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Memories [Jul. 18th, 2008|05:52 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Dubai, UAE]
[מרגיש · Feeling | hyper]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Models - Mehendi ki Raat]

My "internship" slash "training program" slash summer pastime at the hospital is sort of coming to an end. I'm flying out to India next Friday so I thought I'd spent the last week with my chums, Abhishek and Yousuf.

I was supposed to have been rotated between different departments in the hospital. When I started out, I was saying to myself, "Omigod, this is gonna be so much fun, working at a hospital, just like they do in Grey's Anatomy" and other such comforting nicenesses. Towards the end of the first week itself, I was utterly disappointed by the lack of excitement.
The disappointment never completely passed, just came and went. There were some days that were really awesome, some that were mellow and some when I wanted to throw the patients off their beds just so I could have a place to nap.

But looking back, I think I had a great time. At least I had a much better time than I would have had sitting at home. Dude, I got to see real actual medical and surgical cases! I made friends with the staff there.. doctors, nurses, nursing aid, admin guys and even the guy who does the laundry (yes, all of it) in the basement. I made some enemies too, I suppose. I mean, I'm sure I left impressions of myself in people's minds.

I want to bore you (yes YOU) with the details of what I saw. But I can't be arsed to write it out again, having written most of it down in a huge, used notebook of mine from the 9th grade. What was the most memorable thing I saw? There were many things.




We went out for my brother's birthday last night. First we went to Applebee's on Sheikh Zayed Road for dinner - yes, we have Applebee's here, canyoubelieveit??! Sadly I'd already had dinner, moong dal pulao and tomato soup, so I wasn't in the mood for hogging on redneck food. I had a drink, though, some strawberry-lime thing.

After that, we went to the Crowne Plaza Hotel to try to get into Kandy Club. Didn't work because, as our spy Abeer found out, some chick was throwing up and they weren't letting anyone in. So we left and went to the Grand Hyatt Hotel on Sheikh Rashid Road to try to get into the Mix. But entry was limited and expensive (AED 150, whaddafuck), so we turned our faces to the Cooz bar in the same hotel. Bhai, his mates and Abeer had random drinks and I almost fell asleep. Fun night, wallah.





The girls



It was a sexually satisfying dessert.



I own this place.
Erm, not really. It's the foyer of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Dubai where we went for drinks after dinner.



We can at least pretend to be piss drunk, even if we can't actually get drunk (for lack of funds).


On the way back home from the Grand Hyatt, my friend Anil rang me, quite drunk. After verbally chastising me for not ringing him earlier, he declared me a sweetheart. And then told me he loved me. Abeer, who was sitting beside me in Tariq's car, was smiling ear to ear when I casually told Anil I loved him too. Obviously, he doesn't remember (or pretends not to) any of this today.
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Les Splendide Mosquée [Jun. 29th, 2008|10:17 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Dubai, UAE]
[מרגיש · Feeling | enthralled]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Achinoam Nini - Niga el ha-Chalom]

On Friday evening, my father's friend Hakeem Uncle took us to the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It's still under construction, but only the finishing touches are being added. It is built near the tomb of the late president of the country, Sheikh Zayed who passed away in 2004.

Anyway.. the architecture of the place is just mind-blowing. Here are some pictures that I clicked.



This is the corridor of the northern wing of the mosque, leading to the separate entrances for men and women.



Looking into one of the several domes of the mosque. This dome was above the corridor. The rim is adorned with Islamic calligraphy in Arabic.



This is in the landing/foyer of the mosque from the entrance for men. Good chandelier. The verses on the rim of this dome are from the 55th chapter of the Qur'an, named Ar-Rahmaan (The Beneficient One).



The walls of the foyer were decorated with these stone plants/flowers.



Chandelier hanging from the southernmost dome in the main prayer hall. Lovely blue light. Even better symmetry.



Main entrance of the masjid, seen from the courtyard.


I even made a video of the main prayer hall. The quality isn't very good and my pronunciations of gutteral Arabic consonants have been destroyed completely. But you know, enjoy.



In other news, I watched an ultrasound of the heart today. It's all about sending high-frequency sound waves at the heart and then trying to figure out the shape and size of the beating heart (among other things) from the reflected waves. Very interesting, especially because the cardiologist who volunteered to teach me about it is a great teacher.
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Tell me it's a joke! [Jun. 27th, 2008|04:40 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Dubai, UAE]
[מרגיש · Feeling | cheerful]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |A R Rahman - Ghanan Ghanan]

At the nurses' station in the hospital, there's always a general practitioner doctor on duty to take ward rounds, check patients' vital signs and to provide general care to the patients when the consultant specialists are not around. On Wednesday, the doctor on duty noticed me, the new nursing aid on board and asked me if I'm new. Yes I am, I said, and told her how I'm a medical student and I'm on my vacation and was getting bored at home so I joined the hospital as a nursing aid. She must have registered surprise because she asked me, "What kind of a joke is this?" She found it funny that I'd actually want to spend time in a hospital in my vacations when I didn't have to.

Anyway. Last night we went to Kandy Club in the Crowne Plaza Hotel on Sheikh Zayed Road. It's an overpriced desi nightclub - entry is AED 80, which is a little more than £10. Just to compare, in Newcastle, I pay £1 on Skint Night in Liquid, 80p on Born in the '80s Night in Digital, up to about £7 for gigs inside other nightclubs, which are quite fun nights mostly. So 80 bucks is quite a shitty deal.
What was even more shitty is that when we got into Kandy at around 23.30, it was bloody empty. I mean, there were bunches of people standing here and there, but it was empty for the most part. It was a joke, really.
People started coming in later so it was alright. They played Mauja and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom later so I was quite happy because it was reminiscent of the IGF.



Masooma, Kevin, Abeer and me.


I don't think clubbing in Dubai is such a great idea. Passive smoking, your jeans getting wet because some drunk cunt can't keep her drink in her hands, ridiculous entry prices.. it's just not worth it.
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Sniffing the future [Jun. 24th, 2008|11:03 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Dubai, UAE]

Back in the '90s and the early years of this millennium, we used to go back to our hometown of Nagpur in India almost every summer vacation. This was before we realized we could also go to other places in the world for a change. Anyways, how things worked back then was that Ammi would take us three children (or two, before 1997) some time in mid-June and Papa would stay behind for a couple more weeks. Then he used to fly over in July.
As soon as he arrived, Papa would be restless to go back to Dubai. His work, his business was on his mind, twenty-four/seven. I could never understand why he was so impatient to go back.. I mean, didn't he enjoy being with his sister? Parents? Friends? Relatives? I couldn't understand his impatience because I used to have a ball getting showered with love from my grandma, seeing cousins everyday, eating whatever I wanted to.. you know?

But now I realize why he was so impatient, so restless, why he itched to go back, because I'm in the same situation. I'm back home now but I can't wait to go back to Newcastle. I miss the lectures in the David Shaw Lecture Theatre. I miss whipping out my anatomy textbook every chance I got. I miss googling random medical terms and reading up about them.

So I joined Zulekha Hospital today as a nursing aid. Nurses, as you might know, are already 'aids' for doctors. And I'm an aid for the nurses. Despite my lowest-of-the-low position in the hospital hierarchy, I got to wear blue surgical scrubs. Scrubs that reveal my upper chest hair, so patients give me nasty looks and the younger South Indian nurses flirt with me.
I thought I'd be doing things to actually help the nurses like moving patients around, attending to their non-medical needs (because oh, anything medical requires a licence!) etc.. But on the first day itself, I felt like I was getting in the way of the nurses because they didn't seem to need my help. So the matron sent me to the third floor to watch an angioplasty.

An angioplasty is a minimally invasive operation which is performed to widen an artery of the heart that has been narrowed for some reason (usually fatty plaques in the artery wall or a thrombus [i.e., blood clot] lodged in the artery wall) and the resulting decreased blood flow to the heart muscle has caused a heart attack. Basically a wire thingy is inserted into your thigh's artery and then up to your heart's arteries. The wire is guided with the help of X-rays and a dye that doesn't let X-rays penetrate through it, so arteries appear dark. Once the narrowing is found, it is widened using a balloon which is inflated at the exact site of narrowing to push the wall back in place and re-establish proper blood flow.
At first I couldn't figure out the angiogram's constantly changing orientation so I was quite lost.. but eventually found my way around it. So cool! I wanna be a hotshot surgeon too!

Then later I sat in with Papa's uncle who is an ophthalmologist (eye specialist).. saw quite a few cases of viral conjunctivitis (infection of the outermost layer of the eye by a particular virus).
Needless to say, I didn't do much aiding work today. Ah well.
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Micturating on medicine [Jun. 14th, 2008|12:22 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Dubai, UAE]
[מרגיש · Feeling | shocked]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Ofra Haza - Yerushalayim Shel Zahav]

The TV was on this morning as I was reading the paper; my khaalah (aunty) was watching a talk show on the ARY Digital channel. They had a woman on the show who had basically been dumped by her mama's-boy husband and gone into depression. She sought help from doctors but said their drugs didn't help, so she turned to a doctor of alternative/complementary medicine, Dr Joshi, who was also on the show. I'm not too sure we can even call him a doctor of alternative medicine unless you consider gemology(!) and numerology a form of medicine.

When I say gemology, I'm not talking about the actual legitimate science of studying precious stones and their structure, lustre and other properties. Dr Joshi is a gemologist in the sense that he encourages the wearing of precious stones on rings/necklaces to cure maladies. Oh yes.
And let's not overlook his extensive knowledge of numerology. This man was actually advocating the use of 'lucky numbers' derived from people's dates of birth in order to increase prosperity. So if your lucky number was 4, for example, you should live in flat #4, have a licence plate with the number 4 in it etc. so you can be successful in life.

At the expense of sounding like an arrogant medic (which I am), can I just point out that precious stones attached to metallic rings have very little or no pharmacological/surgical activity and cannot cure any diseases. And my 7-year-old sister can tell you that numbers don't make you successful, hard work and connections with the right people do. Ideas like these that suggest that numbers and stones somehow influence your prosperity are a slap in the face to hard-working people, not to mention misleading.

What ticked me off the most about Dr Joshi was that he was saying that his "therapies" were more effective than proper medicine at curing things like heart disease. So you can chuck your silly balanced diet and exercise in the bin because if you get ischemic heart disease and crushing chest pains, you can exchange your glyceryl trinitrate pills for a nice, shiny emerald.

Screw evidence-based medicine, I'm gonna persuade Dr Joshi to teach me his gemology- and numerology-based medicine.. it's the way forward.
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Just plane stupid [Jun. 10th, 2008|12:26 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Dubai, UAE]
[מרגיש · Feeling | bored]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Mostafa Amar - Monaya]

I don't know how I did it but from last Monday to last Thursday, I packed all my things, dividing them into the stuff I wanted to take home (e.g. clothes, shaving kit, CDs, ecstasy pills etc.) and the stuff I wanted to leave behind in Newcastle (e.g. beloved anatomy textbook, warm clothes, utensils etc.). The nice man who sweeps the floor and mops the stairwell of our block lent me a few black bin bags to put my astonishingly giant pillows in.

On Thursday morning, my friend/coursemate/pizza delivery boy Sina came over to take the stuff I wanted to leave in Newcastle - his cousin has a place nearby so we lugged it till there by foot despite my loud suggestions (in public) to Sina that we should get a taxi.

Once that was done, we walked back to Ricky Road to sit in my flat for a bit before it was time for me to leave for the airport. Jess, Rosanne and Lucy were up so I said my goodbyes to them. I'd said goodbye to Laura and Adrian the night before.. Adrian was so nice to me. He used to smile with embarrassment whenever I flirted with him. Always kept in touch, always asked me how I was, how things were, always listened with interest even when my own flatmates didn't give a toss about me. I returned the favor, obviously, but for selfish reasons - he was a pleasure for the eyes and his North Irish drawl was like music to my ears.
I didn't get to say bye to Jesse, whom I shared a wall with, because he was at home (or returning therefrom) when I left on Thursday morning.

Sina saw me off at the Haymarket metro station. At the airport I found out that my 33-kilo bag was much too heavy to put on an empty plane. The rude cunt sitting behind the counter wouldn't listen to any of my pleas like, "It's summer! No one travels with just 20 kilos of luggage!" or "I'm a student and I'm taking my stuff back home now.." etc. She said I could either "go away and repack" (what a cunty thing to say) or pay a little over £100 for five kilos that they weren't letting me off for. Ball (and aircraft) was in their court so I had no choice but to let go of my hard-earned cash that I was planning to spend in Dubai with/on family and friends. Needless to say, I don't wanna fly Emirates again and I don't give a turd about the direct flight from Dubai to Newcastle.
All through the journey, I sulked about the absurd amount of money I had to pay for being just five kilos over the limit.

In Dubai, Papa, Ammi and Abeer had come to receive me at the airport.

My brother is leading a revolution against my accent. He mocks me every chance he gets. And then there's Masooma, my orange-juice-sipping friend who has just finished a year at the Univeristy of Texas. She thinks I'm faking it.. and her American accent leaks out every now and then. Even my friend Marc in England doesn't spare me.. he thinks I have a Geordie accent. Ah don' av an accent, man.

I'm getting a bit bored here to be honest. I don't feel like reading the book I'm reading - Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion - because he's getting too wordy now.

Better get back to wasting time..
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The rain must fall [Jun. 3rd, 2008|11:10 am]
[Tags|, , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Rain, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | rushed]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |David Broza & Meir Ariel - BeTsaharei Yom]

I've started packing my stuff that I don't want to take back to Dubai for the summer, stuff that I want to leave over here. Stuff like bedsheets, old issues of the Student British Medical Journal, books, china, cutlery etc. I had to throw away a lot of stuff.. stuff from the beginning of the year that I'd saved thinking I'd certainly need it later (packrat mentality). Brochures, booklets, things I didn't even know I still had.

In one of the drawers of my desk, I found the record of money that I had kept for part of this year. Yeah.. between mid-October 2007 and mid-January 2008, I had meticulously recorded my cash withdrawals from the bank and my spendings to every penny (well, close) on a sheet of foolscap paper - money spent on traveling, on food, on nights out, on gifts, even things like laundry, stamps and biscuits.
I used to be so nervous about spending money back then, probably because at the back of my head I knew it wasn't really my money, it was Papa's. After January, I abandoned the record and it found a warm place in the middle drawer. Once I started working at Subway and started earning some money for myself, almost automatically I became carefree about my money. I mean, I still knew my limits of spending and roughly how much I'd spent in the week, but I didn't think it was necessary to keep a record of it because in the end, who cares?

It's raining outside.

Yesterday, I was trying to register my debit card with Orange, my mobile phone service provider so that I could add credit to my phone online rather than running to the ATM to top it up every time I ran out of money on the phone. The customer service guy I was talking to was utterly pleased that I wasn't yelling at him and I told him I had a lot of time on my hands. We got talking about our lives (on the customer service line!) and it turned out he was in a call center in Delhi, India. He was trying very hard to speak in an English accent but you could clearly tell he wasn't very comfortable talking like that.
How random my life is!

Results of finals are out tomorrow.

Better get back to packing..
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Shobbing [May. 27th, 2008|08:20 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |London, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | sleepy]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Rekha Bhardwaj - Ek Woh Din bhi Thhay]

I had no real plans for today, so I went to Hyde Park first, in search of the Speakers' Corner because Abeer's mum had told me that there's some random White lady there who routinely raises her voice against all the immigrants in the country and tells them to "go back". Alas, I had no success.

I took the Tube to Oxford Circus which was a single tube stop away from Hyde Park Corner. It takes you to Oxford Street which is a sort of high street in London along with its neighbor, Bond Street. Basically I walked up and down Oxford Street quite aimlessly. Went to Primark and bought a pair of incredibly uncomfortable black flip-flops. It's Primark, I should've known.

I was walking around in search of a Nokia store to get a USB data transfer cable for my phone which is getting sort of clogged up with pictures now but I couldn't find the store. I was stopped by a pretty young lady who was collecting names and addresses for a UNICEF campaign. She had a foreign accent and I saw her name tag said 'Yael', so I asked her if she was Israeli. Yes, she said, she was.
"Medaberet ivreet?" I asked her, do you speak Hebrew? Stupid question, I know.
"Yes," she said in English, a bit weirded out.
She asked me how I speak Hebrew, so I told her my dazzling story. Then I asked her if she had come from the aaretz (the Land, i.e. Israel) and she told me she was from Jerusalem.
I was blatantly hogging too much of her time so I asked her when she would have her break. She said she'd get it at noon, and since it was 11:50, I asked her if she'd like to have coffee with me. She said she needed green hairspray and asked me where I could find it. I pointed her in the direction of the nearest Boots chemists outlet and she said I was welcome to come along if I wanted.
So I went with her to buy hairspray. We didn't speak in Hebrew. We didn't speak much. We talked about what we did in life. Then she went to sit with her workmates and I went and sat with them. Among other things, we talked about Israeli music - she thinks Etti Ankri is a good artist too! - and Israelis doing drugs in India.

Didn't do much after that - walked up and down Oxford Street with my friend Saad. We went into a sex shop and stood there laughing at all the funny dildos and fists. Saad was quite embarrassed. We even went to Soho, which is very simply, a village of vice.

Tesco sells two liters of still water for 17p. And I pay for such ridiculous amounts by card.
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Brown boy in the rain [May. 26th, 2008|11:13 am]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Rainsville, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | slutty]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Achinoam Nini - Genes and Jeans]

On Saturday morning, I went to the nearest 'town' and bought a new phone from the Orange shop. I told them that I'd lost my phone on the Tube the day before and that I wanted a new phone with a SIM. The girl asked if I wanted to keep my old number so I said yes, please I do! I picked a Nokia 5200 and she made a phonecall to their secret headquarters up in the mountains so they could give me my old number back. They also gave me my £12.75 of credit that was in the lost phone/SIM. Happy day!

Didn't do much on Saturday. Had lunch with my friend at an Italian place where the shade couldn't hold still in the wind. Then my friend took me to the British National Museum in the evening - was quite nice, they've got a lot of ancient stuff in there. I was counting the vertebrae on a Levantine skeleton which was on display. Oh yes. I got some photos with my hotshot mobile phone but sadly, I don't have a USB cable to download the pictures and my laptop's Bluetooth won't detect my mobile so I can't even use that to download the photos. Whatte nuisance.

I saw my friend Saad from Dubai yesterday. Met him at his Tube stop in north London, Golders Green. It's where all the yahudis live. We had Chinese for lunch and then went back to his place. I couldn't get the tube back to south London where my friend lives because we just missed the last train at 23:20, so we just went back to his, made some fried rice for supper and I slept over at his place.
When I left this morning, it was pissing down and I got soaked, waiting for the bus to Golders Green station.

I've been to two nightclubs here, G-A-Y and Heaven. Both were quite good, though Heaven was way too loud. I stayed in Heaven til like 5 AM the next morning, which was quite amazing given that I was absolutely drained by about 3.30. I'm tired of clubbing now. I've had enough. My feet are tired of it. My arms are tired of it. My neck is sore because of it. I just wanna sit down with Abhishek and Yousuf in Magic Planet's bowling alley/pool place, talk about totally random things over pizza or cheesecake or ice-cream and laugh like I haven't laughed in ages.
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London [May. 24th, 2008|09:40 am]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |London, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | grumpy]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |101.6 City FM from Dubai]

My final exams for first year finished on Thursday. I had the practical exam on Tuesday, went alright, I screwed up in a few places, but I reckon I'll pass. Then we had the first of the two multiple choice question [MCQ] exams on Wednesday - and when I say multiple choice, I really do mean multiple choice - they give us so many options, it's untrue! That exam went well.
The last exam which was on Thursday, was also an MCQ exam but it involves more critical thinking and the use of calculator. I usually like this one over the other, but the one we had on Thursday was mental rape. I walked out of the exam feeling like there were so many things that I was unsure of, despite having revised everything at least twice. But then everybody else felt like that too, so I wasn't the only one. Comforting, but not exactly since the possibility of failing first year medicine is now quite real and always frightening.
Even so, I think I can say that I'm one-fifth of a doctor now. Just four (long) years to go.

An hour after our exams ended, I was at the Central Station, waiting for at train to London. I'd booked the tickets ages ago and the prices for the 22nd had been amazingly cheap. On the train, I sat next to a guy named Edward and his mother. Edward was special needs and he had the most amazing things to say that made me laugh and took my mind off the bad exam.
When I was describing India to him, he said, "What makes my eyes go as green as an emerald is the number of gods you have in India!"
He spent a lot of time walking me through his favorite computer game.
Amazing guy.

Once we arrived at Kings Cross station in central London, I got a week's pass for the Tube and took the tube to my friend's at whose place I am right now.

On Friday morning, I checked my university e-mail and found out that the results for the Family Study a.k.a the Pregnant Lady Project, the biggest assignment of the year for first year medics - the results for that were up.
I got really excited because I'd been waiting for them, expecting really good grades because I'd put my heart and soul into it, referenced tens of journals, textbooks and websites in order to show that I know my stuff and to show off my referencing skills.
Good grades? We get marked and graded in three different categories: skills, knowledge and professionalism. They gave me an S [satisfactory] for skills, B [borderline fail] for knowledge and S for professionalism.
It's fine that they gave me an S for skills even though I'd word-processed and referenced my assignment perfectly. It's fine that they gave me an S for professionalism even though I'd been completely professional about everything not just in the written assignment, but also in my meetings with the pregnant mum.
What's not fine is the B for knowledge. Borderline fail! What was my knowledge so deficient in that they decided to give me such a humiliating grade?! I'd spent hours and hours in the library and on the Internet reading whole chapters and journal articles about a range of topics, trying to make sense of the statistics and such that I had no clue about before and used them in my assignment.
It just wasn't good for my self-esteem. I had a mini panic attack when I saw the results, it was just so hard to swallow. I was supposed to meet my cousins in central London but suddenly I wanted to dig a hole and bury myself in it. Especially when my friend from Newcastle texted me to say she'd got S, M (Merit) & S - and she'd started writing the essay a few days before the deadline.

Anyway, I went out to meet my cousins and their aunty in central London. I got off the Tube at Hyde Park Corner and then walked towards Buckingham Palace and met them on the way there. They were having the change of guards at Buckingham Palace [which looks quite slobby, to be honest]. They'd attracted a crowd of hundreds, mostly foreigners. We watched that for a bit and then walked towards Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. We crossed the Westminster Bridge to have lunch on the south bank of the Thames. Was quite good.
After lunch, we took a bus, walked across the London Bridge and then took the Tube to Tower Hill where the Tower of London is. When we got there, I put my hand in my right pocket to get my phone out to check for texts and missed calls.. but I realized it wasn't there. I had ANOTHER mini panic attack and realized I'd lost my mobile phone. I'm sure it fell out of my wide-mouthed pockets on the Tube. When we tried ringing it, it was switched off, probably because it was underground.
Somehow I got through looking at everything in the Tower of London, which would've been quite interesting if I'd paid full attention to it.
Sadly I don't have any pictures to post because, like a chump, I forgot my camera in Newcastle. What an idiot.

My friend whom I'm staying with took me out to the scene in London. It's obviously more crowded than the one in Newcastle. With better music.

The past two days just haven't been good for me. Today I'll buy myself a new mobile phone because I'm paralyzed without one. Surely after a difficult time comes an easy time, doesn't it? So there's something good in store for me?
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Grey's (blissful) Anatomy [May. 13th, 2008|11:58 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Dreams, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | happy]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Yaadon Ki Baraat - Chura Liya Hai]

I'm on a high right now, I don't know why.
I'm trying to put my finger on it now, but I dunno if I can. We had a three-hour anatomy revision session today, the second and final session put together by our way cool demonstrators (well, most of them). I'd covered the heart, the pelvis and perineum in the last session, so this time I did other parts of the body: the abdominal organs, then the thorax (ribs and lungs) and then finally the muscles of the abdomen - an hour on each.
I was quite perky during all three segments, albeit less so in the thorax because the thorax is just plain boring, to call a spade a spade. I answered most of the questions that the dems asked, either out loud or in my head.

It was after our dem for the thorax had finished running through everything with us and we still had some time to go before the next segment that I went over to Rupert's station. Rupert was my demonstrator for all the three dissections this term. Most of our demonstrators are doctors who have just graduated from med school and are doing these teaching rotations as part of preparation for a surgical career. Rupert's story is similar except that he says the more surgeons he meets, the less he wants to become one.
After our first dissection this term (it was about the anterior abdominal wall, I think), Rupert told me I was very keen and studious, so I said, "Oh I want to become a surgeon."
Ever since, Rupert's been really nice to me. He sort of told me about the whole process of applying for a position in the surgical specialty, about the kinds of things I might need to have on my resumé in order to have an edge over other applicants etc. It felt really good that someone was showing interest in me this way and helping clarify things for my future.

So anyway, today when I went over to his station, he was teaching another group of my medic mates the heart's anatomy. When he saw me there, behind everyone else, he asked, "Daniel, what are you doing here?"
"I love the heart!" I said, a bit too cheerfully.
"Do you know that there are only two places for cardio-thoracic surgeons every year?" he said to me.
"Two!"
Someone else said, "Yeah there's like seven of them in the whole country."
"Seven!".

Anyway. So that was that. I came home at 16:30 after the revision session and tried to revise some lung physiology but I was literally falling asleep reading my notes so I decided to do the clever thing and took a nap. I wanted to nap for just an hour but ended up sleeping for a good hour and half. No problem.

When I woke up, I made some coffee-hot-chocolate and started revising anatomy with a vengeance. At the back of my head I was daydreaming about being a surgeon. A cardio-thoracic surgeon, the best in the country. I felt like I knew everything and I was feeling really happy inside. I like anatomy a fair bit more than anything else in medicine but today I was absolutely loving it.

I dunno how I got into this state of mind. I was doing three things at once: revising my anatomy notes, daydreaming and singing along to the music playing from this laptop. I can't usually do that and I don't think I'll be able to do it tomorrow. It was really quite amazing.
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It's fine [May. 11th, 2008|02:26 am]
[Tags|, , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Guys, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | giddy]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Lata Mangeshkar - Yoon hee Koi]

Some time last week, I walked into my flat to see Laura sitting on the carpet right near the door and talking to the others. She was pointing to what looked like circular burn marks on the carpet at the entrance.

Laura told me we'd all been fined. When I opened the letter addressed to me (no, actually it's addressed to Daniyal Doud. Idiots.), it said, among other things, "Cigarette burns to common room carpet - cost to replace £607.62 inc. of VAT".
In my head I worked out that each of us would have to pay a little over a hundred quid. Shit. All that money I'd scraped together by working my tushie off in Subway so I could have some dosh to spend in Dubai.. all that would have to go into paying the fine.

Unless.
There's always an 'unless' in such situations.
Unless we appealed. Which we decided to do right then, even though the date for appeal mentioned in the letter was much later.
The five of us (Lucy wasn't there) walked to the reception and were taken to the manager's office. She sat us down and explained how the cleaner had found the burns on the carpet that morning. In our defense, we said that none of us in the flat smoked and we didn't let anyone smoke inside the flat. Laura did most of the talking, she's such a smooth-talker. She suggested that it could've been a cleaning liquid used by the cleaners that spilled onto the carpet and corroded it. But the manager said none of their cleaning materials were powerful enough to do that. Then Laura suggested that someone could've sprinkled a corrosive liquid through the letterbox as a prank or even an attack (oh the drama!) and we labored on that point for a while. In the end the lady said she'd call a carpet consultant (that job title makes me laugh) to analyze the burns and then tell us in a week whether we'd definitely be paying for the new carpet or not.
The manager seemed positive. She said she hadn't seen anything like this in all her 20 years' experience of managing these halls of residence. She said they'd be fair and if they felt that it wasn't our fault, then they wouldn't fine us for it.

Then on Thursday morning, when I came out of my room, the manager lady and another chap were sitting in our common room (which, coincidentally, was sparkling clean because of Rosanne's efforts). Laura was talking to them. They'd come to tell us that they couldn't decide what had caused the burns so they weren't gonna charge us for it. Yay!! I get to keep my beautiful, crisp, hard-earned £20 notes!

This is the sad reality of our halls of residence, our beloved and hugely popular Ricky Road flats. They slap fines on us often for no good reason e.g. having too much "recycling" (empty alcohol bottles, cardboard boxes etc.) in our common room.

In other news, it really does pour when it rains, doesn't it? I met a guy, a nice local lad, a couple of weeks ago and he's alright, but he doesn't keep in touch very well. He's quite a busy fellow, so that explains it. But I need some attention too. I'm supposed to see him again some time soon, but I doubt it's gonna happen because something new keeps coming up in his life that prevents him from meeting me. But I like him (and his house) so I'm being patient about it.
Then about a week ago, a random guy from Newcastle added me on Facebook. I didn't know who he was so we got talking. Last night I met up with him and his faghag. He's nice too. Before we said our goodbyes, his friends were trying to set us up on a meal date. I sort of agreed..
I dunno what I'm doing, to be honest. I like guy #1 and I don't think I should lead the second one on, it's just plain immoral.
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The return of the sun [May. 2nd, 2008|11:51 pm]
[Tags|, , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle Be Mine, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | excited]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |HaMekhashefot - 'Ad haOneg haBa]

It was sunny in Newcastle today. So sunny in fact that the sun poured in through my window early in the morning as it rose, leaving me no choice but to sleep with sunlight on my head.
I defied the BBC's forecast for rain today and went out wearing khaki shorts and sandals and a black top. Got some pictures of our springtime flora:



Here's a collage I made of of two pictures comparing the color image of the place across the medical school with its grayscale copy. Notice the posh cars that some of us have.






This the Ridley building in sepia. We have most of our seminars here, in little groups of 18 people.



We have a lot of these in the university, don't we?



And these.



The angel that stands guard over... the Haymarket Metro station!



The Church of St Thomas the Martyr, in black and white. The clock's a bit dodgy, it wasn't really 3.15 when I took the picture.




I had one thing on my timetable today, just one, and that wast the clinical skills session, abdomen exam. I felt one of my mates' kidneys. Or maybe that's what I thought it was.
After that, I went into town thinking I'd get my wages (today being Friday!) and then to buy my groceries for next week. I did get my wages, but my coworker who was on the phone with the assistant manager from the Subway outlet up the road on Gallowgate Street asked me if I could work right then. 2 to 6 PM, she said, so I said yes. I went over to Gallowgate where they were missing a worker. Worked there for two hours and then went back to the original outlet to work there for another two hours.

Back at home, I revised a bit of pharmacology and then went running. I run round the lake in Leazes Park once and then go up Richardson Road. On my route, near the lake was a group of boys on bicycles, not more than 11 or 12 years old (the boys, not the bikes). One of them, the medium-sized one, was yelling something at the top of his voice - you know how boys' unbroken voices become harsh when they yell - at another bunch of kids across the patch of grass.
As I went closer, I heard one of the other kids (of Afro-Caribbean descent) yelling, "Shut up, you white bastard!" to him.
He replied back, "Shut up, you black cunt!" with equal enthusiasm.
Ah how the little buds blossom so quickly!

Tomorrow's Saturday. I might see him again. Him.
עד העונג הבא. 'Ad ha'oneg haba'. Until the next pleasure.
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Gambler [Apr. 23rd, 2008|11:57 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Tyne, England, United Kingdom]
[מרגיש · Feeling | stupidly happy]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Ofra Haza - Latet]

I've been telling that dick-cheese story to everyone.. everyone finds it amusing that people actually do things like that. Fortunately(?) I haven't had any more customers like that.

On Monday, our gang from the IGF was invited to perform at the Sri Lanka Night at the Hancock pub for a reduced entry fee (which would all be going to charity anyway). The Hancock is quite small and under-lit, but we cleared chairs and tables to make sort of a "stage".



That's me at the back, getting ready to start and our guru in front of me. Photo courtesy Natasha.



That's everyone who was performing that night.. obviously, some of the people from the original IGF team aren't there. I love this little gang! :) Holly, the girl in front with brown hair was my partner for Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. I wasn't dancing in the bhangra bit this time around, but Payel, the girl in the white top was my partner for the bhangra in the IGF.


It was a nice gathering, not too many people, not too quiet, not too alcohol-centered, you know?

And apparently we made it on the cover of some random chick magazine:



This is from the end of the bhangra in the original IGF dance (notice the wooden floors of the City Hall's stage). The stupid month label is blocking mine and Payel's faces. It's ok.. maybe they just wanted my well-built, gorgeous body on the cover anyway.


Today being Wednesday, we had the afternoon off, so Mo, Dopey Nav and I went to Pizza Hut at The Gate for the pizza buffet. We noticed another group of desi lads sitting there, also stuffing pizza down their respective throats. We're so predictable, us desis.
Now at the buffet table, whichever pan has a green-colored handle on the spatula usually has a vegetarian pizza in it. So when I tasted ham in my second helping of the pizza, I didn't stop, thinking it must just be a funny taste. Then I saw the ham! Ew ew ew! Not only had I just eaten part of an animal, I'd eaten a part of an animal which I'd been brought up to loathe and associate with all sorts of filthy things. Haraam, haraam!
What cheered me up later was a little bit of gambling. Nav wanted to get a birthday present for his flatmate and there was one of those machines there in which you control a robotic arm and then let go and the arm claws up a random soft toy. Nav put in 50p and tried to get one but couldn't because I told him to stop the arm too, erm, prematurely. He had another go.. went forwards but stopped too soon, so I hit the button to make it go sideways and then let go at a random point. And it got the soft toy! Yay!
That's not even the best part... we were walking towards the escalators to go downstairs when Mo discovered an envelope attached to the soft toy. When we opened it, there was a £10 note in it! Realizing the vastness of the treasures that lay within the machine, we rushed back to it and wasted like £2.50 on it, trying in vain to get another cash-bloated soft toy.. but it didn't happen. I realized why gambling is so addictive.. you always feel the push to play more, bet more.
Even so.. Nav agreed to split the £10 with me because it was his 50p and my effort that got us the money (and the accompanying soft toy). Jolly good!

Continuing my own tradition, I have a crush on (another!) straight bloke now. Well, I have a crush on two or three at the moment, but I seem to be focussed on this one more. Maybe cuz he's desi. Maybe because he's a medic? Either which way, I need to get clobbered with a dustpan on the backside so I can learn not to fall for straight guys.
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Want some cheese? [Apr. 13th, 2008|11:56 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | happy]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Qayamat se Qayamat tak - Akele Hain To Kya Ghum Hai]

Business was pretty cold on Saturday night, dunno why, we didn't have the usual queue of people waiting for subs, just spurts of customers every now and then. Towards the end of the night, a couple of lads came in and ordered sandwiches. I was making the second guy's sandwich and as per routine, I asked him, "D'you want cheese on that, mate?"
Imagine what he did!
He said, "My dick here wants cheese." When I looked up to give him a proper dramatic Meredith-Grey style stare, my eyes passed his, er, pelvic region and he had whipped his cock out and was sort of raping the glass barrier (thank God for the barrier!) between him and the food. Ughh!
And the bouncer (yes we have a bouncer on Friday and Saturday nights because it can get well rowdy) did nothing at all, just stood there smiling at it.
When they were leaving, I told the guy to wash his hands before eating and he stuck his hand in his pants again, whipped his buddy out and started wanking it right there on the doorstep, letting the whole world see it and driving business away from us.
He wasn't circumcised. If you're gonna show me your cock, mate, at least make sure it's cut.

Today I went to watch 21 with my friend Payel. Good movie, I found the lead actor really hot because of the beauty spot on his cheek, which reminds me of the beauty spot on the face of the guy I'm currently stalking on Facebook.

All but one of my flatmates are back from their Easter vacations. The new term starts tomorrow. I'm gonna have to re-learn living in messy conditions again.
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Loneliness [Apr. 2nd, 2008|11:45 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcaslte upon Tyne, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | flirty]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Achinoam Nini - Now Forget]

I worked my ass off the weekend that my parents left. It was Easter weekend and the following Monday was a bank holiday. But I was called to work (on a bloody boring shift, mind you) even on a 'bank holiday'.

When I got paid on Friday, the first thing I did with my pay was go to Grainger Market to get an apron for myself for work. The trousers that I work in are nice trousers and they're my own and I don't like ruining them with sauces that leak out because of my manhandling of the squeezers, so an apron was long due. I got a plain black one for like £4.
After that I went to Eldon Square Mall to blow some money away on clothes. Topman (how's that for a covert homosexual name?) had a sale so I went there first, even though I'd planned to get something from Officers' Club. I got a nice tee (size XS, to show off my non-existent biceps) and a pair of bootcut jeans. I felt like one of those metrosexual guys on TV who go around shopping for clothes all the time, looking pretty.
Finally I went to Primark to get that military camouflage hoodie that I had my eye on for like a week. I got that in small as well.

Saturday night's shift was quite ugly. I worked from 18:00 to 04.30 (05.15 to be honest). In the first two hours, some guy brought in four really rough-looking people and bought five sandwiches. Later, my coworker who'd had a chat with the fellow, told me that the four people he bought sandwiches for were homeless and the bloke himself was visiting from Leeds. Bless him, there's a serious shortage of people like him in this world and I'm quite guilty of ignoring homeless people myself.
Compare that with the bitch who walked in around 03:00, ordered two subs and stood at the till for ages searching for coins to pay for her sandwiches with. When I got visibly annoyed (because I was working at the till), her friend whispered to her, "He's getting irritated."
It pissed her off that I was getting irritated, so she deliberately took longer to find her coins. I turned to my coworker and said loudly, "I think I'll just cancel her order and take the next one's payment," just to piss her off and he replied back, "Yeah, I think that's the right thing to do." And I did as I said. She got quite annoyed and started yelling. I yelled back and told her that there's a huge queue behind her. She asked for my name, which I gave her. As if she's gonna report me! She threw money at me and told me to keep the change (quite a big amount) for being rude, but I just gave the change back to her.

Not much has happened since then. I got a train ticket to London, leaving Newcastle like an hour after my finals finish. I might get to meet the lad I'm flirting back and forth with right now :)
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Lake Lekha [Mar. 23rd, 2008|11:59 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | sleepy]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Nelly Furtado - All Good Things Come To An End]

My parents were getting quite bored in Newcastle because, frankly, there isn't much here for them to do. So last Monday, I got train tickets for the three of us to go to Windermere which is in the Lake District in the north-west of England.

It took a little less than three hours on the train. We had to change trains at Carlisle and then at Oxenholme.



One of the trains leaving Newcastle Central Station. I really like sepia for some reason.



Ammi and Papa, all covered up.



Peeking at the countryside.


When we reached Windermere, we went straight to the hotel - Cedar Manor Hotel - to dump our bags in the room that I'd booked. The room was quite nice, smelled good because of the air freshener that the owner had plugged in. I made some tea and hot chocolate. We sat around for a bit and then went to the closest lake shore.



That's the hotel we stayed in.. more like a mansion with more rooms than the owner needed. There was some repair work going on, hence the machinery.



Swan! Abundant bird, I must say.



Abandoned boat house, I think.


Originally, we'd planned to stay only one day - arrive on Tuesday, stay the night and leave the next day. Once we were in Windermere, we impulsively decided to stay longer. So I rang my manager at Subway and told him I wouldn't be able to do my shift on Wednesday night.

The next day, i.e., Wednesday, we walked to the nearby town of Bowness where we took a boat ride on the lake. Frankly, the Brienzersee in Switzerland is a more beautiful lake, but oh well.



The weak sunlight, poking out from behind the clouds. It was well cold on the deck and the top, so we stayed downstairs in the heated cabin. Whatte fun.



After that we got some food.. which the swans wanted to steal. They were literally standing behind us boldly as we were trying to eat.. greedy birds. We walked around Bowness for a bit and then went back to the hotel.
Not being able to revise very efficiently in the hotel room, I decided to trek up a hill, all the way to Orrest Head to get a better view of the lake. The trek was long and there were hardly any people on the way up. At the hill's peak, the view was quite breathtaking.



That's not all of Lake Windermere, just one end of it. My camera doesn't do panoramic pictures or I'd have gotten a good picture of the whole lake.



Sun in the trees. Pluck it out!


We came back to Newcastle on Thursday. I had shifts at Subway on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

Ammi and Papa left Saturday evening. I was mildly depressed from the time that I saw them off at the airport until the time I had to go to work. I was listening to two beautiful songs that my brother sent me: Ek Woh Din Bhi Thhay [Such were those days] sung by Rekha, penned by Gulzaar and Ghuncha Koi Mere Naam Kar Diya [A bouquet dedicated to me] sung by Mohit Chauhan of the band Silk Route.

Work was tiring. My shift finished at 04:30 this morning. I woke up later in the morning from a dream about Italian BMT subs and tubs of ham and pepporoni. Subway has taken over my life!
There were funny moments too.. like when a bunch of Polish people walked in and sat down at a table. Two of their group were ordering for all of them and the woman whom I was serving kept saying 'Yas yas, everything but no cheese' every time I asked her if she wanted a particular vegetable in the sandwich. I heard her when she said that, but kept asking her again and again just to hear her say it again. It made me giggle so much!
"Tomatoes, ma'am?"
"Yas yas, everything, but no cheese."
"Ok. Red onions?"
"Yas yas, everything!"
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Teflon [Mar. 16th, 2008|11:48 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | bitchy]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |David Broza - Bedouin Love Song]

I finally got paid on Friday. I didn't realize they were paying me more for working after midnight.. so I sort of got more than what I was expecting.. which is always a good thing, in terms of money, eh? I'd decided that I'd shop for groceries with the money that I'd earned and then give the rest to my parents (who arrived on Saturday from Dubai) because, well, it's just tradition to present your first earnings to your parents.

It didn't go as planned, obviously. Excited about getting paid such a fat amount, I went out for a friend's birthday to Wokmania, a Chinese/Thai restaurant and blew £10 on the buffet. Totally worth it, partly because of the chocolate fountain. Oh yes. I didn't feel so guilty about spending this time, probably 'cause I'd earned the money myself.

My shift at Subway on Friday night wasn't as glamorous as the previous ones. I had to work downstairs to try and scrub the trays and plastic tubs clean. The stupid baking trays in which they bake their bread are so fucking difficult to clean because of the big fat patches of bread that get stuck to them in the oven. Ever heard of teflon, man? Use non-stick trays, for ease of cleaning.

Then my parents arrived on Saturday evening. Their hotel is two metro stations away from me, on this really spunky road in Jesmond.

Today I took them to town and they shopped. Then we had lunch at Pizza Hut.

While they napped in the afternoon, I went back to my flat and revised a bit of biochemistry from last semester, and outside my room, my flatmates cleaned up like crazy because our flat's scheduled to be inspected on Thursday. I'm quite sure we'll get fined because there's some damage, none of which I could've remotely caused, and we can't cover it up satisfactorily. Drunken stupors are not fun when you get fined heavily for the wreckage.

I took my parents for a walk on the quayside. Showed them the Tyne and Millennium Bridge, and the Sage too. Then we went to a bar called Pitcher and Piano on the bank. The ambience was nice, we sat and chatted about money, Dubai and politics for a while.
Then, against my better judgment, we went to an "Indian Cuisine" restaurant. One of the things we called for was paneer makhani which is supposed to be salty and slightly spicy. They got us some really bad, sweet orange goo with paneer soaked in it. I asked the waiter to spice it up a bit, but it didn't help the sweet taste.. for the simple reason that they'd added sugar to it. Ewwh.
When I was done trying to eat, I asked the manager (who happened to be an Indian) to box the daal and paneer up for us. He hesitated and then ridiculously said he'd put both in the same box. When I said I wanted them in separate boxes, he said they don't do that there(!) That was enough to blow my fuse, and not in the good way. I told him what I thought of his paneer makhani and that I didn't expect it to be sweet. The bastard answered back and said that this is England, not India and they serve "English-style food" here. Disregarding all rules of customer service, he waved the menu card in my face saying that I should read the menu before ordering. I dunno what he meant by that because the menu did not say that the dish would be prepared using sugar and it had a little chilli pepper beside it on the menu card.
On the way out I told him that if he wanted to serve "English-style food", he should set up a fish-and-chips stall outside. And I also told him that he wouldn't have talked to me like that if I were white. Which is quite true, really. Brown people have racist attitudes towards their own race, especially in the presence of the Supreme Persons of White Complexion. To that, he replied that white people don't complain about the food like I did. Yes, you monkey, because they can't be expected to know what Indian food really tastes like.

I was in quite a bad mood after giving him a piece of my mind like that but it's all ok now. I might have some gaajar ka halwaa that my parents got for me.
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Six inch or foot-long? [Mar. 8th, 2008|11:15 pm]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | stressed]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Etti Ankri - Millionim]

I feel like so much has happened since I last wrote, but really it all just happened in the last week.

Last weekend, I helped my friend Payel move into her flat which is up the road from mine. Since she's renting it out from two guys who lived there, there was filth (vodka bottles, condom packets, hair - possibly pubic) all over the place. We scrubbed and vacuumed and swept. I got toilet-cleaning liquid all over my right hands from scrubbing the bathtub with it, so I had to clip my nails, 'cause duhh, didn't wanna ingest random chemicals and die.

I've somehow managed to finish the 3000-word report I had to write, about the experience of pregnancy, birth and child care for the lady who was assigned to me. It was surprisingly easier than the 1250-word cunt of an essay that I have to write about how a particular social factor (I chose socio-economic class, like the most of the cows students in my herd year) affects pregnancy etc. I hate sociology, it will make my hair turn white.

I've started working part-time for Subway. I worked my first shift on Tuesday evening, 18:00 to midnight. Was quite quiet, so it was good for me 'cause I got to learn. I make six-inch subs really well but the foot-longs hate me because as soon as I'm about to close them and slice them down the middle, they break open and spill out all their contents, usually some carnivore food like meatballs.

My coworkers are nice. One of them, Adam, is really awesome. He taught me most of the things I needed to know and showed me around (there's more to a Subway than the food!). He cracks silly jokes one after the other, plays rock music on the stereo and asks me if I know the song to which I reply, "No, I don't." Whenever he's serving someone, he'll ask them, "Working or drinking tonight?" and then get a conversation started with them. He makes it look easy 'cause when I tried it, I came out looking a chump, trying to ask the customer where he works and whether he wants tomatoes in his sub at the same time.

The pay is lower than what I expected, but it's ok.

I was working on Friday night/Saturday morning and because the Subway where I work is right next to a couple of nightclubs and The Gate (which, I should add, is Newcastle's sorry answer to the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai :|), we got some really drunk people coming in and ordering subs which they were most certainly gonna regurgitate later, either for chewing the cud or for general throwing up purposes. One guy came in and asked for a footlong something and I made it for him. I put the sub near the till where we usually put it while we wait for them to hand us their dosh. He stretched his arm out and I thought he was paying, but he just grabbed the sub and ran off. Maadarchod.
It's on the CCTV cameras so the manager can't blame me for it.

Everybody seems to love my Subway tee-shirt that I'm required to wear to work. It's a silly tee, advertising the sub of the day but it's in demand.. last night I was walking home after the shift and as I was walking down between blocks 5 and 6, I smiled at the guy and girl who were sitting on the steps and they started talking to me, asked me if I had a "good night" etc. and I told them where I work. The guy got really excited and asked me if I could have a tee-shirt like mine. I thought he was just joking at first but then he took my number to ring me in a few days' time to claim his tee-shirt off me. Seriously. Then he asked if he could get a Happy Meal at Subway and I tried to explain that Subway isn't McDonald's.. but obviously, he was a bit pissed and he kept on saying he wanted a happy meal from Subway, so I said, "Yeah, you can have a meal and I'll make you happy if you come to the back with me." The girl lost it. She was like ROFL.. literally!
Then when I got to my flat I saw that my flatmates and co. had let hell loose on the flat. Adrian saw my tee-shirt and asked me if I work at Subway, to which I said yes. He said he wanted my tee-shirt (I can only hope he meant that sexually) and that he'd buy it from me. What idiots.

The week ahead is the last one before the month-long(!) Easter break begins. I can't wait for two of my flatmates to leave, I'm actually quite sick of those two now. I dunno what I'll do for a month in Newcastle.. I wanna pop down to London to visit a certain queen, but nothing's certain yet.
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Al-gore [Mar. 3rd, 2008|11:58 pm]
[Tags|, , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Tyne, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling | disgusted]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Sarit Hadad - Beyn Kol ha-Balagan]

I don't want people to assume things about Saudi Arabia because I know what the media say about it. But anyway, here goes:

Man cuts off his own nephew's head in a mall.

I don't like posting news on my blog, but this is just ugly. He was just 18 months old, man. What could he have possibly done?!
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IGF [Feb. 21st, 2008|11:53 pm]
[Tags|, , , , ]
[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Wind, England, UK]
[מרגיש · Feeling |high]
[מקשיב ל · Listening To |Etti Ankri - Eshebo]

IGF. Not Insulin-like Growth Factor.
IGF. International Grand Festival.

Tonight was the performance we'd been practising for since November. It was a rushed affair, 'cause it was done with in two hours. Our performance, one of the longest, was right before the interval and lasted 15 minutes.
The mayor was there in the audience too. So was one of my pharmacology lecturers.
Later I found out that there were quite a few of my friends in the audience.

There was a big, carpeted changing room at the City Hall where all the performers got changed. I especially loved it when the Latin Ballroom guys came in bare-chested wearing underwear and grass-skirts. Seriously.

The first performance was by a band called SDF (or FDF, can't remember). Their first song was called 'Shove it'.. shove it, shove it, shove it in the oven. Ridiculously funny. Oh and one of their band members must have been vitamin-D deficient, 'cause his legs were just so bendy.

We had the four dances in order. Mauja was the best one by far. We simply rocked it. They simply loved it. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom was pretty friggin' good too. I got most of the steps right and I spun Holly in all the right directions at all the right times. They woo-hooed so much and applauded more - probably because half the crowd was desi and they recognized the song.

After the show, we drove to Tup Tup, a nightclub. It was £5 for entry, so I just decided not to go 'cause it's just not worth it. I got a hummus salad wrap from a Lebanese restaurant on the way back, though. Mouth-watering. I made such a fool out of myself trying to talk to the cashier in Arabic, 'cause I've blatantly forgotten all my Arabic. He said he'd lived in Dubai too.
It's funny, I met another guy from Dubai today. He was in the audience in the show and I met him in the interval, when he was talking to my friend and partner in bhangra, Payel. He said 'yalla' which kinda gave away the fact that he grew up in the Middle East. Nice fellow. There are more Dubaiians in this city than I thought!

The hot water and heat are back. But so is the 70-km/h wind.
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Hell freezing over [Feb. 20th, 2008|11:48 pm]
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[?איפה בעזאזל · Where the hell? |Newcastle upon Ice, England, UK]