For some, maternal stirrings are as foreign as a KFC Rounder backstage during fashion week in Milan.
I don’t know. Sometimes I feel the tug pretty strong.
Right now I’m feeling maternal towards some unborn turtles. In fact I have named the first three hatchees (hatchlings?) already: Leonardo, Raphael and lastly, Little Splinter, for good measure. I haven’t seen them yet, but I know they are going to be bloody cute.
We are off to Muscat, Oman, this weekend to watch some nocturnal hatchings, and well as getting trousered at the poolside bar of the Shangri-La hotel.
During the summer in the Middle East, most people with half a brain make like lemmings and disappear for cooler climates. Reprobates like us stick around and sweat it out. And occasionally take advantage of summer rates specials at various hotels in prime locations. Hence the Shangri-La deal of the century. We’re staying in the Superior Suites for the pisswilly price of 500 Dirhams for the weekend.
Last night I loaded up my i-Tunes and we shall be bopping and grinding like Paul van Dyk’s entourage for our 5 hour road trip. We’ll need it - Kotters has a hangover and our lives are in his hands as he is the one with the 4x4.
Just realized what a dorky headline this post has. Sorry.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Coming of age
Another year down. Looking back to 31 July 2006, would I change the way things have gone these twelve months for all the shisha in Arabia? Probably not.
This time last year, my minxy friend Christina and I had a combined birthday ripsnorter at the sweatiest, smokiest, commercial-dance-and-R&B-playing basement club we could find in inner London. Why? Because we wanted to flick a hoof. Hard. I had my a rather fit head-hunter (with a six-pack and an Arctic Monkeys hairstyle) on the scene back then. He gave me a card saying “Happy Birthday. I hope you dance your fucking tits off”.
This year, things have taken a far more mature direction. I went to a civilized Italian restaurant with the 12 of the 13 core people comprising the Dubai Expat Unit (High in Dubai of course, was hugely missed). Why? Because they have the most insane breadsticks.
Call me an extremist.
Thankfully, all the maturity was watered down with large quantities of Chilean wine and later, with a healthy helping of smut. I got a card which only Jeanpant could have picked. It says, “What is your favourite type of birthday cake? Angel-food? Chocolate?” On the inside: “BEEF?”. It also has a pull-out poster of a naked torso of a body-builder: “I saved the biggest piece for you”.
This year was also the first birthday since my varisty days where I haven’t been woken up by morning-breathed digsmates singing the Spur birthday song in my ear and dropping cake crumbs on my duvet.
Wild or not, there is something marvelous about birthdays, even though they are undoubtedly “I-Specialist” occasions. The event itself is saturated with disgustingly high doses of attention.
But frankly, we love them.
This time last year, my minxy friend Christina and I had a combined birthday ripsnorter at the sweatiest, smokiest, commercial-dance-and-R&B-playing basement club we could find in inner London. Why? Because we wanted to flick a hoof. Hard. I had my a rather fit head-hunter (with a six-pack and an Arctic Monkeys hairstyle) on the scene back then. He gave me a card saying “Happy Birthday. I hope you dance your fucking tits off”.
This year, things have taken a far more mature direction. I went to a civilized Italian restaurant with the 12 of the 13 core people comprising the Dubai Expat Unit (High in Dubai of course, was hugely missed). Why? Because they have the most insane breadsticks.
Call me an extremist.
Thankfully, all the maturity was watered down with large quantities of Chilean wine and later, with a healthy helping of smut. I got a card which only Jeanpant could have picked. It says, “What is your favourite type of birthday cake? Angel-food? Chocolate?” On the inside: “BEEF?”. It also has a pull-out poster of a naked torso of a body-builder: “I saved the biggest piece for you”.
This year was also the first birthday since my varisty days where I haven’t been woken up by morning-breathed digsmates singing the Spur birthday song in my ear and dropping cake crumbs on my duvet.
Wild or not, there is something marvelous about birthdays, even though they are undoubtedly “I-Specialist” occasions. The event itself is saturated with disgustingly high doses of attention.
But frankly, we love them.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Lays guy, of all people
I don’t know what it is lately about blonde, spanner, rugby players. Not my usual type, by any means.
My thing for Schalk worries me slightly, especially when people make ork comparisons. But I put this little crush of mine down to that whole hands-on, fearless, being-his-own-man vibe he has going on.
But last night I had a dream that I was smooching Francois Pienaar. The Lays guy.
Shit.
I am gob smacked at how F.P. even crossed over into my sub-conscious frame of reference. Let it be known that I have never, not even vaguely, found the man attractive (which is more than I can say for my mother).
Francois came round to my folks’ place, and I was interviewing him for some magazine article. A few things, as is customary with dreams, were amiss. A) he was smoking, and B) there was a rugby field in our lounge and we was watching the Boks in their training routines … live. (Sadly, this must have been before Schalk’s time).
F.P. was, at that time, obviously, unmarried.
Anyway, he kept answering the questions I was throwing at him about rugby, his career etc, with really personal insights into his private life. It was like he wanted to convey his inner self in the article. He just kept opening up, and I just kept writing.
At one point he did ask that I specifically mention the impact that some of the rugby development clinics the squad was involved in had made on his life. He invited me to come and watch one of these … clinics. It turned out that the ‘development clinic’ was actually a full-on rugby match of Boks vs prisoners. They were in black and white stripes and covered in coal … like some kind of Laurel & Hardy/chimney sweep/miner from the 1920’s setup). They were pretty evenly matched. After the game the prisoners went back into their prison cell which was a hell-like flaming inferno.
Anyway, after I had felt sorry for them, Francois again showed his sensitive side. [I can’t believe I’m writing this].
There he was, lying on our couch, just talking, talking, talking. The next thing he started holding my hand, and then lunged. It was a surprisingly gentle kiss.
Rather disturbing.
My thing for Schalk worries me slightly, especially when people make ork comparisons. But I put this little crush of mine down to that whole hands-on, fearless, being-his-own-man vibe he has going on.
But last night I had a dream that I was smooching Francois Pienaar. The Lays guy.
Shit.
I am gob smacked at how F.P. even crossed over into my sub-conscious frame of reference. Let it be known that I have never, not even vaguely, found the man attractive (which is more than I can say for my mother).
Francois came round to my folks’ place, and I was interviewing him for some magazine article. A few things, as is customary with dreams, were amiss. A) he was smoking, and B) there was a rugby field in our lounge and we was watching the Boks in their training routines … live. (Sadly, this must have been before Schalk’s time).
F.P. was, at that time, obviously, unmarried.
Anyway, he kept answering the questions I was throwing at him about rugby, his career etc, with really personal insights into his private life. It was like he wanted to convey his inner self in the article. He just kept opening up, and I just kept writing.
At one point he did ask that I specifically mention the impact that some of the rugby development clinics the squad was involved in had made on his life. He invited me to come and watch one of these … clinics. It turned out that the ‘development clinic’ was actually a full-on rugby match of Boks vs prisoners. They were in black and white stripes and covered in coal … like some kind of Laurel & Hardy/chimney sweep/miner from the 1920’s setup). They were pretty evenly matched. After the game the prisoners went back into their prison cell which was a hell-like flaming inferno.
Anyway, after I had felt sorry for them, Francois again showed his sensitive side. [I can’t believe I’m writing this].
There he was, lying on our couch, just talking, talking, talking. The next thing he started holding my hand, and then lunged. It was a surprisingly gentle kiss.
Rather disturbing.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Goon antics
While it buckets down in London, the Goons keep themselves amused by lighting bits of toilet paper sticking out of their bums. While it looks as though 500,000 English people in the Cotswolds region may soon be deprived of electricity and are stockpiling tins of baked beans and long-life milk in anticipation of the next wave of floods, there the Goons are … singeing their butt-hairs and taking drunken photos.
I should have known that there was no point in worrying about the wayward London tribe I left six months ago. Yesterday, out of concern (after having watched 40mins of Sky News footage of waist-deep Thames water engulfing cars, trains and cats) I emailed the little blighters. Are you all OK? Are you all putting around the city in inflatable life-rafts?
Responses varied from sarcasm to abuse. Mostly, the replies I got blatantly ignored my question and fired off details of the past weekend – who lunged at who, who lost their wallets, etc.
I gave up. As long as the smut and booze reports keep coming, I know none of my mates have drowned.
Reports of the Goon Golf Day, the Ride Her Cup (yes, they had T-shirts made, and yes, one of them played the full 18 holes in a Spiderman outfit) have begun to trickle in. I will believe it when I see the visual evidence on facebook.
And while it continues to pour on Mud Island, the Middle East is as dry as the bottom of the last keg at a beerfest. I cannot lie, it is McSteamy. Being outdoors in heat like this should be a crime. We are sweating, to coin a phrase I read somewhere recently, “like a Premiership footballer at a spelling competition”.
I should have known that there was no point in worrying about the wayward London tribe I left six months ago. Yesterday, out of concern (after having watched 40mins of Sky News footage of waist-deep Thames water engulfing cars, trains and cats) I emailed the little blighters. Are you all OK? Are you all putting around the city in inflatable life-rafts?
Responses varied from sarcasm to abuse. Mostly, the replies I got blatantly ignored my question and fired off details of the past weekend – who lunged at who, who lost their wallets, etc.
I gave up. As long as the smut and booze reports keep coming, I know none of my mates have drowned.
Reports of the Goon Golf Day, the Ride Her Cup (yes, they had T-shirts made, and yes, one of them played the full 18 holes in a Spiderman outfit) have begun to trickle in. I will believe it when I see the visual evidence on facebook.
And while it continues to pour on Mud Island, the Middle East is as dry as the bottom of the last keg at a beerfest. I cannot lie, it is McSteamy. Being outdoors in heat like this should be a crime. We are sweating, to coin a phrase I read somewhere recently, “like a Premiership footballer at a spelling competition”.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Money STINKS
I have just been informed that UK Inland Revenue wants my ass. I got an SMS from my housemate in London who says they are charging me GBP 100 for not completing my tax returns. For crying in a bowl of cornflakes!
Perhaps I asked for it … but I am just so naive when it comes to matters of a financial, or even numerical nature. I want to tell them to make like a polisiekar and VOKAF.
It is simply ANOTHER reason why Mud Island STINKS. I have LEFT that building, just let me be. Stop hounding me. Fair enough, I will do the return and I will pay the 100 smacker penalty. Yet that, apparently, is not enough.
I also have to fill in a ‘leaving’ form and dispatch it via the postal system to stop them from continuing to send me future demands of my 2029/2030 tax returns, even though I have not worked a day since December 2006. Let alone not having even set foot on a miserable tube full of ponging, pasty, newspaper-reading, form-loving, Royal Mail-worshipping, flapjack-eating POMS.
Imagine I didn’t fill in the leaving form. I can picture some revenue clerk named Winterbottom (with a form fettish), wearing the same brown suit since the day he bought it at a Debenhams January sale in 1983, with Earl Grey-stained teeth and Tesco cream cake wrappers cluttering his desk, deriving great joy as he robotically types out annual letters addressed to me until reaching his retirement age. DESPITE getting no response, as time drags on, the penny still won’t drop.
Perhaps he’ll hum as he licks and seals the envelopes year after year thinking some day, I’ll eventually cave in and send him a UK tax return although I will have been neither living nor working there for 23 years.
They crave mail, not email, but envelopes that they can open with a letter opener. This qualifies as the only viable proof of anything. The printed, physically transported word is gospel. The emailed word, and even the spoken word over the telephone to these people has about as much credibility as Busta Rhymes giving a seminar on flower arranging.
Anyway. In keeping with last week’s happy theme, I am actually not mortally wounded by this.
Perhaps I asked for it … but I am just so naive when it comes to matters of a financial, or even numerical nature. I want to tell them to make like a polisiekar and VOKAF.
It is simply ANOTHER reason why Mud Island STINKS. I have LEFT that building, just let me be. Stop hounding me. Fair enough, I will do the return and I will pay the 100 smacker penalty. Yet that, apparently, is not enough.
I also have to fill in a ‘leaving’ form and dispatch it via the postal system to stop them from continuing to send me future demands of my 2029/2030 tax returns, even though I have not worked a day since December 2006. Let alone not having even set foot on a miserable tube full of ponging, pasty, newspaper-reading, form-loving, Royal Mail-worshipping, flapjack-eating POMS.
Imagine I didn’t fill in the leaving form. I can picture some revenue clerk named Winterbottom (with a form fettish), wearing the same brown suit since the day he bought it at a Debenhams January sale in 1983, with Earl Grey-stained teeth and Tesco cream cake wrappers cluttering his desk, deriving great joy as he robotically types out annual letters addressed to me until reaching his retirement age. DESPITE getting no response, as time drags on, the penny still won’t drop.
Perhaps he’ll hum as he licks and seals the envelopes year after year thinking some day, I’ll eventually cave in and send him a UK tax return although I will have been neither living nor working there for 23 years.
They crave mail, not email, but envelopes that they can open with a letter opener. This qualifies as the only viable proof of anything. The printed, physically transported word is gospel. The emailed word, and even the spoken word over the telephone to these people has about as much credibility as Busta Rhymes giving a seminar on flower arranging.
Anyway. In keeping with last week’s happy theme, I am actually not mortally wounded by this.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Scissorhands wishes he had a bag like mine
Thursday night kicked off with a rather extravagant dinner and several whiskeys with the folks at Mina a’Salaam hotel overlooking the Burj al Arab. Colonial-style. In the nick of time I managed to identify the camel’s milk crème brulée and give it a sufficient wide berth.
On the way home we had a spur-of-the-moment tour of the Palm Jumeirah, the man-made island in the shape of a palm tree, extending 8km into the sea. We kicked around on the ‘trunk’ (the ‘fronds’ of the palm are nearing completion), pretending to understand the Hindlish commentary spewing forth from our cab driver, and stared at the uninhabited apartment blocks, illuminated, shiny and beautiful. Rather eerie.
On Friday my brother and dad played golf with a hungover Liverpudlian and I, for no real reason, watched Edward Scissorhands. It was my first time. I felt really bad for the guy for a while, and then went to get a Starbucks. There must be over a billion American movies about bullying.
In the evening my little boet came out with my friends for Aussie-Aussie-Aussie-OY-OY-OY’s birthday. I was aghast at the speed at which the six-pack of Fosters we brought for him were dented at Peggy’s house. The poor guy had to endure vulgar accounts - largely untrue - of his sister’s lunging career. Later we joined several genuine cabin crew members for a jovial meal at the Meat Company. At this stage, Korn’s eyeballs were swimming after the heavy-handed tumbler of whisky he had poured himself at Peggy’s. He was as silent as a Vietnamese sniper throughout the remainder of the evening. We successfully managed to smuggle Heddles Jnr, a man who can handle his liquor, several double brandies (the legal drinking age here is 21) to have with his cokes.
Unfortunately the 19-year old got bounced from Bar Zar thereafter, despite some quick calculations and telling the doorwoman/bus that he was born in ’85. And yet Korn made it in. Why is life like that.
On Saturday we watched the Springbok B team get crushed by the All Blacks (you expect a win without Schalk?) and then headed out to Al Karama for some bargaaaaiiining. The keyword to remember: Haggle. Don’t back down. Be a demanding, haughty expat and you’ll get a fake Prada bag for 200 ZARs. Damnation it’s a hot bag. I now have two of the beasts: a black one and a white one. My girls. And, thanks to my bulldozerish price-slashing ways, my brother now looks like a souped up little indie punk. Love it!
On the way home we had a spur-of-the-moment tour of the Palm Jumeirah, the man-made island in the shape of a palm tree, extending 8km into the sea. We kicked around on the ‘trunk’ (the ‘fronds’ of the palm are nearing completion), pretending to understand the Hindlish commentary spewing forth from our cab driver, and stared at the uninhabited apartment blocks, illuminated, shiny and beautiful. Rather eerie.
On Friday my brother and dad played golf with a hungover Liverpudlian and I, for no real reason, watched Edward Scissorhands. It was my first time. I felt really bad for the guy for a while, and then went to get a Starbucks. There must be over a billion American movies about bullying.
In the evening my little boet came out with my friends for Aussie-Aussie-Aussie-OY-OY-OY’s birthday. I was aghast at the speed at which the six-pack of Fosters we brought for him were dented at Peggy’s house. The poor guy had to endure vulgar accounts - largely untrue - of his sister’s lunging career. Later we joined several genuine cabin crew members for a jovial meal at the Meat Company. At this stage, Korn’s eyeballs were swimming after the heavy-handed tumbler of whisky he had poured himself at Peggy’s. He was as silent as a Vietnamese sniper throughout the remainder of the evening. We successfully managed to smuggle Heddles Jnr, a man who can handle his liquor, several double brandies (the legal drinking age here is 21) to have with his cokes.
Unfortunately the 19-year old got bounced from Bar Zar thereafter, despite some quick calculations and telling the doorwoman/bus that he was born in ’85. And yet Korn made it in. Why is life like that.
On Saturday we watched the Springbok B team get crushed by the All Blacks (you expect a win without Schalk?) and then headed out to Al Karama for some bargaaaaiiining. The keyword to remember: Haggle. Don’t back down. Be a demanding, haughty expat and you’ll get a fake Prada bag for 200 ZARs. Damnation it’s a hot bag. I now have two of the beasts: a black one and a white one. My girls. And, thanks to my bulldozerish price-slashing ways, my brother now looks like a souped up little indie punk. Love it!
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Am I bovvid?
Heddles Junior has had his earmuffs pruned. Still looking a bit like John Lennon when he got out of bed after a week, but his general appearance is more to my Dad’s liking.
It’s THURSDAY. Out of high spirits and to welcome the weekend in (Woza, you good thing you), it is as opportune a moment as ever to give thanks for life in general, which has been on the upswing at least for the past 6 weeks.
Even potentially MAJOR setbacks - such as the departure of my wingbitch High in Dubai, my gym-buddying, fellow BodyPOMP class attendee, my multipurpose strap-on, Devil-Wears-Prada-reading, leather-jacket wearing, salmon pasta magician and jolling mate, purveyor of religious experiences at Faithless concerts, Starbucks-guzzling carer for unwanted, ugly and obese babies (like the project he has unwittingly taken on in Jozi) – have been taken in full stride.
Even flu. I laugh at it. Even though I was on death’s doorstep, aching, nauseating, and leaving work early on Tuesday, I raged against the dying of the light and I am here. I finished reading Scar Tissue, FINALLY, and realized by comparison, I lead a fairly uncomplicated, healthy existence.
We can find a LOT of shit to whine about. Yet often I get the feeling those irritations/hardships (Salik tags, Dubai traffic, the heat, stress at work, rude bastards jumping queues and being general dicks generally) exist more as general hype than being essentially real, or capable of actually irking me on some deep level. Maybe we all feel these things should piss us off, because they grate everyone around us, so we all get caught up in a negative spiral.
Maybe I am just a punk rocker with flowers in my hair. Example: yes, it is annoying having to pay road toll and topping up your account and getting fined, and yes, it is not ideal sitting in an inferno that is a black car in the Middle East in the middle of July in five lanes of traffic that are not moving forward for over an hour, but although I moan about it (and we all love moaning about it), it really doesn’t affect me as much as you’d think it does from the way I vocalize it.
My office is big on collective bitching about the above kinds of issues, especially how inefficient and incompetent the agencies and individuals we have to deal with can be. My personal annoyances for 2007 are Polish wallies and Irish twatts. We all chip in and swear a lot and say how indescribably annoying these things are that we have to deal with. It’s quite crazy though the way that even though I go through the motions, thinking I feel, on a superficial level, as irritated as everyone else, I am actually not. If I really ask myself, in all honesty, it doesn’t get on my tits that much.
When you widen your perspective and acknowledge your life on earth as impermanent, finite, you can take it less seriously and realize you can actually enjoy it all the time if you want to.
There is far too much good stuff going on if you actually look for it. Pollyanna, rock on.
It’s THURSDAY. Out of high spirits and to welcome the weekend in (Woza, you good thing you), it is as opportune a moment as ever to give thanks for life in general, which has been on the upswing at least for the past 6 weeks.
Even potentially MAJOR setbacks - such as the departure of my wingbitch High in Dubai, my gym-buddying, fellow BodyPOMP class attendee, my multipurpose strap-on, Devil-Wears-Prada-reading, leather-jacket wearing, salmon pasta magician and jolling mate, purveyor of religious experiences at Faithless concerts, Starbucks-guzzling carer for unwanted, ugly and obese babies (like the project he has unwittingly taken on in Jozi) – have been taken in full stride.
Even flu. I laugh at it. Even though I was on death’s doorstep, aching, nauseating, and leaving work early on Tuesday, I raged against the dying of the light and I am here. I finished reading Scar Tissue, FINALLY, and realized by comparison, I lead a fairly uncomplicated, healthy existence.
We can find a LOT of shit to whine about. Yet often I get the feeling those irritations/hardships (Salik tags, Dubai traffic, the heat, stress at work, rude bastards jumping queues and being general dicks generally) exist more as general hype than being essentially real, or capable of actually irking me on some deep level. Maybe we all feel these things should piss us off, because they grate everyone around us, so we all get caught up in a negative spiral.
Maybe I am just a punk rocker with flowers in my hair. Example: yes, it is annoying having to pay road toll and topping up your account and getting fined, and yes, it is not ideal sitting in an inferno that is a black car in the Middle East in the middle of July in five lanes of traffic that are not moving forward for over an hour, but although I moan about it (and we all love moaning about it), it really doesn’t affect me as much as you’d think it does from the way I vocalize it.
My office is big on collective bitching about the above kinds of issues, especially how inefficient and incompetent the agencies and individuals we have to deal with can be. My personal annoyances for 2007 are Polish wallies and Irish twatts. We all chip in and swear a lot and say how indescribably annoying these things are that we have to deal with. It’s quite crazy though the way that even though I go through the motions, thinking I feel, on a superficial level, as irritated as everyone else, I am actually not. If I really ask myself, in all honesty, it doesn’t get on my tits that much.
When you widen your perspective and acknowledge your life on earth as impermanent, finite, you can take it less seriously and realize you can actually enjoy it all the time if you want to.
There is far too much good stuff going on if you actually look for it. Pollyanna, rock on.
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