I'm going back to the Land of Sand

Several years ago, I boarded a plane in a dirty little airport in Abu Dhabi and settled back in my squished-yet-cushioned seat for what was going to be a very long flight - via Amsterdam, on to San Francisco. Now it appears that five years of trying to get all that of the Middle Eastern deserts out of my ears, I have an itch to go back. And so shall it be. That itch shall be scratched.

Next week I shall be boarding yet another plane. This one bound for Bahrain, via where who knows?! An email, a phone call, and a job offer later, I find myself headed back to the hottest place on the planet. Sure, we're going into winter, but all that means is a little less sizzle - until May. Will keep yinz updated.

It's called urban camping

And it sucks. It's like being back in college.

A couple weeks back my electricity was switched off. Turns out I forgot to pay my bill. Hey, it happens. Sometimes you think, "Today I shall pay my electric bill", and then something comes up and you forget and you think, "Ok, I'll do it tomorrow".

Unbeknownst to me, my bill was a whopping $1400. Have I been paying for the entire city's electric? Not cool. Either way,  I get home from work, walk into my sweat box, have a shower (candle light - it's all very romantic) and try to fall asleep.

I finally realized where that rancid odor was coming from. When your fridge isn't running, it can't keep its contents fresh. As such, I had to clean out the mold forest that had devoured my fridge. It's almost paid up so hopefully I'll have lights and air conditioning for the weekend.

British vs. Italian

So a couple weeks back I started working at this new Italian restaurant in my neighborhood. Small. Cozy. Good food. I'm not gonna lie, at the end of the first couple shifts, I wanted to hack off my own feet with a butter knife. Standing and running and slipping and bending over for about six hours straight tends to do damage to one's feet.

But now I'm getting used to it - and the nice regular pay check.

Stop by for a munch, Italian-style. The British may have cornered the bangers & mash market, but we're working on conquering the salmon, pasta, and baciole markets.

HOT HOT HOT

I remember when I lived in the Middle East, the temperature would often soar above 50 degrees Celsius. And if you were in say, Dubai, where the humidity is 100%, well, you can imagine the heat.


So I'm left puzzled and perplexed at how meteorologists and weather experts are saying this is going to be the hottest summer on record. Come on, really? Today in Pittsburgh it's just 34 degrees Celcius. Sure, it's a little toasty, but seriously, it's not that bad. Hop on an Emirates flight and spend a day or two in the Land of Sand. THEN you'll know what hot is.

How can something so deadly be so beautiful?

Another week, another volcanic eruption in Iceland.

I was speaking to a friend yesterday about this beautiful puff of smoke up there on the very top of the world and he asked how we pissed off Mother Nature so badly as to have random tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides, and extreme seasons.

My only thought to appease this Mother Nature person is to sacrifice a virgin by tossing her into the volcano. Only problem is, this is 2011. Where do you find a virgin?

The end of the world is nigh

Question: Why is everyone so obsessed with the apocolypse, or armageddon? They say the world will end tomorrow. It was also supposed to end in 2000. And according to those smart Mayan folk, you have until the 21st of December 2012 to get all your Sodom and Gomorrah desires dealt with. 

I've got too much going on to even think about. If it ends, it ends. Am I supposed to plan for it? Make provisions by stock-piling cans of beans and soup in my basement? Should I try escape it? What fun would that be? Imagine it for a minute, you're the sole survivor of the apocolypse. You crawl out of your bunker like a squirrel crawls out of its' tree hole at the end of winter only to find...nothing. If it's the end of the world, there's nothing. No trees, no Rite Aids, no gas stations, no McDonald's. Just nothingness. 

Heaven? Hell? Yowza, this is getting to deep for me. Let's see what The Onion has to say.   

Death smells like moth balls

Sick men are like babies. Scratch that. Sick men ARE babies. A persistent fever of 103 never killed anyone, geez. Suck it up. But either way, I decided that should I survive this douse of bubonic plague, I was going to go coffin shopping. It's kinda like shoe shopping, but it's not.



So I shopped around. This is the type of casket I want. Very smart. This is the corpse carriage I want our Lord and Saviour to see me in when She greets me at the pearly gates. Very smart, it makes a smacking statement.

Then I looked in my wallet and realized this is probably all I could afford - a d-i-y version of a pine box. Pffffff. Just throw me in an oven. I probably wouldn't even feel the heat given my persistent fever of 103.