The exciting adventures of Insomnia Girl

Now I know why I have insomnia, I think too much. My brain just won’t shut up. Yap yap yap yap yap! It’s like I have a little kid with a sugar overdose stuck in my medulla oblongata.

“But why mommy, why, why, why? Why can’t I go out and play, huh? huh??? Pleeeeeeese?”

“I’m not your MOMMY!, now sit there quietly and be a good brain!

As I lay in bed in the dark, pretending to be in deep slumber, there, in my head, was the equivalent of a political debate. Lots of senseless thinking, worrying and fretting. What will I do tomorrow? Why haven’t I won the lottery yet? How will I wake up so early in the morning? Will I look like a banshee, without enough sleep? When am I gonna get my ass to a gym? Did I turn of the light in the guest bathroom? I think I left the front door unlocked…THIEVES, ROBBERS, MURDERERS! Aaaand I’m up.

As I sit in front of the TV wide awake at 2am after checking the obviously locked door and the turned off stove. My husband, I envy him not, is asleep the minute his head hits the pillow. This drives me crazy further. Why not me?? Where is my sleep fairy? Is she on leave? It’s so distracting having someone so happily asleep next to you when you sit there with a furrowed brow, waiting for salvation.

The irony of it all is that tomorrow morning, around the time I’m supposed to be in the shower or getting dressed for work, my bed is going to be the sexiest thing around. I would trade my mother for an extra hour in bed. Sorry mama. And to top it all off, the monsieur is still sleeping. If you believed in the evil eye, you would see the crimson rays of envy shooting out of my eyes as I groggily stumble to the bathroom.

Scientists say you only need around 8 hours. That’s hogwash. If left unattended, I could easily do 16 in one go. Anyway, it’s getting late and I have to go sit resentfully in bed, until boredom knocks me out. I have about 5 hours. That’s the equivalent of being offered a crummy biscuit, when you’ve been fasting all day and were looking forward to a feast. Good night.

Not so good, I’m back. Yes that didn’t work out very well. I was just about to fall asleep when I heard a click from the AC right above my head, like something just got ejected out of the vent. (I have the hearing of a German Shepherd at night.) All senses alert, I feel a hard, tiny body land on my arm, I have a sneaking suspicion I know what it is so I quickly turn on the lights to confirm.

“Son of a BITCH! MOTHER #%@&%! AAAAAAAAAAAH!”

After lots of loud trucker-style swearing, followed by violent whacking of pillows (dangerously close to my husband’s face) with a tissue box, using unnecessary excessive force, I pick up the deceased BIG ASS ANT and disposed of it in the trash, very far away from my bed.

Pumped full of adrenaline from my fight or flight instincts, I sat upright in bed unable to chill out, staring at my dear spouse, who slept soundly through all the chaos, without so much as a blink. It’s a good thing I fight my own battles, because prince charming didn’t budge.

So here I am. I can’t go back to bed, it’s too dangerous. So I’ll sleep on the couch tonight. That should be fun. I have a TV and the laptop and all those books. It can be like camping but without the damned nature. I settle into my temporary refugee camp, winding down again and ready to sleep and then I make the grave mistake that all insomniacs make. I look at the time. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! It’s 3:30 am…I have 3 hours left, I realize sobbing. And so it starts all over again.

hours later...

Nice sunset...

Top 10 Signs that you're NOT a Domestic Goddess

TEN: You found your earrings that you've been missing for a year in your underwear drawer, however it was filled with T-shirts at the time.

NINE: It took you 20 minutes this morning to find the cereal, although it's a big blue box with a huge orange tiger on it. Somehow it was next to the washing detergent, and you wonder why your laundry is sometimes crispy with a crunch.

EIGHT: Vaccuming is a rare activity that you are only driven to do once a month, after you've tripped on a huge dust bunny and fell flat on your face to actually taste the dust.

SEVEN: The term 'Make the Bed', always leaves you wondering..."Make it into what??"

SIX: Your excessive shoe collection is half in the closet and the rest are lined across your bedroom wall like an army ready to march into battle and your mother calls you Imelda Marcos.

FIVE: Once a paper is removed from your usual line of sight, (ie coffee table, stuck to fridge) you've lost it forever, and will only find it 15 years from now, when the subject of the paper has either died, sued you, or is no longer valid.

FOUR: Sometimes when you look at your closet you feel like crying, but instead you go out shopping to soothe your misery. Then you stuff the new clothes into the overcrowded closet to add new woes to your next closet check up. Vicious cycle.

THREE: You've lost a child/pet/spouse at least once and later found them under a pile of clothes/shoes/towels. They looked very resentful.

TWO: You've only bought a set of six plates, so that you have an excuse for not hosting dinners/parties/emergency meetings for more than four people at a time.

And the number ONE reason, that proves that you're definately not a domestic Goddess???

You buy lots of home magazines and recipe books, and day dream of the pictures of immaculate, organized homes and neat, beautifully folded clothes in closets, and the quick ten minute dishes, only to find that you have no adequate storage space to put them away and end up tripping on them for months.

Happy Eid!

Happy Eid! It's finally over. Finally. I'm so excited that I will have steaming hot coffee tomorrow curled up on my sofa, absorbing the morning or rather noon. This is as opposed to the usual grumpy faced zombie-march I transport myself to work with. During the holy month of Ramadan I would usually wake up VERY resentful that my husband is still sleeping. After failing to annoy him out of bed, I’d go to brush my teeth, pull my hair into a semi-respectable pony tail while muttering unholy nothings under my breath.

As I drag my feet out the door, there is an evil vs. good battle raging in my head. "Go to sleep!" "Go to work!" "Go to sleep!" "Go to work!" and so it goes, all the way to the parking lot at the office. And everyday as I walk in fasting my sins away, my colleagues would look at me and giggle, because I look comically angry at the morning for ever existing. Why? Why must one wake up? It's so painful without caffeine. I hate people who look amazing so early in the day. How? Did you start last night? I look so pretty at night, everything snaps back into place at around 11pm. In the morning, my features are rearranged and slightly out of shape. My nose looks koala-ish and my eyes are unamused, my mouth goes all funny parrot beak shaped. I don't get it but I think it's genetic, because my brother has the same "booz" upon rising.

And then the challenge begins. Making important phone calls where you have to explain a lot of technical details and give historical backgrounds is very difficult when you’re running on empty, and not really embracing your fast.

“Hello?”

“blableee boo boo mumu plee plee…”

“Hello?!”

“Sorry, Good Morning, can I please…bleh fur miskru me mo?”

Dial tone…

Okay, forget verbal communication, let’s go to email. It might take an hour to type something coherent, but at least I can click send when I’m good and ready.

Yes my friends, when you fast you feel humbled. You taste the hunger of the poor and the challenges of the deprived and ultimately the stupidity of the unintelligent.

So now that Eid is upon us, I’m going back to step class, spinning and the occasional jog around the compound. The only exercise I did for the past month was leaning forward to get the remote, and then the hourly clicking from one tragedy “musalsal” to the other. That motivated me less to move, and more to cry in mourning for the non-existence of creativity in khaleeji TV productions. (This will be addressed in another post, soon, while it’s still FRESH in my mind)

But before I “happy” myself to death, I have to plan what I’m wearing tomorrow and how I’m going to survive/avoid the 247 family visits that I’m told I have to make in one morning.

Oh, didn’t I tell them? I don’t do Eid in the mornings. Eid is a noon thing. I wake up and go to lunch at my grandfather’s house, the meeting point. And then I get tired. By 5pm I want to toss my shoes off, put my hair up in a bun, and wear my tracksuit. I start falling apart like the pumpkin carriage on Cinderella’s way back home.

Wish me luck. I’ll either be home at 5pm, or sitting miserably somewhere politely smiling on the outside and nodding at people, who keep asking me who my mother is and when I’m gonna get pregnant.

Being the Big Sister.

The wisdom of my years is a result of two and a half decades of practicing my balance of power. Born into this predicament, I tried to learn from famous people in history how to control those under my rule. While learning the famous philosophy of Machiavelli; “It is better to be feared than loved”, I wasn’t thinking of anything other than how to put that into effect in my domain; the home.

Before my recent discovery, I had grown up as the eldest sibling, cousin, and grandchild on both sides. From the minute I was a mere belly, I felt very important. Never having been good at taking orders, I rescheduled my due date to fit my personal comfort and took my sweet time (2 weeks), coming out. I would imagine that after being wrapped and taken from my mother’s arms to the nursery, I had waved regally, like the Queen Mother at bystanders in the hallway of the maternity ward.

Years later when I had to greet the newcomers to my territory, I didn’t fathom that I would have to put up with so much ignorance. I was now responsible for guiding those “unwashed” masses to the light of knowledge. Teaching them how to adapt themselves into a high society was going to be a challenge.

“Would you please stop dribbling all over your stuffed giraffe,” I would kindly request with a smile. Patiently waiting for a reaction, I would get a wide eyed stare from my dear sibling, and assuming I had communicated well, would only turn around to find the unfortunate giraffe sopping in infantile saliva. But thankfully, with the progress of their language skills they came to understand better what I was saying. I didn’t want to be bossy, but I did know everything. And as absolute power corrupts, so did I.

“It’s good to be the King” was something I had pompously uttered under my breath on numerous occasions after having defeated a sibling-peasant, and proved that I was in fact “cleverer”, “bigger” and “righter”.

Of course just like history has shown us before, the “unjustly wronged” peasant, will revolt. After some time, the little rascals had formed a secret alliance based on mutiny and their infamous slogan “GET IT YOURSELF!!!” Still, my leadership persevered, sensing that they hadn’t gained enough power, because their newly found bravery had not yet enabled them to add derogatory adjectives to their protests; for example: “No, you lazy cow!”

However with the years, they realized that children born after 1980 had some sort of insidious growth hormone that made them taller and larger than those unfortunate ones born in the previous decades. With the growth spurt, came the downfall of my ill-fated Queendom. And although my administration still felt that we knew best and were in fact looking for the welfare of those ungrateful “peasants”, the menacing look was no longer an effective domestic policy.

Soon I had to look into ridiculous new tactics, like the “Ice-cream Campaign”. This failure of a plan, was based on the motivation that obedient ones were rewarded with a double scoop of Rainbow Sorbet on a cone, a dessert choice often avoided by mothers who favored non-sticky offspring. But that back fired, because when funds were low or Baskin Robbins was closed, there was always an outrageous yet creative uprising. And then due to the racket produced by the unsettled masses, I would get a menacing look from the governing forces also known as legal guardians.

I quickly found myself to be impatient and very much out of control. I had hypertension at the age of 9. Would nobody listen to my WISDOM?!!

These are the downsides to being a leader. Communicating to the ‘nitwits’ that I knew best was taxing and pointless. Trying to right their wrongs and avenge their victims always made me look like the bad guy. All I sought was justice and at the mature age of 9 ¾ I felt I was more than qualified to govern.

“Admit it!! You shaved your barbie’s HEAD????” I screamed one afternoon.

“No..” she said defiantly as if to dare me to prove it.

“Well, does she have alopecia?! Or maybe the master mind over there did it” I yelled pointing at my 2 year old brother, who turned to look at me, with a piece of cheese hanging from his mouth.

“For your information, just yesterday, I saw him giving free hair cuts to three lace pillows, a lamp shade, and the leopard rug.” Counsel was trying to present new and confusing evidence to get away with her crime.

“I know it was you. And one day I will prove it.” I walked away to put my barbies in a safe place. Until today, there has been no confession, she still claims that the culprit was indeed the cheese eating fool who was watching cartoons. He was Keyser Soze.

I love these guys.

Top 10 signs that you're lazy

TEN: You look at senior citizens riding motorized chairs with envy as they cruise the supermarket aisles.

NINE: You convince yourself that you don’t really need to go to the bathroom, and that it’s all in your head.

EIGHT: You email your colleague rather than walk up to their desk to ask for that file you wanted.

SEVEN: The minute you arrive somewhere you look for a chair/bench/sofa to sit on.

SIX: You don’t understand people who enjoy moving furniture around, just to see what the dining table would look like over there.

FIVE: You were thrilled when you read that your supermarket was prepared to deliver your groceries right to your door.

FOUR: You get tired when you watch the Olympics or the World cup.

THREE: You think gardening is drawing a plan for your gardener of where to put the petunias.

TWO: Walking your dog consists of you throwing his favorite toy and yelling fetch.

And the number ONE sign which proves you’re truly lazy…

You come up with ingenious Inspector Gadget type inventions of how to get things while sitting, like extendable arms or mini robots but never have the energy to actually create/patent/ produce the above mentioned.

Lazy Baby

On September 2nd of 1977, nine months and 10 days after my conception, my mother went to the hospital with my father, both grandfathers and my grandmother, who had all traveled to London to witness my birth, the first grandchild. When they arrived at the hospital, my mother politely asked the doctor why the hell I wasn’t out yet and that this was getting a little tedious.

This was the third time my mom and dad were turned away from the hospital and told to go back home until they had a real labor going on. I guess I was comfortable. On September 12^th, 2 weeks after my due date, the doctor seeing no sign of any initiative on my part to come out, told my mother that I was a “lazy baby” and he was going to have to get me out by way of Cesarean. And so I was rudely forced out into the cold room full of strangers staring at me. I wasn’t pleased.

From that memorable occasion, I have been branded as lazy. And I really am. I’m so lazy that I have actually tried telekinesis to will the remote control to my hand. I’ve gone hours without food, because I was too lazy to make something. That’s when Domino’s became an important part of my life in college. And like Newton’s law of Inertia states, an object at rest remains at rest until acted upon by an unbalanced force. In my case an unbalanced force would have to be fire, hurricane or earthquakes otherwise I don’t think I would ever move. I hate moving unnecessarily. Once we were in the underground and a public announcement came on to evacuate the station immediately, my mother started to panic and run, but I was still evacuating at a leisurely pace. She had to grab me from my elbow and pull me all the way out. At the time I was a teenager, so above everything I didn’t want to be all panicky and look uncool, but the bottom line is that I was lazy.

For the past five hours I’ve been sitting on the same sofa, with the laptop and as people around me move, I ask them to pass me whatever it is I want as they reach its general vicinity. I’ve even asked Whisker, my dog to turn the lights on, the other day. She didn’t respond. I have to train her better, but I can’t be bothered to repeat the same thing everyday.

In my previous life, I suspect that I was either an empress or a paraplegic. I must’ve had slaves that fed me grapes as I lay on my chaise longue watching the jesters entertain me. Ironically, though if I have to exercise, I can actually go 75 minutes in a step class, jog for 30 minutes or spinning for an hour, but once that is over, I refuse to exert additional effort. I paid my dues, and now I must rest, I’m actually quite tired.

And although I’m the queen of procrastination, once in a while I get a spurt of mysterious energy, where in the span of one hour, I would finish a painting or clean my whole room, rearrange my closet and alphabetize my DVD collection. But those are rare moments, and usually there are no witnesses. Sometimes even in those occasions, the energy spurt runs out in the middle of the project. My mother once walked into my room and found me sat in the middle of the room on the floor with all my belongings in piles around me as if I was giving them a speech. I had started to sort things out, and then got exhausted by the immense proportions of the task. I never told her this, but what I was doing, sitting there like a yogi was trying to meditate, and hoping to move my stuff back into the closets with my mind.

So at the end of the day, if left to my own devices I could sleep forever. Nothing is really worth getting out of bed for, especially in the morning. I find my bed to be sacred in that lovely peaceful time of day. It’s personal time. I don’t want to share it with others, let alone get dressed and kicked out of the house into a functioning world. On weekends, I sleep 12 hours and I enjoy every damn minute of it. I went shopping for Eid clothes the other day and came home with 2 pyjamas and water lily bath gel. So I guess my plans for the 5 day vacation are set. I will be having a mini-hibernation followed by a bath.

But I don’t know how long this is going to last. I mean, eventually I’m supposed to have children. And if you ask any mother she will give you one piece of advice.

“Sleep now. Sleep as much as you can. Because the minute you become a mother, you will never sleep again.”

Oh crap. (Long awkward silence.)

Well, anyway, we can cross that bridge when we get to it. Next summer, when I’m all slept out, I will be ready to have kids and inshallah one day I’ll be surrounded by a bunch (and by bunch I mean two) of cute mini-me’s; a few lazy babies to cuddle up with and take naps with on my big sofa. Wouldn’t that be nice?

I’ll tell you when I get there.

UoB the place to be...a clone.

This was my response to the retarded University of Bahrain law which will not accomplish jackshit.

Why is it that when I studied in a university in Boston, 10,000 kilometers away from my parents, and where your freedoms are pronounced, and enforced daily, I never dressed “skimpily”? How come the student body there looks respectable, without any Fascist or Victorian rules hung over their heads like death sentences?

I mean sure I shaved my head, at one point, and I went to my classes like that, but I soon learned that it wasn’t a good look for me. No one pulled me aside to give me a talk. راسي و كيفي. However, had I been a student in Bahrain University, I would’ve had to fake a fatal illness, to try the GI Jane look.

Could it be that the lack of detailed micro-managing rules and misbehaviour are not actually related? God forbid, someone should do something, that you personally don’t agree with. We must make up new rules to combat everything. Can you imagine if the law had to uphold some of my suggestions?

1. If you chew with your mouth open, you will be escorted to a cattle farm for 5 hours daily of labor to see how unpleasant it is, when chewed food is on display.
2. If you burp in public, you will be fined 500 BHD which will be shared equally among all the victims who heard you and were disgusted at the time of the incident.
3. Any spitting, phlegm-ejecting out of car windows will be punished by a round of spit balls from a firing squad of 10 unruly teenagers.
4. If you push in line, and don’t stand at the back of the queue you could be arrested and sentenced to 20 hours of queuing, and when you get to the end of the line, you get slapped.
5. Anyone who is rude or unkind to his wife in public, will be punished by making him kiss his wife’s feet and beg for forgiveness in front of all the local mosques, the sentence depends on the number of mosques, maatams that are in Bahrain.
6. Any woman wearing a hideous shade of purple lipstick, that is so offensive even catwalk models won’t try it, should be punished by being made to eat the above mentioned offensive lipstick.
7. All men who think it’s cute to say something perverted to girls passing by, have to be tied up and pelted with rabbit dung for 3 days by any girl who has suffered such annoyances. This will be held in the Seef Mall; the Mecca of such people.
8. People who don’t signal when turning left/right or changing lanes, have to be pulled aside and asked to do the YMCA dance, while singing during high traffic.
9. Any man who makes his wife eat in public, with a burqa, doing the garage-door move to reach her mouth, should be sentenced to eating spaghetti and peas wearing the same…for the rest of his life.
10. Anyone who smells, due to lack of showering, sweaty clothes, or lost their deodorant should be sent to a zoo to start an alternative skunk exhibit.

There. The above rules will make a lot of lives easier and more pleasant. I hope that you will all appreciate the fact that I don’t enforce them, because I’m tolerant of others. Now maybe someone should smack the University upside the head and knock some education into them.

Obesity is a state of mind

I’m starting to believe that I have cancer of the fat. My chemotherapy in this case is diet and exercise which is proving to be about as potent as spritzing melon-scented body spray at a big hairy alley rat on a dark night. Meanwhile the fat cells have their own agenda of spreading their troops and mutating to resist the normal means of burning and they are pissing me off.

In this battle my progress is non-existent. I’m starting to believe that metabolism is a mythical character from some Greek tragedy. My body is not reacting to endless spinning classes, the sweating, the running or the minimal soup for dinner. It’s as if I’m not politely excusing myself from the daily breakfast rituals of my colleagues which involves carbs upon carbs of deliciously filling food. The other day as I walked past the desk of one of my work mates, enjoying his happy meal, I spotted the small toy that came in the box. Having gone for about 2 weeks without any form of potatoes, I picked up the colorful plastic object and put it to my nose and fiercely inhaled the sinful scent of French fries right out of it. I looked like a freshly fixed crack addict. That whiff alone caused me to gain two kilos.

Since then, the evil scale in my bathroom mocks me daily with the same number. Even the most minor fluctuations only ever go upwards, if anything. One day I’m going to sacrifice that damn scale to a bonfire and then dance joyously around the flames.

And it’s not like they can find anything wrong with me. I’ve been turned away several times from the hospital staring begrudgingly at a lab result informing me that I had no thyroid problems or unnatural hormone levels, and that I was fine. Damn it!!

Most of the time, when I look at food I can hear the music from that Clint Eastwood movie in my head where he stares at the bad guys just before asking the punks if they felt lucky. It’s either you or me, buddy. While I am battling with the carrot cake to stop seducing me, others around me are happily eating what they like and stylishly donning clothes 4 times smaller than mine.

I have been trying to be thin since I was 12. Several years ago, when I was 10 kilos less than I am now, I went to a nutritionist with my little sister who was quickly following in my voluptuous footsteps. After our weights and heights were measured, we sat silently in her office staring at our feet in shame, waiting for the diagnosis. We watched eagerly as she tapped furiously at her calculator and scribbled numbers down, wondering which one of us was in more trouble with our BMI. The serious look on her face made it seem like we were here to take out a loan and she was looking at our two dollar collateral. A minute later she looked at us and smiled. She began politely explaining how she took our weight and factored it with our height and came up with our Body Mass Index. The number corresponds with different categories of fat such as ideal weight, slightly overweight, overweight, and so on.

“However”, she said sweetly: “You are both obese.”

OBEEESE! OBEEESSSSE? How can I be OBESE??? Then what’s the word they’re using these days for people who are really huge. Obeser??? Super obese? That’s it? They just add a descriptive term. I can’t believe that we’re all in the same category. So what comes after that? What do you call the really fat people we saw in Disney World drinking milkshakes out of bucket-sized cups with straws in one hand and holding a giant turkey leg in the other. Ill-proportioned?

So as you can see, it hasn’t been fun. My year long membership at the gym has just expired yesterday. When I joined the gym last year I was 8kg less. I don’t get it.

I actually went to the gym 75% of the year. It’s just like the cancerous cells that feed on the opposition they get. They are taking me over alive.

Although my husband tells me that he loves me just the way I am, my jeans evidently do not. Is it sad that I feel rejected and upset, because I’ve been dumped by my clothes. But no matter what, I will never give them away. They are neatly folded and allocated the VIP section of my closet, because if I get rid of them, then I will be embracing this new category that I’m a reluctant member of. The obese.

So today’s a new day, and I promised myself last night that I will not eat anything with sugar in it. I’ve been successful so far. But that’s only because I spent the day hiding in a closet, peeping through the cracks at the dancing chocolate soufflé, waiting for me to come out.

Air Freshener-the faux pas of the century

What is the deal with air freshener’s? Who exactly are they supposed to fool? Just how long ago was it, that man- or more probably womankind discovered the offensive “Bad Smell”?

Exactly how did that conversation go?

“You know what, I’m tired of breathing your pungent aroma, I now pronounce you STINKY.” said Neanderthal woman.

“Huh? I’ve been hunting. Lunch wasn’t going to catch itself” retorted Smelly Neanderthal man.

“That’s not an excuse! March yourself to the river at once, before I spray you with some Forest Freshness!”

Okay maybe not. But I’m sure that after a similar scenario, some genius in a chemistry lab somewhere was wondering what the chemical compound for Forest Fresh was.

What brought this about was an exchange I had sometime ago. It was a time when my car was for several weeks, committed to an insane asylum as I like to affectionately call the garage. My dignity or pride were trace elements, as I was left to the whim of my kind family members, for donations of transport. So, if everyone was using their car that day, I watched reruns of the Golden Girls. And if they were going my way, I got lucky but then later was stranded wherever I was, because they claim that they “forgot” that I needed a ride BACK home. Like I’m new, and they’re still not used to me living there for 27 years.

It was during that time that I submitted to carpooling to work with my younger yet challenging brother. And because we are both Virgos, look alike and have similar character flaws, I would say that we can only love one another from afar, because too much together time, makes one want to affectionately asphyxiate the other.

“Its better than the smell of cigarettes..” said my sensible brother.

“No…ITS NOT! I would much rather marinate in an ashtray, than smell this disgusting nuclear powered tangerine.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Throw this obscenity out of the window at once, it is an insult to my nose, my brain and real citrus fruit. For God’s sake, it’s like a gigantic orange died in the trunk.”

The obscenity I’m referring to is a little harmless looking can with a matching orange colored plastic cover, which emits a horrendous smell. I don’t know what the hell they put in there, but I’m not going to open the cover and unleash the stench further. It is so strong, you have to stick your head out of the window every five minutes, not to get violently high on it. It claims to “freshen up your car” in my case it freshened up hostility. I wanted to kill it.

In order to save the can or myself from being catapulted out of the window, it was eventually settled. The can was punished and closed away from our senses into the little box thing under the armrest where you keep pens and tissues and things you never use.

“Here, let’s see how long the tapes can take it. I bet you anything they will sprout little legs and jump out of the box shrieking in horror and running for the hills.”

Needless to say, I never saw it again on our morning rides, although I know he secretly took it out when he was alone in the car.

I also once worked in an office, where the office boy, insisted on psychotically spraying a “rose” -and I use the term loosely- aerosol freshener. I was much younger then, and less outspoken. However in my head, I could see myself snatching the spray can out of his hands and beating him senseless with it. On the outside, I silently continued typing, seething on the inside at having to be subjected to breathing poisonous flower gases until 6pm.

So far, I’ve yet to meet an air freshener, I didn’t want to destroy. I feel that if you can’t stand a smell, either get out of it’s vicinity or eliminate the source. But, for the love of God, do not, I repeat, do not try to extinguish it with a can of Summer breeze. You will only end up with a headache and a stinky season-themed scent, also you will be somehow making it more pleasant for flies to hang out with you.

Summer Holiday

Summer Holidays are great. You have your hopes all set for a vacation of fun and relaxation. You want to escape to a tropical location of twittering birds and endless seaside sunsets viewed from a smooth soft sandy beach.

Sounds good. So what do you have to do? Pick the spot, book your plane tickets, pack your bags and take off, right? Sure, its going to be a fantastic getaway from stress, traffic, and unreasonable office tasks.

Now although I’d been saving all year, my handsome stash of holiday cash has been reduced by life’s unpredictable spending habits. But that’s fine, because I can still have fun on a budget with a few small, tiny, miniscule sacrifices. So as I call the airlines to get bookings and ticket prices, the nice lady on the other side informs me that I will have to sell my kidney and my first born child, in order to sit in the fancy shmancy first class seats. So I think, who needs first class? I’m a world traveler, and so I book the economy seats, excited at the prospect of roughing it.

After all, it’s only for a little while and then all that extra money I saved can be spent on straw hats with delicately balanced fruit or hideous shirts featuring Hawaiian scenery.

And it finally arrives; the day my trip begins. At the airport I stand in line with my clean, well-kept luggage, ready to check in. I’m excited and happy for about five minutes but eventually the eager moose behind me has dented my ankle a few times too many with his trolley of seven bags, and I begin to wish I could slap him silly with my tickets and passport. Suppressing those nasty feelings of rage, I turn around and forcefully smile at him, as if to announce: “I’m still sane, but hit me one more time and you’ll be admiring the leather sole of my shoe.”

After what seems like a week later, I arrive at the economy counter and inform the clerk that an aisle seat is all I want for the 8 hour trip. And so he kindly gives me seat 32 G which is almost in the toilets between 2 other seats, explaining in a recording-like voice that the plane is full. But I don’t let that get to me, tomorrow I’ll be on the beach.

I settle into my so called “seat”, study the safety procedure intently as if for a test, and then try to find out what movie it is that they’re playing today. Oh. I have no screen. They seem to have traded the cool plane I saw in the brochure with personal TV’s and remote controls for this bus turned airplane thing. I’ll just have to share that tiny screen 10 rows ahead . I hopelessly fish around in the pocket in front of me for a pair of binoculars, soon realizing that I won’t be watching Jack shit.

I’m handed the earphones, and get excited again. But in order to plug the jack into the side of my seat, I have to do a strange yoga position to self levitate and then live with it digging into my leg for the rest of the journey. Who designed these seats? The Marquis de Sade??? And so I opt to read.

I’m just about to start fishing for my book, when I see that people are still settling into their seats and I look around for my future rowmates, wishing for a pair of extremely skinny introverts who don’t chat to their neighbors and enjoy tucking their elbows on the inside of their arm rests.

My neighbors arrive. One, is a large man in a studded leather jacket, a back pack, and a bag of McDonalds. The other is a meek looking grandmother pulling along a four year old. The child is holding onto a large bar of chocolate the size of a laptop and it is melting. Let the fun begin.

As Mr. Big sits next to me taking off his jacket, he exposes a tattoo on his arm in greenish lettering, informing me that he is a lover not a fighter. I say goodbye to my elbow room and sit like a freshly boiled lobster not really knowing what to do with my limbs.

Granny sits in the seat at the end, while Galaxy boy looks up at me grinning, consuming his chocolate bar by applying to his mouth as a lipstick. He thinks it’s funny. I feel my biological clock screaming to a stop. I shrink back in horror as he wipes the melted goo of his hands onto his jeans, the blanket and his Grandmother’s arm.

“Ma’am, would you like some orange juice or a soft drink?” suggests a sweet looking stewardess.

“Do you have anything that could induce a safe, controlled coma, some anesthesia perhaps?” I ask hopefully.

Confused she hands me a Seven-up and moves on. And so I sip it calmly while, Big man eats his cheese burgers, elbows out and greasy fries scattered all over his folding table.

I take a deep breath and close my eyes. If I don’t look at them, they may eventually disappear.

It is approximately four hours after take off, that I begin to build a case against the airline industry. My alleged seat is now pissing me off. I think of nudging Leather Jacket awake to ask if he has some tape measure in his back pack. I’m quite positive that the width of my chair, is about 15 cm and that it’s under the legal requirements of humanity. Junior has overdosed on sugar and seems to be rehearsing for his part in River Dance, lord of the Dance. His grandmother had passed out some time ago.

After some back tracking in my head as to how I got myself into this hellish nightmare, I realize that what was small, tiny, and miniscule, was not my budgetary sacrifice, but in fact, my living space for the next four hours.

At some odd hour, an undefined meal is served, and I choose the chicken, thinking at least I can kill some time, eating. However, as I begin to savor the plane cuisine (pun intended), a sharp pain in my knees alerts me that the passenger in front has reclined all the way back to take a nap. And if that’s not enough, he violently bounces himself to flatten out that odd bump; my knee, into a comfortable position several times, until he has ensured that my clothes are also getting the nutrition that they need.

Picking out the peas from my lap with one hand, and nursing my knees back to health with the other, I fight my new-found psychotic tendencies and choose not to kill him as that will mean I will be taken away in hand cuffs at the door of the plane. Instead I sit, seething in my ridiculously small seat, quietly wishing the reclining monkey a severe bout of food poisoning on his vacation.

Looking at my watch I’m relieved to see that there are 2 hours left till landing. However my bladder is notifying me that if it is not taken to the bathrooms soon, it will cause a scene. I glance behind me at the little red bathroom men and look hopelessly at the queue several passengers and 5 children long.

Up ahead in first class, caviar is being served to the passengers by personal butlers, while angels play on harps to gently wake them up. It’s probably not that crowded there. So I squeeze uncomfortably past Leather Jacket in order to avoid Dennis the Menace and Co. making my way to the front of the plane.

“I’m sorry maam, you can’t use the bathrooms here.” Snaps the same previously sweet stewardess.

“I see. There’s a long queue back there and…” I begin to explain politely.

“Please wait back there. These are for First Class passengers only.” She interrupts.

I begin to feel like a peasant who wanted to eat at the table with his feudal lord. It seems that if another word came out of my mouth, I was going to be escorted by security to the luggage compartment of the plane and kept there for the remainder of the flight.

As I pretend to walk away. Witch woman is summoned by someone up front who wants a foot rub and an ice cream sundae.

I take that chance to sneak into the “first class” toilet, and expect that this heavily guarded compartment would be clad in marble and gold sink fixtures. At the least I’d think that you could turn 360° without hitting a smelly toilet bowl or a sticky wall. But no, you must experience the full pleasure of the mile high club. Ech!

Anyway, sneaking out from behind the door, I tip toe back, only to find the air witchess glaring me in the face.

“I thought I told you not to use that bathroom” she hisses with her hands on her hips.

“Well, would you prefer that I pee in my seat?” I retort, getting angry again.

“I’ve already told you it’s reserved for our first…”

“Too late, no refunds!” I interrupt as I make my way past her.

I have to remember to do this more often, it was satisfying to defy the queen of the loo.

If you want to wish hell on someone, wish them an eternal flight in my seat with witch lady and the smelly bathroom.

We finally land, and I sit there as every grumpy member of the tail section, puts themselves back together and starts to gather their belongings ready to depart. I don’t move. I will not recreate a pilgrimage experience, by squeezing between chocolate boy and Hell’s angel.

Once the entire plane is cleared out I make my way out into the terminal and the feelings of resentment that had built up on the 8 hour ride, start to melt away as I see outside the blue skies and sea and palm trees inviting me into a blissful week of relaxation and fun.

I fish around for my passport to show it to the immigration control officer and flash him a sweet “I’m no terrorist” smile. I hand him my passport as I start to see myself on the beach with my book and pina colada, when my thoughts are interrupted suddenly.

“Where is visa?!”

“Visa? What visa?”

“NO ENTRY FOR YOU! NO VALID VISA! OFFICER, TAKE ILLEGAL GIRL BACK TO PLANE!”

I think I passed out at this point, but that’s another story.

Yallah Minnaaak...YALLAH!

The below is in response to: http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/1yr_arc_Articles.asp?Article=158000&Sn=LETT&IssueID=29201&date=10/7/2006


Dear M Ayaz,

It was very kind of you to take out your pen and pencil and write your lovely little heartwarming letter to the GDN on Saturday the 7th of October. I hope you didn’t use a computer, because then you would’ve had to use Windows, and we don’t know what infidels were working as programmers on this and I think it would be HARAM to use their products. Also Inshallah you didn’t put the date as October 7th, 2006 because as we all know, the Gregorian calendar is not relevant to our religion, next time please refer to the Hijrah, so we can feel more Islamic and pretty inside.

Ayaz, I would kindly ask you not to speak any more, because you’re starting to create what is known as a “Brain Fart”. I don’t think that you’re in any position to suggest bans, restrictions, or new fatwas on what is HARAM and what isn’t. I hope you wrote this letter in Arabic as well, as it is the language of the Quran. Can you write Arabic? In fact, this letter is to you and to all the other domesticated monkeys who feel the need to make us more Muslim by banning fun. Incase you missed the handing out of brains event, during creation, let me give you a tip! Not you nor any other little sewage bacteria has the right to control people’s freedoms, make suggestions, or restrictions. If I want to, I can have a juicy cheeseburger in the middle of the day during Ramadhan, and I have to answer to my own faith. God is not going to call you up, Ayaz, and ask you why you weren’t guarding my kitchen!

And another thing, what is this retarded notion that you do everything Islamicly only in Ramadhan. I suggest that you do it all year round, so we don’t have to see you anywhere public. Never come to the cinema. Don’t come to any hotel/restaurant or café, as they will all either play music, serve alcohol, or have a TV. Oh and the mixing of the sexes! Blasphemy, how can you witness such sins???

Ayaz, starting now, just stay at home, and stop salivating in front of the cinema. The rest of the community who don’t want to practice your sadistic version of religion, would really appreciate not having to step in your puddle of drool.

Also, if you have a problem with BTV broadcasting music, then I suggest you give your TV away to charity. You don’t seem to know how to use it very well. If you recall, movies, music, women, cartoons, breathing are all HARAM. So it is best you call up your good friends in the caves of Afghanistan and tell them you want to go back. They will be happy to show you how Islam has helped them and the repressed beings under them.

Oh and by the way Ayaz, the BIG SIN is that your mother didn’t use birth control.