I want to blog about...

~How I recently discovered that, as much as I may dislike my father, I love the stupid man deeply.

~Music.

~My romantic interest. (an animate one)

~My exercise habits/mini-transformation.

~My foray into entrepreneurship and why it may turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me or what drives me off the deep end in a cut-of-all links-with-conventional-society-and-delve-back-into-pure-country-living way.

~Sensuality.

~Princess.

~Mechanics 101. 

~Losing what I thought was a close friend.

~My ADHD.

~Why cognitive dissonance is my middle name.

Until I pick one, I may never blog again.

Princess Part 1

Let me tell you the story of a girl I know. 

Her name is Princess, and she has the personality to go with it. Princess is very loud. She has the most erratic of mood swings. She is a bully. Princess doesn't arrive, she makes an entrance. She doesn't walk, she sashays and flounces. Her explosive tantrums, if harnessed, could power the national grid for a week. Simply put, Princess puts the prima in prima donna. She's bona fide royalty and, she doesn't just know it to the depths of her psyche, she feels that she's a deity.


She was my first back in the mid-noughties when I, as a shy 18-yr old little versed in matters of seduction, attempted to charm her. She took one look at me, giggled at my audacity and naive bravado, and more out of amusement than any real interest, entertained my advances. Princess was not an easy companion. Not by any stretch of the imagination. She was the prototype high-maintenance femme fatale. In that first month, she took me through hell and back, battered a few members of her sex in my presence, put my heart through the wringer, made me doubt my competence and nearly made me give up on love completely. But I persevered and I won her affections. I had been to the belly of the beast and I had come out nearly invincible, like steel, tempered. I tamed the shrew, to some extent.

I left her soon after and moved to shores distant (she gave me a cold glance once I told her and was pretty much non-responsive on the matter) for a number of years. I'd come back once an year though and, each time, we'd rekindle the flame briefly and the chemistry, oh the chemistry, it was fantastic. It was beautiful. It was a delightful explosion of serotonin and sheer adrenaline. Adrenaline. Princess always had an element of danger about her. 

All this time, Princess was betrothed to another and our dalliances would transpire behind the scenes. Yes, Princess was cuckolding her significant other and I was an accessory to her indiscretion. My conscience should have been aflame with guilt but, frankly, I could hardly care less. 


A little under an year ago, after I had come back home for good, Princess took her leave of her lover and came to be with me more permanently. Time had hardly dulled her beauty nor had it affected her temperament but we had to grown to love each other and I had grown to understand her, to make some sense out of her unpredictability, to fully appreciate my earthly Aphrodite. 

Our relationship is neither laid-back nor comfortable. It will never be so, and I'm perfectly fine with that. Our time together is spent dancing an intricate emotional pas de deux around each other, circling each other, and knowing what the other is feeling but never what the other is thinking, it's fiery, it's high-maintenance, it's pure, unadulterated limerence.

Of Libyan leaders and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

So, my uncle drops by my office unannounced, of course, and, upon enlightening me to the fact that he is mad, no, livid about what is happening in Libya, he pens a scathing invective which he hands over to me requesting, nay, ordering that I ensure that it's printed in all the major papers. I try and tell him that that might be a bit difficult especially taking into account the fact that I don't own The Nation and, since my massive falling-out with it's owner, the Aga Khan (It was in all the papers. I prefer not to speak of it.), have little influence regarding it's content. He gets worked up and pontificates, in a very flowery and bombastic manner, on his right to express himself. I've known my uncle all my life and I know that, although he is a good man, he is a miasma of feelings, emotions and strongly held opinions with nary a whit of logic to ground them and give him some perspective. In short, my uncle is not a particularly reasonable man. I tell him that I will email his article and, hopefully, it would be printed in the 'letters to the editor' section. That seems to placate him somewhat and he takes his leave of me. 

I looked at it after he left and I knew that this was a letter I could not type up. See, my uncle supports Gaddafi. He despises the Libyan people viewing them as ungrateful louts (does not care that they're being massacred) and views Gaddafi as some neo-messianic visionary that will deliver Africa from the dark abyss and transform it into a halcyonian utopia (God, I hate that word... but I'm too lazy to think of another); a veritable mecca of all things prosperous, peaceful and successful. He brooks no disagreement on the matter.


Herein  lies my dilemma; to email his article and be a channel through which something so horribly disagreeable is sent in (and possibly published. Methinks the editors would likely print it for shock value and for the devil's advocate angle) or hold it back and be one of those vile freedom-of-speech curtailing censors...


I'll sleep on it. 

p.s. Oh yeah, I'm back in Kenya. Have been for nine or so months. *waves*

Writer's

Block.

I'll be Bach

 

Kindly refrain from using the fine China in my absence (these should suffice. It's not like you're the queen or anything). 

 

p.s. Sorry for not visiting your blogs for a while. That shall be remedied shortly.

I watched a movie a couple of weeks ago that left me...

With a far greater impression than any movie ever has. 

I've never identified so much, at the core, with any movie character as I have the protagonist in that particular movie. The difference between us is that he had the guts to say to hell with societal conventions and went out and did what he truly wanted to do and was who he truly wanted to be (Additionally, he's a lot more intelligent... but let's not get into that. LOL). In retrospect, I'm glad that I lacked those guts  In many ways, the protagonist is much like who I was. I look at him and I see the fifteen to eighteen year old me (remember my letter to a 16yr old?). Back then, like him, I believed that human contact was not necessary for happiness and I never sought out relationships of any sort. I had a very clear outlook on life. Or so I thought. Everything was black and white; I saw the world in absolutes and held up everything and everyone to my own extremely high inner values. Naturally, that made for a very conflicted young man and, ironically, after that young man had 'given up on the world', a selfish, ignorant and self-serving one. Much like the movie's protagonist.

"Quant'e' bella giovanezza, che si fugge tuttavia" goes an Italian saying. "How beautiful is youth, which flees straightaway". Into the Wild is about society and nature, about family, about idealism and solitude; but most of all, it's about the dangerous, heartrendingly brief and beautiful romanticism of youth.

I've got a new favourite movie. 

Which I'm never watching again.

There was a proverb in Things Fall Apart that went "the old woman is always uneasy when dry bones are mentioned". I adored this movie but parts of it hit too close to home (and to who I was) and dredge up some memories best left untouched.

Steve Jobs is the anti-Christ... and other short stories.

Well, someone, thqt shqll remain unnamed, emailed and threatened me regarding my prolonged absence. She scares me (and was rather glad to find out she does) so... yeah, blqme her for having to trudge through the rest of this ill-conceived mess. I'd tell you who she was but you might be tempted to confront her and, unfortunately, they'd have to bury you in a matchbox and I love you too much to have you die. Not you though, you can contact her. I'll email you her details.

First things first, you mqy hqve noticed some typos up till this point. My flqtmqte has an internet connection on his MacBook and I've been using it to surf for the past couple of dqys and the thing has screwed me up in two ways. First, it's a bloody AZERTY keyboqrd. It's frustrqting to have to resort to a hunt and peck typing technique because the thing is so bloody confusing and second, after a few days of using it for an hour or two every evening, I'm now conditioned to it  and make these lil boo-boos when I get back to using my (decidedly NORMAL) QWERTY keyboard laptop.I mean, why does one have to type out the nymbers using the shift key? Why on Earth are the special characters dominant and not the numbers? Who would use the 'sterling pound' character more than they would any particular number? And that's just for starters. Steve Jobs is annoyed that we love Bill Gates more (well, the normal amongst us) and is out to make us suffer. I pity those people who have to use a MacBook AND a normal laptop/computer on a daily basis. So yeah; I went there.

I'm currently freezing in the desert.

No, I'm not high (and if I were, I wouldnt share. Buy your own intoxicants. I'm talking to you, Monsieur Stone).

Remember how I quit the other job and had a million ideas running through my head of all these start-ups I was going to build into multibillion dollar blue-chip companies but I had neither the discipline nor the ... (fill in the blanks; I wanted to use neither but I couldnt think up a post-nor word and they always have to go together. Unless Mrs Onam lied to me back in primary school) to really get into them. Part of it was indecision, part of it was a mini 1/4 life crisis and the other 90% was sloth. If you looked up sloth under a dictionary, there wouldnt be a picture of me. I was too lazy to show up and pose for it so they put some stupid totally made-up South American animal instead.

So, I bummed around, all but got this other job (which we'll call job X) which came with a stupid list of conditions so I gave up and was about to sink back into the doldrums of my 1/4 life crisis when I suddenly got a chance to interview for another job (job K) in Djibouti. So, I dressed to the nines in my interview suit. There's this particular suit I ejoy wearing. It makes me look like I stepped off the pages of GQ (well, off-off-off GQ. You know, like those offx10 Broadway shows that should just say where they're really staged. The Galapagos. Therefore, Gikomba Quarterly) so I always wear it to interviews. I showed up to some fancy Nairobi hotel where the boss was staying, had a rather casual lunch-interview with the company chairman. He then sent me on an errand with one of the company managers and as I was walking back, Mr Manager was like "So, on Friday, you're going to Dubai where you'll be for X duration and then you'll be going on to Djibouti..." On the exterior, I was playing it cool and I'm all profoundly nodding and going "Yes... yes... certainly" and on the inside, I'm all "YEEEEEEEHAAAAH!!!!"

So, yeah, I was pretty much not given a choice about being hired.

Job X (remember them?) then contact me and they're all contrite and want me to start in January and I'm all "You have a branch in Tahiti? No? Suck it". Well, I didnt say it... but I thought it. Which, I'm told, counts.

My boss (the chairman) is so delightfully eccentric which is nice cause it's familiar territory for me but the man is a handful. I worked for him, in Nairobi, for a week before leaving and the old man had me jumping through hoops doing this and that and not that then maybe that then this and this and that and... my cellphone was ringing off the hook!

After a crazy week, I got to Dubai (where, apparently, I'll be eventually based after less than an year in the horn of Africa) where I got a temporary place in company accommodation. Its currently winter here which makes it an average of late-teens,early 20's °C. I'm told I came at a perfect time. Apparently, June is crazy (45°C). I can't wait (NOT. If I have to spell it out for you. Yes, you. No, not you. You're smart. Well, occassionally).

Dubai is an interesting city; it's very ostentatious. All; look at me; money; flash; zing; bling! It's almost sickening.

Well, what is one to expect from a city surviving through the genius of a well-oiled, calculated, excellent PR machine. For instance, how often does one hear that Iraq and Iran are right next door? There's not much substance if you arent distracted enough by the all the style to peer behind the veneer. He (Dubai is DEFINTILY a 'he'. To anthromorphise him, he'd be the spoilt, inebriated, obnoxious 23yr old layabout club-hopping with his Range Rover Vogue bought with daddy dearest's dirhams) has great beaches though so I'll lay off him. For now. I'm watching you, Dubai. Shape up. I can't wait to get to Djibouti though. The name is so... exotic. So... *must resist absurdly silly/funny Monty Python 'gorn' reference*

So, yeah, that's the state of the nation address as concerns Mo.