one last joint

but it's never the last. mum's visiting. i've been tentatively packing my stuff because i'm supposed to get a job outside of baghdad some time in the coming weeks. it seems i'll be around for the elections. this time around, i should make my mind up ahead of time. so why not go over this now.


1. maliki and the state of law coalition. my dad's cousin is in this party and i don't like him. when people in shamiya ask me for a favour from him i tell them that when i was living alone as a teenager in lebanon he was my only relative in the country and he never even called to ask how i was doing. as far as achievements go, even though they've brought upon a relative improvement to the security situation, which i think they bear some responsibility of causing in the first place, there's not much else to show for.


2. sciiri (Iraqi National Movement). their leader's dead. what i've heard and from more than one source is that al-hakim's offices have not been allowing people to sell their properties in karada and offering to buy them at a discounted price. and where the hell are they getting their money? that's something that pisses me off about iraqis, they don't seem to ask where the money comes from, they do sometimes wonder where some of it went however. my personal opinion is that the state shouldn't give any money to the clerics and that the clerics should be able to support themselves on donations or in exchange for services such as readings.


3. the kurdish parties (Kurdistani List). i honestly do like these guys. talabani looks like a barrel of love doesn't he? sure they seem to operate like mafia families trying to go legal up there in kurdistan. a little shady here and there, but on the whole, i believe they've succeeded in making the people of kurdistan pround and happy. but i'm not going to vote for them even though that their behaviour has a lot of positive energy they don't really do anything for the people south of their border. they just keep to themselves.


4. sunni parties(Iraqi Accord Front and Iraqi Unity). they used to have a funny shaky guy with a cool hat. i haven't really had any interaction with them or any of their influence. i do however get the impression that they've kept things running smoother and operate a lot more competently in their areas than the others have with the exception of the kurds. they're pissed off all the time, and in all fairness i think they've got the right to be pissed off and they deserve to be listened to. the problem with them is that they've got themselves so involved in getting angry that they seem to have lost any kind of vision for the country.


there are more parties aren't there... trying to remember them...


5. allawi's (Iraqi National Movement). they have nice campaign billboards with nice smiles that brighten up your day. that party is a big bunch of really nice people and allawi's was dead cool when he went out there into the street right where a bunch of car bombs had just gone off to see things for himself when he was acting prime-minister or something. but they seem to have no grassroots support. their lack of support i believe is their distance to the people, they don't want to get their dirty. i don't think any of them are really up to the job. a lot of them have been living in abroad in england or wherever for a very long time and i think they've lost touch with today's iraq and its people.


oh another came to mind a moment ago...shouldn't there be a bbc list...


6. the commies. these guys are always good for a laugh. a bunch of geezers that pretend that communism doesn't include atheism. these guys have good hearts, in denial that communism failed and that no one's going to buy it anymore. they're the least corrupt of them all, it would be hard to imagine these guys stealing money from the state or doing anything dodgy. but on the other hand, they're so out-dated, all of their policies would fail and the country would starve itself to death. these old guys are just hanging around, keeping themselves busy in their retirement who of course have pockets of support everywhere among all the other over aged pensioners.


this is taking forever! there's a bunch of other guys but i'm not sure... wow! i found a wikipedia article! it's got the names of the parties that i'll put in brackets... oh i finished! i thought there were more. there was no mention of the commies in the article. i think the best thing to do is to just vote for a minority's party.


Post continued five days later...




I spoke to a Christian classmate to ask him who he was voting for so that I vote with him, but he was encouraging at all telling me to pick the hottest one, who according to the posters is a Fairuz Hatim. But after a google image search it turns out she's very fat. He told me to give him word if I saw anyone else that's cute. I also tried to dig out some info on the Christian parties and the candidates don't seem to be in any way spectacular. They get provisional seats anyway.


Another friend recommended the Ahrar party, a party led by a rather young guy that was previously with the Allawi list. My friend tells me that even though he's got a cleric's turban, the guy's very keen to make the most of help from abroad in the form of foreign advisors as well as foreign companies.


The party didn't get mentioned in the Wikipedia article I had read, so that qualifies them for that underdog quality and today I saw a poster for one member who is third on the list. Her name's Qortaba, she's got a degree in political science from Germany and looks cute enough.


And the post is continued on the day of the vote...


Sorry Qortaba, I'm not voting for someone that doesn't return a single Google result other than the one on her party's website especially if she's supposed to have studied in Germany because that's plain dodgy. Neither do I want to get a puzzled look when I tell people who I voted for. I'm succumbing to peer pressure and choose to vote for Allawi's list.


A couple days later...


I voted for Allawi :) No regrets so far. Did feel bad for not voting for the Ahrar party, I hope they do well and do better next time around. There's something that does get on my nerves. There are loads of people that didn't vote and if they didn't complain or care about the past four years about the country then that's fine but those that did, those that went on complaining about the state of things, they tick me off.


The way I see it, most of the people that didn't vote (about 40% of the electorate maybe) are those that are the most unhappy with the way things are whilst the guys that are voting for the punks that are pissing the unhappy abstainers as well me off are having fun knowing they're going to win.

Do Love a Good Steak

I spent the day trying to sort out my online existence because I can't seem to get the hang of social networking. Today's a been a try to get things in order, but so far it just looks like a bigger mess. I now have 5 e-mail addresses. The idea is that one e-mail address will be used for my blog and to communicate with friends on facebook and another for formal and family with another facebook account. Oh and of course there'll still be a need one for signing up to forums and other sites.

I was losing weight during the month of January, somehow my weight has bounced back up this month. Something I wouldn't know had I hadn't been playing Wii Fit. I ate so much when trying to quit cigarettes. I'm still upset that trip to the plantation messed that all up. There are still things that need to be taken care of there, such as getting all the socks that can't be found when in Baghdad.

My blog's pictures might disappear. Having changed the e-mail address to sign in with, if the other one is deleted the pictures might go along with the account. Not to worry, the pictures are backed up but it'll be a hassle to get them back on in the right places. Facebook, Picasa and Blogger are awfully hard to understand how to get to work together. There's a rising suspicion within me that they simply don't work together.

Went to Erbil with Od for a couple of nights and came back the day before yesterday. It was fun road tripping to there. We smoked up all the way up the highway to there. We'd wait till we pass checkpoints to spark up and several time we came up to another one before the joint was done. We stayed at my cousins', those two cousins are two big bags of crazy.

Od didn't get to see much of the town on this first visit of his, we spent our whole time in four places, the Speedway Center, Ain Kawa, Bakery & More and my cousins'. He liked the place a lot and during a brain storming session at Bakery & More we made a flowchart with his choices for the future ahead of him until he gets his immigration papers to move to the United States where his dear fiance is waiting for him. He's now considering moving up there to get a job.

My stash is nearly done and hopefully won't be replenished. Yes it's sad that it looks like it's coming to an end. but it's time for us to go our separate paths again and to long for the day that we meet again. It's the time apart that makes you realise you want it.

Today's Maz's birthday! That guy's been foaming on me since yesterday when he dragged me with him to the tire market. He took us to the airport to a little cabin restaurant run by an American. The food was good. Nais had a good steak, like the one Od had at the Speedway Center in Erbil. Iraqi restaurants are terrible at steaks, they're always too dry and taste like cardboard.

The weather's been great these past few days. It feels as though there's a gentle warm peace in the air which might be because it's a bit humid rather than the usual dry. It's only February however, and that can only mean that it's going to get hot even sooner this year.

I'm now going to go roll myself some of the stash that I had kept in a bottle of vodka to see if there's any goodness left in it after most of it should have been absorbed by the booze.

At The Farm Again!

I'm here at the farm again. Hopefully this will be the last time for a long time. I've brought my new camera with me too. So hopefully, there'll be lots of pictures to post.

I was certain that I had things to mention here on this blog, but nothing's coming to mind right now. It's also been about two hours that I've had this page open to type something in it.

My visit here is limited to tying up some loose-ends that I've left behind and then I'll take back Nahida and Fozzy to Baghdad. I'll get Nahida to help me out sort out my junk.

Cigarettes are so boring. I should have brought my stash with me. I'm trying to quit smoking and so far I've doing pretty well, getting myself stuck at home without any lying around. Except that today, I find myself with a stockpile of cigarettes from my last visit.

My health's not doing so great. The other day, I took a generic Viagra gel thing and got myself a proper boner and not the half hearted kind that I have been getting of late. That was fun. Quitting cigarettes should help achieve the same effect. On the other hand, I've been eating like a pig and should watch out for diabetes.

Mentally, I'm doing alright. I'm not sure if I've got the patience to deal with farmer complaints tomorrow but hopefully I'll be able to deal with them using the repertoire developed over the time dealing with them.

I was supposed to figure out why I'm afraid to go back to the U.K.. In summary, the reasons are that I worry that I might not survive there, that my life there will be lonelier than the life I have here and that I probably will find it hard to secure a career considering my lack of skills and experience.

It's getting late and my phone's about to die.

Jobs In Baghdad

So I've been looking for a job and I've found a few links to job postings that might be useful to other Iraqis that have a good working knowledge in English and fluent Arabic (what I don't have).

American Embassy They seem to come up with new stuff every week. Busy people!

USAID: Assistance for Iraq Probably also worth checking regularly.

British Embassy in Baghdad... I haven't seen anything posted here, but who knows maybe someday.

International Organization for Migration

International Relief & Development

If I come across others I'll try to remember posting them up and if anyone has any suggestions feel free to leave them in the comments section.

Karada Market

Waking up in the middle day, that's a luxury! I just woke up and had my dump with a cigarette. Fixed up my Zippo, the one that my friends in Lebanon gave me about ten years ago for my Birthday.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I hadn't many pictures taken in 2009. So I bought a new camera. Taking pictures is hard or something, because most of the ones I take come out bad. I also keep messing around with the settings which is my fault.

A few days ago, Od and I went to Karada and I brought the camera with me to take pictures. We were both uncomfortable about carrying a camera and taking pictures in the street with it. People might think that we're planning a terrorist attack or something and it can't be helped that there are soldiers nearly everywhere. Fortunately, nobody gave us any trouble. What I do want to do is go take photos with my uncle whose house is a museum. Maybe I could learn a trick or two from him.

Looking at my pictures however, made me realize how bad my body looks. It looks as though I've got man-titties. I must get back to playing tennis, which I can do since I'm no longer waking up so late in the afternoon as I have been doing the past couple of weeks.

Oh crap! I just realised that I have a couple of errands to do before I go to the plantation tomorrow for the very last time. I'll make sure I get as many pictures as possible, and maybe with the 10x zoom on this new camera, I'll finally get a good picture of those colourful birds that hang around the plantation.

Here are the pics that didn't come out blurry...

400 Posts or Why I'm Afraid To Go Back To The UK

Having a British passport and staying in Iraq is one of those things that people find strange in Iraq. Nearly everyone's asked me why do I stay. I've come up with a million different excuses to tell people some maybe true, most of them probably not. I'm not even sure which ones are true anymore.

The matter does come up now since I have very little to keep me in Iraq anymore, which for the past were college and then the running of the plantation.

I just spent spent the last 10 minutes making a table mapping what I've been doing since moving back to Baghdad in 2002. I've been here for 8 years. Things have changed in the world and so have I.

I really can't keep up with all the messed up reasons why I'm so afraid to go back. Typing this post is hard. Hard to choose one to start off with. I'll try doing a meditation breathing exercise for a minute.

Oh no! I just gave myself a head-rush. I figure out how to do the breathing exercise on the Wii Fit: that I must clench my tummy when exhaling and relaxing my belly when inhaling. Doing the opposite that I'm accustomed to: sucking in my tummy to inhale and relaxing to exhale might be good sometimes too, (smoking cigarettes might have encouraged this way of breathing).

Perhaps I need to make a mind map. I'm not going to get to the bottom of this matter in this post. I've given up already. The truth is that I don't know why I'm afraid to go back. I need to answer myself first which is another great thing to-do to put on my white board.

In a few hours, I'm supposed to head to a bank's share-holders meeting, but I've left my stock certificates back in the plantation. So I'm not even sure if I'm going to be let in or allowed to vote.

Laptop batteries are about to die.

Get a Job?

My dad let me have some money, not much compared to what I was expecting from our agreement that he's chosen to ignore. As a result, I don't feel myself obligated to the plantation any longer. And so, I'm supposed to be looking for a job now and a whole bunch of other things such as, the trouble is that I'm high. Right now I am.

I've never really taken the initiative to get a job. It's also the kind of thing I've always (and still do) imagined would just work itself somehow when the time comes. I'm not struggling or worrying too much about it thinking that the time will come when it will somehow sort itself out. But it's not going to happen like that, I'll start getting serious about it soon.

For the meantime, I'm making an effort to enjoy myself. Nahida got left behind at the plantation which is a bonus too. I wake up to a calm house that stays calm. My days start with a simple breakfast: some butter on toast with some tea and a joint. I try to stay at home quite a deal. My Ramadan stockpile of beer got finished by my friends. But I still have a small variety of spirits as well as a little bottle of green dragon (but mine's gold) that's waiting to be tried out.

I've also been trying to get a bit more serious with getting healthy. I've made a couple of salads and with some help they're coming out alright. I'm making it a point to play more Wii Fit as well, which I think has helped me avoid back pains. Occasionally, I get to play tennis, but then pain in my wrist sets in after half an hour of playing and I have to give up for a couple of days. I'm also hoping to go swimming soon too.

My sexual frustration has been taken care of too. She wasn't that pretty, but all in all it was a surprisingly better experience than I've had the last couple of times. The sex wasn't much fun, but to be relieved of pent up sexual frustration is something to be enjoyed.

Sav gave me the number of a pimp and I did all the rest all on my own, which is something I'm proud of. Some things did go wrong with the pick-up. The guard of a building that I'm acquainted with smiled at me as I walked past him and off with the girl to my car. I had made it so obvious what was going on that everyone on the street knew what was going on.

It's odd but I get the impression that there's something wrong with my perception of what it is that I can do as well as those things that I have achieved. I think I successfully managed the plantation, increasing production and making it more profitable, I made a big effort and I spent a whole big deal of my time but yet I feel I didn't do anything and achieved nothing for myself. In the end, I don't see myself as being any much more able a person.

I'm an able person however, I made salad. I'm slowly tidying up my home too. I'm noticing that there's a lot of junk in the house that's managed to blend into the house. It's difficult getting rid of junk simply because it's been there for so long, and so I'm doing it very slowly and it's making a difference. Having less junk cluttering up home is nice and I'm slowly adding things that are worth having around. Such as a vegetable peeler and curtains for my room. I didn't imagine they'd make such a big difference to the room's atmosphere.

So for now, I just want to keep reminding myself to enjoy myself something that I didn't feel I could do when I had to burden responsibilities back at the plantation. I want to focus more on enjoying myself for a while longer rather than getting a job. And if I make getting a job fun then all the better.

Happy New Year!

The club was fun. I saw women! I also popped into the bar every other moment to grab a drink. Later hanged out with Od and Zaif. We took a drive around and got a bite to eat. Poor Od's got to go to work in the hospital tomorrow.

The curfew tonight's still midnight. One would of thought that they'd make an exception on New Year's! So here I am back home, it's midnight... Happy New Year!

Getting Close to Number 400

The sun's about to set on this last day. Keeping it going with the nostalgia, I've got my old laptop playing old songs that I haven't heard in a long time. A lot of which I listened to while smoking up copiously such as I did ten years ago and that I'm now. The speakers on this old thing are so much nicer to that that I've been accustomed to. I've barely done any work ever since ending the harvest and I've been getting high instead. I must take down a notch the getting high act, but for now I'll leave that till next year. Maz just called, we're going to go to the local social club. Might see women there! Haven't seen them for a while.

Something To Work On

Got some stuff to fry up for a meal. It's been a struggle to feed since I'm in Baghdad and Nahida's still at the plantation. Nostalgia's good. I'm working my old laptop now. Most of my blog has been done on this little one. It's hard disk growls these days, angry that it's been woken up. I hate my other laptop that I've been using for the past year and so. It's got Vista. It's also larger, heavier and has bad speakers.

I wonder what I would have blogged ten years ago. My life seemed like a big mess around about back then, and it's funny to see after all this time, I'm suddenly finding myself in a big mess again with no idea what to do with myself. I know I'm going to do something silly over the next four months or so. But for now, I've turned myself back into a glorious sloth again.

The electricity is back and it's time to start frying food...

Still no improvement on my puff pastry frying skills. The pastries nearly look burned on the outside but there's a big layer of pastry on the inside that isn't getting cooked.

I Love My Dad

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Beans

It was a long harvest, 30 days long. Thankfully, heavy rains didn't come pouring down till the night of the day we finished. Sure enough, I was on my way back to Baghdad the next day. After doing some quick sums, it looks like our sales of our crops are going to double this year.

Coming back to Baghdad after such a long time at the plantation made me notice a few changes. Such as the traffic is now even more horrendous than before I left. It took me over an hour to drive into my own neighbourhood and to my house the day I arrived.

Od arrived from Lebanon the same day as me to hear that one of his classmates got shot while riding with someone else who seemed to be the target. He also got engaged to what seems as like someone that can cut through his bullshit which is a good thing. Every guy needs a woman like that.

It's very early in the morning now, I'm hungry and I think that Qaddori's opens at 6:30 AM. So I better hurry up this post to get there and eat some beans. One other change that's taken place in Baghdad is the popping up of small take away pizza places. There might be two or three in my neighbourhood. Up until now, nearly all burger/pizza restaurants have had sit-in areas. They still have a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the pizza however.

Ever since coming back, I've kept myself busy. During the day I've been getting things done. The first thing I did was go to the phone company to pay my phone bill which for last month was about 160 bucks chargeable to the plantation. The girl that prints out the bill is so cute. She looks like she's in perpetual mourning because she's been wearing black for the three months since I started with my billed line. She was also not wearing any make-up and she doesn't need to because she has pouty lips and rosie cheeks which is something somewhat rare here. She was the first pretty woman I got to see for over a month.

There's something wrong with the SIM cards we get. They've got no theft protection at all. You might know that if you type in the wrong PIN number several times that it'll then stop asking for the PIN number and won't work unless you type in the PUK number. I've learned that the PUK of all 078 numbers is eight zeros, thereby defeating the purpose of the PIN number and there's no way to change the PUK number either.

For a change, I'm not feeling bored. Instead, after coming back, I got swept by a big sensation of loneliness. I guess I've been lonely most of my life and that most of the time I'm just used to it. I'm thinking that as soon as I've cleared up all immediate work related to wrapping up the rice season that I might go take a vacation and see my family back in England.

I'm getting too hungry to continue this post. I'm going to roll myself a joint and go get me some beans.

Ba Ba Bored

The harvest is nearly over, we're on the last stretch, about 25 hectares of partially collapsed rice to harvest. The rice collapsed because of its heavy load being blow down by strong winds. No cool crop circles here unfortunately.

Going out to the harvest has become a routine affair. I wake up, get me a bite to eat from Nahida. Call up my advisor and head off to the fields. If the day starts early I come back home for lunch. The day ends after sunset and I drive back home. I watch the movies, animes and series that Nais has loaded onto my portable hard drive, have my dinner and after a couple of joints go to sleep.

That's not to say that it's all routine. A couple of days ago, a farmer protested against letting a second combine harvester into his land. A couple of his relatives then came in and shot at one of my agents. When things go awfully wrong I've got several numbers to call on: my cousin the sheikh, the dude that's in charge of all the government offices in town, his assistant and my dad. But I couldn't get through to any of them.

I took my agent in my car and we headed to the police station who sent us to the court house that then sent us back to the police station with some. We then had to go back to the court house but we needed witnesses to testify. We called on my other agent and the driver of the combine harvester and they didn't come fearful of any repercussions. It was around this time that my cousin got through to me. He told me that I could go back to the harvest, that he'll get the cops to hurry up and that he's sending a guy we know and who is a relative of the shooter and the farmer to the harvest and who he wants me to put on the line when I see him.

I left my agent at his house and went onto the harvest met up with the guy and we were about to listen to the farmer's side of the story but I had to tell him to get rid of the automatic rifle he had slung on his shoulder (My dad once told me that a farmer must not bear arms during the harvest). After we heard his story, I told him off a little more. We held onto his share of the harvest as instructed by my cousin, the purpose of which was to get him to hurry up with resolving the matter.

By the evening of the same day, I visited my cousin to explain to me what will happen. He explained to me that it was agreed that the next day the farmer and members of his family will apologize to the agent as well as myself in each of our homes and pay somekind of compensation fee of nine-hundred thousand dinars to my agent for the bullet shot and six-hundred thousand to me for messing with an agent of mine whilst doing his job, but that it wouldn't be appropriate to take the sum owed to me. My cousin told me that it was important that such things be dealt with as fast as possible and that they'll come to me even though he wouldn't be able to come. I told him I had no clue what the heck to do, so he agreed to postpone their apology to me to the day after so he could attend.

And so today, at ten minutes to two in the afternoon he came to my guest hall and told me about some website on the net to check the weather on and a couple of minutes later the guest hall was filled with about thirty or forty guys as if they had just come off of a bus. My cousin called for tea and explained the actions he took and some other things I didn't understand and then called on the farmer to say hello or 'peace onto you' which he did and was followed by a bunch of the elders some of which I was well acquainted with, others I had just seen around. The whole thing was over within twenty minutes.

That was pretty much the highlight of this year's rice harvest. The rest of it has been well boring. Especially these nights when I get back home.

Bad Luck Tapping

Seems as though this time of year can be just plain bad luck for me. Something I'll check by reviewing previous posts.

Last night, somebody tried to get passed the PIN protection on my dad's phone and screwed it up. For no good reason at all, I tried sliding in the my dad's SIM card into my Sony Ericsson phone. Turned on my phone and nothing came on except for a little blink from the infrared thing.

This morning I woke up with a wet dream. The last time that happened it wasn't a wet dream, it was chlamydia. But I haven't slept with any prostitutes in a long time, so there's no chance of that. It's still a nuisance. The strange thing about a wet dream, is that I usually get a chance to wake myself up before it climaxes. This morning I chose not to wake up.

I had to go to Diwaniya this morning. I thought that perhaps there I'd find myself a replacement battery and that would do the job. But there was not a single Sony Ericsson phone in sight. I need a phone for work and I'm not going back to Baghdad for another couple of weeks, so I bought a new Nokia. I don't like Nokias, I don't know how to setup the internet on it and I can't find the blog function.

Driving back to the plantation, I drove over a dirt bump that's supposed to keep people from driving through. They didn't quite make it high enough to stop cars from going over it and I drove over it on my way earlier in the morning. On the way back however, I must've been driving too fast because it hit the car from underneath and when I got home some guys took a look and handed me a piece of plastic telling me this must have fallen off.

It was mid day by then and realising that my luck so far has been very bad, I reluctantly went out to the harvest. Surprisingly, everything went smoothly until we got to the last farmer of the day. That's when my scientific calculator which I've set constants to calculate my share of the harvest.

24 hours have passed now and I should be safe now.

Drugs on the farm?

I've been hearing about a flower that people plant for its nice smell and that is also a drug. This is the first one I've seen. There's a story of a little girl that ate some of these flowers and died. The farmer's could also be pulling my leg.

A Day at the Harvest

Why do the people look so small in the picture? There are a lot of these women dressed in black, about thirteen in sight right now. They come and collect the stalks with rice that the combine harvester misses. They collect the stalks in a bag and beat the bag with a stick to thrash the paddy from the stalks.
A few also come to ask for some of the paddy that the combine dumps that the farmer and I split. So we give then about fifteen kilograms from each pile.
There are alot more than there were last year. I thought it was because we had poor crops last year, but I'm told that there women that come from far away places have gathered here because this here is one of the few places that managed to cultivate in spite of the drought.
There was one guy that had been following us since the first day and would walk off at the end of each day with a big bag. It's good to see he's not here today. He got me wondering how much is enough.
Oh no, it's started to rain again. We didn't harvest yesterday because of the rain. It's also started to get cold. I might now need to switch my white summer dishdasha for a winter one.

Harvest will Start

The harvest starts tomorrow. I'm nearly ready and will make an effort to blog from my phone during the harvest. I hope it's not as exciting as the last harvest. I also hope that the farmers don't have much to complain about either. The thing they annoyed me the most about last time regarded getting a 'shovel' (big yellow vehicle with a big scooper in the front). A lot of them got that taken care of after the last harvest. Some will complain that I'm compensating a little less than they expected for the 'shovels'.

After this harvest is through, I'm going to have to start thinking of how I'm going to spend my first twenty million. It's going to totally change the way I think of spending my money. No longer will it be worth my while to spend money on expensive restaurants and the occasionally nasty prostitute. I could try saving my money and travel instead. I'll try to get a job too, but I definitely have to travel even it's to piss in a foreign country and fly right back.

No orn

I haven't wanked in a long time. Having my dad around has made me feel uncomfortable about doing, his room is just across the corridor from mine. He's taken over my room at the plantation and now I'm sleeping the living room and I think it's time I move that bottle of vodka out of sight it's been lying around on a drawer in the corner for a week. I should not be leaving that around for my dad to see. It is a half-bottle of absolute, maybe it doesn't look so suspicious. Let's see, (thinking about wanking) I do need a shower too.

I might as well drink the vodka, there's not much left in it anyway. Never mind, I don't have anymore but I've got plenty to keep me high. Getting high so much is beginning to make me feel I've lost my focus on controlling my life. The good news is that I'm still making the changes I decided I need to make before feeling that I've lost my focus on controlling my life. Maybe I could say that I was in 'boss me' mode and that I'm now in 'do-er me' mode now. Drank the vodka, and the result is that I had so little there's no effect.

This laptop doesn't have any video porn! They got accidentally deleted a while back and I haven't copied anything new. Maybe that's why I haven't been wanking. But back in Baghdad, I've found a bunch of stuff on my old laptop some of which I didn't even know I had. Should have copied some. Porn sites have also lost a great deal of their appeal these days too. I'm definitely wanking tonight no matter what.

I did get turned heavily turned on last weekend though, my dad and I visited some family. That was the most fun I ever had during a family visit, because they Wii at their house. And I got so horny after coming back from their house. They had a very cute sixteen year old daughter. Yes, it's wrong. Fortunately however, she was off my mind the next day and thinking about her now isn't doing anything to me.

Getting a Cut

Autumn started the day of my last post. Ever since the weather hasn't climbed over forty Centigrade. The weather's been lovely ever since. There was one rainy and windy day in the plantation when I was in Baghdad. That day was my birthday. When I came back, portions of the crop had been knocked down by the wind which was a sore sight.

I had a bunch of issues to go through with my dad. One thing that he caught onto quickly enough was that he should play down his authoritarian attitude with me about how things should be done. He now understands that I like to do things differently and that it works. A few days ago, my dad agreed to giving me a portion of the profits. We haggled until we agreed that I get 30% of the profits. That's about 20 million dinars ($16,000) for the last wheat season. I'll also be responsible for paying for my own expenses in Baghdad. The most annoying thing about having my dad around is that he keeps waking me up early in the morning.

Both my father and I are doing better now that we agreed on a cut for myself. He was very apprehensive of the idea at first, but we finally sat down to talk about it he quickly become more receptive. He couldn't sleep that night and the next day after a bad night's sleep he did accuse me of trying to weasel as much money as possible. But after a good rest, he switched to a good mood and now I'm a bit worried that maybe he's figured that he got himself a good deal and that I got ripped off.

Kiki's thinking of coming back. He's still in Malaysia and finally got a job that was passed down to him after the friend he went to Malaysia with flew off to America. He asked if he could stay at my place which of course he's always welcomed to. It would be really nice having him back. It would bring back the spirit of the old times. He was always the one that I was sure to find when I used to visit during summer break when I was living in Lebanon. My ex-neighbour's been here for a month, and Kiki asked if he was staying at his old house. But ex-neighbour is cooped up in grandma's, I told Kiki that he did think about moving back into his old house. It would be great to see the old gang grow back.

Wine from a Tea Pot

Woke up with a slight sore throat. Must have not covered myself well last night as well as smoked too much. Yesterday, was my birthday.

After a morning going round the local offices with my dad to distribute gifts, Nahida popped out the cake she had prepared the night before. Dad remarked by the time he was twenty-eight he was already into his second marriage.

From there I drove back to Baghdad, bought some wine and went over to my ex-neighbour's place. Another friend from school showed up a little later and we went out for dinner where we were served wine in cups out of a tea pot!