i'm on my third piece of chewing gum since morning. cutting back on cigarettes blows.

never fuck a gift horse in the mouth

The internet isn’t a sentient being, so I should probably stop starting every post by greeting the internet. But then neither is the universe and the universe and I talk all the time. INTERNET, HELLO.

This is my first Ramadan experience, despite coming from a country with one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. When I’m not marveling at my cultural ignorance, I’m in awe of the hardcore fasting people are capable of. Other than the standard no food / drink fast there are people who also don’t swallow for the entire period, with the basic idea being that nothing should go down your throat. Thirteen hours of nothing going down your throat. And the whole experience is meant to remind you of how insignificant you are, a lesson in humility and the awesomeness of the god you believe in.

I now live in Dubai (have I mentioned that here earlier?) and it’s illegal to eat / drink in a public place during this month. There’s a room somewhere in my office where non fasting employees can convene to eat / drink. I personally find the thought of going to some secret room, with the door closed and stuffing your face while a significant percentage of your fellow employees are fasting in remarkably poor taste. So I also end up not eating / drinking till I get home (reduced working hours means home at 4) and even though today’s only day 4, the whole thing has been a shocking realization of what a toxic sewer my insides are. It’s not that I’m hungry by the time I get home (which I am, but is manageable). It’s the nicotine, caffeine and aspartame cravings that give me migraines and reduce my brain to mulch, that are alarming. Apparently, I can NOT go hours without any of the three. Which makes me wonder how would I live on a deserted island / in a small city / on a farm. It’s a charmed solipsistic life I tells ya.

Can I revoke my invitation to my manfriend to visit me? The women here are too pretty, it’s a horrible mistake. I know I say that a lot (the thing about the pretty women), pretty much every time I travel. But seriously! Dubai is numero uno when it comes to the babeliness of its women. Other than the hordes of beautiful expats who’re flitting about the place looking fresh and lovely, the effect local women have on all who lay their eyes on the only visible bit of skin, their dignified, demure face surrounded by meters of black fabric, is pretty fucking damaging.

One of the kittens I feed has finally finally FINALLY decided that she can trust me and now every day at feeding time I get rubbed against in a manner that if not adorable would be downright perverted. I know I can’t take them home, because a) I’m not home much b) I don’t how long I am in Dubai, but it’s a thought that’s begun gnawing at my heart. Its easier when I put a ‘doing what’s best for them’ spin on it as I figure they’d be pretty miserable being locked into an empty flat for most of the day.

And to continue with the inane domestic roundub (I’m a diarist, not a blogger SEE) I got my lockjaw insurance claim from the evil insurance company. Considering this has been my first ever experience with any sort of insurance company and they coughed up as per process without any harassment (real or assumed) at all I should probably think a little more favourably of them. I’ve however been conditioned to think of insurance companies as the epitome of corporate evil (ho ho ho I work at one of the oldest MFing banks in the world) and was fully prepared to hand over my claim documents and stab the insurance rep in the scrotum.

In what I could consider to be supremely ironic, my brother has moved to the village (while I have moved out of the country). However, since he is my favourite human being I’m also super happy that he gets to enjoy beautiful weather and kickass coffee and very narrow roads and the sexism of the landlord community. Better there than in hotter parts of the country I say. And it’s too early but I’m already excited about my two week long trip back home in October. I can’t wait to get bitten and ignored by my own babies. I. Can. Not. Wait

I’m looking forward to the manfriend’s impending visit on so many levels. In the top three is the fact that I intend to constantly get wasted with him. Dipsomania aside, this visit is also very worrying and I want to keep you posted with daily updates of ‘god, how do I get him out of the house without seeming insane, considering the bitchfit I threw to get him to visit in the first place’ and ‘why must he snore all the time!’ and ‘is it okay if I start staying late at work to avoid him?’ but I can’t since he knows the link to my blog :(

xx

Murphy's a h8r

For the record everything about Coke Studio irritates me. I'm not really sure why, and my irrational response probably shows that I'm a douche. This weekend I was hanging out at a friend's place. This friend and her boyfriend happen to be from Pakistan, and are very into douchey music like the doors. Besides this they listen to a lot of Pakistani music and had a whole bunch of Coke Studio on (I think it was Coke Studio at least, typically vaguely classical instruments, acoustic guitars and warbling). So I got to hear this song called saari raat (literal translation: all night) about this dude who's up all night wishing the worst for some person. There's a verse in there which actually says:

jab teri aankhein so jaye
aur teri yaadein kho jaye
tere tan main tere man main
tere ghar ko aag lag jaye
aur tujhe jaag na aaye

vague translation:

when your eyes fall asleep
and your memories are lost
in your body in your mind
your house should burn down
and you don't wake up

:O

Whoa, Coke Studio! What's with the intensely hate-filled songs? Needless to say, in my douchy tradition I've started listening to this ode to ill will and started vicariously enjoying the hate.

In other news tomorrow I'm attempting to drive to the hospital for my appointment. This will be my first time driving somewhere which isn't work or the mall, as mentioned earlier. I've got my GPS ready, though, GPS lady, I don't see how announcing 'in 750 meters get on the highway' is a useful instruction. The roads of Dubai are horrible where if you miss one turn you're halfway to Sharjah before you can turn around and fix it. So I really hope she's a little more useful tomorrow. And it also doesn't help that I had thai food for dinner, where my bravado made me ask for 'thai spicy' level of spicy and now I have a potentially upset stomach. The egg fried rice was rice, egg and red chillies. Red chillies EVERYWHERE. In a 5:1 ratio to all other ingeredients. God, I hate the GPS lady and the thai so much.

my yoga place is shut because it's friday, i want to get drunk but then my brother won't let me drive to the mall at night to pick up thai food.

this weekend is fraught with conflict and choices.

cheap bastard Murphy

Dudes. I’m so bored. I think I want to start applying to schools. I’m not even sure I want to do an MBA. Maybe an MSc in something gnarly like Finance or Agrarian Economics. I wrote that and went off to look at websites for business schools and now my head hurts. I don’t feel very competitive anymore, or maybe I’m just lazy and used to having a job where I turn up and they pay me and the thought of going to a business school and being surrounded by hypercompetitive ambitious types who are all trying to see who can get by on the least sleep is very very painful. Which is why I like the sound of a mellow MSc or MA. But nothing fruity, like my best friend’s soon to start course in Semiotics.

I think I’m just old and lazy.

I feel crabby and irritable. I’m not going to go on about how I’m surrounded by petty misers, because even I can realize that the problem clearly lies with me for surrounding myself and liking these petty cheap bastards, and what makes it so much worse, for going on whining about it. Fuck ‘em and fuck whining. From now on, there will be only chillaxing and chillaxing to the max.

I’m going home for two weeks in October and I’m already thinking about who among these people here do I trust enough to leave my plants with. The obvious answer to the question is also probably traveling at the time. My plants are kind of fussy. The place that I bought them from gave explicit instructions to water them only once a week. That sounded wrong to me, but considering I have no prior flora related experience, I shrugged and tried it. On the second day itself I could see immediate droopage. So I started watering daily, but that didn’t help. I tried moving the plants around and that didn’t help, if I’d left them out on the balcony they’d have charred to a crisp. So I finally figured out the perfect schedule, water them every alternate day and leave them during the day on the ledge next to my window-wall, so they get sunlight all day. Then in the evening, my paranoid / super smart brother forces me to pick them all up and move them out of my room because I sleep with the door closed and will apparently die of carbon dioxide poisoning.

So, BASICALLY, I need to figure out who I trust enough to make sure my precious plants don’t wilt. Otherwise I’m going to have to lug them to India with me. Where my cats will promptly tear them to shreds and sit on them.

**

I’ve just returned from a super quick lunch at home with my brother. An advantage of living practically next door to work. I’m very ready to put in the remaining 5 odd hours here and get a move on this weekend. This weekend I’m ready to get vaguely acquainted with the city and its very confusing roads. Couple of days ago I had a day off and had errands to run and actually left my car at home and took a cab because I couldn’t even fathom driving around the city and actually getting where I wanted to go. So far the car has only been to my office, the mall and home. All three locations are within a 2 kilometer distance, so that’s something that clearly needs to be worked on.

From somewhere on the internet: ‘it is actually urgent that we connect with the world, not hide from it with drink or drugs or television or literary skill; that paying attention to nothing but the movie inside one’s head will ultimately kill you’

I’m evidently a diarist, here. Calling people names and pasting random stuff off the internet.

the fan on my newish macbook pro made a scary sound and altogether stopped today. it restarted, but has left me nervous, like a concerned parent whose kid has just coughed up blood. luckily my child is still within warranty.

i continue to maintain a delicate relationship with the truth. i choose to ignore certain truths about me. i get enraged at the fact that some people insist on lying to me. and they lie, how they lie. everyday, with shamelessly straight faces (fonts?). i tell myself it doesn't matter, everyone doesn't need to share everything, but i'd like to have defined rules which say that some people do.

i just had a three day weekend, a very successful three day weekend. i slept a lot, wasn't irritated once and felt calm throughout. i cleaned and cooked and oiled my hair. did i tell you about my bedroom? one of my walls is a giant window and my view is of the desert with a number of skyscrapers and an artifical / man made bay. it's the strangest kind of beautiful, i never knew i could find a combination of greys, blues and dust pretty.

my mother wants me to buy a four wheel drive. a big, sturdy car that will keep me safe. a) i don't have the money b) i don't want to take a loan and get stuck here paying it off c) i don't know if i can drive a truck. dubai feels like the most unstable city in the world. everyone is here with a very short term plan in mind, it's like the world's one night stand. everyone's cut off from their definition of normal and the mangoes here have no smell. everyone's struggling, the local emirati women take loans every time they leave the country so they can buy designer clothes / bags / shoes / perfumes. there is nothing holding any of us down.

the more time i spend here, the more disconnected i feel. i can't tell if i'm being paranoid or if its my intuition. i have no trust left, i'm just driving around, going to work and learning how to cook.

who's going to save the world tonight?