The only reason I am come to work today is for a big mug of coffee. For some reason I just can never make coffee like the guy at the office does it. There's something about it, its creamy richness, the right amount of sweetness, I am so accustomed to having a coffee here at my desk while checking your blog, yes, yours; that I can't fathom having a coffee anywhere else in the morning. Braved the wind, and the hint of a dust storm that makes Kuwait look like it was sieged by "the Mist". There is also the fact that I am here because I had to report to work while everyone else twists and turns in their beds. I will never stop complaining about not having two days off. But its okay, I have coffee I guess.

Another song from Oscar Winner for Best Soundtrack or Something.

Since the Oscar Fever is going around, I just couldnt resist spending half my day googling the winners and the non winners like my life and salary depended on it. So there I was busy hunting for Oscar 09 youtube videos that dont even exist yet. I was hoping someone at the Oscars was holding up their phone and taking a hand held video of the whole thing so they would get extra fans on youube. Guess not. It got really annoying so I started checking Golden Globe winners instead to simply justify my spite for lack of Oscar footage. Slumdog Millionaire (like I even need to hyperlink it, huh?) seems to have played the monster truck at every ceremony there is, but unfortunately it is hyped to a celestial (and thus non existential) level that it definitely did not reach to. It's not like the Internet Movie Data Bible gave it a 10 out of 10 ?

I began checking out youtube for the Oscar winner/musical composer A.R.Rahman, and liked this other song of his. In fact, I was going to post a french video with translation at the end of this post that I had fallen in love with and was listenign on loop, but since my love is fickle here's this instead. Unfortunately, all of the embeddings by request has been disabled..... so here you go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5lflQjrlP0
The translation below was seriously not easy to find, nor was it great but you will survive without turning green or feeling dizzy. In fact if anyone wants to step up and heal below mentioned translation, feel free because I dont think the translator did too good a job, considering all the english grammar I rectified (not too well too but I wanna leave the office and scamper home now) :-D

Yahan vahan saara jahan dekh liya
Been everywhere, I've seen the whole world
kahin bhi tere jaisa koi nahin
Anywhere at all, there is none like you

assi nahin, sau din duniya ghooma hai
not 80 , I toured the world for 100 days
Naahi kaahe tere jaisa koi nahin
no, there is none like you anywhere
Main gaya jahan bhi, bas teri yaad thi
wherever I went, it was just you I remembered...
Jo mere saath thi mujhko tadpaati rulaati
who was with me, was tormenting me, troubling me
Sab se pyaari teri soorat
the most lovely, is your face

Pyaar he bas tera, pyaar hi
Its love, just love for you, its love
Maa tujhe salaam, maa tujhe salaam
salute to thee mother...
Amma tujhe salaam
Vande maataram, vande maataram ( a phrase that means We are paying respects to you, Mother)
Vande maataram, vande maataram
Vande maataram, vande maataram
Janam janam tera hoon deewana main
I've been in love with you since birth

Jhoomoon naachoon gaaoon tere pyaar ka taraana
I sing, dance, enjoy the music of your love
chanda nahin suraj nahin duniya ki daulat nahin
I don't desire sun or moon, neither the wealth of the worlds
Bas lootunga tere pyaar ka khazaana
I just want treasure of your love
Ek nazar jab teri hoti hai pyaar ki
Your glance is filled with love
Duniya tab to meri chamke damke maheke re
my world shines and glitters and become fragrant
Tera chehra sooraj jaisa chaand si thand hai pyaar mein
your beauty is like the sun and love is as calming as the moonlight
Vande maataram, vande maataram
Vande maataram, vande maataram
Vande maataram, vande maataram
Tere paas hi main aa raha hoon
I am coming to you
Apni baahein khol de
open your arms
Zor se mujhko gale laga le
hug me close

Mujhko phir voh pyaar de
give me that love again
Tu hi zindagi hai, tu hi meri mohabbat hai
you are my life, you are my love
Tere hi pairon mein jannat hai
heaven is at your feet
Tu hi dil, tu jaan, amma
you are my heart, my life, o mother
Maa tujhe salaam, maa tujhe salaam
Amma tujhe salaam, maa tujhe salaam
Vande maataram, vande maataram
Vande maataram, vande maataram
Vande maataram, vande maataram
Vande maataram, vande maataram

Succumbed to Education

I seem to have swiped my way into an MBA course. Damn credit cards and impulsiveness. For a moment it seemed like it would redeem my choice to graduate in English. I had feigned aspirations of becoming a famous novelist then, and hid away my perpetual writers block under a pillow so no one would see. I loved the benefits; there was no need to study, and I could escape into all the books of fiction I wanted. So this MBA course felt like penance for not being able to use my degree to pursue a career.
Feels like a pain in the left butt cheek right now, I swear. I was sitting in a funny position while I was reading yesterday, it seemed to enhance my ability to concentrate. Also came with the price of a sore bottom apparently. Okay I'm kidding, I am excited at the prospect and I am looking forward to experimenting with the dormant company I work in.
I'm required to spend 1 hour every day to each of the 3 units I enrolled in. I've managed t stretch myself to 2 already, but I can't help wondering if they're just imposing that rule for a giggle. "Hah look, we have made these dorks spend 3 hours of their time everyday on these summaries we have slapped together from famous books availableall over the internet. If they only knew that they could just read these books and implement the philosophy into their work, they would learn through trial and error anyway!"

Instead, what would employers deduce if they just saw this in a CV:
" Perused all the text, material, and reference books suggested in top MBA courses and implemented such strategies in previous jobs successfully attaining calculated results."
Would showing that ability to utter sneakiness work better than having an MBA certificate, I wonder?

Should I hire my Clients girlfriend?

Ah the sun shines bright, the clouds swirl in the sky making funny faces at us on earth, the trees dance- or rather the sand dunes ride the breeze, and things of that nature are happening when suddenly THWACK! You are faced with this question. No, it's not that simple to answer it, because no matter how easy the question is; it always has its own little circumstances, tangled enough to complicate the situation in an entirely different way from before. But I exaggerate. The equation is simple. Great client. Done me huge favours. I am in the position of hiring his chic. She's ok, from what I gathered from our phone conversation, not spectacular, but ok. I can't figure out if I should. Would you?

Cookies and Unexpected Cash

I Want Cookies!
I just got a 1500 $ check from my accounts department and want to spend it on Cookies. Not all of it, but a nice chunnk of it. There's alot of people I can think of who would like Cookies right now as well. It's always nice when money unexpectedly bounces along to you with its cute little money face. Or cheque face. You get the point. Incoming cash personified is always adorable. In my case they were reimbursing me for something, but it's been 2 months and I had forgotten I had it. Its like finding money in the pockets of your jeans unexpectedly; or in your bag in a very unused pocket within a pocket. Great place to hide stuff from yourself to discover on a later day, methinks.

Wardrobe Crisis.

Okay, at the risk of sounding utterly superficial I need to dedicate an entire, yes an entire post to my wardrobe crisis. If you think I am a pessimistic person you have guessed wrong, but if you think I am taking the full advantage of using this blog as an imperfectly shaped virtual punching bag, then bullseye.

I went to the Avenues, Kuwaits most famous mall that had its end of season sale recently that seemed to last forever. Alot of people thought it was due to the recession, and thought that it would last until yahoo's Finance section would stop dramatically spelling "monetary apocaypse" and despair into everyones hearts. But no, two days ago I went there, and the word "sale" was not in the malls dictionary. The prices induced the usual semi-jaw-drop once again. I gathered up my jaw and checked out the new collections, only to discover that they seemed more pricy that the previous averages. Even more not worth it, is when the not-so expensive brands have too many outfits of the same style. There's nothing more unfunny than bumping into someone wearing the same thing. The media may clone our thoughts, but they shall never robotize our bodies! (said in a Mel Gibson way) Excuse my melodrama.

So now my recession induced reaction has me scouting the internet for stores from the countries clothes are usually manufactured in. You'd think it would be easy. Whoever takes over the third world will have ALOT to capitalize on.

Caught in the Act.

More on the N78

You know sometimes you need to really click with your phone? Understand it? Feel it? Want to share your pillow with it? Have your palm reshape itself to contour better to its fit?

Well, I'm not giving my N78 a Valentiny gift for sure. It's a good phone, but I'm not earlobes over it.

I really like its standby theme with 15 shortcuts (when the vertical icon bar is used)- especially the notes and audio message features. The latter is useful for when you have noteworthy stuff deliberately cross your mind when in the shower or on the road. They are the same thoughts that disappears the moment you whip out a pencil. The only problem is that now that I got this audio message function working, I just don't seem to have many interesting thoughts passing me by. And the ones I do record don't seem all that funky when I play them back.

Anyways, lets focus on the phone right? Yep if you can't live without the delete duplicate contacts function on your phone then you would be screwed. I have 800 numbers on my phone, and no patience to sift through 'em. In fact I'd pay anyone 10 K.D to freaking do it for me. Maybe at Starbucks over the coffee and cupcake you buy me.

Another annoying thing is what happens when I receive a message saying I've missed these calls. I'm already ticked off as my phone hasn't been switched off to miss any calls. It's been lazing right here next to me, bored to death due to its own lack of utility, yearning to vibrate on my table. So I browse through the message and realize this phone cannot grab the # through the regular Use Details> Use Number feature. 8 digits! Thats a mouthful if you can't write it down. Anyways, I hope I don't have to review it anymore as it is already almost as ancient as amber. Minus the Value.

Dust Cloak

This isn't clicked in sepia for your amusement, nope. Kuwaits been feeling all Yellow lately. I've been humming Coldplay on account of it for sure.

Dust clads every inch of the air, clogs every window sill, seeps indoors and leaves a film of itself everywhere. It's not bad except when you realize you're literally another one who bites the dust. Crunchy. Blech.

Hazard lights on while they still race through the fast lane. Wataniya, one of Kuwaits telecom provider, sent a message to all its users telling them not to use their hazards. I hope no one gets stuck or stalls in the middle of the road, because their hazards being on aint gonna distinguish them from the morons on the road who've put it on so they can be seen.

I'll take your snow anyday! Give me your snow!!!!! Does anyone have snow anymore anyway?

And if you're really bored, you can read this. I apparently was.

Kuwait was blinded yesterday by a sand and dust storm and buffeted by winds reaching speeds of up to 85 km per hour. The dusty weather came as a surprise at this time of the year as it is not common for Kuwait to have such weather in February. Sandstorms, which usually occur during the summer, caught many off guard. A number of schools and public departments closed early because of the weather.

Northwesterly winds were blamed for the sandstorm. "Wind speeds reached more than 50 km per hour in some areas. This caused sand tornados that reduced visibility to less than 100 km in desert areas. The red color of the dust was noticeable across the country and the dust was said to come from the Iraqi desert. The weather also caused high sea waves," meteorologist Adel Al-Sadoun told Kuwait Times

Effin Facebook Flirtations.

I know that alot of my posts have facebook in the topic. Thats because its more than a social community, it's a tool that I use a lot less than its full capabilities. It works great for advertising to a targetted crowd, to learn alot through more mature applications and initiate discussions on the more important topics of life. Its another topic entirely that I use it for the same reason you use it for; to check out what other people are doing, browse through their pics with as judgementality your curious mind can muster and to over use lexulous and text twirl. Texas hold 'em is forgivable for being over used but one inch out of my darned firewall.

Anyway, all of that is beyond the point. Here is where my post actually starts. So two days ago, this guy sends me one of those random messages on facebook. I embarassingly admit I did allow the "Are you Interested" application after I received some notification from it. But it wound up one of those that lie forgotten like the Astronomy application, the Dilbert/ Garfield comics, the daily horoscope and the visual bookshelf and others you initially think are brilliant but later ignore as much as you would that mouse on your desk. What mouse? See, you don't even realize it's there!

Did you notice I'm in a digress-y mood today? :-D Anyways, so the message goes something like: "I found you in are you interested which made my mind go crazy seeing you looking all hot and sexy, sugar, so would you party sometimes on the weekend sugar...? Let me know more about you when approved me to be one of your friends though."

I usually delete these with one of those disgusted I-just-ate-something-too-healthy look smeared on my face, but the fact that he called me sugar just pissed me off some enough extra notches. Guys randomly calling me baby or sugar or honey makes me wanna stick a fork up their arse. You get the same feeling? If you are a guy reading this, I'm almost sure you do, heh.

Anyways my conspiring mind clicked on his profile- which you can see for sometime after someone sends you a message. And right there, very obvious and apparent- his relationship status said he was in one with so & so. Now these kind of men have to be tied up to the thorniest cactus in this Kuwaiti desert, stripped so he'll dehydrate, given some LSD to induce hallucinations, and have a few people put on the most horrenduous evil masks you can find and interrogate them on how exactly is that appropriate. Am I being harsh? Really? I just don't want that girl to be me. Or you. Or any of us. It's the first step to the next step, to something worse. Now, I'm oscillating on whether I should send the message to his chic. Yep, I'm quite a feministic biatch when that side of me is provoked.



I hate long posts, and I don't do them, but this blog is my punching bag for the day.

Office Ringtones

Yesterday it was the sound of water trickling somewhere in the office. Loud enough to trigger my bladder to incite another bathroom run. The day before that, a pitiful mewing of what seemed like a dying cat from the pantry. Before that, it was an uncouth kid shouting out obscenities that echoed through our corridors.

Initially I noticed my boss's lips moved in a silent "what-the-f~ck", but lately it has evolved into more of a resigned sigh. It's not very motivating to know my boss is trying to claim the hopelessness card, mainly because I have called dibs on that dispositi0n. So I had our secretary draft a circular saying the next time we hear a ringtone that is inappropriate for the office the person would be fined half a KD. I guess she told the others I was behind it, because two got themselves a Viva La Vida ringtone as well, and I noticed smirks at my initial confusion. The only difference is that mine rings in a barely audible decibel. There's a seriously raunchy hip hop track from one of the guys who gets the most phone calls, alternated with a cheesy lady Ga-ga track which rings out on what I swear is full volume. The offices at the other end are bound to agree with me.

I see my boss mouthing those three words again. I think it's progress from the resigned nod, but I'm still hoping that these guys phones fall into mucky puddles from the recent rains.

Salwa, by the beach.

I took a detour on my way to work today. No hurry to get to the blogosphere, or my morning dose of caffeine, or yes, work. Parked my ass in front of the morning sea, and smoked me a cigarette with VOA on the radio. The music wasn't repetitive 99.7 Kuwait radio bullsh*t, but I need to look for my little IPOD shuffle in all of my bags and pockets of random pairs of my jeans. I'm just hoping it hasn't been laundered. Anyways, by the sea. Wondering how all these people over there made money if they could come chill on this promenade early in the morning. Probably made redundant recently, I think. Looking to the sea for escape.
I steadied my mind, and let my thoughts shut the hell up. It was nice for some few minutes before I got bored. My mind drifted to one of my current lexulous games and that moment of freedom was gone, baby, gone. Left the beach, hit the 6th ring road to work and became a drone again.

Okay, I stopped being a drone somewhere around half an hour ago, and decided to go through one of my cabinets for forgotten jewels. I found a set of jinga (do you call them a set or a box?), a shockingly ugly bag as a gift from one of my tasteless yet thoughtful coleagues and a book my ex gave me about a year ago. I think it ranks as one of the best gifts I ever received. Its just nice to bump into it again, a flood of memories and another reason to go stalk a beach and reminisce.



Anyways, its the weekend. So I'm going to go off and tra la la.

That Time of The Month Again.

Actually it's that time of the week again. Time for our cherished DVD guy who usually sneaks in on a Thursday as we work half the day then. Unlike the rest of Kuwait who work the entire day ha. Also unlike the rest of Kuwait who thus have Saturdays entirely off unlike us. Turdballs.

Anyways, after we slyly call our Boss and locate his whereabouts, we roll in our little DVD guy, plonk him down on a chair and have some very hot tea served to him. Hot enough to give us ample time to browse through the movies he has, IMDB 'em, then Rotten Tomato 'em; and if the reviews are writ well we watch a minute or two of each to make sure it is actually the same movie as the cover claims. It can get embarassing if you don't check it, and I may or may not be relating that from my own personal experience.
Since our asses have recently been firewalled lately we can neither download movies, nor watch them online. Alot of what is not commercial never reaches us anymore and we live our lives in mainstream blindness. Actually we did so before too when we took our downloadable privileges for granted. But now that I don't have it, I'm actively looking for stuff that won't play in the cinemas. Either way these are what I picked up, some of which you may have heard of, others I'll post a review of if I don't fall asleep through it.

An Ari Folman Film- Waltz With Bashir. An animated documentary into the darkness of western Beirut during the Sabra and Shatila massacre, September 1982.

Yeah, I know you know enough about The Reader.

A suspense by some Shelli Ryan chic. Great reviews from suspiciously unknown names.

A partially BBC produced British single drama about Albert Einstein's theory of relativity, his relationship with British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington, and the introduction of this theory to the world, against the backdrop of the Great War.

Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences

Too many Visualizors, Too few Executors.

Bottom Drawers of Office Desks.

Don't you often wonder whats in the bottom drawer of peoples desks at work? Well, I'll tell you what recently inhabited mine, hopefully not for too long. A packet of Twix. And Snickers. And the Snickers packet was on special offer, which made you buy some 6 large snicker bars for a discounted price. I don't think it really was discounted, but my senses chose to go with the illusion.

That's what's in my bottom drawer now, though it until recently used to have all these little chits and letters and tiny gifts given by my ex who I kinda worked with. I even found a shrivelled rose (not even a rose petal kept between the pages of a book) but a whole darn dry withered rose. Cheesy.

Speaking of cheesy, the reason my bottom drawer has a new personality is my new need to gain weight. I like experimenting, and also decided that people need to find a new name to call me behind my back at work. Make 'em rack their brains to come up with something a little less cliched than "That skinny bitch". I don't mind them retaining the bitch part of it, it makes me happy to think I'm successfully foisting off that demeanor. So I've marked a cereal box and carton of milk with my name and stacked it at the back of the office fridge so I don't skip breakfast anymore. Mission 5 more pounds is on, baby, on! After that, I think my bottom drawers gonna be monopolized by bootlegged DVDs that I need to swap for something new.

Das Leben Der Anderen/ The Lives of Others

An excellent movie that is political on a human and emotional level. I wanted to click a pic of the set as it felt like a 90 minute escape from Kuwait. Nothing censored. A canopy of threatheningly heavy clouds above us. Salmiya's blinking city lights. I forgot to click the pic of course, but there is always next Thursday.

The Lives of Others (German: Das Leben der Anderen) is a 2006 German drama film, marking the feature film debut of writer and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The film involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police. The film was released in Germany on March 23, 2006. At the same time, the screenplay was published by Suhrkamp Verlag. Donnersmarck and Ulrich Mühe were successfully sued for libel for an interview in which Mühe asserted that his former wife informed on him while they were East German citizens through the six years of their marriage. In the film's publicity material, Donnersmarck says that Mühe's former wife denied the claims, although 254 pages' worth of government records detailed her activities. The film succeeded in Germany despite a widespread contemporary reluctance in the country, particularly in its films,[1] to confront the totalitarian excesses of the East German state.