Out of Type

Sometimes I tend to box a person into a certain character. Once in a while, a never-before-seen trait jumps out of that box and it's either pleasant or disgusting, but it's always a surprise.

Like how Mustafa insisted that I let him drive me to Villagio even if it's far and out of the way. I was ready to wait in the sunset and spend 15 QRs on a taxi fare when Mustafa saw me near the office. He told me to get in the car without even asking where I'm headed, which made him either genuinely generous or downright stupid. He didn't flinch when I told him I'm going to the mall--the far one--but I think I felt that we both braced ourselves for a long uncomfortable ride. The trip wasn't bad. The conversation we had was trivial but it wasn't forced.

He was leaving that evening for Saudi Arabia for a sort of pilgrimage. He may be an ass sometimes but you got to give him props for being religious. I was mildly interested with the topic and found that I had enough questions for him until we reached Villagio. At the entrance, and in between religious discussion, he asked me which gate I wanted to be dropped off, without blinking I told him "Virgin". He smiled as if he smelt instead of heard the word.

As I got off the car I thanked Mustafa and told him that his driving greatly improved from life-threatening to minor-injury levels. I wasn't kidding either because it was the first time I sincerely felt comfortable with him as the driver. He said it was his pleasure, and it felt like he sincerely meant it too.

Meanwhile, I've discovered something dangerous about Edmar's character. I thought he's just annoying sometimes with his brand of 'small talk' that blindsides you just when you were thinking how lovely your day was going. I do try to ignore that, err him, and I can live with it no matter how hard he tries to magnify the mundane into a catastrophic problem (ie no sleep = cancer, too short haircut = chemo therapy).

But to make up stories about people? I think he has crossed the line from boredom to insanity. He told me that Mustafa and Hosam, had a brawl in their room one evening. My journalist instincts started to ask him questions, and while he couldn't answer most of my questions to save his story from the trash--how he saw it, who told him about it, etc.--I still believed it enough to be worthy of tabloid space.

So I told the same story to Khalid and he told me that Edmar had told him the story already but claimed that it was only a joke, something he made up. Two things bothered me: 1. Why didn't Edmar retract the story when he told it to me, and 2. Why would he cook up something like that in the first place?

He knows that Mustafa and Hosam are two figures in the office who are least liked. Pitting them against each other would make an interesting fight on MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch. Still, a 27-year-old guy doesn't make up such bogus story in a supposedly formal office setting. Unless, he has an agenda. Could it be that he only wants me to smile? Could it be that he wants me to react and quote me on that for the Egyptians?

His motive is still vague. For all I know, he might be bored. But like I said, maybe he has crossed that line already. He does have a history of drug use and who knows how far gone his brain cells are now.

It's surprising how you discover more and more about a person even after several long months of being around them. I wonder if I also surprise them, too. I'm sure some readers have been surprised about my posts or comments in this blog.

Maybe it's too soon to put a person in a box. You never really know a person until you really know him. What I hear, see, and read about a person is only what he wants to reveal about himself. But what I should be in the lookout for are those unguarded moments when more good or bad traits spring out of the character. Nobody's perfect, but it does make a person interesting. I'm writing about two guys, and you're reading about them. Yep, interesting enough even when they're acting out of type.

Read more...

Desktopped

I know I said that I'm not doing tag games anymore but what can I do? "So unimpressed but so in awe, such a saint but such a whore. So self-aware, so full of shit. So indecisive, so adamant." (Come Undone by Robbie Williams). Trust me, I sing that song with all my heart.

Gypsy tagged me. She said something like get a screenshot of your desktop and show and tell. Here is the show part:


Here is the tell part:
There's nothing much to say. It's a mess. I get a dozen emails a day for my boss and most of those emails have attachments. It's easier for me to locate the attachment on the desktop. The attachment stays there for a week before I move it to a "Desktop Items" folder which means it's been a month since I moved anything.

The wallpaper is quite obvious. I'm currently on the fifth season of Six Feet Under. I am such a fan when I'm into it. I'm not satisfied with my Six Feet Under theme ringtone; I need a visual.

One thing I like about my desktop is the Yahoo! Widgets toolbar. It's on auto-hide mode so you can barely see the black strip on the right side of the screen. It pops up when you hover the mouse on that area and you can get instant access to weather reports, horoscope, international time, and calendar among other things. My favorite is a comic strip widget that generates my daily dose of funnies.

That's how lame my desktop is and how messy, too with icons literally over the top. The tag game ends here, by the way. I'm burying it, six feet under ground.

Read more...

A Mouse's Trap: Ramblings of a Domesticated Rodent

A Hole New Beginning

The new hole rendered the room an entirely different view. I had to find my way again. New scents—citrus and mint—made it even harder for me to retrace my tracks. I made new ones, wary that there would still be booby traps on my old trail.

The human was smarter than we thought. Or maybe my cousins were just stupid. Mice can be stupid that way, giving in to urge rather than to reason. I have been raised well enough to know that I have to earn my meal. A piece of cheese doesn't just happen to stick out of nowhere. If life were that easy, then it's not life at all, it's quite the opposite actually and I have seen my relatives' insides splattered on walls because of this. And the cheese? It became the sole witness to the gruesome event. Another thing I hate about my breed is that, more often than not, we never learn.

That is probably why I found myself inside the human's room again. Uncle always reminded me that humans are the enemy. The curse of the middle-class mice. Rats in the ghetto have to watch out for cats, while we in the suburbs have a bigger enemy. I would've preferred cats myself because they're stupid. But humans are the thinking kind. Weaponry is essential in their home. BB guns, traps, glue, poison, flip flops, and basically anything they can get their hands on. No wonder our kind jumps with a mere snap of human fingers. But like I said, while humans are smart, it does not help us a bit that we are stupid. We smell cheese and we abandon all fear.

Forgive me if I speak lowly of my kind. I feel that I am above them. I'm educated and I found a way to control my urge. Every time I cruise the human's territory, I stick soap crumbs up my nose to sanitize whatever seductive smell that dares to entice my animal instincts.

The human had every right to abduct my cousins anyway. I told them to take only what is due to us. Anything outside the bin was off limits. I knew that if we stuck with this, we would have had an unwritten understanding with the human. He might have gladly watched us feast on delicious green bread if we only followed the rules.

But my cousins were arrogant, uneducated, rat-bred monsters. They ate packed food, they left feces everywhere, and worse, they disturbed the human while he slept. That probably did it for him. I too would be annoyed if some ant decided to run up and down my tail.

The last time I saw my cousins, they were stuck on a piece of cardboard, trying to claw their way out of glue. They were shouting apologies to the human and while he heard, he didn't listen.

I hate to admit it, but now, I'm glad that my cousins are out of the way. I have a new hole and I am the only one who can enter the human's room. To be honest, the reason why I am here is not because of food. If I may be direct without being accused of being a hamster, I have a certain admiration for the human. I feel that we have a lot in common.

We both love to read. I'm no bookworm, but reading Nutrition Information excites me the way paperbacks excite the human. We both love films. Art house films to be exact. None of those crap that Mickey and Jerry star in, but films that depict rodent life truthfully. Flushed Away remains to be my favorite, it's so accurate I almost thought it was a documentary.

We also both love to eat. Needless to say, mice are walking digestive systems. It is our luck that humans have larger egos than stomachs. More often than not, they buy too much food that end up in the bin. They think they're hungry, but what they're really hungry for is attention.

And that's another thing that I have in common with the human. We're both lonely. We're lonely because our hunger for attention is never fed. There is no one to watch a movie with; share a bag of chips with; and at the end of the day you sleep alone and the pillow does not hug you back.

This new hole is a new beginning for me. I hope to introduce myself to the human. And to do that, I must first establish trust and understanding. I have to respect the limitations and take care of the room as if it were my own pad. It's possible to be friends with humans. My mother knows that, too. Why else would she name me Ben?

Read more...

Indian Invasion

Two cups of yogurt. Creamy, almost sour and cold. Layered with preserved blueberry and good bacteria. A minute of happiness when I eat it and 24 hours later, 30 seconds of blissful bowel movement. Two cups of yogurt were waiting for me inside a locked refrigerator to which only I held the key. Right after the Indian school dismissed their noisy students, I rushed to the peace and quiet of the second floor, unlocked the ref, peered inside, and found a light bulb and lots of chilled air.

I stood there and wondered what kind of monster devoured my precious. How am I supposed to defecate now? I looked at the bin and sure enough, the yogurt cups were there, along with my two cans of Pepsi Max and a bottle of milk all empty, cheap stuff I put in the ref to save me from a five-minute marathon to the store. I narrowed my suspects to the Indian school students (and / or teachers). The only other people who have access to the ref are Khalid and Edmar. It couldn't have been Khalid because our friendship has reached charity level. And Edmar doesn't like yogurt.

A quick experiment proved that the ref lock was as tight as Paris Hilton's vagina. Anything that fit in it did the trick. And those rowdy students could have done it on a dare.

This isn't the first time that Indians made their presence felt. I get my laundry done at the shop next door. Kala wrote about her experience with Indian laundry shops so I was already expecting their 'system' which is basically: dump your clothes and come back a day after tomorrow. No listing, no counting, no weighing. Just your name so they can bill you correctly. The rest of the business is put to good faith (and a couple misplaced socks every now and then). What I didn't expect though was that they'd label my clothes, not with my name, but with the name of the guy who handled my laundry. My wardrobe is now owned by a certain "VAN".

I can see it now, me spending extra time in the can because some Indian guy ate my ticket to a satisfying dump. So I sit there, longer than usual, staring at the seam of my pants and figuring out if Van is short for Vanesh, or Vanij, or Vanadev or Vanamalin.

Read more...

Forget Her

I wasn't sure if it was a full moon already. The park seemed aglow in florescent light, almost like dawn in fact, quite unusual for a place that's notorious for its dark corners. I glanced at the moon to be certain. It's not a perfect circle, its halo also premature. Still it was fine enough for a walk along Corniche--an escape disguised as an exercise. I found a spot and decided to master the lyrics to a new fascination: Jeff Buckley's "Forget Her". His voice is like no other. Too bad he's singing with angels now. I sat there watching the faint waves of the sea, singing in a concert in my head but A capella to the world. I wondered who broke Jeff's heart when he wrote the song. Now that he's gone, I'll never know. But for me, the lady in question is none other than Qatar.

Get this widget | Track details | eSnips Social DNA

Forget Her by Jeff Buckley

While this town is busy sleeping
all the noise has died away
i walk the streets to stop my weeping
‘cause she'll never change her ways

Don't fool yourself
she was heartache from the moment that you met her
my heart feels so still
as i try to find the will to forget her somehow
oh i think i've forgotten her now

Her love is a rose pale and dying
dropping her petals and men unknown
all full of wine the world before her
was sober with no place to go

Don't fool yourself
she was heartache from the moment that you met her
my heart is frozen still
cause i try to find the will to forget her somehow
she's somewhere out there now

Oh my tears are falling down as i try to forget
her love was a joke from the day that we met
all of the words all of the men
all of my pain when i think back to when
remember her hair as it shone in the sun
the smell of the bed when i knew what she'd done
tell yourself over and over you wont ever need her again

I have to be honest. As my Qatar anniversary approaches, I'm more confused than ever. After my vacation, I don't know whether I should come back or move on. Maybe I'm just "fooling myself" into thinking that I like it here. But maybe I do like it here. I think I do like it here. Maybe I don't want to go through another adjustment period. There are so many things to consider, all pointing to a way out. The only thing holding me back is of a selfish nature--I'm holding on to the familiar, the expected, the routine. A year is quite short to be starting all over again. Should I really forget her?

Read more...