Nearly Everyone Else's Eid

I woke up very early this morning, opened up Facebook and everyone was Happy Eiding everyone else. I was so happy, all I had to do was take a shower, shave and get ready for the arrival of a bunch of kids to come to the mudheef and to hand them out candy. And then around lunchtime I'd make my getaway to Baghdad and enjoy some festivities.

Come seven in the morning, and the date evaluators are in the mudheef waiting on me to come out so that we can finish off the date evaluation of each farmer which we had planned to finish after Eid if Eid was tomorrow. So while nearly everyone else is celebrating, the guys down here are celebrating it tomorrow. Which means that I'm down here for an extra day and I'm missing out on another day of Eid.

Yesterday, we went to Karbala for dinner. It was cloudy, maybe it will rain this winter which would be so good as long as it doesn't rain during the harvest which isn't for another couple of months. When we got to the restaurant, Durra al Nasrawi (or something like that), which was quite good the guy at the door recognized Fozzy and Nahida. It turned out he was the guy that lived and guarded the house opposite our own. It was surprising so much affection exchanged between the two at this random encounter considering I think they found him annoying at the time he used to live on our street. But in retrospect he was a lot simpler than the new people that moved in.

I'm quite fed up with my workload at the plantation. The amount of accounts that I have to do is ridiculous. Data inputting what each of over 150 farmers has received in terms of seeds, fertilizers, plastic pipes (which they end up tossing away anyway), cost of land repairs, cost of canal cleaning (the last two of which I haven't done yet). Then there's categorizing all the costs of which there are plenty such as operating, fixing the water pumps, diesel, handling the seeds, costs of selling the yield, administrative costs, fixing things such as step-down transformers.

There's also the adding up all the rehabilitation projects, such as building a bridge or installing a new water pump, of which I have to pay back my dad a third from the profits I make from the land I'm supposedly renting from my uncle and from which I have yet to pocket anything. But I do spend freely from my dad's money. I think my dad's going to try to cut me off next time he visits and so I'm trying my best to spend as much money as possible while I still can.

I'm going to get a Visa debit card to buy myself a Blackberry. But unluckily, Iraq's government has decided to impose duties on imports as well as on stuff that's sent through DHL and the likes. They're even trying to take duties on books from people arriving at the airport.

From what I hear the government's trying its best to mess with the work of parcel courier businesses. Something about trying to get a state enterprise to monopolize the handling of all stuff flying in and out of the country, so for example, I go to DHL give them a parcel, they then have to hand it to the state enterprise that will then fly it off to a neighbouring country from which DHL will then take back the parcel and take it where it's supposed to go. As inefficient and ineffective as state enterprises are, you can only imagine how bad it can get and how late and how lost your stuff will get.

So right now, I'm hoping a friend of mine who would also like to buy a Blackberry to see if his boss will allow him to use his APO (US military) mailing address to circumvent the whole problem. Leaving me to hope his boss doesn't take them for himself. (Quick edit: Just checked and online shops don't mail electronics to APO addresses, not only them, but Play.com (UK) don't mail electronics abroad either, for security reasons! That leaves me only one option: Western Union some money to mum and have her buy it online for me because the high street only sells them on contracts.)

I read the preview section of a book about Iraq's economy in the thirties through to the fifties on Google the other day. It looks like a good read, but for $190 bucks, I'm not so sure. It does a great job describing British attempts to control the economy and how hopeless the Iraqis are at running things on their own. I've got to get myself these history books one day. It really does help make sense of everything of what is going on today. Because at the end of the day it all begins to seem like one big re-run, leaving one to wonder if it can all work out right this time.

Od and I were hoping that things will get better by the time we graduate, and in some aspects they have such as in security and the availability of prostitutes. Though I'm still trying to regain the stupidity of giving it another go after my previous bad experiences with them. I told Od that next time we have to insist on some quality. Then there's the availability of hash which is good too, it certainly does help. But I much prefer grass. Hash satisifies the urge but isn't so pleasurable.

But on the other hand, it seems that the more the government gains its own say on the way things should be run, the more likely it is to screw up. The aforementioned parcel service nonsense or the big idea to censor the internet 'for state security' for example. Sounds like you'll soon get in jail for saying 'down with the government'. With their attempts to practice censorship, they step right into the scenario where moderate reformists are silenced and radical extremist's wills are strengthened, something which should be obvious. But then again, it's all good for those in power even though the people will suffer.

I don't know why I'm becoming pessimistic all of a sudden. I've always thought that as long as some democracy existed there will be hope for things to get better, but it does seem that those in power are trying to burn the bridge for change...

I had a good idea of exactly what I wanted to say next but Nahida brought me dinner. It was something like: Why can't this country gain sovereignty without shooting itself in the foot?

I know it's not me to talk of politics but does anyone see any sign of improvement in writing? I've been practicing.

Oohh Humbug

It's Ramadan again. I just noticed that the visitors to my blog have doubled. Seems that if you google: "i hate ramadan", my post with the same title is the first result on the list. I read that post today and I ought to make one correction: when I go to a restaurant with my friends who are fasting, I get the impression that I'm the hungriest one among them.

This year is completely different from last year's however. Where as last year people were smoking, drinking and even eating at restaurants on the sidewalk. This year the government has done a 360, making all the above outlawed.

Not everybody fasts! These days the weather is very hot. There plenty of old people that don't. There are also those that are sick. What's a person coming from a province and needs to do some kind of medical test supposed to do when the doctor tells him or her that he or she needs to drink or eat something.

Restaurants aren't allowed to serve food during daylight hours and they can't even give out take-aways till after three in the afternoon according to a friend of mine who was desperate for some lunch. Before the war, it wasn't allowed to do so and so in public too, but at least the restaurants were allowed to stay open as long as people on the street can't see the customers eat.

It's as though the government is imitating the Taliban. The government also wants to block internet porn too. It's not going well at all. On the bright side, the government does seem a great deal whimsical and Ramadan next year will probably be a different deal altogether again.

Why does it seem like I'm the only one hating Ramadan on the net? I don't mind if the whole world went fasting on Ramadan honestly, it might be a little inconvenient but there's no reason why I or anyone else should have to starve too.

---added later---

I wrote this post without actually seeing with everything with my own eyes. Now I'm back from Baghdad and most of it is kind of true. I later found a neighbourhood with a bunch of restaurants open. So it seems the rules have been applied more leniently in some parts. When buying Kanafa from one of the local sweet shops, I was told that the least I can order is half a kilo until futoor and that otherwise it would create a hassle for the shop.

Big Plan

Need to learn to write faster and where else to do it but here on my blog. I ought to plan that which I want to write. Skipping that stage this time, or maybe I could come up with something to talk about.

I've been extremely lazy today. I didn't even go out of the house. I'm having trouble with the 'E' key on my keyboard. It's driving me nuts. I just slipped a tiny piece of cardboard paper under the letter and it now works well. Good things do happen after all.

I've got enough hash to make one last joint. Will smoke it as soon as I'm done with this post. Was supposed to go back to Baghdad today. Perhaps I'll go tomorrow. I need to take Nahida back there to get food.

I should've signed out my messengers before starting this.

Life's been quite good of late. Not very sure why, but I get the impression that it has been. I'm very behind on work, but I'm beginning to have some perspective on my life. I'm still getting my act together, and I'm making progress. My actions are goal-orientated now.

I'm not sure if I've gone over this already or not, but the big plan for me is that in a year. The time required of me at the plantation should be so minimal that I'd have the free time to get a job. I have no idea what kind of job, but a job is what I want.

To not be here at the plantation full-time. I'd first have to set up a well-structured management. Put to practice the things I learned at college. But before all that can happen I still need to sort myself out, which I'm doing at my own pace.

Music for the Death

'I WANT TO SEE YOU BLEEEEED!!!'

I'm at a death metal concert. I don't listen to this stuff. Still fun.

The Bloody Pincher

This is my toilet at the plantation. There was a crack on the seat that used to pinch my bum as i'd try to get up. I then fixed it by stuffing in tissues. Eventually we got it replaced (it's the one in the pic, see the crack?). It took less than a week to crack too. Ended up stuffing tissues again. A few days ago, i realized that I hadn't been stuffing tissues and haven't been getting pinched either. Until today, it pinched my buttcheek so hard I bled.

4:35 AM

It's rather nice being so awake at night, as well as a little high. I'm going back to Baghdad tomorrow, in a couple of hours actually. I've been sleeping throughout the mornings these days, a great way to avoid people. I have toured the plantation a few times in the evenings. Spending my time listening to everyone and giving some words of encouragement. I'm no longer getting myself caught up in all the little details and it's working out. Sometimes things don't work-out quite right but I'm learning to keep my cool about it.

I've been reading up on how to get organized and it's going well. I bought a bunch of files and sorted about half of the paperwork I have scattered on my desk and in my cupboard and briefcase. I'm still being productive. Fozzy and me did a rough draft of the profit and loss of the rice mill that my dad insisted on setting up last year. It turned a loss of about nine million dinars and that's not including the massive cost of setting it up.

We finally got checks for the sale of wheat. It's only half of the sum and is at least a month overdue during which time the plantation has accumulated a lot of debts. When Fozzy went to cash them at the bank, the bank manager said told him that there's a new rule that said only the person whose name is on the wheat check can cash it in. Our checks have my dad's name on them and he's not coming till autumn.

The rule, a result of a guy with his check who walked in with his son to withdraw the cash. The son took the cash and the dad then came back later asking for his money. A bank employee had to be fired too. The banking system has a long way to go.

So after catching up on what's going on with the crops, I've realised that we need to get the water pumps working as much as possible these days which means getting diesel which for me is a very good reason to head back to Baghdad to pick up some cash from the bank and come back the next day. Then Fozzy and Nahida brought it to my attention that if I don't wait till Sunday I'd lose out on a million and a half dinars of interest. I'm still going tomorrow (about 2 hours from now).

It's been five weeks since I ran away from the plantation and now I'm back. I haven't yet seen a single farmer nor I have dressed up in my dishdasha and head gear yet. I can't imagine having arrived without anyone noticing so I suspect that some farmers will be coming in an hour or two.

Fozzy and Nahida have been here in charge of things all this time. A month without Nahida has been great. They seem quite well. Fozzy didn't get sick this whole time which is a miracle. The crops they tell me are looking good. Fozzy told me that the farmers have been asking him in whispers when will I return.

Fozzy and Nahida are giving me the impression that all's well. But I'm finding that hard to believe. I'm still trying to expect the worst. This now is supposed to be the least busiest of times of year for the plantation. So whatever went wrong went wrong and that's that.

what was i thinking?

hello me! i do from time to time read my own blog and often find things i've forgotten. i've moved my 32" LCD television to my room and have hooked up my laptop to it to watch movies and cartoons since my bedroom is the only air-conditioned room in the house.

i should be excited, i've had enough of living in baghdad and being with the plantation. inside i feel i'm ready to move on. what i need to do is sort out a whole bunch of things over the year ahead and get myself a new life. i've put off the idea of getting married for three or four years. i should be excited but right now, i don't feel at all excited.

tv in the room is cool.

I'm in Erbil again. Drove here with my car. It was the longest drive of my life, I was told it takes five hours to get here but it ended up taking eight hours because of the dust storm. The weather was alright until we got onto the highway and just before entering Erbil the weather cleared up again.

The roads here are quite different from those in Baghdad, I don't think I've seen a single pot hole yet. I'm trying to learn my way around since I have my car with me, luckily it's not such a big city and they have a few circular roads which means you'll end up where you want to get to eventually.

Everytime I come here, I think of how nice it would be to move here. Over the past two weeks I've been trying to think of a farm exit strategy. I can't go on working and living on the plantation forever. It seems like it isn't too hard to find a job here or perhaps I could continue my studies.

So far I'm thinking that I need to delegate the day to day work and go see them every weekend. That leaves me to focus on the more fundamental issue of sorting out ownership of the land which is a mess, the land is composed of many plots and ownerships of each plot is shared between my uncles and aunts. Sorting the legal side and then physically re-organizing the land will take a long time.

Truth is that I've had it with the plantation. It's a horrible horrible place to be. Ever since I left it two or three weeks ago, I've been avoiding all calls from the there leaving Fozzy and Nahida to take care of everything over there.

As soon as I get to Baghdad I'm going to finish smoking whatever hash I have left and go back to the plantation and start shaking things up or fall flat on my face.

Sports are Unhealthy

The tennis ball hit my eye and I wasn't high.

--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Half an Hour

3:20 AM... still awake. Slept too much today, paying the cost with boring night hours. Here at the farm I'm feeling a great deal clueless. Everything seems to be taken care of and is going just a little behind schedule. The only serious problem we're facing is a lack of liquidity. I think the wheat prices are out and are as were hoped.

Would very much like to go back to Baghdad and see Smoky. Tomorrow I've got to go plastic pipes to distribute to the farmers to regulate their irrigation. See the farmers to show some support for the guys whose responsibility is the irrigation management. Should also resolve some issue with a cranky farmer that wants to remove some excess dirt from his borders.

Why are the widths of the pipes in inches and the lengths in meters?

Looking at the quantities we've moved to the government silos and the announced prices, I should be expecting sales of a little less than two hundred million dinars. That sounds like a lot. Last rice season's sales were about a hundred and fifty million and profits only came up to a fraction of that. Wheat should be better since it incurs less expenses. That said, I've spent so much money on fixing up the farm and added an electric generator, that it looks like I've yet to see the day I get to pocket some profit.

Dad's still expecting me to do the accounts for the work we've done with the rice mill. I'm seeing myself as unable to do them here at the farm because of all the distractions, where as in Baghdad I'd be stoned and I can never get anything done stoned. But right now, I think I'm better off going to Baghdad to do them.

I was sick before going to Baghdad and then I got high and then well and then I came back and now I'm sick again with a sore throat, a bit of a cold and feeling like poo.

Hickey

I got back to the farm today. My three days of getting high are over, I left the stuff at home in Baghdad. Od's squirming since I didn't leave him any. He finally got himself a residence somewhere outside of Baghdad. He's just going to have to hope that we meet up in Baghdad some day soon.

Yesterday, Nahida's nephew took us to some guy that sucks out blood from one's back. It's supposed to be a very old sort of alternative healing called 'hijama'. Nahida went in saying I had back pains, which I don't really have these days, but it's true that I can't touch my toes. Need to stretch. High as I was, I just went along. The guy, who we'd call 'Sheikh' (as in a religious cleric), asked me where the pain was on a poster of the human body and I pointed at the lower back region. He lied me down on my side and shaved the area he was going to work on (I got a hairy back). He then pricked the area that he was going to suck from with a needle and placed a cup on the area all whilst reciting prayers and blowing on the area. From what I know is that they usually have put inside a candle or something to create a vacuum to suck the blood out, this guy however had a plunger thing with his cup with which he could just pull and create his vacuum at will.

Nahida wasn't at all impressed with the cleric and showed it which led the cleric to go through all sorts of nonsense to convince her. For example, that like women who menstruate their bad blood, men too have bad blood that needs to be ridden of and that it accumulates in the back. He'd show us the blood after it had been extracted and it'd look like a big lump though it was sucked out of the little pin pricks that he had made. Oh and after we were done with everything Nahida who is uncomfortable with me smoking up asked him if he could help chilling me out. So the guy told me to stare into his eye and then he grabbed my head for a moment and said I was okay. I was high.

My dad just called asking for the accounts. He's worse than the tax man. Well I'm now left with a big round hickey in the middle of my lower back and tomorrow I'm going to get myself working again.

Got it :)

(there was a picture here of some hash, rizlas and Smoky)

Yesterday afternoon I realised that I wasn't feeling so well and that my presence at the farm wasn't vital. So i drove back up to Baghdad. And today I've scored some stuff. I feel so much better now. My friend that got me the stuff even made me a sweet pipe and that by pure coincidence has Smoky printed on it.

Still About-ish

Just over a month has passed since my last post. Seems the posts are getting further and further apart. Got myself my one bottle of beer here at the farm. Having trouble sleeping, so I guessed I might as well slap me a post up on here.

I finished the wheat harvest a couple of weeks ago. Just like the rice harvest it involves visiting every single farmer and splitting each share. Even though it took less than the rice harvest it was still quite an ordeal to get through. On some days I'd get back home at one in the morning.



Starting from the left in this picture we've got my adviser and the guy that calculates how to split my share from the farmer's share, he's not to be trusted and often doesn't give me the full story on things. Then behind him we have the local alcoholic that puts his whole family to shame. Then there's this annoying guy, he thinks he knows his thing and I thought that perhaps he did, that's until I saw him mix two varieties of rice in the same field. And then there's the old timer who is always asking for a new dishdasha, this season he made the most wheat per area, which was really cool.

All in all it was a good harvest. It was a good season for all, my lands however, weren't as great as others which was my fault because I didn't time the fertilizer distribution early enough. I had to admit my mistake to all the farmers and they in turn were quite forgiving.

One day during the harvest there was a big fire in the agrarian reform lands in land. That day was the worst of all. I was sitting with my bunch and we could see the smoke and hear the bullets signaling, but everyone around me seemed all cool about it until about an hour later somebody pointed out that it wasn't so far from my land.


The better pictures of the fire got corrupted somehow.

The thing about wheat is that it burns and spreads very quickly. All the land that had caught on fire had been harvested but it could have spread onto my unharvested lands had the people and firemen not have made a huge concerted effort to stop it. And most important and fortunate of all nobody got hurt.

One day, I had to finally confront the scariest of all my farmers "the professional criminal". I hadn't had to deal with this guy up until now simply because he was in jail ever since I came to take over the farm. That day, he seemed all ready for a confrontation carrying a gun in a holster regarding some expenses before my arrival that he felt that I should share the burden of. Within seconds, I got him to chill out, eventually met him half way on the expenses and now I'm his friend. Here's him with his grandson.



Up until the harvest my own morale was pretty low, but I was surprised to find the farmers encouraging me and telling me that I've been doing a good job. I had a chat with one of the best farmers I have and from our conversation he told me that he in the time I've been here I've come to understand as much as my uncle and my dad took years to learn.

And talking to one of the guys that is in charge of tilling the land today, I'm told that the farmers are paying more attention to the tilling than usual suggesting that they too are more enthusiastic about the season to come.

There remains one massive gloomy cloud hanging over the parade though, and that's the country's massive water shortage. The government's giving no guarantees that they'll get the water flowing. Chatting to a guy today, it seems to hang on whether the government will be willing to give Turkey a cut of the oil in exchange for water. I don't know for sure if that's the truth but if it is I hope that they concede. Otherwise, it would be really stupid of the government to keep all the farmers holding their breath and spending money on the hope that there'll be enough water for water-thirsty rice instead of just calling the rice season off this year at the appropriate time which has more or less already passed.

That's pretty much, I've typed more than I had planned to. Aside from the farm and the accounts that are still piling up that's not much left to my life. When I went to Baghdad for the a few days after the harvest, I got a little depressed because there was nothing there for me to do. Even my buddies all seemed to be too busy to hang out.

I ended up spending a couple of late afternoons at a family funeral getting to know some relatives, one of which keeps stressing to me that it's great to be working at the farm but not to waste away my life there. One night I took a cousin of mine out to one of those dodgy nightclubs which was pretty fun, I danced a little with the prostitutes and ended up leaving when the cops arrived but I didn't understand what the deal was up with that. On the way back home it turned out there was a midnight curfew but I still managed to get home.

Shepherd people come to the land during the harvest to let their animals feed off the land after it has been harvested and I got a picture with a camel that belongs to one that I'm so happy about. It was the first time I ever came up close with one and it was so cool. The camel was really friendly and was playing around with my headgear whilst I was trying to get one of the workers to operate my camera phone. I'll try to upload some pics of the harvest sometime soon. There got it!



I really should get to sleep now, the workers are coming in four hours to load up the wheat into the truck to be taken to the government silo which is purchasing wheat this year without declaring the price at which it will buy. I'm loving this government.

I got to stop sleeping during the afternoons, staying up so late is not good.

This toilet here smells bad, this particular one not as bad as most. My own method to deal with the stink is to breathe through a lit cigarette.

The OverFlusher

Here we go with the first toilet. The missing seat is something that's quite common. I've used this toilet on a couple of occasions before to take a pee. It's all good until I flush and the water just flows out in such force that it just slightly overflows over the edges. Now that's not so bad when all one's done is take a leak, but it would be scary scary if one's to take a dump.

Toilets

India once pointed out that Iraqis have no love for their toilets and it's so true. I'm going to start taking pictures of toilets with my mobile phone to document their dire state. Much better than photos of booze.

Footie

Wow, I haven't felt so free to feel so lazy in a long time. This is kind of nice. I still haven't started doing the accounts and I don't really care right now.

Work in the farm's getting a little fun. I had personally dealt with my first tiny conflict resolution, if that's the right term. A bunch of teenagers that were playing in an uncultivated plot of land and were told to piss off by the farmer living near the plot. So the kids came to me asking for my permission to play there. I told them that I don't see any problem with it and that they should be allowed to play. The next day I headed over there, found the kids all gathered up on the road complaining that the farmer living by hadn't let them play and that they were cursed at. That they were cursed at I told them is no big deal since they're kids and that the matter at hand was whether they should be allowed to play or not.

Accompanied by the adviser that my dad had assigned to me, I went to the plot and was greeted courteously by the farmer that hadn't been letting the kids play. They explained to me that the women of the household couldn't hang around the house at their ease because of the presence of the boys playing football. Women here hide whenever there are men around, it does get a bit silly if you're not used to the idea, but here it's a fair argument. We drank tea and then left them and insisted that they not follow us to the street where the boys were at. On the way to the street, my adviser explained to me that that family were they themselves troublemakers.

Back to the boys, my adviser explained to them that for the sake of avoiding any trouble that it they weren't allowed to play there and that there was another field that they could play in by the river. Then I told them off for not telling me about the inconvenience for the women of the household and that I'll try to find them another place to play.

Today, I think I came up with a good idea, but I've still got to present to my dad and hope he accepts. There's a plot next to my rice mill that at one time was supposed to be an orchard, but everything but all that's left are a bunch of scattered palm trees. If I could turn that into a full-sized football pitch and set up a little kiosk to sell soft drinks next to it. I could get the guy working the kiosk to collect 10,000 dinars (8 bucks) from the kids for 2 hours use of the football pitch. If they were to play just once a day for a month that would make over 300 bucks a month. I would make enough money to cover whatever expenses in a matter of months and then with the remaining profits I could set up lighting and pocket a bunch of cash.

My adviser told me that my dad had once wanted to make a football pitch for the kids once too but that the local elders were against saying it would cause trouble. But perhaps my dad might be convinced by the prospect of profits. In the meantime, I've had kids come to me asking me for a place to play football and I'm telling them I'm looking into it but it seems there's a rumor that I'm going to make one according to Nahida who spoke to one of them.

Eating Lots of Halloumi

I've been having trouble with my internet connections which is why I haven't been able to post (that and simple procrastination). At home in Baghdad, my wireless access point stopped working so I went out and bought another one which then after a week broke down too. My internet here at the farm isn't doing so great either, virtually impossible to load a page of porn.

My dad finally left a few days ago which is a relief. He has managed to leave me with an incredible mess to deal with. I've got about 3 months of accounts that I need to start working on and it's still just piling on. Got a couple of brothers that have built themselves fancy homes on our land that I must either get them to agree to sign a rent contract or otherwise we'll have to take them to court. Right now, I'm now in the middle of re-routing a bunch of irrigation canals which is costing plenty.

I did go back to the doctor after finishing my prescription and after some persistence on my behalf I got him to tell me what the heck was wrong with me... Yes! I am stupid to have had unprotected sex with a prostitute... I contracted chlamydia from the woman. The doctor gave me a bunch more antibiotics, some pills to treat the 'sand' in my pee (an early sign of kidney stones) and told me not to worry and to come back in a month. I've got to insist on getting a culture test next time to make sure it's gone.

Come to think of it, my life's getting extremely boring. Work's keeping me occupied, but there's no fun to be had. On Fridays I usually head back to Baghdad and catch up with Od, we get drunk and go out in search for food hoping for something new but end up with the usual pizza or burger. I think I've played a part into turning him into an alcoholic. He didn't used to drink until I left that stash of booze at his house during my dad's last visit.

One day, Od got his hands on a tiny bit of hash the other day. We smoked a joint from it on his roof. The sun was quite warm that afternoon and the hash was rather good. There's definitely something nice about getting high in the sun and it's strange how I feel more comfortable with myself when I'm high and I'm not so grumpy either (something my dad thinks is a result of sexual frustration). If only I could get things done whilst high, but I can't.

Prostate's Good

Last night, I spoke to my dad's friend who has a hospital and asked him for a urologist. He told me to go to his hospital today. I got there at nine in the morning and he had already left. Over the phone the doctor told me to come to his clinic on the other side of Baghdad but a couple hours later I figured that I didn't have the time to go all the way over there. So I headed to a local street where lots of doctors are to be found and picked the first urologist I found. His sign was new, so I guessed that he probably was a doctor that returned as a result of the improved situation. In his office he still hadn't finished hanging all his plaques.

I explained to him that my penis was leaking something watery and he asked me if I had been 'naughty'. I told him I had 7 weeks ago. He then got me on the bed, felt around my tummy, took a look at my willy and gave it a painful squeeze. Then he told me to turn over, so I lied down on my tummy but he wanted me to lift myself on my elbows. That's when I saw him put some cream on his glove. He told me to look forward and he inserted his finger into my bum. He asked me if I felt something was pushing out and yes it did feel so. My prostate's good he said. He then gave me a piece of paper to take to the lab to get a urine test and if necessary cultures.

Walking down from his office I spotted a friend from college. He asked me how I was doing, I told him I got fingered! It then turns out that the doctor was his dad who had been abroad and was suffering from cancer, but is now nearly recovered. I did my pipi test and didn't end up having to do any cultures. The doctor prescribed me some antibiotics and told me to come back in ten days. And I've got no idea what's wrong with me.

Oh no! I'm on antibiotics which means I can't drink up anymore! Good thing I got well wasted last night.

Later this evening, my dad took me to that 'lady of society' that I've mentioned before. She had found me a 'suitable' woman and we were all invited at her house. The girl was not especially pretty and certainly didn't know how to do her hair nor how to dress in this century. I spoke to the lady outside and told her that she looks a bit heavy to which she responded with you can't have it all good to which I replied that I worry about my back. It went pretty well, dad kept his cool for once and didn't bring up the 'marriage' subject out loud. The evening passed and I didn't exchange a single word with her, but I still had fun conversing with everyone else present.

On the way back home, dad insisted on giving his opinion and that included the fact that the girl was nearly two years older than me which I guess explained why he didn't jump the gun this time. I'm ready to give up on my dad's help now. I'm thinking I'm better off focusing on my work for the mean time and then make a drastic life change so I can meet more women.