Quicksand

Walked to the place where they issue IDs this morning with Nahida. Got the forms, had them filled in and handed them in without a hitch. We were told the ID would be ready in the afternoon and that Nahida could pick it up in my stead because I was going to busy with my Arabic tutor.

Walked back home and finally got a haircut. People will be celebrating. Did a little shopping too, got some crisps, peanut butter sandwich crackers, pomegranate juice, toothpaste, gel, bread, cigs and ate a kebab sandwich on the way too. I'm eating way too many of those kebab sandwiches and they're getting stingy with the vegetables. I need those vegetables.

After I was done with my tutor, Nahida had already got back and repeated the same story as last time about me needing to change my birthplace again and added that the civil worker there showed her a memo was sent from the government cabinet telling them to make everyone's birthplace Baghdad which Nahida explains is a government ploy to permit Iranians to infiltrate the Iraqi population.

I just don't believe it. I'm going to go there tomorrow and try to talk to the administrator. I've thought up of another good reason why I need to keep my real place of birth on the ID, which is that it could convince a checkpoint if it has doubts that I'm Iraqi by showing that I was born abroad. I'm also having to consider calling the British Embassy to check if it would be any problem if my Iraqi passport had a different birthplace when at a passport control. I don't know if they're the right person to ask but I can't think of anyone better to check with.

I'm really trying to understand the ramifications of changing my birthplace should if I'm eventually forced to. My aunt thinks it's a good thing to change it to Baghdad just in case a crazy ruler like Saddam comes into power and removes the rights of people who aren't born in Iraq.

This crazy story has got my paranoia working up. If things were to go the way of the powers that be all my Iraqi documents would state that I was born in Baghdad. And to what purpose?

After having a fit with Nahida, I went on a munchie rampage and fell half-asleep on my couch for a while. I stayed up very late last night chatting to Suzy on the phone. I've forgotten to mention that things have somewhat developed between me and her. We're now playing the roles of a couple, we occasionally stay up late at night on the phone and I blow kisses on the phone and I'm getting away with a lot of perverted talk too and exchange those mushy words too. And I can't believe that she's pointed out that I'm very shy about public displays of affection. That's actually a problem I've had before but how can it be a problem when she also makes it a point that she doesn't want the guys at uni to know about 'us'. A large part of me wishes that I could get out of this relationship but there's no way out, I have to wait another year and a bit.

I'm surprised that sky is still cloudy at this time of year. Most of my memories of Baghdad have a clear blue sky and a scorching sun. Maybe it's normal to have clouds at this time of year but then maybe not I'm not sure. Whenever there's talk about the environment on the tellie of late I'm often wondering what the effects of global warming are on Iraq could they possibly good or are they really bad?

There was a short feature on CNN about banking through the use of mobile phones in an African state by a company called Wizzit. It's such a great idea and would be a great quick solution to the problems that Iraq faces with the banking system which has a knock on effect that produces high levels of absenteeism among the Iraqi army (they leave work to get their wages and give it to their families). It's amazing how there are so many quick fixes to a lot of Iraq's problems which can be cost effectively implemented to improve the situation here. At college nearly all the students in my class have an internet connection at home but my college which boasts about its IT departments doesn't make any use whatsoever of the potential available.

Bridge

A mind that farts thoughts that's what I feel I have sometimes. They usually have the same smell too. Regular diet of baked brain beans does that maybe. Tediously boring exhaustion, remember when exhaustion was accompanied by a sensation of achievement. Life made bland by a remarkably unreal situation. The fruit tree drops its fruit and they're not ripe yet. Can't be free all on my own and I'm the crazy one. Water isn't pure but you better believe it is. Don't need TV to numb my head, it's numb enough already. It's getting harder to imagine. A river run dry perhaps. Night comes and curtains are pulled. To keep people from looking inside and to keep me from seeing the moon or a star. I've heard that a mortar or two landed in the neighbourhood. A boredom so spectacular.

Can't Think Of A Title

I think I might have to come to terms with the fact that's impossible to fix my sleeping schedule. Thursday morning I woke up at seven in the morning just like I would have to had I had college that day. I have classes at college on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. But by the time the week-end is over I'm sleeping at one or three in the morning and waking up at around midday. So when Sunday comes it's a nightmare to wake up and when I get home I'm flat out exhausted and spend the rest of the week sorting out my sleeping schedule.

Yesterday was a crappy day, and it seemed as if just about everyone I spoke that day had a crappy day too. It started off when I chose to go to the petrol station and got stopped at a checkpoint. Iraqi army guy stops asks me where I'm coming from, I tell him from my home in the same neighbourhood, then he asks me if the car's mine. I stutter a bit and tell him it's in registered in my dad's name. And because I stuttered he told me to pull over to the side. He then proceeds to open my boot on his own whereas usually the soldier would ask me to open it for him. Then he opens the door to my car and starts fidgeting hastily through my stuff and underneath the seats. First thing he asks me is where do I work with a notable degree of apprehension. I tell him I'm a student and show him student id he takes a look at it says it's old, I explain that they haven't issued a new one. Asks me what my iPod was. I tell him it's an mp3 player and showed him how it's connected to the car stereo through a CD car kit. At this point I notice another soldier standing behind him. Then he asks me how much it costs, I lied and told him I got it as a gift and don't know how much it costs. He then takes the car documents and my ID and asks me if I've got a legal document permitting to drive my dad's car. I've heard of checkpoints asking about that, but it makes no sense. I told him I didn't and with a laugh asked him if he had one when he drives his dad's car. To which he answered he did as if he was speaking the truth. So I finally exclaimed while still laughing about the situation that that would mean I stole my dad's car. To which he said no and let me go without an apology.

It pisses me off to know that these guys get away with such harassment. Most of them are pretty decent and polite and excuse themselves. But every once in a while, I get stopped by a buffoon. And because I'm not fluent in Arabic I can't go and raise a fuss because then I'd raise some suspicion because of my heavy accent. And I haven't heard of any official channel through which people can complain about such issues. The truth being that if such a channel existed it would easily overload and it would be too much of a task to deal with.

Well that experience pissed me off for the rest of the day. When I got to the petrol station the queue had veered off from the main street and into the side streets, so it looked to me as if wasn't worth the wait. And I then came back at around midday and the queue looked the same. And so I ended up spending two and a half hours in the queue. I had forgotten to buy some cigarettes before getting into the queue, but luckily I found a couple that I had take from Od (who has gone off to see his family in Yemen) a couple of days earlier. When I reached the end of the queue I had a go at a couple women drivers. They get their own queue since they're women. I let one slide ahead of me and then the next one wanted to go ahead of me too so I had a go at her and told her that since I let one woman go ahead she should take her turn and go behind me. She whined and said that the other drivers don't let her through. And then another woman got ahead of her and I had a go at her and told her that the other woman was ahead of her in the line.

I was hungry so I decided to go to a restaurant and see a nearby doctor to check out the bump on my wrist. When I got there it surprised me to see that they've placed junk all along the main road to prevent people from parking. I drove to a little parking lot on the main street that was full and spoke to the guy in charge, he told me the parking lot was reserved for the doctors working in the building and that I should park my car in a side street and inform a shop keeper that the car is mine. So I did that, and had to promise a couple of times that the car won't explode.

Went to the restaurant, they had no more shawerma left, so I walked out and spotted a new restaurant and decided to give it a shot. It was a barbecue restaurant with kebab and tikka etc. I had myself a half portion of meat tikka, it wasn't bad. What was nice was that there was plenty of little hot green peppers in the pickle dish served as part of the entré. I've catagorised the barbecue restaurants into two types there are the ones that serve hummous and those that don't. And then the better the hummous the better the restaurant. This one didn't have any hummous.

There was a new grocery store next door to the restaurant which I checked out. It was disappointing to see another relatively big store with the same range of products as a store half its size. The sanctions are over but traders are still too scared to operate and bring in a greater variety of goods. And it pissed me off to see yet again the guy at the cash register permitting himself to get distracted instead of dealing with each customer in turn. All I wanted was a pack of cigarettes and some juice and not to listen to some chick trying to haggle over the price of a phone card or some other person trying to get the price on some fish.

I then went over to the dermatologist doctor that I regularly see. He checked out the bump on my wrist. He said it's a muscle thing and not a bone and he asked me if I worked with a screwdriver a lot I explained I was learning how to play the guitar. He made fun of me for leaving England coming to Iraq and learning how to play the guitar. He gave me some pills to take and said if it still bothers me he could stick a needle into it. He also gave me some ointment to use on my chest which has this chronic rash. These day it's not as bad, but there are times when it really starts to bug me so it was cool to have something handy.

When I got home I hit the bottle, and got slightly wasted. There was nothing better to do. I sobered up around midnight and made a couple of phone calls. My operator's got this new deal that allows you to pay for the first three minutes and the rest of the hour is free. Which is pretty cool. What sucks about my operator is that unlike the others it still doesn't offer GPRS or WAP. But when I was at the doctors I noticed a little 'G' next to the signal strength indicator, but when I got home it was gone. So maybe they're working on it.

I've nearly finished learning the guitar exercises my tutor gave me to do last January. I'm such a slow learner. So maybe this coming week or the next I'll go see him and get told I'm doing it wrong and get a new bunch of exciting exercises.

A few days back my gang from the class went out together after college and had some falafel in the Karada district and shopped through the market stands on the street. I bought a pair of sunglasses for a couple of bucks, dodgy as hell since there's no guarantee they have UV protection, but I don't know if that means they hurt your eyes more than if you were not to wear them. Got some Zippo flints for less than a buck that I've been trying to get my hands for a very long time but which whenever I see them are part of a box set. Luckily for me the guy was willing to take one out of the box set and sell it to me individually. And I finally got a DVD copy of the new James Bond movie for about a dollar and a half. I also saw a Playstation 3 there, unfortunately that wasn't in the same price range as all the other stuff I bought, it was priced at 800 dollars. I told the guy it was a good price and he said it's being sold for the same price in the UK. I laughed to myself about the sucker who was going to buy it at that price. I myself am looking forward to buying a Wii, but Nintendo isn't a popular brand here like Sony is and so the Wii has yet to make an appearance here.

I spoke to my dad on the phone last night. He's getting married. It's been over twenty years that he's been wanting to do it and he's been engaged numerous times. But it looks like he's finally going to do it. He's had the 'Islamic' marriage done and he's soon going to get a civil marriage done too.

I had to speak to my dad about this new problem I've got. Nahida had got my dad a new civil ID card but couldn't get one for me. They told her that I have to be present and that I'd have to change my place of birth to Baghdad.

What doesn't help is that for some reason I've got another ID that I got ten years ago which is called 'The Proof of Nationality' I think that says I was born in Baghdad. I hadn't noticed the discrepancy until a couple of years ago and when I asked Nahida about it who was there when we made it, she said that the official at the time advised us to do so just in case.

Just in case, something like what my auntie told me about a couple of months ago happens again? She told me how Saddam had wanted to purge Iraq from all the Iranians that had previously gained Iraqi citizenship somehow. So that if you couldn't prove you were a true Iraqi you'd be treated like a second class citizen or you'd get thrown at the Iranian border.

It wouldn't be such a problem but when I make my new Iraqi passport it too would then say I was born in Baghdad and so when I show up at passport control with two passports (one British and one Iraqi) with two different places of birth it would look fishy.

It's midnight now and I'm feeling a bit drowsy maybe I could go to sleep earlier than I did last night. I should call Nahida's bro tomorrow and tell him to take my car and fix it up some more. It's already started to screw up in a bad way. I better study tomorrow too. I'm hungry, I'm going to steal a piece of bread that Nahida bought yesterday. If it's in my freezer I can take it.

Oh yeah and it's my brother's birthday today. I called him up, he was happy today because his sugar reading was healthy today meaning that he's learning to control his diabetes. And the half-Iraqi chick won the Star Academy contest. I really don't care, someone just messaged me about it right now and it's somewhat of a topic people like to talk about. It's one in the morning and I still can't think of a title to the post. I give up.

Blast From My Ass

Got diarrhea once again. Haven't had it in ages. Maybe it's because today I stopped taking those antibiotics I started taking last month. Or maybe my lunch at that restaurant was dodgy. I always have tummy problems after eating there. Last night it looked like that zit on the inside of my thigh was about ready to pop. Now it looks like it's just going to disappointingly fade away.

Miz came back from Egypt. He stayed at Kala's place. He was supposed to buy an apartment for his parents and his little brother to move into. But after arriving there with his brother his parents told him that they had changed their minds. That certainly pissed off Miz. And so Miz came back with his little brother that he was supposed to leave behind had he bought a flat.

I slept over at Miz's place last week end. Before leaving, India had fortune of spending a sleep over at Miz's. I remember India telling me it was a dreadful experience, but I just couldn't for the life of me remember why exactly. His parents moved abroad a couple of years ago and the place was the filthy. But everything was fine until I needed to take a crap.

Turned out Miz doesn't have a toilet seat in his house, instead he's got a traditional hole in the ground. I'm not accustomed to the hole in the ground thing and I re-discovered that it does require some skill and dexterity. The other surprise was that Miz doesn't have any running water in his house except for a weak running tap in the garden.

Miz got me a bucket of water to flush with and a jug of water to wipe my ass with and left me to deal with the situation. After some mental preparation, I got to the task at hand. I pulled down my pants and squatted over the hole. The delivery was satisfying enough, even though I was sure if I was on a real toilet I could've probably pushed out a bit more. But then I had to wipe my ass with the water jug and it was too heavy for me to pour onto my backside without losing balance. And I noticed how very dangerously close my linen trousers were to the hole and the likelihood of some of the water flowing off my backside could drip on it. So I took off my trousers and then proceeded to wipe my ass successfully. Put my trousers back on and called Miz to show me how to wash my hands, he showed me the tap in the garden and the ordeal was over with.

Enie and Zaif, both of whom had left to Syria during the summer came this past week. I saw Enie at college today and I've yet to see Zaif. It's good to have Enie back in the class, he's much more alive than the rest of the guys. When Zaif arrived I spoke to him on the phone and he explained to me how he and his friends are planning to rent a place near his uni since his neighbourhood is too dangerous to commute from on a daily basis. He's a bit worried that it might be considered suspicious for a bunch of guys rent a place together. I knew my cousin was planning to do the same thing, so I told him that there must be a lot of guys doing the same and so it shouldn't be that suspicious. I know he knows my cousin, so I tried to tell him that he could maybe find a place with him. Zaif then connected some dots and realised that one of the friends with whom he's trying to find a place with is my cousin.

My bro who quit smoking just a few weeks ago has found out that he's got diabetes. It was my dad who also has diabetes that figured it out when he caught my bro pissing a lot. He's so bummed out about it. The doctor told him he has to lose ten kilos if he wants to fix himself up to not have to take pills or needles.

Nahida's found me an Arabic tutor (two actually) to teach me Arabic grammar. The first one was really good and he gave me two lessons which went very well. But since he's in such high demand and tutors groups, he's not affordable. So he hooked me up with another with whom I've only had one lesson so far and who inundated me with information. The second one ain't so great but I hope it works out with him anyway.

My car spent the last week being repaired by Nahida's brother. The choo-choo train sound from the engine is gone and is now making a beautiful hum. Acceleration is doing great too.

I'm still holding out against Nahida's food. I'm having lunch at restaurants and dinner has become a 'la vache qui rit' sandwich nearly everyday. I don't think I'm spending more by eating out every day, because a lot of the time I end up eating out before coming home from college anyway. And the food Nahida usually makes me is somewhat expensive and the amounts are wasteful.

I haven't had a shower for a week until this morning because the electricity has been missing that whole time. So after a week of building up a good smelly and well itchy body, and I would've gone on if I didn't have college today, I finally took a cold shower. But then after I got back from college the electricity came back for an hour or so and I just wished it had come one day earlier. But the cold shower was pretty nice, it also convinced me to use the downstairs shower next to my bedroom because the water flow is stronger. Which is exceptional because I had grown accustomed to using the upstairs one which even after I moved downstairs I continued to use. The upstairs shower has an indoor water heater but a weak water flow whereas the downstairs one is the opposite, it has an outdoor water heater which is harder to warm up and a stronger water flow making it more ideal for a cold shower.

Elated

I'm feeling somewhat elated this week-end. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, maybe I'll crash in a couple of days.

I've spent most of the week-end in my bed reading about some of the subjects I'm studying in a couple of old A-level textbooks. It's a bit odd to see that the A-level books go into more detail than the what I'm studying at college. Well that's Iraqi education for you.

Got a massive zit building up on the inside of my thigh. It was a little lump for the past couple of months until last Thursday. It's a case of folliculitis. Not the first time it happens to me. To avoid any further friction on the spot I'm covering it with a nicotine patch. I've finally got the hang of sticking one on without having it fall off. If it pops and I don't clean the mess straight away I could get another.

The nicotine patch is also having some effect. I've cut down from two packs to only one pack a day. I know it's wrong to continue smoking while on the patch, but I'm not trying to quit. I have to admit it's nice to relax those worn out lungs a bit.

The fight for independence from Nahida is still going strong. I haven't had her make me a single meal except on Thursday morning when she made me a heavy breakfast of eggs and basterma because I was to get a new filling and wouldn't be able to eat on that side of my mouth for the rest of the day. Today for example I had drove out to get a Lahma bi Ajeen (translates to "meat in bread" and is like a light minced beef pizza) in the morning, on the way home I also got some bread and had a big peanut butter and jam sandwich. And for dinner I had a tuna sandwich.

The fight against her bad vibes is also going good. She says that what I'm going through is a result of the change of weather and that'll pass as if it's something bad. Where as I'm feeling a lot more comfortable and motivated than I've felt in a long time. I'm actually getting some studying done in my free time for the first time since I've come back from my summer trip, I'm sleeping better and I'm not over-eating anymore.

We've had rather cool weather during the weekend and today it rained which I think is a bit odd considering that it's mid-March. I just hope that the coming week ahead isn't going to be a whole lot hotter than last week. And this zit I've got better not decide to pop while I'm at college.

I should say that I finally must admit if I haven't already, I must be a bleeding hypochondriac. Every week, I find something wrong with my body. There's that lingering rash on my chest that I've had since 2001 or 2002 and I still haven't checked out what's the deal with that bump on the underside of my wrist. The thing can hurt sometimes. At least I got that filling that's been waiting for nearly a year to get done. I just got to go to the dentist one more time to take care of the final touches.

I was about to start reading the last bits of the economics chapter that I set out to read since yesterday but I picked up the phone and called Suzy. She finally asked me a question that she said she asked me before: whether I 'fancied' her or was 'in love' with her. I told her that she was a best friend to me that I was also physically attracted to. She wasn't very content with the answer saying that a physical attraction must be accompanied by feelings of love. I elaborated by saying I was in between 'fancying' her and 'loving' her. She sang a line of a song that described that she regretted meeting me. I then asked the same question she had asked me and she said she more than fancied me but less than loved me. So if what we've said was true to our feelings we've got a mutual thing going on. I asked her if I could still give her a kiss over the phone, she said it was fine.

One thing Suzy previously pointed out was that since we're in the same class it's harder for us to disconnect. It's true, and we've got a small class too. I do regret having moved on her too. I might have been more willing to try my luck elsewhere if I wasn't stuck in this cozy and no fun relationship with Suzy. And with summer starting up, I'm going to have to deal with the sight of her chest hair which I caught a reminding glimpse of a few days ago.

Oh bugger! I just noticed the electricity came back on, so I turned off the generator off. And the electricity just went off. I should just go to sleep anyway. Where's the off switch for this elated state I'm in?

I'm Not Hungry Anymore

Ten days since my last post is why I'm posting. I'm not in a talkative mood these days. I'm feeling more burnt-out than usual for no apparent reason. Sitting in some of my classes, I'm wondering why I'm not making sense of what the lecturer is saying.

At home, I've made Nahida understand that I don't want to hear her voice. She talks so loud and once she starts it feels las if she'll never stop. I've got such a hard time understanding her a lot of the time because she beats around the bush and she over uses pronouns. Now if only I could block off the sound of her voice coming from upstairs.

Last Sunday, I got my midyear exam results. I've failed four out of eight subjects. I was more or less expecting that. At least I know which subjects I've got to focus on now. Today I began reading some material. It might be the first time I actually get home and read something. I'm usually too tired by the time I get home. But today I felt pretty good. I had a good night's sleep last night, I had lunch with some classmates after class and I came home by cab.

Yesterday, I went to see one of my lecturers to talk to him about how I could improve my average. This lecturer belongs to another department at the university and I got told off by his head of department when he, the head of department, saw me with my shirt untucked and unbuttoned. And somehow he made it a safety issue. That I could be targeted for not tucking in my shirt. That's ridiculous I say. But I then tucked in my shirt and buttoned it up and went back to the man to say I'm sorry.

Things have been picking up with Suzy after I told her that I was sexually attracted to her. She thought it was a nice thing. But now I'm regretting it because she might have understood it as saying I'm in love with her. I'm just bored and don't have any one else to flirt with. It's all really silly since we could never get a private moment. And now she's got a new habit of leaning against me in class. It looks pretty awkward.

For the past week or two I've been working hard on guitar exercises. I think I might have plateaued. I'm having trouble holding on to bar chords for more than a couple of minutes and I just can't seem to speed up my picking with my wrist.

And to demonstrate how much I don't want to hear nahida's voice, I'm not getting any dinner because that would involve me talking to her. But it feels pretty good to not have her cooking any food because for one I'm sick of the stuff she cooks for me and second of all my belly has been growing and growing for the past six months. As I was crossing the street the other day, some guy in a car told me to do some exercise because my belly was getting too big.

I wonder how long I'll be able to keep this up. Ideally I don't want it to stop. But I know I'll grow weak and I'd yell: "Shaggy's hungry!" and she'll get all happy because I would've finally submitted to my dependency towards her.

Broke Sweat Today

Not in the mood of posting, but doing it anyway. Last week my class agreed to take a week off from college and start attending today. But not all of the usuals showed up and those that showed up decided to skip class. The day would've gone by if Dudu and another didn't get caught by the economics teacher. Which just happened to be the most boring one.

The odds and evens rule is being enforced again. I got used to using my car everyday for the past couple of months and now I'm back to taking cabs. And they can get quite expensive these days. I was passing by the bab-alshargi market and I realised that it was a great chance for me to check out some Nintendo DS games. So I told the cab driver to drop me off and he reluctantly took the full fare for my trip home. He needs the money more than I do and I never give money to beggars.

It was very sunny today and I was overdressed and I was carrying my college notes and books in my hands. For some reason, backpacks never caught on over here. And considering the security situation it'd be very suspicious if someone was seen carrying one. But there is a general trend among Iraqis to be willing to sacrifice practicality for the sake of adhering to social norms. Maybe someday they'll get too many books to carry in their hands and they'll be forced to take on backpacks.

I passed through the shops I knew used to stock DS games but with no luck, but there were plenty of PSP games. I ended up finding one shop that had a handful of old games. I bought an odd brick dropping game just because I didn't want to leave empty handed. I wasn't in the mood of browsing through all the DVDs in the market, so I just went into one and asked him if he had a proper copy (not filmed in a cinema) of the new James Bond movie. No luck there either, he said the proper copy had just arrived on the internet today and that he should have a copy soon. Translated: there's no decent copy, don't bother checking the other shops, and here's a bullshit excuse to put your mind at ease. There's one shop that sells semi-decent pirated audio CDs so I got me a couple of those. The nice thing about them is that they chuck in previous hits of the same artist in the remaining space on the CD. But the dodgy CDs don't always copy to my hard disk well.

Last Thursday, I bought a new wireless access point but the thing won't attach to my grid even with an adapter cable. So on the way back I stopped by the shop to see if he'd be willing to take back the thing. He couldn't believe that the cable from my grid ends with a SMA connecter, I told him I'll take a picture of it. So he told me to go back home and check if I could maybe unscrew the SMA connector off and reveal the normal one. I asked him if it would be okay if I returned the thing if that doesn't work and I think he said that it'd be okay. I hope he doesn't try to get me to swap it for a D-Link wireless access point. But the shop guy strikes me as the relatively gay type that understands that good services brings good revenue as opposed to the usual computer salesman that's intent on holding on to those couple of bucks he made on that sale no matter what.

I didn't feel like paying for another cab now that I was only a twenty minute walk away from home. And on the way I stopped by a kiosk to buy a drink that to my surprise was run by what looked like a handicapped person to me. He was awfully joyful. Seeing him work, reinforced my stance towards beggars as just pesty con artists.

Even though I was very hungry, I stopped by the kebab place I usually get a sandwich from when I'm hungry and can't be bothered to wait for Nahida to cook me a meal when I get home. The old man and who I suspect to be his son greeted with me a bigger smile than usual. The son asked me where I've been all this time. They've only got one thing on the menu: kebab sandwich for about a dollar and a half. From what I've heard it's been around for ages and has a branch or two abroad. Even though it doesn't show, it's one of those relics from the good days.

So I eventually got home and I checked the stupid cable and there's no chance that there's screw on adapter to take off. I'll go to the computer market tomorrow and go to that shop that hates me for returning another access point I bricked while updating, and ask them if they've got an adapter cable for me.

Then I took a nap and when I woke up, Nahida sent me off to some guy that lives a few blocks away and works at the state seed company. He's a really nice guy and very cheerful. But today his cheerfulness was often interrupted by bouts of despair and complaints of how life has become. I told him that my dad had sent me an e-mail a few days ago mentioning that I should prepare myself for spending the summer in the farm. I explained to him how daunting a task that would be for me and that on the other hand the rewards could be good. He pointed out the treachery, dishonesty and corruption of the Iraqis all of which I still don't know how to deal with, but if I was able to overcome all of that, then that would be the reward. And from there I could start my own militia perhaps and then begin my campaign for world domination.

Miz by the way has flown to Egypt today to chuck his little brother there and to buy an apartment for his parents who are in Amman to move to. He's delegated me to assist Kala's parents in case they have any internet problems. He's supposed to come back in ten days.

One Side To Chew On

Today I finally saw a dentist to fix the broken filling I've had since May of last year. And she's really good too, she didn't hurt me at all. I've got a temporary filling now that I can't stop playing with with my tongue. I'm not supposed to chew on it till tomorrow. But how in the world am I not? I eventually did while I was eating sunflower seeds. Of the one hundred sunflower seeds eaten I had to chew one on the wrong side.

The dentist also taught me how to brush my teeth. I've been brushing my teeth with horizontal movements while according to her I'm supposed to do so with vertical movements. Now I can't remember when my next appointment is, I hope Nahida does. I just know it's next week Thursday.

Filled the car with petrol today before seeing the dentist too. Just after Nahida and I got into the queue her brother called and told us to meet him at the beginning of the queue. And so we ended up cutting the queue thanks to her brother who had already been waiting in the queue before us and let us get in ahead of him. I'm still feeling a bit guilty about that. But in my defence I never buy petrol from the black market. A long while back, every time I put black market petrol in my car it screwed up the fuel injection system, but I'm told it's not so bad any more. And while we were at the dentist, I finally had the wheels balanced so that the silly car won't wobble at 90 km/hour.

My internet service hasn't been working well for the past week and a half. Last night it stopped working completely. I got my internet provider to check it out today. It turns out my SMC wireless access point isn't working any more. The stupid piece of crap. The internet provider guy was nice enough to lend me one of his until I get a new one. He also left me a portable USB hard disk of his to copy all the films and music I've got on my computer to.

The guy's hard disk is infested with viruses. I started to get virus alerts on my laptop. And I inadvertently began to delete a few of my files instead of repairing them. Realising that the viruses weren't going to stop coming, I decided to ditch the people I were chatting to to do a boot scan of my hard disk and his. Mine took a while, but his seemed like it was going to take several hours so I didn't bother finishing scanning his.

Other inadvertent thing I did today. After the internet provider guy came over, Nahida's other brother came downstairs and brought up Nahida's paranoia about having a stranger (the internet provider guy) in the house. And I said jokingly, "We've let you in the house haven't we?". In hindsight I can't make much sense of why I said that. Well anyway Nahida later told me that it upsetted him a lot since he feels that he's imposing his stay on us.

He's one of those people that have become 'internally displaced'. His wife and kids are staying with his wife's family and he's been staying with us every other night ever since. I enjoy having him over, and I didn't mean to hurt his feelings. Nahida's told me I've got to call him tomorrow morning to say I'm sorry. I wish she told me as soon as he began to trip out. So that's it... first thing to do tomorrow is deal with someone's sensitivity issue.

Od's Back Home

At eight o'clock last night, Od's mum called to say that Od came home and to pass the news onto Nahida. A couple hours later I called Od but didn't speak much with him because he complained about his throat about to burst from talking too much. He asked how I had heard he'd been caught and how did I hear he'd come home. He's already had a fight with his mum. His mum wants him to leave the country where as he wants to stay. He said he got treated very well and that they didn't hurt him at all. I wish Nawf was here so we could beat him up ourselves.

Yesterday I woke up with a bone or hard bump sticking out of the underside of my wrist. And the evening before the occasional gentle pain, that I had been getting ever since an Iraqi doctor gave me some weak treatment for that tick bite, began to move upwards. So I got myself the antibiotics that are recommended for treating lyme's disease in its early stage. If only I got the swelling checked out when it first appeared in the UK, I wouldn't be so hypochondriac about it.

I was planning to start to make healthier choices after I was done with my midyears. But getting into gear is still a work in progress. I've got to stop eating copious amounts of rice for example. Hanging out with Miz was part of the plan. Classes at his college resumed last week and he didn't show up till yesterday to find out he has a test today but he's not going to take it. we were supposed to start going to the club to check out the swimming pool and play tennis. But the punk is always too busy and keeps telling me he'll pass by tomorrow.

Mum e-mailed me yesterday to say that my cousin's wife has given birth. So I called him to congratulate him and stuff. He asked me if I had heard about the suicide bomber that hit so and so university. I told him that I hadn't. He then went on to tell me that he was there taking an exam when it happened. It'd would have really sucked if the poor guy got killed the day after his son was born. And it was around about this time last year that his dad had died from bad health.

I wonder what I'm going to do today. Probably nothing like the past few days. I'm going to play Scrabble on my mobile phone now.

Od's Been Taken (Part III)

This morning I went back to Od's place. His mum was on the phone smiling. She was talking to his dad. Od had just called to say he's fine. She was told that he'll be released as soon as the 'first lieutenant' or something like that comes back from his break and signs him out. So hopefully Od will be released tomorrow, knock on wood.

Od's Been Taken (Part II)

I went to Od's house to find his distraught mother her eyes still tearing. I didn't say anything, Nahida did all the talking with her, I just listened.

Yesterday the police were going going through his neighbourhood looking at the cars in the neighbourhood. They checked my friends car because it has 'Al Anbar' province plates. He was at home alone at the time, and they give it the all clear. Then his family, mother and uncles, arrived.

After the police finished going through all the street. They came back to his house, emptied the university handouts and stuff from his car and took him and the car. His mother described how she and him looked into each other's eyes during the moments that he was being taken away.

She didn't get the name of the officials. The police said that they were part of the explosives division and that she didn't have to worry, that they were only going to take him in for interrogation.

After a couple of hours later, Od called his mother and told her he was in a nearby neighbourhood. And then other acquaintances later called her too telling her that they'll get Od back. But she's being told by different people that he's being held in different places.

Nahida told his mum to go to the offices of a certain political party and to seek help there. And told her that if Od doesn't come back by tomorrow that she'll try calling up our own connection to help get him out.

On the way back home I got stopped by that same checkpoint that had been stopping nearly everyday for the past week. It's very close to his house, so I was hoping that they'd be the same guys that were there yesterday so I could ask them about those that took Od. But the guys manning the checkpoint had changed.

At this point it's anybody's guess if he's being detained just for the sake of an interrogation in which case he'll be released promptly or whether he's being taken under the guise of an interrogation to have him tortured and then killed. But I'm hoping and expecting him to come back soon enough.

I asked Od's mum for her phone number but since she didn't know hers and didn't have any credit on her phone she couldn't give it to me. So I gave her mine, so that she can call me after she tops-up her mobile up. But I should have taken Od's uncle's phone number at least so I could at least pass it on to Nawf and Sida.

Od's Been Taken

Nawf who left to Qatar or Bahrain a week ago sent me a SMS message around one in the morning today. Which I just read when I was awoken by my alarm at five in the morning. It said that Od and his were taken from his home by police commandos yesterday around four in the afternoon and asked me to try to find him. Nawf and Od are best friends.

Od is the last of my high school friends that I see. I don't want to lose him. His mum had arrived just a week ago. He's about to start his exams, he's studying to become a doctor. This is the first time something like this happens to someone close to me. It feels so horrible. I called Nawf and he tells me that he heard it from Talga. Nawf told me that all we can do now is try to talk to someone in the government to release him.

I'm going to go to his house soon and check the story out. After that I'm going to pass by the checkpoint which has been stopping me all week and see if they have anything to say but Nahida thinks that's a bad idea and she'll probably start her sabotage routine.

Improved Blogger I Am

The punks at Google have forced me to switch to the new Blogger early than I was planning. Well it's done now and even though it only took a couple of minutes to do. I wanted to wait till I was ready to post my 250th post. This one is number 245 but one or two might have been left as drafts. That's a lot of posts I'd say. Most of them long winded and some of them short and sweet. I've got maybe one last sip of whiskey left and on the occasion of my 245th post (minus one or two) I raise my glass and take that last sip... I'm out of booze now. Life couldn't get much worse.

Maybe it's time for me to change the layout of my blog. I can't be bothered to make a custom one of my own, it's too difficult for me. Maybe I'll find a new layout to replace the one I'm using now. Crap just dropped the can of sunflower seeds.

I'm getting stopped at checkpoints way too many times these days. There's one checkpoint that seems to have the impulse to check me out at least once a day and sometimes twice. Most of the time they want to check what's in the boot. Sometimes they check if my car is mine. At another nearby checkpoint, one of them asked me what my iPod was. People usually assume it's a mobile phone. Maybe they're looking out for a black killer car like mine... or maybe I just look like a terrorist in my own country.

I love my car. It imposes itself on the road. On the outside it's beaten up, it's scratched and the rear-right door is dented. One end of the front bumper is hangin off. There's a couple of badly covered bullet holes too. Sadly it's in dire need of repair right now. It needs so much repair. Most of which I thought would be carried out during my summer in the UK, but didn't. The acceleration in the car is awful right now, and I can't drive faster than 90 Km/h because the damn wheels need to be balanced. Last week I saw a couple bullet-proof versions of my car, they were so sweet. I wish I had one of those.

So I'm drinking and I've got another midyear exam tomorrow. Well screw 'em. I've had it up to here with these damn tests. Today I got so angry, boiling blood sort of angry, when I read through the questions of today's test. The teacher of the class had lectured three times since the beginning of the year, two of which I wasn't present for. He had given us one handout and highlighted specific lines for us to study (memorize). And I memorized them really well before the exam. The crap I memorized didn't provide the answer to any of the questions.

And that's why I'm in such a bad mood. Tomorrow's test is no better. The teacher of tomorrow's test has given us three handouts with a hundred lines lines to memorize by the word. Nahida tells me not to worry because she's spoken to someone that works at the university and that person tells her that there's an agreement to pass us anyway. Right now I'm waiting to see what my marks will be, because I'm considering just giving up on this year. It's too much of a hassle if things stay this way. I could maybe find some other way to waste the year away.

Bleeding Midyear Exams

It's been a heck of a past few days. My midyear exams started on Tuesday. And unlike previous years, we've got one test everyday as opposed to a test every other day. So after a test I go to Dudu's, we go over the material until around four in the evening, then I drive home and go to sleep. I wake up around midnight and continue studying. Then I leave home two hours before the test to make sure I get to my test on time.

Getting to college should only take just over half an hour before rush hour, but it's taking even more time now since they've placed serpentines using concrete blocks on both ends of the Bab-AlShargi bridge. Crossing that bridge used to take five minutes at the most, now it takes about twenty or more.

Yesterday they closed it a few minutes before I was about to reach it. And so I then crossed the other busier bridge which hasn't had serpentines added to it yet. To find that the road to college from there was blocked off. I then took a side street and ended up in an unfamiliar part of Baghdad the name of which I didn't know. Luckily there wasn't any traffic in this part of town. And when I asked for directions, I was greeted with a smile and very simple directions for how to get to college. That day it took me over an hour to get to college.

As I drove around yesterday, I kept noticing people looking at the sky as a plane was roaring about. Even the forces at the checkpoints had their heads fixed upwards. I thought it was odd since a bomber jet isn't a rare thing. But as I was on the last couple of stretches on my way home I caught sight of it. The thing was either flying very low or was massive. I had never seen a plane appear so big in the air (aside from air planes landing at an airport). And unlike the usual F-something, you know the Top Gun kind, this thing was black. By the time I got home and got Nahida to find my camera the stupid thing had disappeared.

My first exam on Tuesday was my easiest since it's a mathematical subject, but I'm bound to mess up the rest since they're in Arabic. I did so bad on the other two this week. I answered most of the questions, but whereas I'd answer with a couple of phrases, the others in the class are filling up pages. I can only hope that the teachers are going to be generous with me.

On Thursday everybody cheated except for me. Even the exam supervisors invited me to move my seat so I could cheat. By the time I was done with the exam, the only other two left were the uber-nerdy girls fusing their knowledge to get that perfect mark.

Unlike everybody else in the class, I've been brainwashed into to think that cheating is wrong and shameful. When my classmates asked me why I didn't cheat after the exam, I told them I was too tired. But the truth is that I hated them so much for cheating that I didn't want to join in.

Fozzy's gone back to the farm and without giving me my money. Instead he's given it to Nahida who has yet to hand me some serious cash over. I know she's trying to sabotage my plan to get two healthy whores to spend the night with me. She says I'd squander my money too much. I've got to start bugging her until she breaks and gives me my money.

It's five in the evening now and I haven't started studying. Instead I've been watching TV and the animes that Miz gave me the day before the exams started (what a splendid way to sabotage my motivation to study on his behalf). Miz who studies at the university that got hit a while ago still hasn't still hasn't resumed classes. I'm going to flunk these exams with flying colours. In the week ahead I'll have an exam everyday. Five exams day after day. It's ridiculous. I'm probably going to end up having a car accident from sheer exhaustion.

Last night I chatted to Kiki, he says he's going to go India in a week. He tells me his cousin Duraid is there. Duraid's the guy that gave him the idea of going to Malaysia, where Kiki spent a number of months hoping to pursue a master's degree. Duraid's also the wanker that wiped Tie Fighter off of my hard disk back in 1995.

Okay so I'm going to start studying now. That or watch another anime.

We Got A Gun In The House

My mid-year exams are going to start on Monday. And so far I've studied a few pages. I just can't be troubled to study. I'm going to get terrible marks. So instead I've been doing my guitar exercises. I'm having trouble picking really fast. My teacher's given me sound clips of how the exercises should sound and they're ridiculously fast. I'm supposed to pick by moving my wrist but I can't help moving my whole arm. I'm not sure if it's something I'll get better in time slowly or if it's something I ought to master now. Well whatever the case is after I'm done with all the other kinds of exercises I'm going to go see him and see.

With all the free time I've got on my hands these days. I've spent the past couple of days going into Yahoo chat rooms looking for chicks to chat to. It's something I do every year or two. I got myself one Iraqi, one Syrian and one Indian added to my Yahoo messenger contact list.

I thought I was going to get more studying done by going over to Dudu's place every day and have him explain all the material to me. But the bastard wakes up at around midday and I'm supposed to get back home early (around three in the afternoon) leaving not much time to get any studying done. Maybe I'll go to his place tomorrow. The other thing that has been discouraging me from going to his place was petrol. The petrol crisis isn't over yet. It's not as bad as last year, it might take an hour to get petrol on a good day, but I can't be bothered to wait that long.

I did fill up the car today though. Nahida and I left the house ten minutes before the Friday afternoon curfew finished. We even crossed a checkpoint and I think there was still five minutes to go and we got stopped just so they could check the trunk. We waited perhaps fifteen minutes in the queue at the petrol station.

These midyear exams I've got coming are a piss take. Some teachers have assigned material that they haven't even lectured to us. There's one subject in which the only way day he chose to lectured us, I wasn't able to make it to college.

Suzy on the phone told me that chapter three of some subject was included. I don't remember anything about chapter three. She then explained that the day he began to lecture us about it only her and three other girls were there and that one of the girls at some point told the teacher that he's doing a lousy job at explaining (which he does) and then the teacher loses it, stopped explaining and said the third chapter was included and that it was up to us to understand the rest of it. I don't get how the teachers are pulling this off, they know that we can't always make it to class.

I've also been spending a lot of time going through forums to figure out how to improve my audio drivers in my mobile phone. There's a new method now to customize my W810i that doesn't require bruteforcing. I can also do things like remove the annoying noise the camera makes when taking a picture or remove the operator logo. But it's all a bit scary in case something goes wrong and I might end up with a bricked phone. So far I've managed to access the files and folders where all the fun takes place but I still don't have the confidence to apply the strokes that'll change my phone. I'm still not sure if I have to go through the trouble of backing up everything in there either. And there might be some checksum thing that I might have to be aware about.

Oh and about tidying my stuff. Haven't done it. I think I finished planning it or I nearly did. I'm so damn lazy. I can feel a new 'me' emerging ever more carefree and lazy. I feel like a nirvana of laziness is overcoming me. It's wonderful.

I spoke to Kiki yesterday. He's been living with his sister in Amman without a residency and he's trying to figure out a scheme to get asylum some place. He says the UNHCR office there is open only one day a week for Iraqis and only for a few hours too, if you're lucky enough to get an application you'd still have to wait for months and months for an uncertain decision. I don't know what the UNHCR is supposed to do but it sounds like a sad deal if getting just an application is a challenge. He's also got a new idea that involves going to India to study Microsoft and Cisco networking. Which is a great idea. But Kiki is an idiot, and as much as he loves computing, he doesn't really have the head for it. And those are hard courses as far as I understand. It's typically him to think of pursuing some pipe-dream.

India on the other hand is getting a tooth removed for seven dollars in Sweden. Seven dollars! That's the price of an emergency dentist session for an asylum seeker in Sweden. And if it totals into twenty-eight dollars then he'll be fully compensated by the Swedes. Surprisingly to me, after seeing an x-ray of India's teeth the dentist there admired the work that had been on India's teeth.

India started to quit smoking today. And so has my brother. My mum tells me that one of his kid's friends said that his dad had died from smoking at the age of forty-seven, and that's what pushed my brother to quit.

I think my mum's getting pissed that my dad's new girlfriend has moved in with him. I was telling my brother the other day about how having such a dysfunctional in the UK makes me rather stay here in Baghdad than go back there to live with them. My family is crazy, everyone in it is pissed off at the other for some reason.

Fozzy is back from the farm. He's been at the farm for ages. Ever since I came back from the UK, he's only visited two or three times. He's here to get fix the deal so that we can receive rice grain from the government so we could mill it for them. But for me his arrival means that he can withdraw money from my dad's accounts and hand some to me. He hasn't given me any money yet and I think Nahida's trying to make some manoeuvres to try to stop me from receiving a lump sum for fear that I blow it all too fast. But as soon as I get my money and these midyears are over I'm going to get me a couple of whores for a hundred bucks each. I'm still not too sure I can pull it off though.

Last night Fozzy said that people shouldn't be emigrating abroad and instead should be returning to their tribal villages where they'd be safe. And from there people could work to making Iraq a better place. From their villages they'd be able to have a say and influence their respective leaders with their own opinions. I think he's right, the bottom line is that nobody from Baghdad for example would want to go back to their backward living villages of origin. Two million Iraqis probably consisting of the more privileged tier of Iraqi society could make a difference, but those two million have fled.

Nearly every home has a gun in Iraq and it's been that way for ages. I thought we had a handgun and a Kalashnikov. But it turned out that the Kalashnikov went off to the farm and I don't know what happened to the handgun. Nahida's brother who often sleeps over has been telling Nahida that we ought to have a gun and I've been nagging her about it too for a while too even though I don't know how to use one. Well she finally got one and this is what it looks like...

I have no idea what it's called, there's some Russian print on it. But it looks like an antique doesn't it? Nahida's brother is saying that she ought to give it back from whoever she got it from because if our house gets searched they'd confiscate it. He says the only kind of guns that are permitted are Kalashnikovs.

I should go try to study now even if I'm only going to do it for ten minutes. And I'm hungry too.

Had dinner, and I took the time on the internet to find out what the gun is. On the gun there are several engravings: a Cyrillic serial number: БД-2729 four times, the Iraqi army logo twice, and '1945'. I wasn't getting anywhere until I began searching for World War II Russian machine guns. And I finally found it on Wikipedia as the PPSh-41.

Sober Tonight

I'm posting sober tonight! I'm not suffering from alcohol withdrawal ever since I switched to Teacher's whiskey. I'm going to stay away from Grant's from now on.

On Thursday I went to college to get some missing handouts and I'm now on a preparation holiday for the mid-year exams that are coming up in two weeks. I haven't started studying yet. My morale is really low this year. I've decided I'll start studying on Sunday. But I think that's the day Nahida's decided to take me to get a new passport.

The government and everyone else has made a big fuss about the issuance of new passports. Whatever the fuss is, my passport expired three days ago. I've got the 'M' series passport and it's already been renewed twice. So I've got no qualms about getting a new one, just as long as the government finally settles on moving forward with this new one. During the past few years I think there have been three or four different designs, each of which have different levels of eligibility from foreign countries. For example, some embassies don't grant visas to people with such a series of passport.

I've been watching lots of films these days. Miz had given me a couple ('Kicking And Screaming' as well as 'Friends With Money') when he gave me his portable hard disk. Kicking And Screaming was watchable, it wasn't exciting to watch and I don't have the sense of humour required for the genre so it ended up being a bland film for me. Friends With Money was all right and it had a nice ending. I like the idea of a snapshot of people's lives developing and intertwining.

I also uncovered a bunch of films on my own hard disk which I had downloaded for India and had never bothered to watch and had eventually forgotten about. Some of which I finally decided to delete. He got me to download some seriously unbearably sick stuff. Which I think he's yet to watch himself to this day. He's got a penchant for just collecting things that to me is just weird.

But there were some films that didn't seem so bad. So I watched 'A Dirty Shame' yesterday, sure enough it was weird, but how I wish what took place in that film could happen here. Today I saw Fat Girl, it was a French film which in French I think was called A Ma Soeur. I really liked the pace with which the story unfolded and the ending made it so very worth watching. With the few plot twists throughout the film it gives you a chance to appreciate the main character and makes sense of what would otherwise would be a twisted ending.

Before I start studying I've decided to tidy up my stuff around the house. Which involves bringing more stuff from downstairs back downstairs. It's all part of a procrastinating plan to delay studying for my upcoming mid-year exams which are ten days away. But it's crazy, I've even got a procrastinating scheme to delay tidying my stuff up. I've been planning on paper how to tidy up my stuff. Three days I've spent 'planning on paper' and I'm not done yet.

I'm thinking of pouring myself a drink now. Just one before I go to sleep. I swear I'm not suffering from alcohol withdrawal. I haven't had a drink since my last post.

Patio

Yawn. Get a drink... Got drink and got a couch out onto the patio. Also got some bird seeds, the kind that Remy was addicted to, that Miz left over when he had lunch at my place today.

Nahida woke me up today to get some petrol. There's been somewhat of a petrol crisis for the past week and I haven't been bothered to get into any extra long queues preferring rather to take cabs should I need to go some place instead. Petrol is also needed to run the generator. A day can go by without any electricity from the government these days. I can't remember how long it's been since I last I had a shower. Which aside from the sometimes itchy scalp, isn't much of a big deal since the weather isn't so hot as to cause profuse perspiration. For the past few days we've been using black market petrol for the generator. Can't use black market petrol in my car because every time I did it screwed up the injection system in my car.

Oh crap! the generator ran out of fuel just now and my stereo stopped too. And I can't hear the birds chirping any more. Instead I can hear the sound of the neighbour's generator, the distant mosques yelping and rounds being fired. Oh here's a little bird, it's got a black head and white cheeks and it's friend is here too. Got to feel sorry for the birds with having to put up with all the noise we make.

So after Nahida and I spent over half an hour queuing for some petrol and got home, Miz called and then came over. I told him that the queue at the petrol station wasn't long, so we went off to fill up his car too. Came back, had lunch, watched an anime together and the beginning of The Machinist. And then it was time for Miz to go back home so we copied The Machinist to his portable hard disk along with a bunch of other movies before he left.

Ran out of battery charge but now I'm back. Still outside, it's night time now and I've got the driveway lights on. My generator and the other neighbourhood generators are on, but I can still hear my stereo from the living room. My stereo which is my iPod connected to half of my Creative speakers. I must say it's nice to be outside. The weather is only a tiny bit cold, but the whiskey in turn compensates for it. The setting reminds me of the one time I made a house party at my place. Sure enough all those people that came are no longer in the country and having a house party is no longer possible.

Some punk just threw a handful of pebbles into my driveway. First time that ever happens. And I didn't pop my head over the gate straight away because of the possibility that the punk is carrying a gun. I turned off my music went back outside and shouted 'speak cowards' with no answer. Then went upstairs to tell Nahida and her brother what had happened, they came down to take a look at the street with me. The street was empty.

Well on one hand it could be considered insensitive that I'm sitting listening to loud music on a day when Shiites are mourning for the death of some dude over a thousand years ago which in my opinion would of course be better spent mourning for the Iraqis killed daily. But the music isn't so loud as to be considered disturbing the peace. Nahida's brother concluded that it's just a youngster that peeked over my gate and thought it'd be fun to startle me with some pebbles. Nahida is on the other hand is freaking out a bit because it's the first time something like this has happened in the nearly 30 years that she's lived in the house. But sure enough during the past few years a lot of my neighbours have left and have been replaced with dodgy folk.

Well anyway, screw all that. I'm still outside drinking and listening to music but with only one driveway light on. Sure wished there was a gun in the house though even it was just for the sake of just scaring such a punk away like Nahida's brother suggested.

Oh well it's been a couple hours since the pebble throwing incident now. I'm hungry and sleepy now so I'm going to drag my comfy seat inside and get warm. I wonder if Nahida's started making me food or not.

I'm now thinking that I'd fit in quite well with those apocalyptic folk down south. The ones that are suggested to be the ones that were thought yesterday by the government. Because they're all about committing sin to bring forth judgement day. And in a muslim perspective I'm really good at that.

Iraqis Have Trouble Distinguishing Ps and Bs

The weather has become much warmer since Thursday. Good thing. Some time during the past week a petrol crisis began again. Bad thing. I haven't electricity since yesterday morning. Bad thing number two. But there is a bright side to not having electricity and no petrol to run the generator: I'm getting time to practise my guitar exercises.

Not much I want to vent out today. I spent last night complaining to Nahida that I need to get myself a couple of whores. She's generally against the idea but I went on and on anyway.

I've had tests everyday of the past week. So far I've failed one and passed another from the week before. I've got another test on Sunday. Everyday of last week I went to Dudu's house to study. One time I came back at around six in the evening, when I got home Nahida and her brother had a quick rant at me of how dangerous it is to be out so late.

Yesterday I spent some time with that girl I mentioned a couple posts ago. This time we exchanged numbers and I got her name by asking what to add her as to my phone's contact list. She wasn't reminding me of some pretty girl this time, this time I was focused oh some stubble above her lip and her chubby fingers. Last night 'Rea' sent me a SMS message saying: "Good night, my pest freand.". Now why the hell did I ask for her number?

There's this other girl at college that I've had my eye on for a month, and I've been making a lot of eye contact with her. On Wednesday, she was standing on her own and I kept walking towards and away from her too shy to go up to her to say something. So when I got home I decided that the next time I see her I'll go ahead with it, I even had an idea of what to say after talking to a couple of friends. What those ideas were, I can't remember now. One thing I have decided is that I'll be aiming just to making a new friend.

A bunch of things are bothering me about myself of late, and it's really hard to confront myself about them. Things like not being able to pick up on my own emotions and those of others and failing to act in the moment.

Teacher's Lesson

Yay I'm drunk again.

Well to get a couple of things out of the way: Had a big fit with Nahida when she said she wouldn't allow a classmate come over to my place because of where he lived. And India didn't go to Germany to do a training course but instead bounced to Sweden to seek asylum. Someday I might be bothered to elaborate on those two.

I called up Hans a little earlier since he's my favourite to get drunk with. He's been on my case for months now trying to convince to leave Iraq and come back to the UK. He's so worried about me that he called up my mother to check I didn't get blown up in the Mustansiriya slaughter. I explained to him that as long as he was getting any sex in London, I can be assured I'm not missing out. Explained to him that I'd seriously consider leaving if the civil war comes to my neighbourhood which involves people getting kicked out of their homes based on their sect.

I need some more chilled out music. I'm listening to some of the tracks of the Donnie Darko film score. Need to get some more music like that. The point of what Zed and I were trying last time was to figure out some way of downloading torrents from a remote computer so that my ISP wouldn't complain about overloading the server. I'm thinking of making a couple of stops near some music shops in the days to come, I hope to find something.

Over the past year, different people have made the same remarks about me that I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with. One of them is that I'm sneaky. The second is that it's hard to tell if I'm telling the truth. The third is that I have no emotions. The fourth I'm not really sure about, but it's something to do with insisting that I'm right sometimes.

The third one: feeling no emotions, is I guess the one that leads to the others. I could probably count the number of times I felt a pure emotion during the past year with my fingers. I mean for example I couldn't feel anything when I heard one of my classmates died in a car accident on his way back from Syria a couple of months ago.

Of the moments I did feel an emotion, saying good-bye to Hans at the train station when I visited him in Sweden. I'm not sure why that happened. I had met up with him in a bad state. Being with my family in the UK prior to seeing him wasn't a good thing for me. Sweden that summer was the furthest point of my travels and as I was on my way back to the UK I saw the UK as one stop before coming back to Baghdad.

One bitter-sweet moment was when India chatted to me for the first time from Sweden. I was happy for him to have finally made it there with the hope that he'd make for himself a new and better life than anything he could have hoped for here. It was also then that I told him out of my blog which of course he already knew about.

Bleach episode 111 has finished downloading, so that's it from me. I'm going to watch it and go to sleep. Was supposed to have a test tomorrow for which I'm not entirely prepared for but a bunch of classmates contacted me to tell me that we're not supposed to show up tomorrow so as to avoid and the test and have it postponed.

I'm Fine

I wasn't going to make a post but Zed chat messaged me and then another kind reader e-mailed me to check if I was okay. So to keep anyone else from holding their breath, I'm posting to say I'm fine. It wasn't my college that got blown up, it was Miz's. Miz is fine though because he left before it happened. He tells me that it was the evening class students that got hit. I didn't even hear about what happened till I chatted with my mum a few hours ago and she told me about it and then another friend in Dubai told me about it and the number of people that died and injured which was when I remember to call Miz to see if he's okay. Then India came on-line from Sweden. I assured him that Miz was fine. I'll get back to India in my next post since I also forgot to mention him in my last post. What struck me about today's bombing was that there was that flyer being e-mailed around about a month ago that warned people not to go to college because they'll be attacked, well they took their fucking time to carry out the attack didn't they, so much time that myself and I imagine everyone else thought that the warning had expired. Well I'm exhausted now, I was planning to study hours ago for tomorrow's test but people kept showing up on-line one after the other and I was compelled to chat with them. I just spent the last hour and a half with Zed with him explaining to me what VPN is and all sorts, we even had a go at some program called Hamachi which worked but then not really since I've got such a pathetic internet connection. Oh no I can't believe it there's a random Skype contact that just added me now.

Tad Late

Write a post or practise guitar exercises (something I haven't been doing enough of)? Write post first.

Saturday: Nahida and I picked up my aunt and grandma and took them to my dad's friend who owns the crummiest excuse for a hospital. The benefit of which was that should the need ever occur we'd have established a relationship so that we could if there need be in the future have one of his doctors come to and visit my grandma at her place which is very close to the hospital. Grandma turned out to not have anything serious we even had her take an x-ray just to make sure. We then dropped her off at her place.

My aunt wanted us to leave herself there and then come back and pick her up again. I had prior plans to have lunch with Od and Naffer and Nahida wanted to get back home too for what reason I forgot. The idea of coming back to my grandma's which is a long drive away was a bit inconsiderate. So my aunt didn't stay at my grandma's and came along with us. And to further assert that I wasn't her driver, after we had picked up the electric generator from the repair shop, Nahida came up with an extra chore that involved driving about near the green zone looking for a house. Driving around near the green zone is something anybody would rather avoid. We even came up with another little extra detour just before getting home too.

Unfortunately lunch with Od and Naffer didn't happen because Od got busy repairing his car near his home and Naffer thought that since Od was in the middle of getting his car repaired we wouldn't make it in time to get home safely. I was really looking forward to having lunch with the two since I don't often get the chance to meet up with them and they're the last two old school friends I have left here. Later that night I had a fit at Nahida who in effect controls my life since I'm not responsible enough for myself in my father's eyes (which is a fair judgement). I told her that I wanted to go to Amman for a week and see my friends. I was regretting not having gone with India to Amman as he had suggested. My idea was that if I'd have that little vacation I might be able to break out of this bad run of procrastination (which is pissing me off) before my mid-year exams start. I then also suggested to her a cheaper option of giving me money to get a couple of expensive prostitutes. She ended up giving me an empty promise of getting me some whiskey the next day.

Sunday: I had an economics test for which I didn't study. Before the test I revised some stuff that I had studied maybe over five years ago. Luckily for me there were two questions in the test and that was one of them. On the other hand, I had no idea what the answer to the other question was about and all that it involved was writing down four memorized lines. The teacher had dictated the questions to us and I couldn't keep up with him so I asked for him to repeat them to me after I wrote down the one answer I knew. He firmly placed his handwritten questions along with another a paper underneath on my desk. I struggled to make sense of his handwriting and I didn't really bother copying the questions down but rather just checked that I answered every part of the one question. I was sitting in the front row so when I was finished with it I slipped it back on his desk. The teacher then comes back to me and asks if he I looked at the paper underneath which I didn't. I shook my head and with a blank face said no. He then tells me out loud that the answers were on that paper and I'm not sure because I don't understand Arabic sarcasm very well but I think he then suggested that I was stupid not to have taken a look.

Later that day, the human resource teacher showed up to tell us some new handouts were at the photocopy centre for us to pick up. She also told me that I was the only one that failed last week's test and that I should do tomorrow's re-test with the rest of the class that didn't show up that day. She also told my classmates that they should help me out and do study sleepovers. So after uni a Dudu, Jumbo and me got some take-away burgers and went to Dudu's to study. Jumbo who hadn't been showing up for the past few weeks neither wasn't interested in studying, but Dudu did a great job explaing to me and helped me memorize the first page and a half of the nine page handout for tomorrow's test. Then we had some tea and Dudu got Jumbo to teach him some weight lifting exercises. Soon enough it was nearly four in the afternoon and we had to get on our way home. I got Dudu to give to fill up my empty can of Coke with some Arak, that today I realised made me drive rather recklessly on my way back home. I think I can handle some drinking and driving fine, but I'm now coming to the conclusion that I should draw the line at Arak no matter how small the quantity.

On the main road near my house ahead of me, I saw a bunch of cars waiting for two police trucks to turn around and drive off. When I got to the point where the police cars were there was a car that had seemed to have crashed from the front end and had a splat of blood splattered across the wind shield. It was hard for me to tell if it was a car accident or something else. I was just surprised at how the splat was centred in the middle of the wind shield.

When I got home I had a fit with Nahida again for pressuring me with phone calls to come back home early at the expense of having some more material explained to me by Dudu. She said that something happened and then told me that a relative of mine's husband got kidnapped. What she didn't know that was that I knew that that person got kidnapped over a week ago and thus had an extra reason to have a fit at her for lying to me. And I didn't mention the car that I saw in the street, because I don't want to give her more reason to get anxious for my sake, even though I was curious to have her find out what it was about.

Later in the evening, Suzy spent an hour with me explaining me some of the rest of the material for the test.

Today: Five minutes after leaving my home my car broke down on my to college. I was hoping to make it to college early so that Suzy could go over the material with me. I wasted over half an hour in the street with an engine that would not start.

I had Nahida come over because I couldn't just leave the car unattended because people would then think that it's a car bomb. When Nahida came to me, we called up her brother. And it was then that I figured what that the piece of hardware called the 'Katef' that regulates the fuel pump in the car was the problem since I had a new installed just a week or two ago. It's a recurring problem with my car since according to Nahida's brother is a hard piece to find for my specific car and we're having to make do with that of a similar model. So I got out the little plug with which I can replace the 'Katef' that I was given if I should it ever stop working, plugged it in and it worked.

Got lucky again and the stuff that Dudu explained to me on the first page was one of the two questions on the test. I also didn't know the answer to the other question but I copied some of the answer from Suzy who was sitting next to me and was urging me to take a look at her paper. The other question was one of things that Suzy had explained to me the night before over the phone but that I still didn't quite understand and didn't bother memorizing after hanging up.

Last night I had begun researching on the net about how to flirt using Bluetooth enabled phones. I even scoured and collected a bunch of romantic pictures to send. So I was really looking forward to try it out today. Yeah well, it didn't work out since apparently the whole craze is over already or so I'm told (maybe even a year or two ago). I did think it was odd when browsing last night that the couple of forums I visited hadn't had a new post since 2004. It was still weird today, yesterday loads of phones showed up when I searched for Bluetooth devices, but today I could only find two or three at a time. I'll give it another try tomorrow, we've planned to ditch our classes to not have another test. And so I'll be able to try out the cafeteria which I'm told is the best place to try flirting with Bluetooth.

I did bump into that name-less girl I mentioned in the post before last today. I just had a couple of minutes with her. As I came to say hi to her she brought out her hand for a handshake, which is weird. I don't like handshaking much for one, and there's a girl in my class for example that thinks it's indecent to even shake hands with a guy. But in general a girl leading a handshake is pretty awkward. Her friend who was standing by her then left us alone. She was acting anxious and I asked her if she was waiting for someone, she said that she had to get some notes from somebody and excused herself. After seeing her and not getting neither her name or phone number, I wondered to myself why I spent so much effort thinking about her in that previous post. Now I'm thinking that it wasn't so much her that pre-occupied me but the prospect of meeting someone new and on how to deal with the situation.

Now I've got to try downloading the latest episode of Bleach, something I've been having trouble for no reason obvious to me.

Chronic Procastination

Friday evening. What to do? I'm awfully lazy these days. I can't be troubled to get any studying done. I'm not even in the mood of mucking about with the guitar. I think I want to crawl into bed and spend the rest of the evening day dreaming. Which isn't a bad idea since I did go to sleep late and woke up early to pick up my grandma with my aunt.

My grandma is sick, she's having trouble breathing, her back aches and she's limping. It seems doctors have stopped making house calls because of the security situation. And since today is Friday, there's a traffic ban most of the day on Fridays, most doctors don't go to their clinics or their hospitals. So tomorrow morning I'll pick my aunt and my grandma who is spending the night at her place tonight to take her to a doctor.

I've lost track of all the pseudo names I've been using for my friends. Trying to find if I've already made one up for someone. So I'm now quickly going through all of my posts starting from the beginning to make a list of all the pseudo names I've been using. In one case I've used more than one pseudo name for the same person.

Okay I've gone through all of the posts and I'm exhausted now.

Got A New Phone

Just had a shower, something that's rather rare these days. Since the weather is cold there's not much need to wash away accumulated salt deposits on one's skin as a result of perpetuating sweat. I've also become lazy in regards to taking showers. But now that I've only been getting one hour of electricity a day to work the water heater and that's making it much harder to get that shower.

So I got my new phone. It's a Sony Ericsson W810i, it looks and feels nice, surprisingly light too. The interface isn't slow like on a lot of Nokias I've tried. I think the guy who sold it to me pulled a sly one on me and gave me a fake battery and headphones with it. I went back to him and he insisted that they were the originals. Before going back to him I thought one side of the earphones wasn't working too, but when I went to his shop they started working again and at that point I gave up trying to get the whole thing replaced. He suggested that I was anxious and that was the reason for my thinking that they're fake. Well in any case I'm happy to have it now. Oh and it does have a really good flashlight.

The only problem I have with it so far are the ringtones: they're not loud enough. But so far nobody's called me. Except Nahida from upstairs and there was one phone call from abroad that I didn't make it in time to pick it up and whose number was withheld, it might of been India whose number I lost.

I was sure that I read the Wikipedia article about the phone before I bought it. After I bought it I realise it says there that there's a hissing noise when it plays mp3s and that people have managed to change the internal software to fix the problem. So I spent all of last night going through forums trying to understand how to change the firmware and the drivers in the phone, and it's all very confusing since most of the talk isn't restricted to the one type of phone I have. The risk of playing with the firmware is that it might turn the phone into 'an expensive paperweight'. But it doesn't seem like I'll be trying to attempt to do so any time soon since the only website that provides the firmwares is under maintenance and I'm still wondering if they by any chance have the Middle-East version. The other problem I'm facing and the one that takes the mickey is that the process takes several hours and I can't be certain that my generator won't break down while I'm at it.

I went to college on Monday this week. Nahida woke me up a bit late on Tuesday, it was too cold to get out of bed and I figured that I won't make it in time to go before rush hour so I decided to stay in. That day the Haifa St. operation went down and I was glad that I had stayed home because I'm sure it would've made getting back home a very long trip since most of the roads were blocked off as a result. And since that shit happened on Tuesday, I thought that the same could go on the next day so I stayed home Wednesday too.

Well anyway, on Monday the one day that I did go to college, while I was waiting in the corridor for a lecture that wasn't going to happen there was a frustrated girl staring at the closed door of another room. I asked her if she had left her books inside. She nodded and then asked me if I had lived abroad, surprised I answered yes and asked her how the did she notice so fast. She explained that she had come to that assumption a while ago and then went on to tell me that she had lived in the UK for a couple years herself but when she was a baby and showed me a collection of family pictures. I had nobody else to hang out with that day so when she invited me to come downstairs with her, I went along. She introduced me to a couple of her classmates and we walked all together. She then led herself and I away from the pack to talk chat on our own some more. We sat on a bench for a short while until I spotted the lecturer on his way to give my class a lesson and she was about to get picked up.

Now I wish I could remember her name, but she couldn't remember the names of her classmates either which is really cool. She's not hot unfortunately, she's on the chubby side, but she has a face that reminds me of a cute girl I knew. When she told me that her dad had died during the Iran-Iraq war, I began asking myself if there's something about me that attracts girls with deceased fathers to me. Well after hearing her life story and it all, I don't think I share much with her and she doesn't strike me as someone especially interesting. But since she's forgetful with names she might be more like-minded than other girls.

Maybe I'm setting myself up for defeat already. I don't want the same thing I had going with Suzy to happen with this girl again. The whole time I spent with her, I was debating with myself if the girl's worth a shot and how much she resembled that other girl I knew. Looking back at my stoner days there were a few girls with whom I think I had a chance but didn't take. I did take the decision in light of those stoner days a long time ago to give things a shot regardless of whatever lame excuse I came up with. But having a relationship here is so messed up since it's practically impossible to have some personal time to spend together. And I know that I can't be able to be so emotional as nearly any girl expects me to be.

I got her Yahoo ID because I insisted on exchanging them even after she told me that she doesn't have a PC at home, and the ID doesn't make reference to her name and so still no clue on her name. Well I wasn't going to ask her her phone number because I knew that I would lose it since I didn't have a phone on me. Oh dear, I've spent a whole lot of time thinking about this. I'll get her phone number and see what happens from there and will have to try not to repeat the same mistakes I made with Suzy.

I went to take a leak and saw that the national electricity was on. I thought I heard a beep from upstairs a while ago, I thought that Nahida would tell me to go turn off the generator but she didn't and it slipped my mind. I wonder what that beep is in the first place. Oh it's the microwave. Anyway so now that I've switched to the national grid it's probably going to switch off any minute now. Oh but wait let's see, the last time it came it was 5:15 PM (odd since it wasn't on the hour) and cut-off at 6:15 PM, and now it's 11:00 PM, so if it came at around 10:15 PM (a quarter past just like it did last time), it should go off in 15 minutes. So if this new schedule sticks, we should be getting one hour of electricity for every five hours of no electricity.

Still waiting for it to cut-off... it just did at 11:35 PM, maybe it came later than 10:15 PM. It's messed up today.

KitKat - Globalisation's Victim

Not feeling so great, I think I've eaten too much and haven't eaten enough fruits. It's moments like these that I remember that I decided to limit myself to water and fruits whenever I get the munchies. But of course I didn't have the munchies today, got no weed to do that. I was just pigging out.

I'm sure I must've once mentioned a year or two ago how great KitKats are, I mean were. Because for me Bounty bars are now the my favourite chocolate bar. I think I ate four or five of them today. They must be the healthiest of the common lot. It contains something real: coconuts. 21% desiccated coconuts is what it says on the wrapper. I'm thinking that there's less guilt associated with a Bounty than a Mars bar.

Oh and the subject, beware of the Chinese made KitKats that are appearing in the shops these days. They're disgusting and a travesty to Mr. Rowntree's legacy.

Yesterday I got a new generator. It's smaller than the old one that's got a damaged piston ring. The new one is super cool. It's got a remote to turn on and off the engine. The remote ON function is a bit stupid since one still has to bend over next to it to turn the choke on and then off as it starts. But it's nifty when one just wants to turn it off without having to nip out in the cold in the middle of the night.

Tomorrow I'm going to get my new phone. Just a couple more shops were open today, and one of them had the phone I wanted. But I insisted on going back to the other shop across the street where I found it during the holidays just because he had the decency to open during the holidays. But that guy said he had sold a couple days ago and that he could get it for me tomorrow. Well I've been waiting for a week, I could wait another day, besides he's offering to sell it for cheaper and he doesn't look so dodgy.

I didn't go to college today. Most of the roads leading out of the neighbourhood were blocked off, leaving all the cars to go through my usual route and creating a one hour jam just like the one that nearly led me to a nervous breakdown a couple weeks ago. So I just drove home and thought this would be a good opportunity to get that studying that I was supposed to have been doing for the past couple of weeks.

Last night, I actually got down for nearly an hour trying to understand a photocopied handout from a textbook in English that a teacher gave me to explain some mathematical kind of material that I missed in class. It's amazing how the teacher manages to dumb down the material for us, because even though the stuff was in English, I struggled to make any sense out of it.

So because I didn't go to college today, I was supposed to get some studying done? I've even got a test tomorrow. No I haven't studied anything today. A few hours ago, Nahida came down to tell me that tomorrow will be a day-off. I was so relieved. She came down an hour ago again, to tell me that the prime minister spoke and said that only a bunch of provinces in the south will have a day-off tomorrow.

I've been playing poker on my DS a lot lately (been stuck at the same level for a couple days now). And it's an interesting game and one day will lead me to victory the next time I play poker with Hans. I never began to imagine how Texas hold 'em can pit you against yourself whilst trying to decide whether to call or to fold. Well as far as studying is concerned I'm calling. I might just win if the teacher doesn't show up tomorrow which is quite likely if there's a jam such as today's. On the other hand, I just wouldn't mind getting the bad mark and have it done with. I need a bad mark to put me in my place.

I installed OpenOffice on my laptop today. It looks nice, it's free, legal and opens MS office files too. I don't need it but I don't have Microsoft Office and there are many times when I wish I did have Word. And I don't want to put any dodgy pirated Office on my laptop since I do have an original copy of Windows installed. I've had my laptop for nearly a year maybe and I haven't had to format it once, something that's pretty unheard of in Iraq since that's the most common solution to a faulty PC. A solution that often leads to a modem not working because the drivers went missing.

Two weeks I've been without a drink. I'm definitely getting some tomorrow on my way back from college tomorrow. I've been coming to the conclusion that it's my lack of booze that's driving my productivity down. There's a positive correlation between alcohol consumption and productivity isn't there?

Ati's coming down the stairs very slowly. Could he be bringing me some tea and being careful not spill it? Oh my! Yes he is, lovely jubely. And he comes bearing a message from Nahida: "Study and go to sleep early". Right.

Laptops are such a blessing in the cold. They're the most functional lap warmer ever conceived. Oh but I now I need to take a dump. It's so painful using a bidet pouring ice-cold water.

Why FMMM?

It's been another wasted day today. Got pretty much nothing done except fuelled my car and got ripped for a coupled of dollars by the guy at the pump. In case you're wondering why I keep re-fuelling my car, it's because I use the fuel to run my generator.

So just now I was sitting on my couch facing the tellie and it occurred to me that it's been a while since I've last jerked off (maybe a day or two at the most). So I dig out the unencrypted hardcore porn channel that runs little clips in ads to join to get all 18 channels! God knows why one would need all 18 channels, when just 15 minutes of porn would do the job.

And as usual I turn to the channel to find a rather hot chick sucking dick and within a minute it switches to the ads. And the ads aren't any good. So I flip through some more channels till the ads finish. There are loads of channels advertising sex hot lines. And what might seem surprising is that most of them are targeted at Arabs. Oh and just so you know it's a European satellite that I'm switched to because the Arab ones wouldn't have any of that.

Anyway so I switch back to the free hardcore channel and there's a rather okay girl with her knickers off and she's feeling herself up. I'm thinking to myself that this is good. I grab the box of tissues sit in the corner so that nobody can see without me sensing their approach first. I unzip my pants, pull my dick and just after a few seconds of warming up, three guys and their weeners walk into the frame. My dick shrivels back in and I zip up my pants, turn off the tellie and sit back on my couch.

India left to Amman today. He's off to do some training course in Germany. He had the airport cab pick him up from my house since his house (which is closer to the airport than mine) was in a neighbourhood too dangerous for the driver. The funny part was when Nahida woke me up in the morning and told me that his family was coming along with him to my house. I freaked out because I knew I had left the living room a mess before going to sleep and when I walked into it, it reeked of cigarettes. But Nahida was on top of things and I quickly had no reason to freak out besides that it's the first time ever in the 12 years that this house has been mine that one of my friend's family comes over.

And that's one more friend of mine, one of my closest ones, that's gone. And it's dawning on me that I need new friends. This is such a pathetic predicament.

Waaaaa

I'm waiting for my lunch right now: barbecued kebab and meat tikka.

A couple days ago, I spent the afternoon with Nahida's brother to fix my generator and fill up the car. He got the generator working just by adding some oil and an oil thickener. Nahida's brother explained to me that a ring inside one of the cylinders is bust and so oil is seeping into the combustion area which in turn is burning away the oil, which is why so much exhaust fumes are coming out of the engine.

Food's here already.

I would've fuelled up my car on my own, but that day was odds and my car is evens. He was driving, so as he approached the petrol station he prepared one thousand and a half dinars. So he drives up to the entrance and the FPS (the Iraqi government security force in charge of protecting ministerial interests) guy blocks our path and signals us to go drive back out. Nahida's brother drives up to the guy and tells him to take the money. I was thinking to myself that one thousand and a half dinars (just over one dollar) wasn't enough to bribe him. And the guy was very reluctant to take it, but then Nahida's brother started to act angry and insisted that the guy takes the money and the guy did.

Ah and the after meal tea is here.

While Nahida's brother was filling up the car, a man in a suit with a walkie talkie showed up looking at our license plate and had a go at the FPS, which it seemed accumulated to nothing but a slap on the wrist. As we drove out the FPS guy whined that he got told off because of us and Nahida's brother shouted with a big smile that he was a hero. I was just glad that the petrol station we went to wasn't the one I regularly go to. But to think that an Iraqi's integrity could be sold for just over a dollar, doesn't give much hope that this country will ever come to any good. I don't imagine integrity is a word that runs much through the mind's of Iraqis.

Last night or the night before I had what I hope was the conclusive conversation about our relationship. It turned I was right in thinking that I was potentially her first love. I told her again that I didn't have any true feelings for her, and she said she didn't want to get involved if I didn't have mutual feelings for her. So after an hour of being on the phone, I told her that I really want to put the matter to a close because it's been dragging on for way too long now. So that was that. I did try to convince her that she wasn't really in love with me and that all she had was an infatuation or that she in love with love itself, but she didn't buy it. To prove my point I asked her why she loved me, her best response was that I was a rare person. I also selfishly tried to convince her that we ought to just have a relationship for the fun of it and for the sake of the experience but she didn't buy that either.

Aside from studying for my upcoming tests. I've got a homework assignment: make ten questions and answer them. I had six prepared last week and I did one today. Just got three more to go. It's bad, I'm going to really screw up on the upcoming tests. I can't seem to get myself motivated enough to start making sense of the material. It looks like hieroglyphics to me. And memorizing lists of lines that I don't understand is too troublesome. I'm now thinking that it's okay if I don't perform well in the beginning, it's not a bad thing if I show bad results in the beginning and thus setting the standard very low so that when I do put in an effort into it, the improvement would seem so substantial that I would deserve more merit.

I still didn't get a new mobile phone. Most of the shops in my neighbourhood are still closed. For the past three days and today, I've been going out for a drive in the neighbourhood to find some shops other than the four that I've already checked a few days ago. One of those four that I checked did have the Sony Ericsson W810i that I've chosen to get for 285 dollars, but I want to be able to just see it available in another shop or two just to assure myself that I'm not getting ripped off. I was thinking of getting the K780a after reading a review of it on the net, but I think it's price isn't within my budget and I've yet to find a shop selling it. One sorry excuse for a mobile phone shop today told me that I'd have to wait till Sunday for all the shops to open up again, I guess he's right. I'd either have to wait or go to another neighbourhood where they're not so afraid to open.

It sucks how their isn't a one stop shop where you can see all the mobiles on the market here. It seems that all the shops only stock a few models, the most I've seen in one shop is about 30 models. It's strange how up until now we don't have and major chains of stores of any kind nor we do have any really big department stores. But come to think of it they do in the north. They've got malls with nicely polished floors and well dressed people spending their new found disposable income, it's sad we don't have the same here in Baghdad where if anybody has any disposable income they'd use it to bugger off somewhere else.