Why Men Marry Bitches

I read two books in one day the other day: "Why Men Marry Bitches" and "Eclipse", which is part of the Twilight saga.

I have to admit that men baffle me. They baffle me because I always see them walking all over nice, giving and loving women, and chasing after and giving the world to more self centered women.

According to the "Bitches" book, men take "nice" women for granted and are bored by them, while they find self-absorbed women ("Bitches") more challenging and therefore worth loving and worshiping. So I guess this means I am doomed to a lifetime alone. It is my instinct to try to put other people's needs before my own and to love someone with all my heart if I love them. One of life's big ironies is that this means I am doomed to never be loved or cared for.

:( I'm not feeling very happy today.

Vindication and other things

So I have a lot to report

# 1 I have been vindicated... my "oh so much more professional" replacement quit after telling the boss off :)))
she told me before she left to go back to her country "that man thinks he is a god and everyone else is a cockroach" She told me that he threatened her before she left about revealing any of his shittiness or dishonesty and then she walked out on him. I am not sure what precipitated the whole melt down, but she the little local girl helping her said that he got angry because she wasn't taking her computer home and wasn't answering his calls after a certain time, so he told her that even if she is using the toilet she should answer!!

So now his office is back in a mess. He has no one on which to take out his nasty little temper, because the girl sitting there until they find someone new is a local, and he is too scared to treat them as shittily as he treats others. That might be why he sent an edict to my present supervisor saying that I must return there to work "until he finds someone new." Imagine the nerve, thinking he can tell me how useless I am, fire me, cut my pay and then make me return and put up with his shit again for less money?? I went straight to the HR and told them there was no way I was going back there and that they have no right to mess with my life like this. Seriously they are asking for a "postal" situation. For some reason he is hell bent on placing a westerner - preferably an American there.

#2 My dad is out of the hospital - his growth is still in his abdomen, but he is out for now at least. I hope he wont be back for a while.

#3 I went to see New Moon. I bought the Twilight book, way back when, got bored and didn't finish it - and I love to read. So, I never paid the movie much mind. But then it came on TV here - MBC channel (Yeah MBC), and I watched it and I have to say that it was quite good and romantic - I have always had a thing for vampires - they are kind of tragic monsters - human but not human, that destroy what they love. The kids watched it with me and liked it too - which quite frankly surprised me and New Moon was rated PG 13 so I took them.

Well this move was even better, what I saw of it at least, the problem was that no one else in theater was there to actually watch the movie. I really don't understand these people here. They pay 30 dirhams a ticket and then talk on their cell phones the whole time, talk to each other and get out of their seats about 100 times for trips to the snack counter, bathroom and God-knows-where else. The most annoying are the little local couples on dates. They go to the movie because its dark in there, and no one will see them on a date that they aren't supposed to be on. I know they aren't married couples, why would a married couple choose to pay to go to movie so they can sit and talk? They can do that anywhere they want. I got out of my seat to complain about twenty times because the couple in the row behind us and the couple in the row in front of us were talking so loudly I couldn't hear the movie and their cell phones were ringing every 5 minutes. The couple behind refused to move when the Indian attendant told them that they are bothering me. They have no respect whatsoever for the Indian and Filipino movie theater staff. By the end of the movie my blood pressure was surging and I had the worst headache from tension and rage. My six year old son was better behaved than all of the adults in the theater (aside from me of course).

My high blood pressure actually started on the way to mall. While waiting for the traffic light, one guy in the lane next to me decided that he didn't want to wait for a green light anymore and he was just going to go, but the problem was there were two cars in front of him so he started honking wildly at them until they went - even though the light was still red, and cars will still coming across the intersection from the right to left where they still had a green light. I closed my eyes and winced expecting any minute to witness a horrific crash.

Adding to my pressure, at the mall while sitting on a bench waiting for the movie, 3 couples decided to just take over the three seater bench I was sitting on with the kids. They pushed my little one and my purse clear off the bench and Salman was sitting on, literally, one inch of bench. They attempted to shove me off as well until I said - EXCUSE ME I AM SITTING HERE! DON'T YOU HAVE ANY MANNERS? Of course that was a rhetorical question, since they obviously didn't have any. They seem to operate on a "my butt is bigger so that means I get to push you off the bench" rule.

#4 In other news, my lawyer says my divorce should be final by December, but he has been telling me that it will be done by "next month" since May so I will only believe it when I see it.
My "husband's" birthday was on the 21st, so I called him so the kids could talk to him. He told me, "thank you for letting the kids talk to me," I told him, "it could happen more often if you ever bothered to call." He said "ok I will." I said "you always say that and nothing changes" He said "you will see" .... well Eid just passed and he didn't bother to call them. I guess he was expecting me to call and pay the long distance bill. He didn't even sms us... what a cheapo. He added Salman on Facebook, but he deleted the friend request. His sister also added Salman and Salman deleted her friend request too, yet he still chooses to believe that it is my fault he doesn't communicate with his sons, though the only time he does talk to them is when I pay for the call and I force Salman to talk to him.

Salman left his Facebook open the other day and one of his annoying cousins there came on and was trying to talk to him. I told Salman that his cousin said hi, he told me just reply hi back. Then he asked Salman how old he is now, again Salman told me to reply for him, I told him "11" and the kid then wrote that he is 13. Now I know for a fact that he isn't because he was born only a couple of months before Salman and his parents got married AFTER I did and my 13th anniversary is this coming friday. So I told him "how can you be when you were born at the end of 1997?" then he told me (thinking I was Salman) "no wonder your dad is here and not with you, you are so stupid" - what a nice family they are... and not too bright either - his parents clearly aren't so good with the math since he said they told him he is 13 now.

#5 They say chocolate is a substitute for love - that must be why I just polished off a whole bar of Lindt dark mint chocolate.

My Dad's Pancreas

It has been so long since I last posted, that I don't actually know where to begin.

I have been distracted by a lot of personal issues and feeling kind of down.

The foremost one being that my father is quite sick. When I was a little girl, about 30 years ago, when he was around the age I am now, he developed pancreatitis, and had to make frequent trips to the emergency room, which at the time, was just up the road from us. In fact, I have a memory from back then, it was on a weekend, maybe we had just come home from church, and he was standing outside and holding his stomach and then he came in and told my mother rather calmly, I think I am having another attack, I am just going to walk up to the hospital. I didn't really understand what was happening, but after reading about pancreatitis and how painful it is. I wonder at how he managed to appear to so calm, or even walk himself to the hospital.

According to Wikipedia, the symptoms of pancreatitis:
Severe upper abdominal pain, with radiation through to the back, is the hallmark of pancreatitis. Nausea and vomiting are prominent symptoms. Findings on the physical exam will vary according to the severity of the pancreatitis, and whether or not it is associated with significant internal bleeding. Blood pressure may be high (when pain is prominent) or low (if internal bleeding or dehydration has occurred). Typically, both the heart and respiratory rates are elevated. Abdominal tenderness is usually found, but may be less severe than expected given the patient's degree of abdominal pain.

Now alcoholics can develop pancreatitis, but that is not the only cause for it, and it certainly wasn't so in the case of my father. My father had given up alcohol completely in his twenties. On one trip to the emergency room, while he was doubled over in pain and vomiting, a judgmental ER doctor came and looked at his chart, I guess he had told the nurse his history of pancreatic attacks, and laughed at him and said "I guess you had one to many, eh buddy?" When he got a momentary relief from hurling, my Dad looked up at him and calmly said "no my pancreatitis is of undetermined origin." One thing I will always admire about my dad is his ability to calmly react to offensive people.

Anyway, it was determined that his condition would require surgery and removal of most of his pancreas as it was abscessed. There were two surgeons for him to choose from, one up in Boston and one in New York City. He opted for Boston, because my Mom's sister lived up that way, outside of Boston and he and my Mom had decided that My mom and all of us ( we were 5 kids at that time) would stay with my Aunt and Uncle while he had his surgery and recovered.

That was a long and depressing summer - or that's how I remember it anyway. My Uncle Tony isn't the easiest person to like, and he has always seemed to harbor a special disdain for my Dad, and liked to mock him and poke fun at him about his religious beliefs. He must have talked negatively about my dad in front of his kids too, because I always noticed the way they spoke to him was less than respectful, as if they were dealing with a half wit - and my father is anything but that. To be fair, I don't think Tony likes many people; I don't think he likes, Dave, my other Aunt's husband either - who, incidentally, has been my dad's best friend since they were 3 year olds taking tap dancing lessons together - but he is less easy to poke fun at, what with being a successful doctor and all that not to mention at that time a "rational" atheist (after experiencing something he considers miraculous when treating a patient he later became and still is a Christian - along with my Aunt). Anyway, Tony is just... well mean is a word that comes to mind. You know... the kind of person who teases kids just a little too much and with a kind of malicious gleam in the eye - well, he was that kind of person.

What I remember from that summer was, aside from visits to my dad where we gawked at the tubes going into his abdomen - for a while after the surgery he wasn't allowed to eat or drink so they had to feed him through a tube, was being put to work in Tony's rather large vegetable garden, picking string beans and weeding. The only person who was exempt from this was his daughter Mel, who was his obvious favorite, her older sister - who was obviously not is favorite - had to join us. I remember her protesting and asking "Why doesn't Mel ever have to help" I also remember Mel lying on the sofa watching TV and smugly smiling as we all trooped out to the fields. My brothers have an additional memory of having Tony tell them to chop wood and then mock them for not being strong enough, like his son - All of my brothers are younger than I am and I was only about 8 or 9 at the time , and his son - my cousin - was a teenager.

They removed 3/4 of Daddy's pancreas that summer. The remaining portion, continued to function and produce enough insulin for several years and he had no attacks. It eventually gave up when I was a young adult and he had to start taking insulin shots and digestive enzymes. When he visited us in Zanzibar about a year and a half after I was married, he was still getting used to the routine of taking his enzyme tablets and regulating his sugar, so that it didn't dip too low after a shot. One the one hand my dad has some form of OCD, so anything he has to do routinely, he makes a ritual out it, and he was also obsessive about the way he packed and stored his insulin. I still remember the little cooler he kept in our refrigerator and him nagging my mom about how she packed. But on the other hand he is absent minded - or rather has a "one track mind" as he likes to call it, where if he is concentrating on one thing - like reading a book for example - which he usually is, he tunes out everything else around him and gets lost in what he is doing. This made for a kind of dangerous combination, when it came to his insulin. He would ritualistically take his shot, but then start doing something and forget to eat and several times his blood sugar dipped dangerously low, before he snapped to it and remembered to eat.

While visiting us in Zanzibar, my dad struck up a friendship with one of our neighbors, a taxi driver named Babu Ali (which means Grandfather Ali - I'm not sure why since he was not a grandfather and had a baby named Suleiman who was the same age as Salman was at the time). My dad would pay Ali to drive him out to the jungle - Jozani Forest - so he could go bird watching. Sometimes Ali would go with him on his nature treks, other times he would leave him there and come back to get him later. On one of his solo missions, he suddenly became lightheaded and felt like he was going to faint. All alone, in the middle of the forest, he realized that in his excitement to get out the door and on his way, he had forgotten to eat after taking his insulin. On the verge slipping into a diabetic coma, he frantically searched his pockets and found a pack of gum, and he popped all 5 pieces into his mouth, fortunately, the sugar coating on those 5 pieces was enough to keep him conscious.

He also often forgot to take his enzyme tablets before eating. He was supposed to take them an hour before eating - that was the problem - he would forget until it was time to eat because we didn't have a fixed meal time; especially since my parents were visiting, the time we ate depended on what our daily activities were. Or we would be out and decide to eat out and he didn't have his tablets with him. If he didn't take his tablets he could have some pretty serious diarrhea. So he got this idea in his head that if he popped the tablets in right before eating or after if he didn't have them with him at the time, it was better than not taking them at all, and then, after dinner, as soon as he got the chance, he would go and do head stands with his legs in the air, theorizing that it would mix the tablets and the food in his stomach around better. I'm not sure how effective that was...

About a month ago, my dad started having stomach problems again and the pains became severe enough that my Mom decided to take him to the emergency room a few weeks back and he has been in the hospital since. Some kind of initial test or scanning indicated that his pancreas was "swollen"; further scanning / tests indicated that he had a growth the size of a man's fist on the pancreas and, from what they could tell, it was pushing on the bile duct and somehow this was causing some kind of spillage of bile to somewhere it should not be going and that was damaging his liver and causing jaundice. The growth, from those initial test was determined to be "precancerous" or slow growing, but my mom was told there is always a possibility of such growths becoming cancerous and fast growing. They decided to do surgery, but once inside they saw: the growth was bigger than expected and engulfing the bile duct; it was surrounded by blood vessels and therefore could not be removed; looked like it would eventually grow to block of his stomach. So they did some rerouting of the digestive tract. He was recovering for the past few days, but then he suddenly showed signs of an infection and his oxygen levels dropped and he was moved back to ICU the day before yesterday. They found some kind of blockage in his gall bladder, and did another procedure and now he is recovering from that.

So I have been worrying about him a lot, especially since it has been more than two years since I have seen him. I was supposed to go this summer, but thanks to the @%&@ I work, I was deprived of my vacation and tickets to go home.

I feel sad because it seems that even if he is OK for now, this THING growing in his abdomen is there to stay and eventually it will rear its ugly head again to cause more problems. He is only 67 now, but it doesn't look like he will reach 93 like his dad...

I feel so helpless, all I can do from here is wait, and worry and pray...

Time Flies...

Everyone knows the common saying, "time flies when you're having fun" but the truth is, it flies when your not having fun too. When you get older it just plain flies... perhaps that is why I have noticed that people just say "time flies" these days and leave off the latter part... most people aren't having fun most of the time.

In fact, during the time of life in which we have the most fun - when we are little children - time doesn't fly at all! Years took forever to pass by when I was small.

Anyway, now I am almost 38. The 7th will mark 38 years since my mother gave birth to her second child, who was supposed to be a boy (because my parents already had a girl) and for whom they already had a boy's name picked out. Luckily for my parents, three boys followed right on my heels, and I think that was more than enough for them so that when little girls 3 and 4 came along they were a relief from the constant mischief making.

The 7th will also mark 20 years to the day since that same girl, who was supposed to be a boy, was climbing Mt. Kenya and met the boy who would, 7 years later, become her husband and 10 years later break her heart and 16 years later disappear.

It will als mark 1 year, since what I thought was the first of many happier birthdays to come, when I received a gift that meant the world to me, and still does, only now it makes me sad to look at it because it embodies all of the hopes and dreams I had at that time, which have come to naught and reminds me of how alone and uncertain I feel again.

So, I'm not looking forward to my birthday. It is a yearly reminder of my failure - my failure to find love in particular, but all of my failures in general as well, since my poor track record in personal relationships has shaped the rest of my life.

Perhaps if I was home, it would be a different thing, I would have my family with me, and I could celebrate with my Grandfather, whose 93rd birthday was on the 3rd of October. Last year, he celebrated his 92nd with a big shin dig. This year they are throwing another big bash for him on the 9th - it will celebrate his birthday and mark the opening of the visitor's center at the urban wildlife refuge named after him. The park was named after him - and a statue of him erected in his honor - for an important environmental law he passed, 38 years ago. For him, his birthday is a yearly reminder of his accomplishments. He can look back with pride on what he has achieved over the years.

I called him for his birthday this year, and even though he is 93, he still is as sharp as ever. I am happy that with age, his mind has not gone, I think for someone like him that would be a great loss and tragedy. I hope I will see him again before his time comes. It makes me sad to realize that, having lived well beyond life expectancy for the average American man or woman, any day could be his last. I wonder how he feels when (if) he thinks of that. I wonder if he thinks about how time has flown and wonders where all the years have gone, since he was a handsome star pupil in his highschool in Portage Wisconsin.

He doesn't believe in God. I always wonder where he thinks he will go after he draws his last breath, and if he is scared. I wonder what God thinks of such a man, who in spite of not believing in Him, has lived a more moral and upright life than most, respecting His creation and fighting to preserve it, refusing to backdown on issues he knew were important and sometimes forgoing the power and wealth that would have accompanied doing what was expected in order to do what he knew was right. I hope God is understanding. I love my Grandfather.

Dishonest Mechanics and other random topics

Why are people needlessly dishonest? Is it really a good business practice as a mechanic to steal from your customers and do shitty job of fixing their cars so they never come back again? I mean can that really be good for business?



I got my car ( that was rear ended) back from the mechanic, only to discover that the light on the right wasn't fixed - and they had glue the glass / plastic covering for it back together instead of replacing it with a new one and that the back door doesn't open. I just don't get it... why would they do that? I mean, do they think I will EVER take my car back to them after they ripped me off like this? I wonder if I am allowed to put the name of the garage here... just to warn other people... "A" took his car there too, to be fixed for something, and they did a crap job on his as well, it started smoking so badly he had to abandon it in the parking lot of a mall somewhere in Dubai - he ended up having to replace the engine later - which might have been what it needed all along, and if they had just told him that and done a proper job of repairing it, then he would have saved money, but no instead they decided to do jack shit and take his money for it.



Anyway... now my registration is up, but my car still isn't fixed so I can't renew the registration ...not sure what the hell I am going to do... :(



I have a new housemate. Which is good, because every bit helps when it comes to paying the bills. She is American too and works for the same company I do and is being dicked around by the management too. So we have a lot in common. She is really nice. I realize I like having other people around me. For some reason I have been isolating myself ever since my Sudanese friend moved away and my Egyptian friend just stopped talking to me for no reason after she found cooler, younger friends who liked to go out to bars with her - I'm a teetotaler, so I guess I wasn't much fun. I have no clue why she did it. Funnily enough, my Sudanese friend told me the Egyptian one would do this to me, but I didn't believe her. Anyway, now I have someone to talk to again - the only problem is that we end up gabbing so much we forget the time and then I suddenly realize it is way past my bed time. And that is probably why I suddenly get so sleepy at 3 PM on the dot every day. Today, I actually fell asleep at work in the middle of editing a newsletter article - I was literally typing in my sleep. When I jerked out of it, I saw I had typed a few words of complete nonsense. "Akkdrwn dfak"



This used to happen to me back in my University days. I fell asleep in Chemistry class every blessed day, no matter what I did, I couldn't stay awake. I tried everything, eating before class so my blood sugar would be up, still fell asleep. Not eating so I was really hungry, hoping that the hunger pangs would keep me awake, no such luck. I tried dressing warmly, so I didn't feel too cold and I tried dressing lightly so I was a bit too cold for comfort. But no matter what I did, I fell asleep. My notes for that class were absolutely useless. Sometimes as I wobbled in and out of consciousness, I continued writing notes. I am sure if I saw them now they would be pretty hilarious looking, but I remember going to study for my exams and looking in dismay at the notes that after a few words tapered off into complete nonsense and then just a line sliding off the page.



Another reason why I am falling asleep at work these days is that they have moved the whole marketing section, and now I am in an office with two guys who are graphic artists who don't make a noise all day. It is so quiet in there that I feel like I am making a huge ruckus when I move a piece of paper and the sound of my shoes when I get up to get a glass of water or use the rest room is like I am stomping all over the place. Sometimes the wife of one of the guys comes in, (she works in the company too) during her break, but he doesn't talk much to her either, so she has taken to pulling a chair up to my desk and talking to me. It's not that he is rude though, in fact he is quite nice and calm. It's just that he is one of the most mellow people I have ever met. Oh and he makes yummy, homemade, caramel fudge, which he shares with us.



The good thing about my new office though is that it is on the 2nd floor and the elevator is so slow; so being incredibly impatient, I am taking the stairs a lot and that hopefully will have a postive effect on my back side. It is also good because it is far far away from my former boss - if I am lucky, I will never have to see him again. The other day I was walking between buildings and he pulled up into the parking and started honking at me and I pretended I didn't see him and kept walking so he had to drive after me and roll down his window and shout to me :) - he couldn't remember the name of some hotel he had stayed in before in Switzerland and wanted me to tell his new PA. Why can't she just look in the god damned contacts file that I made in outlook. Its not like I had anyone helping me out. Oh yeah, that's right, she is a computer 'tard. Yesterday she sent me invoices from the travel agent asking me to verify if they were accurate - again, if she knew how to use her outlook properly this wouldn't be necessary since I filed all of his old emails regarding his trips in one folder there. He also told her to ask me for some CDs that someone had sent and she came and told me that she was looking for some CDs from Austria and I was like 'what the hell? Austria?" because we had no dealings with Austria while i was there. So she went and told him that I don't know and then he summoned me and when I got there he asked me where the CD's from Prague are - so it seems she needs a little geography lesson along with a basic computer packages class.



My 38th birthday is coming up next week, and I'm kind of depressed about that. My mom said she sent me a package, I am hoping there is some nice outfit or something in there, so I can get a little excited. I haven't bought new clothes in so long, sometimes I suspect people are snickering at my out-of-date style. If it weren't for the Christmas and birthday packages from back home, I think I would be a total fashion disaster. Speaking of new clothes... Fatema's big wedding is finally coming up next weekend, and I don't have a THING to wear! I dug out some old dresses that I bought quite some time back, and by Arab standards, they are just plain dull - they also seem way too low cut, and I don't remember them being like that and I cringe with embarrassment at the thought that I actually wore them - Lord Help me, I am getting really old and turning into quite a fuddy duddy.

RAGE

I am just so full of rage and fury right now. I imagine that I feel the way postal workers must feel right before they .. well.. go postal.

They pay me so little now at work that I can't afford to send my kids to school. Nor can I afford the tutor who used to teach them at home. That means that I have to go home straight after work to teach them, but for some FUCKING reason the ASSHOLES at work think I should happily stay after for 4-5 hours extra like i used to for half the pay this time. I feel so mad I could literally kill someone. Especially since everyone in the company just got a bonus "for their hardwork and dedication in the past year" except for me. I can't tell you how hurt and angry and thoroughly enraged I feel about the way I have been treated. I try to ignore it, but I can feel it building up inside of me, and I feel like I am going to snap soon.

I don't know how to describe how I feel except that I am clenching my teeth as I write this because I want to so desperately smash and destroy everything within reach including my cell phone and this computer. I am so tired of people walking all over me and taking advantage of me, that I am afraid I will kill the next person who tries it.

What's up with that???

I spend a lot of time wondering What's up with that? about a lot of things that happen around me here. Things like....

1. The lady who replaced me is from South Africa and is a Muslim - a convert obviously, since she is from an Afrikaaner background. I don't have any problem with that part; acutally, I don't have a problem with her at all. But what I find weird is the way she dresses. I mean, she just wears regular western clothes - including shirts with very short sleeves, sometimes made of kind of sheerish blouse material so you can kind of see her bra through it. Sometimes they are low enough you can even see a peek of cleavage too. She also wears trousers that aren't super tight (she is about 50 after all) but definitely show her shape. Her hair is cut really short too, and she doesn't wear hijab, so you can see her whole neck and ears and all that. Considering that I am always freezing in the arctic climate we have in the office and thus wear long sleeves with sweaters over them most of the time, I usually am dressed more modestly than she is. She is fasting during Ramadhan, but she is still dressing this way. So every time I see her, I wonder what's up with that?
If she was born into a Muslim family, I wouldn't wonder as much, because people don't always buy everything they are taught by their parents. That is why you find a lot of nominal followers of various religions. They say "I am Christian" or "I am Muslim" or whatever for the sake of family or culture but they haven't really taken the time to believe it and love it for themselves. But converts are usually very fervent and very strict. And I guess, especially in the case of a religion like Islam, which doesn't just lay down what you should believe but also seems to have a lot of lifestyle rules for dress, diet, etc. that are religious mandates, I alway assume that people who have chosen that religion would follow everything. Anyway, I just find it odd... and I'm incredibly nosy so I really want to know what her reasoning is there...

Speaking of her. I went up to her the other day to ask her how it's going - I actually meant Ramadhan and all that - but she thought I was talking about the job. She confessed (after only one month in that position) that she is beginning to regret taking it or wonder why the hell she left teaching. I didn't realize she was a teacher before, when she told me, I said "you must be nuts, if I had the teaching certfication, I wouldn't even consider this kind of job." So - again - what's up with that?! I mean who in their right mind would leave working with children and having nice hours and the whole summer off, to working for corporate @#%&@s?

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2. I have road rage, I really shouldn't drive. The traffic isn't even bad here, but I still am impatient and angry when driving. Of course, it is largely due to the inordinate number of idiot drivers on the road. No one here drives normally, it either has to be way too fast or so slow that the driver could literally get there just as fast walking. There was this car going around the round about in front of me and it was literally going around it so slowly that it was jumping around - like it would if you tap the gas and then braked immediately and then did it again repeatedly. Lord help that driver if he /she ever finds himself in Dubai at the Trade Center roundabout .

Of course my favorite two types of driving related idiocy are
1) when someone in the middle lane manages to hog all three lanes at once. He wavers back and forth between them, not allowing anyone to get around him because they can't anticipate which direction he will meander next.
2) when you are in the fast lane and someone in the lane next to you is sooo desperate to get in front of you (though you are driving fast) and get around the slow poke in front of them that they gun it, quickly swerve in front of you but then immediately brake and proceed to drive as slowly as the person they were trying to get in front of, who is now driving exactly beside them in the other lane - thereby trapping you at their turtle speed. Or you are happily speeding down the open highway, no one in front of you, no one behind you, and a car waiting to turn onto the road, hits the gas really hard just so they can get out infront of you but then does not continue to accelerate - forcing you to brake really hard. Really, WHAT is up with THAT?! Why do they absolutely NEED to get infront of you only to slow down? Why if they think it is their god given right to drive at the speed of an inch worm on tranquilizers do they need to be in the fast lane, why couldn't they have let you pass first? Why can't they just pick a lane and stick with it?

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3. The Chairman - HH - walked up to my desk on Sunday and asked me "you, what's your name?" and I said "qadfjafkljaslfj" and he said "what?" and i repeated "qadfjafkljaslfj" and he said "not kadfjafkljaslfj?"(alternate pronunciation of my weird name) and I said "well you could say it either way" and then he just walked away. What is up with that? I've been paranoid ever since. Are they plotting something new against me? Not that I know that he he was in on anything that has happened to me, but who knows ... And I have been working here 15 months and he only thought to ask my name now? Today I found out that some staff have been invited to the Palace for Iftar, so another paranoid thought crossed my mind that maybe he had suggested that I be put on the list, but since I wasn't invited someone *cough CEO cough* chucked me off of it. But then I think, Why the hell would he care if I was put on the list or not? He didn't even know my name until this past Sunday.