Bushums

For instance "marmalade" or "concubine". Send him into a tizzy. I got the image off Humay's blog so if you want to know where she got it from go go go.

$$$$$$

My standards for a marriage partner have drastically changed. I don’t care about sex appeal, family background, being personable etc. The B said this shows I’m ready to get married. Since no one wants to pay me a lac or so I just want a rich man who can fund my PhD. (Which Minchka said is not suiting to my personality- since I am more of a flitter than anything else). Everytime some engaged fraintaince (between friend and acquaintaince) waves her rock at me, all I can curdle and think is “She’s wearing my graduate education on her finger”. And my eyes go Ka-chingg!So even optimistically I'm looking at someone 30+.F said his khala gets rishtas done "Fisabillila" (lol.I don't know why I find the term so funny in connection with marriage but I do) and he will ask her.

It a truth universally known that a man with a car will hate asking for directions. Especially if he gets lost in his own residential area. F is such a kook and a half. First of all, he drives his car like he’s wearing it, which means for every left turn he PHYSICALLY himself moves to the left as well. If he accelerates the car, he presses up against the steering as if manually pushing it. It’s a fascinating pantomime to watch. And he makes you argue with him about directions like an old married couple.

“Isn’t this PAF market?”
“I know where I’m going. This street will lead there”
“This is a bit off Munchie’s house. Definitely”
“No it’s near it. Munchie said this is where that old Movie Walay Uncle live who everyone fights with”
“Maybe Munchie sleeps with him to get all the seasons fusst, before everyone. And maybe you don’t know the way in your own area”
“Don’t distract me with your pukh-pukh”

*drive drive*

Me: “Are you trying to kidnap me?”
“Yes. It’s a particular fantasy of mine”
“You’re very bad at it.”

*drive drive*

“I think we should turn left from here”
“Whatever. We’re going straight”

*drive drive into crowded street with tullahs cordoning off the area at one end and buffaloes and cows moored at the other side of the street*

Me: “Yeh to Saddar aa gaya hai”
“I know I know I can see.”
“Stop the car. I’m going to ask the cow for directions”
“Shut up”
“Ask the tullah at least”
“I know where we have to go. You know that juncture before this. We should have taken a left from there”
“I TOLD you too.”
“Yes but you started on withs your stories. I got distracted”
“You’re a shame as a Cantt dweller”
“I live in my own world”
“You should take a cow along with you. To help you”
“I’m going to drop you here and turn. You can walk the rest of the way.”
“I can’t leave you alone. You’ll end up in Gujranwalla”

M does Sara's Fulbright Statement

STUDY/RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
Write a clear and detailed description of your study objectives and give your reasons for wanting to pursue them. Be specific about your major field and your specialized interests within this field. Describe the kind of program you expect to undertake, and explain how your study plan fits in with your previous training and your future objectives. This statement is an essential part of your application. Do not mention specific U.S. universities at which you would like to study.

I want admission in an Ivy League school.
I am not picky about the program.
I will research anything.
When I come back to Pakistan, I hope to earn lots of money.
Previously I have been trained to do things at the last minute.

The End

P.S. I hope to find/achieve matrimony in the U.S.A.

M does not want to discuss Trek abhi

I bought my first ever bandana in Karimabad.The Mean Girls had a silly hug moment in Cafe de Hunza.I had my first Pani Puri of the year in the most burger bacha style from Spiceship at lunch.I love the pirate decor.Maps on table tops, maps on doors and the staff wearing hideous blinding yellow-pink bandanas.I want the maps to wallpaper my room.

Four am yesterday we finally came into LUMS.Till 7 pm I was at work.Then 10 pm I performed my first ever mehndi rasm at a small dholki that the bride at the last minute made into a mehndi because she didn't want the hassle next year.Dewy green mehndi on the boy's hand (tissue papered), dab of ubtan on his cheek (with a whispered 'sorry') and finger of olive oil in his hair (while he closes his eyes and winces), a pinch of dripping cham-cham in his mouth.Felt like a gracious pagan.So much intimacy and half of us don't even remember his name.But our Molly looked stunning.And today I hear of three deaths over a period of three days, Abby's father on Sunday; heart attack, Saqib bhai's 10 year old son; cardiac arrest in Punjab Club pool and Anila's brother last night; succumbing to injuries from a bike accident.Which happened right after she got engaged.Marriage mania followed by death season.Some calligrapher of time is taking the cyclical theory of stuff too seriously.

M does without sleep.

My shalwar ripped at the knee in the morning.I saw it when I was drawing my knees up to sit in the chair and for a second I looked at the hole petrified, my sleep deprived mind thinking, first the rip, then the whole shalwar so I did the only thing I could at that moment to resuce it.I grabbed the stapler and stapled it and it has done me proud so far.Nobody notices and its holding up marvellously.Lol.Yaay for me.Mama would die of shame.

Trek stuff littered all over the bed.I can't find woollen mitts.I'll just have to do without them.Or ask someone in Hunza to lend them.I hope, I hope we get to stay in Hunza for a bit before we head off for the glacier.I want to lounge on the bolsters of Cafe de Hunza, read their books and have apricot pancakes.YUM.

Danced with B yesterday.Lol.Much entertaintment.Quite the good dancer except for choregraphed stuff.Then he looks like an Ooompa Loompa for Wonka's factory.Lol.Watched Erin Brokovich and Ramsay's Nightmare (on BBC Food) yesterday.Most impressive both.I don't like movies as a rule but Erin was good stuff.I suppose that's the success of a corporation.It never depends on one person, it never goes down because of one person.It's always greater than the people who make it and they are quite the disposable.It was clear in Unilever where they were having to fire high level resource people who had spent 20 years in the workplace.I don't know if the Golden Handshake is all its cracked up to be, even if it was a fantastic monetary compensation. Ramsay's Nightmare kitchen was hilarious.Ramsay had to make a French chef bend to the will of the Scottish so their resturant could kick off.Ramsay made them get into kilts for the flavour and the chefs went arond with spoons tucked into their stocking.Cute but gross.The French chef kept "overcomplicating" his dish by giving it too many flavours and too much ornamentation.His defence was that if he just cut down to the ingredients, it would be regressing the palate.Maybe blogging is like that too.It's fun, it's a great space (even if your potential workplace shortlists from CV by looking at orkut profiles ans blogs) but the general grain of stuff posted may just be regression to mediocrity.Oh well. Who's to judge.Lol. The escape clause of every academic ho.

M does Hmmph.The irritated kind.

How cracked do you have to be to say it "actually, it doesn't do to be with or without you". *pukes in acme tiny toon fashion* Seriously, deal with your issues. And you're not as articulate as I am to convince me with that sort of flim flam.

I'll be nice this weekend.Then hopefully over the trip I will forget you.

M tests stamina and Darryl

I am mortally scared of being the girl who holds up the whole trek because she doesn't have the stamina.I get tired walking in the academic block.My legs hurt so much today.So if anyone has stellar, rocking stamina building tricks please throw them my way.I have hopefully hopefully till 2 am Wednesday morning.What if I'm not as athletic as I used to be?I 'll die. No I'll throw myself off a cliff (but the trek shall FINISH!).Actually, one can die God forbid.I have to sign disclaimers and all and YH sent out a mail saying nobody has to prove anything to anyone so please don't join one of the treks out of machismo and switch if you think you cannot handle it.

Went with Darryl and Moeen for coffee.As it is I have a thing for chaptas and this one is an exceptionally well built chapta with Ivy League stamped all over him (and confirmed).Speaks excellent Urdu. However, though extremely intelligent for an American (+10 right there and then another +5 for being chinky, -25 for not being a Samuri)and excellent to talk to, just not the sort I clicked with.O veeelll. At least he's doing an intersting PhD thesis.Lol.(SUCH a redeeming factor.Almost like "she's not married but she's got a PhD".And if you're not married and not a PhD, then to you are big dhabba on khandan.Lol!)He's looking at the Muslims who passed through Pakistan en route to Jihad in Afghanistan and their political training etc through the establishment.He's in LUMS because a) teaching very interesting course on law of wars (open attendance so I can go) and b) he needs to properly introduced to his research contacts because an American looking into Jihad is hardly welcome in the official circles of Pakistan and he said he hates being thought of as someone coming with a typical bias. He may be tagging with us on our UNDP research trip to speak to relief forces to find out about islamist forces who are forming the core of the rehabilitation programme in the earthquake affected areas. There are some militant groups who have resurfaced under different names and work with the government because of their outreach and knowledge of the people and the area. However I don't think D likes to party too much so I was fairly deflated at that point.

I pretend the pillars in LUMS are Saana or the B and hug them. Saroo said it's silly and Munchie said she would rather hug whales. Hugs are significant life affirming gestures. People I like to hug and who give nice hugs(and I give exceptionally good hugs, especially before exams and job interviews, also on weddings): Minchka, Munchie, B, Saana, KK , Zehra, Saroo, Beens, Poput and K (K gives fragrant hugs). Didn't say a single prayer today.Feel like a jodforsaken heathen.Which reminds me.Good huggers are also Ho Chih Minh- the Horny Bastard and Humay's Pink Panther- The Serial Humper.

M in Boots

Dropped the B a line after eons of non-writing to make up for bad temper at his phone that WOULD NOT let me connect pre-flight. Technology is maddening in its imapassive It's-not-my-fault-because-I-don't-have-a-soul-you-twit defense.I was so irritated at the phone, completely slipped my mind it owned a boy at the other end who was in weird departure mood. I am calling his phone Jeeves because its interfering ayah like tendencies in protecting the boy from ladies' calls.I am going to make Jeeves my bitch.Soon.

A Tasmanian devil like storm of wind, water and lightning. Like Captain Planet going kaput! in mid flight. Happily enjoyed the mayhem of slamming doors, flying lamps and wet rooms until I realized all the aerodynamics were taking place at roomie's end of the room and water had smattered into her PC.Lol.Hope she doesn't realize I was there throughout the tempest.To my credit I did curtail my enjoyment and fixed up as best as I could.

Tis a neurotic hour to be sitting in office, in hiking boots that too, trying to "break" them in.Hiking boots with pratty work shalwar kamiz = fashion suicide.I look like poster child for polio recovery ad. But they give a good grip on slippery bricks.Must yeti-walk my way back to dorm and cram fistfuls of words.

Mina messaged to say she was barefooting the storm trying to be a dryad. Munchie my wuv on the other hand wants to join Greenpeace becase they have an annual event where they all jump in the sea and hug whales possessively.Lol.I imagine the whales will be on the right after this.

The 'system', cartoons, saying no evil

Poput wanted deaths and sex in cartoons disallowed at the dinner convened yesterday in honor of Usman. Remembering the trauma of Octupus Prime’s death in Transformer’s movie and the heart rending galactic funeral orchestracted in fornt of our snot riddled noseys, we all agreed but I thought cartoon sex should linger on to give the uninitiated some training. Poput took it as a personal attack and told everyone I was an over sexed child who at the tender age of 11 saw some chemistry between Dick and George of the Famous Five. Thankfully enough Usman supported me and said the two were always doing it in those tunnels they lost themselves in islands and mountains. Tis true. That’s what they were Famous for. There was chemistry. I don’t know why everyone forgets how jealous George was of Jo when she and Dick became chummy. I should be licensed to make a politically incorrect version of Famous Five. In which (as much as I love the woman for the beautiful book addiction she gave me) I will note all her racist tendencies and make much of omissions such as how come the childun’s never had to potty in the wild? I will have to soon (hopefully) potty in the wild. Had most rational, articulate (yay for me ) conversation with Iali today and got permission for seven day trek as long as I finish the work for the conference. It’s a conference I am quite cheesed off about. Forget investment from there, they don’t even want to travel to have a dialogue with a panel of like minded businessmen. Quite strict observance of their travel advisory. But still. The accommodation and cooperation is mostly at the geo-political level. There is no talk nor room for any economic alliance which just goes to show the overriding importance of rhetoric and such cream and froth needed to push your way ahead. More pressing need for a third space for the politically incorrect like White Ninja. It’s macabre but hilarious.

There is so much that has gone/will probably go on at LUMS but survival and expediency merits keeping silent. From smaller issues of using clout to larger of sexual harassment. At least one was brought to account this week even if it took a month to do so. These larger misdemeanors just remind me of the smaller ones from not stepping up to responsibility you took when you take your students traveling outside the country to more ambivalent issues of insisting your TA spend time with you before and after class to refusing to grade someone because they don’t come to your office often enough. In the spectrum of battles to pick it’s just so much easier to decide which ones to let go off. Even if it’s the smarter choice for you, it’s never the right choice for you and everyone else. There is no such thing as working within the system. Shirazi has a point “When a person says the system works, what they're really saying is I'm not hurting”

Since choices more than intentions make the person we are; choose to live with having what we can get instead of giving it up for an alternative that seems floozy. If it seems floozy, there is no commitment. Academically and practically. Friday lunch in the RA room ranged over disappointment at reading Sen boiling it all down to elements to “have”; abstract notions such as “protective security”. About how difficult it is in the academic world to label yourselves as more than reactionary. One step ahead and you’re not even a legitimate source to study. To the point that the only “radicals” we have are Chomsky and Stiglitz. Quite the funny.

Namesake, Maps, Possession

I read Possession and I loved it.It was properly brewed and lavished with details unlike the Namesake which By the second half I was only trying to finish because I hate the idea of books half read which seems more of an insult to the characters than to the author. Namesake was derivative and yawned on and on about South Asian diaspora in amreeka and please at least put in a plot rather than just describing how two generations lived. Maybe I wasn't psuedo intelligent enough to get it but the link between Gogol and his namesake Nikolai Gogol the Russian author was also quite THE half baked. Kher. Am now lapping up Maps for Lost Lovers, had seemed contrived in the beginning. The hallmark of a great writer is supposed to be his/her ability to construct metaphors and Nadeem Aslam seems to have taken that to heart, peppering the book with metaphors that don't flow really.But am not in the middle of the book and I think I've got used to his style so that it is actually flowing.Adnan keeps insisting that Aslam, so far, describes the best the way migrants actually live and while I do understand that,I feel completely uncomfortable with Aslam's constant forceful thumb tacking of some rituals/events/incidents as "it had to be done/it was that way because that is the way of Allah and there is no other way".Islam is made the causal point liberally.I feel almost apologetic for being uncomfortable because he's not off the mark, people do think that and do believe that and live their lives according to that but it is not Islam per se.

Am back for mid blog break spent baking with Majid and Munch sprawled gecko like in the sun on the brick red ledge of LUMS where we spoke about the books we are reading and the books we read too soon and spoilt it for ourselves(I read most of Marquez when I was 12, Munch read her Russian authors by then and Majid as well).So it is confirmed, this nauseu with South Asian writers trying to sell themselves to a white audience with all the boring descriptions that have been done to death. Fine write about it because it is important but for God's sake at least insert a story.You know what it reminds me of? Those A level students applying abroad for undergraduate studies, who made up stories of being lesbian and suppressed to sell themselves to Ivy league colleges and then laughed about it.If you feel a certain sort of suppression then articulate that instead of making up something because it would appeal to an audience.It's smart marketing but not smart humanity.

I guess I'm just tired of it because I have to STUDY this stuff and I don't want to read it in my free time as well.

One Eyed Moody

If God is by nature good and not neutral, then he/she cannot be the creator of evil in the world, or creator of all that happens in violation of his code. The Other is that whole arena where greys and blacks exist and intervention staged by God removes the consequences from actions. The thing is though, is it more important to let people live with the consequences of their own actions or to protect people against consequences of OTHERS’ actions. You cannot be equal in the eyes of God if you are placed in circumstances that make it difficult for you to follow his edicts. If each individual has to fight for importance in the world and in the eyes of God, to somehow somehow be the survivor who makes it to the grand narrative of this world where the sum of events is preferred over the individuals that become their target groups, then is worship anything more than ass kissing?

For Bootiful Bumble

Friday night at bridal shower number one: I don't know ANY wedding songs. At Tehni's wedding it was still hokay, the bride was our friend hence equally inept but Friday bride-to-be was what we call "Nasreen"-you know when you go to weddings, there is the one flish-flash-shiny-happy-best-friend-of-bride looking girl who sings the loudest and dances the most. So the bride was that.It was refreshing.Laughed and danced the night away.It's only when the Lahori gang gets together that I can't help but laugh helplessly at the collective accent production.I know Bia does it deliberately to entetain me.I wonder about the rest.Bia had never heard of Black Eyed Peas and the song "My Humps" so we told her they were Black Eye-Piece and the song was "My House, my lovely little house" and carried on from there on the dance floor.

Saturday afternoon: Pakistan Television offices, I missed the ice breaking session before the recording, was shoved into a make up room and sweated in fear of being made to look like PTV newscasters with white faces and black necks, but thank the lord, they thought Poput's make up was good enough. I like the idea of me going with Egyptian crafted bedroom eyes on PTV version of Hard Talk. The discussion was not as bad as I expected but again, it's only when I have to communicate in Urdu that I realize that all the ideas that make so much sense in English and convincingly flow together, I just cannot express in Urdu. At one point the Minister and I were arguing completely in English. It's horribly elitist and I had thought my Urdu was better than most of my contemporaries because at least I grew up reading Urdu fiction as much as I read books in English. My second diary was entirely scripted in Urdu. Anyway, I wonder what I will look like on national television.

I watched Basic Instinct. Uncut version. Was scared. Also liked the legs bit. Will practice. Although if she had been in a Pakistani police station doing that during interrogation, she would have probably been gang raped by the bastards by then.

Munch and I also had discussion on little moves. The little moves that don't count as foreplay but still thrill you all the same. I have a whole repertoire of tried and tested ones. It's sometimes strange how your flame will have perfect recall for the way you hold his hand and move your fingers over his hair more than he will anything else. Surprisingly the four married friends we put our inquiries to had no idea what we were talking about.Depressing state of affairs I must say. It has also been established that while practically I may be the queen, theoretically Munch rules the roost and we should start our own Cosmpolitans for Muslim girls who don't want to have sex but want to do everything in between that and holding hands.

Sunday: Sunday went into the bones, I had a three course breakfast. Weather was bubbling with scented wind of spring flowers and eye-pricking green glint of Cantt trees in the pre-rain pastel sun.I love how spring comes to Lahore-especially Cantt and LUMS every year. Slept in the afternoon, went for long drive, all along the airport singingm hanging heads, hands out of car, watched sex and the city, then steaming sauna at Gymkhana (burnt my bottom on the seat, I love the taste of salted sauna steam), shower stalls and walk outside on the roads post dinner. Saw the new baby hearing Azan in each ear as well. Papa gave the Azan in all of our ears.

Lolita

It’s most un-endearing for a man to be so eloquent and lyrical about being emotionally and sexually active about a little girl. There are feudals such as Mina who think that well because she was precocious, it isn’t as bad as if she was really innocent which shocked the living daylights out of me. Her logic reminded me of the man who raped a girl in Aladdin water park and said that well, she was with her boyfriend so obviously not a chaste girl. I mean what the fuck.

Moreover, the book and later the movie (we watched the new one, not the old one and I HATE it when the skip parts out and it was pretty obvious that if you hadn’t read the book you wouldn’t get a thing of the movie) made me claustrophobic and reminded me of the time when I wanted to run away from home as a kid and I used to pack my red and black chequered school case with two shirts, books and a jar of milk, a pack of Marie biscuits, stand out side the gate and immediately burst into tears because even the path away from the driveway where I spent my whole time biking away was a blistering chasm just waiting to rip my limbs apart and induct me into a beggar mafia gang. This was just it. Mina said well you know she didn’t have to stay with him. Of course she did. You cannot underestimate the fear of a child who has no parents, no family, no money, no nothing, no avenue to turn to. Of course she had to stay with him because the world would swallow her whole otherwis

Morals Shorals

Money is a morality and usually doesn’t agree with the moral compasses provided by religion, self-help or whatever and family spheres seem quite immune to this morality. Families have their own logic of give and take at least here, actually there is no rational logic or logic based on human rights, it’s just need based.

Al-Jazeera

It has not only started an international network but has apparently hired Sir David Frost and Riz Khan as well. No way.

Page 3

Indian movies are best to be read like bathroom books (you know those ridiculous Archie comics and squeaky whiny Love Stories etc that you can finish in an hour and not remember one minute later. Perennial value) but Page 3 was different. In the last year Lahore has started publications of magazines called GT and Sunday Times where a good half of the magazine is devoted to pictures of socialites and them doing-the-thang-they do over the weekend. Munch, Ali and I have a competition of who knows the most people in the magazines and the one who knows the most loses. But Ali is the centennial loser because his picture came in GT. So Page 3 was a sort of look into the dynamics of socialites (a title which had achieved occupation status on Zoom because I saw on some street talk show, a woman’s name followed by the explanatory label of “Socialite”) and how journalism is falling prey to focusing on the lifestyle of these as “news” and “entertainment”.

In the movie, there is an Indian police director, who hours away from a communal blast in his jurisdiction is drinking the night away as he does almost every alternative night. The character up for vicarious living with is Madhavi a sweet woman, who has moved to the city just to write and as the movie plays out around her and people she knows (friends just seems too strong a word to give them); her actress friend who won’t be given a role until she sleeps with the director, her boyfriend who has sex with her gay friend because the latter can get him a big ad, the families that fall apart, justice that can be just handed out through illegal operations such as “encounters” (the subcontinental practice of shooting a criminal and claiming he was resisting custody. Usually done a) either to kill someone who is meddling on higher up orders or b) done by the police to ensure that the criminal is not bailed out by a rich influential backer to roam the streets again) etc.

Disturbing and what’s more disturbing was how I could feel at some level that because I had partied at times with the same crowd, I didn’t see them as deviant. No shock-value; it’s like when pictures of starving children are flashed at you again and again, you stop noticing, or flip the channel or worse still, look at the needy around and feel “well at least they’re not as bad as those in Ethiopia”. It doesn’t make you feel grateful for what you have but perhaps makes you more remote from forms of suffering that are not unexpected.

Wallpaper

Mean jwurl Poput left this on my desktop. Fidel is cousin to Ho Chih Minh-The Horny Bastard an aptly named McDonald Happy Meal stuffed purple dinosaur inducted into role play on one of those sleepless autumn nights.

The bottom of the barrel

Maybe because it was beaming out of a wide screen TV, at the comforting breakfast hour but I corroded inside and felt godless at the photographs released from A.G prison. I think dating back to 2003, 2004. Maybe it was because their backs looked like the backs of boys I know and love.Coloured backs.I can think of of very very few categories of people who deserve that sort of treatment.

And those were just the male prisons.The female prison photographs, said one commentator on BBC, were obviously not being shown but they were equally graphic. It is VILE. I don't care for justifications-your side did this, our side did this etc bullfucking shit.

Asswipe chutya officers.

Lahore: Karachi style

Lahore has erutped again today. Hand grenades no less. Amena is stuck in her office and is marginally safer than Mariam who is stuck in the eye of the storm- Mall Road, that too in Habib Bank.I thought I had left this mess, this feeling back in Karachi.While most Lahoris find the turn of events surreal, the Karachiites are still walking around normally, laughing, going about stuff without paralysis because we grew up in a near war zone. Specially if you lived on the other side of the bridge, and woke up and slept to gunfire,bullet holes in the wall concrete, getting used to not going to school because it was too far off to risk the travel.I caught myself in that apprehensive-anticipation again yesterday when we were glued to the news- in the hope of a chutti, lol, a day off from work.

Ugly,ugly, brainless, so fucking pissing off that I don't want to think about it.What did Habib Bank or Metropolitan Bank have to do with the cartoons, what did your own people have to do with it, what did the poor men whose bikes, or whose Fx you smashed have to do with this?How does the strike make a statement about anything and do anything that cripple yourself?Mariam's car was chased at hair's breadth by a gang on hooligans waving sticks and bats.School children in Islamabad, in uniforms still, swarming like ants all over the diplomatic enclave.Thank God security is always top notch in Isloo-land of the ferangis who come to Pak-iss-tan.The Lahore police said it wasn't prepared. How can you not be?Did you honestly think something like a peaceful protest cannot be hijacked by a simmering,disgruntled population?Bloody stupid chutyapa. More than willing to jump into the hole dug for them, always the first to axe their own foot.

Telenor offices guarded by rows of armed rangers.I hope Saadi doesn't come back from his work trip anytime soon.Not an environment to go to office in.All banks, KFCs and McDonalds being guarded by armed police after their outlets on the Mall were burnt down yesterday.On our way to work today, Munch and I honked hard at woman in front of us who stopped at the McDonald's turning, laughing-yelling at her that we didn't want our car stuck anywhere near these franchises, stall your car somewhere else.Quiet on the roads, marginally, no public transport except Daewoo.Pindi gone berserk also and nationwide strike on March 3.I think it's coinciding with Bush's visit.Hope the energy dissipates by then.

I didn't move to Lahore because it was like Karachi, but because it was its anti-thesis in everything-from the people, the society, the roads, to the environment.

Flu Induced

To avoid the prowling thieving bitches I left my laundry in the machine because I figure its more cumbersome to stuff sopping wet pants down your parka and steal them. My lovely pastel cucumber green kapra. *grumpy* If I catch a wench wearing it am going to pound her face in the mud till she gives it back to me right there and then.

Semblance of flu means I've been more clumsy than usual, overturned packets of clothes at the tailors and then stared at the scattered pieces with profundity for a good 30 seconds before stepping into the if-you-cause-you-must-remedy chain reaction.Didn't even bother to argue the price with the rickshahwallah. It's such a great urban myth about the subcontinent o' mine that if you don't bargain with the shopkeepers/traders/drivers they get insulted.I mean where in the freakin country are they? Do they dig little holes and crawl in when they see me?Do I not fit the stereotype of bargain type person?What am I doing wrong?I feel like I've been snubbed from some exclusive sorority.No one wants to baragin with me.Everyone gives me flat-take-it-or-leave-it-rates.Maybe it's because I'm coloured.

In food foibles drained away entire platter of cream chicken and mushroom soup and a mug of tea.Have not done a mite of work.Zilch.Nada.Absolutely nothing.Worrying about it will keep me occupied for the rest of the day.