria into one big convoy of it's own. Several of the roads leading into Baghdad were closed and after going in circles for a little bit we eventually started the rest of our own convoy into some place we didn't recognize. It was about 9pm and the there wasn't a person in sight. All the lights in the streets were off and all the shops were closed. Which reminded me of a time when Baghdad used to stay alive till midnight and made me wonder when will things go back to normal. We eventually got dropped off home, barely able to recognize my own main street in mansour because of the dark.

Now I've been here for 10 days. The novelty of coming back home wore off with a day or two. I've already created a routine for myself, involving waking up late, watching tv, and going to sleep late.

Viva La Nicotine Patch

At around 10 am on the 6th of February, with a nicotine patch on my back, my dad and I standing at Bath Spa Coach Station, waiting for the 403 National Express service to Heathrow. A couple hours later and a couple of hours early for our flight we arrived at the airport. After the metal detectors, a passport control guy took a look at my passport, asked me where I was heading, I told him that I was on my way to Baghdad. In turn, he said 'that's a dodgy place to go' and asked if it is as it seems on tv. I'm still unsure whether he's implying that it is I or Baghdad that is dodgy.

Since my return from London, I've had a cold and have been having trouble with my left ear. It's blocked. But that was just annoying since I had to sometimes tell my dad to speak louder so that I can hear him sometimes, until, the plane had to land and the pain in my ears from the change of pressure was multiplied by ten. The lay-over in Athens was only 2 hours for which
I'm grateful, since on the way to the UK it was something like 6 hours.

I arrive in our cheap hotel on Hamra St. in Beirut and sleep for 24 hours. Get out of bed and finally leave the hotel room to get something to eat at around 3 am. Later that day, we a cab picks up to take us to Damascus. We would've preferred to leave at night, but snow on the roads would've meant that the roads would've been closed.

10pm we leave Sayadet Zeineb in a cab that had no heating and instead blankets which we were to use while waiting in the queue outside the iraqi borders in no man's land. The Iraqi borders usually open at 7 am which is a real inconvenience, since it creates a very tight time window through which to travel since it's dangerous to make the last stretch of the trip which passes through Fallujah and Ramadi at night. Thus causing alot of congestion at the time the borders open. And as a result of this congestion you'd be lucky to make it to Baghdad that same day.

I woke up at around 11 am, and it seemed we hadn't moved at all since we queued up 7 hours ago. The borders had remained closed while I was asleep. And we were told that they were to remain closed for 5 days. We stuck around for a few more hours just in case the border folk change their mind. But after all the cars in the queue had left so did we.

Upon returning to Damascus dad took us to a hotel that he had used to stay at when he was a little kid with my grandpa in the center of town called Hotel Omar Khayyam, but in grandpa's days it used to be called something like the Omayyid Hotel I think.

I've just taken my first walk through Damascus. Which I'm glad I've done since this is the 4th time I've passed through this city. Now I know there's nothing to see, and I want to go home. Tomorrow I might be off to Amman and wait it out there, it all depends on Dad I guess.

Little City Me Don't Like The Big City

London wasn't that great of an experience, did alot of drugs the night I got there. Daddy and Mummy wouldn't be proud. Cocaine, ecstasy, hash, and Stella beer, which they claim is responsible for men beating up their wives. Did have the oppurtunity to go with Dan's friends to a club called The Egg. But Dan didn't want to go probably because he was all smashed up. And I didn't go alone with his dodgy friends and also because I was well smashed up too.

The next day I went to see Hansie and Kiko, they had partied the night before and finished all their cash, the bastards. They picked me up from the tube station with a box of beer, and promise of spicy chicken later tonight. 2 nights later we dined with Maha in a Ethiopian restaurant near King's Cross Train Station. Hans was at the station way ahead of all of us. I thought I was late when I arrived an hour after the rendez-vous time, but was still ahead of the Maha and Kiko. Hans dragged me with him to the public library to see the Magna Carta and a copy of the Gutemburg Bible.

The food that night was pretty cool but I had begun to lose my appetite as I was beginning to get a really cruel cold (which I still have till today). We all but Kiko drank a big load of Ethiopian coffee, which we later found out to be called Crack-Coffee, because it us all up except for Kiko all night. The next day, I helped Kiko move some of his stuff out of Hans's and into his new place, that ended up taking all day, alot more than I had expected. Hans spent that whole time at home. After a last meal of spicey chicken I left the guys and made my way back home to Bath.

I'm off to London tomorrow.

And from the UK

I'm at my bro's place now, not much going on. Just had a late lunch with him at his home. He's off for a snooze. And once I'm off the pc I'll be left to the mercy to those kids of his. One of them is trying to get into the room. And he finally did. Annoying little bugger hehehe.

I'm spending my time watching videos and eating too much.

I found a diary of mine dating to 1992. I must've been about 10 years old. It's got less than 10 entries, the first ones were written in the uk and the rest in Paris.

I called Dan and told him that I was going to stay at his place hehehe. Daniel is the guy with whom I wound up in several British bases in the south of Iraq following the war, as a result of a failed attempt to get him out of the country through Kuwait.

Pay 9 bucks for a pack of cigarettes, not me! I'm smoking rollies or my brother's cigarettes. It's good that he's finally started buying cigarettes.

Mum keeps telling me stay here in the UK, which I could be an option if I don't get accepted by LAU. I could get a crap job, do an open university thing, and things might not be too bad. As I get older it's getting alot harder to dream of being somebody succesful.

I'm a bit glad that I'm not in Baghdad right now, they haven't had running water for a week now. And that's a first since the war.

In Beirut

I hate being here.

Tonight, I'll be leaving Baghdad

Yuck, I'm leaving town. It's cold, why in the world does it have to be cold tonight?! Yup from here on it's going to be cold for quite a long time. I'm already grumpy. I'm really really grumpy. Dinner got screwed because the damn cheese didn't melt on the pizza. I had to eat kebab instead, which along with felafels I strongly dislike eating during a trip because it leaves me with a really bad taste rising from my stomach. I ate felafels today for lunch. It really isn't a good day.

Ahh, TEAAAA :) I love you.

The electricity has been awful the past few days. Something like 12 hours = off, 2 hours = on.

Here's my first picture post: It's my roof where you see 2 satellite dishes, a wifi internet thingie, and Atiyeh's bed. 

The coolest thing about today!

Not only did I put AdSense into my blog. I also saw how our Sudanese handy man regulates our electric generator. Now I'll be able to fix that pile of junk whenever it decides not to give enough juice.

I haven't acheived so much in a long time. Maybe this year I will be different.

Oh and I finished that bottle of Jim Bean last night. I still think that bottle was bootlegged.

Ads won't make me any richer.

I got the Google AdSense thingie going on. Would be very funny if I actually got paid something.

I wonder how to put some pics on my page.

Listening to some 'The Who' songs I just downloaded. I used to get high and listen to this stuff when in my first semester of uni.

I didn't bite my nails today weehee. My computer is dying on me. I don't know what to do with it. I'll be leaving in a few days. Should I fix it? I think there was a problem with my Creative Live! sound card. I took it out and did something with the windows CD (I don't know what) and it seems to work now. Running on the motherboard built-in sound card, and I've been ungrateful for that thing for so long.

Regarding that AdSense thingie, I could try to bring alot of attention to the site. But that's just not me is it. I actually keep this blog as a secret from my friends.

My Tummy

5 am here, i'm really tired, my tummy wants me to go the toilet i think. I finally finished that bottle of Jim Bean, I'm guessing it wasn't the real thing. I've got mosquitos in my room. Things are blowing up alot around town.Dad's decidedfor us to go to Lebanon this coming Saturday. I've tempted him to take us to the UK. He sees it as an oppurtunity to go to Germany to see somebody. I've managed to stop biting my nails for a week, but i'm back to it today. Must must stop. I'm thinking of how to lead my new life in Lebanon, but me being who I am, all those ideas probably won't come to be.

Life's pretty quiet over here as usual. I've left my home a couple of times over the last week. And oh my god, the traffic is horrendous. It took me 2 and a half hours to get to uni. It used to take me half an hour. And the other time, I tagged along with my friends India and K because we were all invited to Omar's little graduation party at home.

It was the day that the car bomb blew up near the president's place which is in my neighbourhood. We took a cab and got a tour of Kergh (that's a name) side of baghdad trying to get to the Rissafa (the name of the other half of baghdad), we even passed by the jail I got tossed in. We eventually had to walk a bridge and catch another cab on the other side. We finally got to Bab al Shargi (which is one of the main marketplaces of baghdad) where you can find second hand electronics, watches and tons and tons of pirated DVDs for just over a dollar each. India brought us here to install a mod chip into his new XBox. The XBox was sold to him by a game that works with US forces and who's selling stuff from the PX (US military WalMart kind of thing).

At a traffic stop on the way to Karada, a Kia driver began yelling at the car in front of him. The Car in front was leaking petrol. I was relieved that when that car drove off in a different direction after we began to move. K bought some perfume. I also got Omar a perfum, which my brother brought me from the UK the last time he came. We then got our presents wrapped up in a little shop across the street. And headed off to Omar's. The rest is pretty boring, except Omar stressed out India for not alerting the mod chip dude that his XBox was a 110 volts model.

Detecting Tsunamis

lots of people dead in the south pacific, but i don't care, a couple of years from now i'm sure i wouldn't even remember it happened.

i hope these blog things stick around.

yesterday it was 20k dead, today it's 60k. every person probably has about 6 people that are very close and would truly mourn that person. 60k times 6... 360k people that really give a damn about the lives lost excluding those weirdos that can get an emotion out of a statistic.

what's been happening lately... i wish i knew what i wrote in my last blog.

aub rejected me, dad nearly got killed by iraqi security because he drove towards a mosque and then began to reverse which is when they started to shoot at him. fortunately they're crap at aiming with their ak47s, that and my dad's the terminator, he miraculously survived a bullet that went inside the car, through the seat, through his jacket, and simply got scratched. well now he's shitting his pants, and is giving the move to lebanon full steam ahead.

i don't quite understand how my dad makes decisions, but he just seams to use any excuse to support his decisions even though they appear after taking the decision. even after the initial premise for the decision no longer stands. sounds familiar yet?

made myself some black coffee (no sugar), damn this stuff tastes nice, i've been drinking just tea for the past month. ahhh, coffee and cigarettes, the bitter taste of coffee at the back of the tongue, the cigarette smoke travelling in and numbing the taste of the coffee for just a moment.

i'm 23 and i've just recently developed acme problems. weird shit. maybe i should get some antibiotics.

i've downloaded a bunch of songs from '96, that can't be healthy either. i'm looking forward to going someplace where i won't listen to music. when i was a little kid i didn't listen to music much. i remember being on my way to infants school. my mum was driving me there in her little blue volvo and i was sitting in the back. there was a really sad song on the car radio. it wasn't that sad, it was a pop song, the i love you kind i think, and i had this urge to cry and i tried ever so hard not to but i ended up shedding a tear. i don't understand why i felt compelled to restrain myself, and now, i really wish i did cry my eyes out.

i've watched soo many simpsons episodes over the past couple of weeks, i've still got one disc to go through, but i'm saving that more desperate times. earlier this evening i bought a bunch of dvds: i, robot; the recruit, aliens vs. predator, phone booth, seen all but the last one. all were pretty good time killers.

new year's eve is coming up in a few days, no need to send a bunch of e-mails for that occasion fortunately. my brother suggested that i get a present for dad for the occasion so that i get one in return. i haven't been getting presents from my dad lately. as much as he would like to boast that he would purchase something grand for me, but somehow i make the point that whatever he has in mind just doesn't do it for me. for example if he were to suggest to buy me a car i would be really glad, but if it's a ford escort from the early 90s, then i rather walk.

i really wonder why i feel that i've got no control over my life. and it's really strange how around about this time 3 years ago, i lost it. i lost it in an amazing way. i went crazy. literally crazy, mental asylum crazy, and since that time i've been unable to resume my life. 3 years! how can i forget it. 3 years of sitting in this room of mine, doing nothing.

going back 3 years ago, i was a mess, but i was a student in the uk, preparing myself to study maths in a really good university. and then within a week i messed it beyond repair. i lost my mind and destroyed myself. destroyed it all. i did my best to destroy it. when i walked around in lebanon, one of the places that i visited during that week, i felt awful. I even visited the same office i did during that horrible week. maybe i spoke to that same lady. the phrase digging out the past comes to mind.

i wish there was something tying me down, but there isn't. if there was something tying me down, i wish i knew what it was. all i've done ever since i've graduated from high school has amounted to nothing. i've got an empty cv. i've lived in iraq and lebanon for a total of 10 years. and I can't read the bloody newspaper. i guess this suggests that i need a plan to stick to. ideas of getting a deadly job sounds attractive. maybe i can pin something up in the british consulate. it's not like i haven't thought about all this before.

time to look at some pics of naked ladies, and then watch phone booth.

One Month Later

I went to Lebanon last month for a week. It was a horrible trip. I went there to apply for re-admission at my old uni. And today I got the reply. I got rejected. I was relying on pity to get me in. It really was a horrible trip.

Well maybe it's about time I give up on the idea of going to university.

I've started to do a little weight lifting. I had cut down on my smoking too to one pack a day. But a couple of days with the boys and I think I messed that up.

I've been popping paroxetine for the past few days too. That trip to Lebanon had brought me down. And already I think the effects of the pills are wearing off. Damn pills don't work.

As soon as I arrived, I took the piss out of Nahida and then she made reference to my mum. She's been trying not to talk to me for a few days, but she's growing weak, and will be doing all the things she's used to doing for me.

Tania left to Lebanon a day before I got back from Lebanon. Good for her, she's gone for good, on her way to Cyprus. Damn cunt, owes Nahida 200 bucks. Of which I was relying on paying for my internet monthly rate. Fortunately, when I called the ISP up to tell them that I can't afford this month's internet they said I could have it for free... hehehe.

I think my socks smell

Yippee! Ramadhan is finally over.

So plans to go to Canada got scrapped since my dad isn't getting married anymore. So the new plan is to go back to Beirut. Again, I'm not too sure that it's going to happen. But I hope it works out even though the idea of going back to AUB makes me feel uneasy. A couple of friends who were there during my last visit reminded me that I left quite a few people with a bad impression of me during my last visit there. I just better not bump into them.

Today is a special day, it's the first time I'm not going to spend the day asleep. But unfortunately, there's nothing to do. The city is still not that safe. I can still hear shots being fired in the distance.

No Plan

Was it yesterday? I think. Dad called to say he's having trouble getting married which as a result cancels any plan of me moving to Canada this January.

I wasn't really hot on the idea, but none the less, it does feel like a set-back. I really need to get out of this country and get on with a normal life for a bit. A little vacation would do I hope.

Ola Cold

I'm sneezing, and I've got a runny nose. I'm not supposed to get sick like everyone else. I was brought up in the UK, I had a cold all the time back then, I should of been immune a long time ago. That's what I thought I was at the least.

Yesterday I fed the cake to my friends. I kinda messed it up... it was too big, not enough cherries, and had too much chocolate because I was obsessed about hiding the split between the top and bottom layer of sponge with chocolate icing. I'll eat the middle of what's left and chuck the rest I guess.

It's very nostalgic having a cold actually. It brings back the memories of mummy taking care of me. And also gives a good reason to stay in bed and not go out. And feeling drowsy all the time is cool, people pay money to change their state of mind, not me hehe.

The day after the day after

Oh weeee, that cognac stank the next day. Don't have a clue how much of it is left since the bottle is opaque black. Not much of a headache fortunately even though I forgot to drink water before going to sleep.

Yesterday I went out and bought the cake mix, chocolate icing, whipped cream and tinned cherries. Today I'll be baking the stuff. Woke up really early today: 3 am I think. Went to sleep too early I guess.

So I've got the whole day ahead of me. A good idea would be to make a plan for the day. Ummm, let's see... what do I need to get done?

• Get a light bulb for the table lamp which is the only source of light in my room.
• Go to that microsoft learning center across the main street and see what they have to offer.
• Call my dad in Iran and tell him the post code he gave me the second time for me to do my applications is that of a shopping mall.
• Get a glass of water, which I'll do right now. And a cup of tea too.
• Bake that cake.
• Feed the cake to my buddies. It's going to be scrumptous.

I'm sooo rotten bored. I need to get myself busy somehow. Doesn't look like I'm going to make it to college this coming February. So I might as well think of carrying out some mid-term project here.

I like Otard

Hell yes it's my birthday! I'm 23 today yay. A very good reason to buy expensive booze after several weeks of sobriety. I ditched all my friends so that I could tidy up my room and e-mail those colleges in Canada. 2 have replied so far, one was automated and although the second seemed automated it didn't claim to be so.

I watched that movie with Katie Holmes during dinner, and oh my gosh it sucked, probably the worst movie I saw since the last Katie Holmes movie I saw. So now that I've had my dinner, I'm drinking my fancy bottle of cognac.

First time I drink cognac I think. I don't know if it's because I haven't drunk in a long time or if it's the type of booze itself, but it hit me from the first swig.

I'm supposed to consume the bottle over 3 days, but I kept the bottle sideways in the freezer and the cork got soaked and flakey. After I poured out the cork, I guess I'll have to drink the whole bottle tonight since the cap is broken, oh dear.

So what have I got lined up for tonight... I'm planning to have one of those spontaneous nights yes I am. That's never worked out well in Baghdad. Maaayyyybeee not then.

And so the night is young, but not in this part of the world. oooh no the electiricity is going to cut off soon. got to post.

I like VH1

In times of tremendous boredom there's VH1, for which I am grateful.

I'm getting an impression that nobody is reading my blog. What's up with that huh?! Ah well the www can take a whiff of my bum.

What did I do today?... As usual not much. Got painfully poked by my acupuncturist, couldn't be bothered to entertain him today. Spent an hour or two taking a shower, having breakfast and playing utopia. Eventually got out of the house. Went to Tania's, promised to myself that I would be nice to her. I think I failed.

After Tania's, I went to see my uncle. Chilled out with him for a couple of hours and then drove back home. He'll be gone for a week or so.

So what then? I had dinner, turned on the tellie, some movie with katie holmes, really not my cup of tea, she does a good job of picking cheesy characters or is it just her that's soo cheesy. But I definitely would yeah.

Played a bit more utopia. I play too much utopia, but it kills time so well. I really should e-mail those community colleges in Canada. I just need to take 10 minutes to think of what I want to say. I was feeling really peaceful a couple of days ago, and after a few hours I flipped outside down. The Hives make nice videos huh.

Rammstein are good, really good. I didn't think much of them, except they have a catchy tune from time to time. But their new video clip 'Amerika' is lovely and humourously depicts the americanisation of the world. With a Santa Claus in Africa with an african tribal kid in his lap or even better the muslim taking off his Nikes to step onto his prayer mat. I'm not sure if they've shown that video on any other network besides the german MTV (which I'm receiving courtesy of apt Iraqi satellite receiver crackers).

Oh no! I think the electricity is going to cutoff in half an hour. Maybe I should go fetch some fuel for the car or... I could get someone else to do it for me later or tomorrow. I don't know if today's odds or evens. Petrol stations are open for cars with even car plates one day, and odd the next day. And I'm hungry, had bacon and eggs for breakfast last time, I should do eggs and basterma today.

And after a week of seeing the beginning of Britney's new video, I finally see the end: Hooray to Britney. Elections coming up soon. Saw an interview on BBC with the guy that does voices for the The Simpons. He thinks that Kerry is going to win cause he's taller, and that more often than not in American history the tall guy wins. It's not really fair that us iraqis don't get to vote for the US elections, it's only fair since we're under their occupation and are affected directly by the outcome of the elections.

So it's costs 7.5 million Iraqi Dinars (5k US$) to sign up to be a candidate for the elections here. That's out of my budget, I was guessing that I could easily get enough votes as a result of random factors such as an illilterate voter randomly picking or someone mistaking me for someone else.

Arrrgh I'm hungry!!! that's it I'm going to wake Nahida to tell her to make me some food.

I Hate Ramadan

Yay it's ramadan. I hate ramadan. I'm not a religous person. Everybody that knows me admits that asking me if I'm fasting is a stupid question, but they ask anyway.

So what's different about ramadan. Most of the differences only take effect during the day. Going over to my friend's house is uncomfortable since it's impolite to smoke in front of them. Can't smoke, drink or eat in public out of fear that some psycho extremists come and teach me a lesson. At dusk everyone's busy eating, usually I've already had lunch so I'm not hungry and I really don't like going over to a friend's house at such a time cause then their parents would start asking me why I don't fast and so on. Oh and the big difference is.... no shops to buy booze are open. The only upside that I've noticed so far is that traffic is a lot better now.

I'm sooo bored. I've got to stop watching TV and mucking about on my PC, and instead read a book or atleast stare at the ceiliing and contemplate life.

I had completely forgotten that I had created a blog account until today. So I've posted the week running from 20th to 27th of september that I had been typing out for my own sake.