Forever Tainted

Thursday evening I had to leave my office for the pharmacy because I had what I thought was a tooth ache. It was severe, anyone who knows me knows I don't leave work for anything at all. Anyway, I picked up oragel, and a bunch of serious cleaning crap thinking maybe I was getting a gum infection. When I got home I scrubbed the shit out of my mouth. I woke up the next morning (Friday) hurting even worse with a nasty swelling under my tongue. I called a dentist and made an emergency appointment for that day. When I got there, the dentist had a bunch of x-rays done, counted my teeth, and told me I had perfect teeth. The pain he said could be caused by a damaged or ruptured saliva gland. He gave me antibiotics to take 3 times a day said he'd see me again in 8 days, and sent me home, with nothing for the pain. It cost me $200 - and he didn't even clean my teeth.

I woke up Saturday morning (after taking the stupid antibiotics as he'd prescribed) wishing someone would cut my fucking head off the pain was so bad. My sister took me to Emergency in the hospital. I have a stone (like a kidney stone) in my saliva gland. They gave me a shot of Morphine and examined my mouth. They put me on antibiotics by IV, and had me go back each day at 9am and 9pm to get another dose. In between I was given a stronger antibiotic by pill to take every day at 3pm. For the pain, they gave me T3's (which relieved pain for about 20 minutes) and Oxycontin (which relieved pain for about an hour). My chin swelled up so it looked like I had a fucking Adam's Apple in the wrong spot.

On Monday, I went to Vancouver and saw an oral surgeon, who was meant to cut the fucking thing out of my mouth. He couldn't because it was so inflamed. Instead, he upped the dose of Anitibiotics by IV and sent me back home - and to the hospital twice a day. Finally, on Wednesday the swelling stared going down, the pain started to subside, and they were able to take me off IV, and god damn it feels nice to take a shower without a fucking needle stuck in my arm to get stuck in my hair! I'm on oral antibiotics 4 times a day until it's down far enough to operate or the stone passes on it's own. I still have a swelling under my tongue. And I still have all the pain killers in case I need them. I've also been put on some other drug to help with the inflammation.

All I can say is it fucking hurt. But as if all that isn't bad enough, now that I'm better I had to turn into a masochist it seems. This morning, I managed to fall down my wooden steps ripping the shit out of the entire right side of my body. It doesn't end there, either. While leaving my sisters house and getting into my car, I convinced myself for a moment I would be able to multitask... Surely, I should have been able to open the car door and wave at the neighbor simultaneously -- but hell no... I smashed the left side of my face into the car door. I am one big, HUGE walking fucking bruise it seems.

Oh, and we currently have blizzard conditions of wind chills reaching -20, winds expected to be at 90 km/h, and snow bringing visibility to about zero. And I don't have snow tires on my new car.

When it snows, it really fucking dumps.

Sodomy Sentence Reduced to Molestation ~*Gulf News

"The convict's lawyer, Ali Al Abbadi, argued: "My client didn't sodomise the schoolboy... the forensic report confirmed that the boy was not sodomised (there were no signs of any intercourse) but the examination showed that there were signs of sexual interaction which occurred due to possible molestation.""

What I want to know is exactly what examinations can determine whether a person has actually been penetrated, or just “molested?” Sounds like a crock of shit to ignorant little me. Any rapist/child-molester deserves capital punishment.

And while I’m on the topic of child abuse, watch this movie (the whole thing available in parts on YouTube). It’s heartbreaking.

Yesterday, the road report said the temperature was 2 degrees, at noon. I find that hard to believe because the chill of the breeze seemed to slice though my clothing and into my skin. I was almost sure I’d wake up this morning to find a coat of white snow covering everything in sight. The mountains surrounding this little town have been capped in snow for a couple of weeks now. It’s creeping in.

I hate the cold. And it doesn’t help that the sun seems to start setting around 4pm. By 5 you feel as though it’s about 11pm – time for bed; when really, you haven’t even had dinner yet. Winter is depressing for me. The next few months will not be easy.

It all started on Monday night when my father called to tell me my mom was in the hospital. According to him, she’d been admitted for pneumonia/bronchitis and was detoxing at the same time. It was too late for me to get there, as the ferries stop trips early in the evening. First thing Tuesday morning I called my office to see if I could get the day (or a few days) off to go and visit her. At less than 100lbs (45.45 kgs) my mother is on the verge of vanishing into nothing even without illness. Death was the first thought that came to my mind.

I couldn’t reach my boss, or her daughter. Almost coincidentally, they were both in the hospital as my boss had been suffering severe chest pains that morning. My shift was from 3pm until 11pm on Tuesday and I had no choice but to go in. By the time they got out of the hospital and were accessible, it was too late again for me to take a trip to the island. I did however get the Wednesday and Thursday off, swapping shifts with a colleague of mine. So I went home from work that night thinking I’d get a little sleep and then jump on the first ferry in the morning. But sleep wouldn’t come. Instead, I spent the night tossing and turning, jumping up for a smoke here and there, until 3am when I got in the shower and quickly packed whatever I thought I’d need. I was at my nieces house before 4am, ready to take her to visit her grandma too.

We made it to my mom in the hospital around 10.30am. She was shocked to see us. But for the first time in over a year, she welcomed my presence. She was thankful for the time we’d taken to go out there, she was thankful for the flowers, she was thankful to have someone to play cards with in the hospital. For the first time, she resembled that best friend of mine from so long ago. She hardly had a voice, but was in good spirits. She’d been answering the hospital phones, because the place was so busy there never seemed to be a nurse around. We spent the day with her in the hospital, listened to her talk, walked around with her until her doctor came and told her she could leave. He made me listen to the final lecture before we left though. And that was a lecture that for a moment, seemed to make my mother want to push me away.

It turned out she had gone into the hospital on her own, pissed drunk, asking for help for her alcoholism. The other illnesses had been discovered and treated the week before. She had been chemically detoxed and now, simply had to follow it up by not drinking and attending counselling for both her alcoholism and metal state. As the doctor talked, my mom’s eyes looked either directly at him, like an obedient child agreeing to do whatever he said, or at the ground. She could not look at me. She did not want me to know she had finally admitted to having a problem. I acted oblivious to what the doctor said, hoping to restore my mother’s good mood before leaving. And it seemed to work.

I asked that she attend the meeting he’d set for her the next day and she agreed. When she was discharged, she asked me if I had an extra pair of pants, because she had made a mess of hers. In my car I found I’d only packed the purple flannel kitten print pyjamas I’d stolen from her years ago. She giggled as I gave them back and she dressed herself in them. It was really nice to finally see my mother remotely happy and accepting of at least some of her issues.

We went for dinner with my father and brother. All the while both boys seemed to be pushing her buttons. My niece and I both gave the boys shit for it. Both men have been treated like shit for the last few years, and they have learned to cope by joking, or poking fun at her. Habits die hard. But she had just gotten out of the hospital and she was taking the first step to getting better. It wasn’t the time. And personally, I found it awfully disgusting.

My niece and I left the island and were back in Squamish just after 11pm. I had to run into my office because all hell had broken out during the shift that was supposed to be mine. A little clean up help was needed. When I finally got home, I slept like someone had hit me over the head with a hammer. I was fucking exhausted.

The next morning I woke up and tried to call mom. I got my brother. Mom had taken to the bottle again. And instead of making her appointment she was out running around with my dad. He wasn’t supposed to know about the treatment, by her request so even though it had been whispered to him, he didn’t say a word about it.

I've talked to my mom twice since. She has called me. But she says nothing about the treatment, nothing about the appointments she misses. She simply thanks me for taking the time to be with her while she was in the hospital and talks like all is normal.

There are a lot of other areas of my life that have been moving rapidly, but I haven’t had the chance to clean my house let alone organize my thoughts on it all. All I can say is despite the depressing reality that is my family, life still looks good. The only complaint I really have is how much I miss my son.

I have been incredibly ill pretty much since my last posting here. A lot of funny little things have happened that I haven’t had the energy to write about. In particular, I’m talking about my mom and how strange she really has become.

Now that the mediation is over, and the papers are in the making, she’s acting like it’s a new beginning with my father. She’s friendly with him, has invited him on a trip to Thai Land after Christmas (she’s offering to pay – with money that was once theirs but is now hers), and is convinced that the two of them should start counselling. What makes all this strange is the fact that she’s spent the best part of the last two years insisting that she was leaving him, making his life hell, and fighting to separate all assets so that she has her own little piece. Don’t most couples consider counselling and vacations prior to legal separation of assets? Aren’t lawyers and courts, and mediators the last resort when all is said and done in a relationship? And does my mother have any real recollection of the shit she’s done in the past to her entire family? My father wants to stay on good terms with her, but as of now he still has no intention of getting romantically involved with her again.

My intuition says that they spent 15 years together, and chances are they will get back together soon enough – despite the fact that my mother is not the same woman she once was. My intuition says the habit of being with one another for so long is still under both of their skins and now, since my mother cannot pose any legal threat to my father, at least not once the papers are signed, they could find some sort of comfort in something similar to the norm they once shared.

In the meantime, my grandmother is pissed about the results of the mediation and how my mother ‘short-changed’ herself. And all the while she’s trying to convince my mom that the two of them should take a trip to Las Vegas together – which confirms our suspicions as to why grandma was of no help when my father and I tried to contact her as my mom’s symptoms started appearing a year and a half ago. If anything, that cunt helped convince my mother that she needed to separate from my dad and all her medical, psychological and addictive problems would vanish with him. The selfish bitch has only ever been looking out for herself and what she may get from the legal separation. I don’t believe I’ve ever known someone so evil in my life.

And perhaps the most bizarre of all, is my mother’s mention of Dubai, and my son. She’s mentioned she may buy both her and I tickets to back so we could visit my son. Of course, none of this was ever said to me and I myself am not ready to be in Dubai, and would weary of travelling there (or anywhere for that matter) with my mom. Who the hell knows what kind of problems she could cause? In the past year she has suggested kidnapping my baby and smuggling him out of the country more than once. That’s not something I’m interested in, and not something I would dare risk. And let’s not forget that chances are, my mom couldn’t get back into Dubai if she tried – as she’s got a credit card there she failed to pay. When this is mentioned to her, she insists that she gave me the money to pay it off, which of course is not true. In fact, she took out a bank loan here to pay it off, but I never saw a dollar of that money as she pissed it away with copious amounts of other money, while I continued to make payments on the card while I was in Dubai.

It’s all a big mess. And my words are coming out like little assholes, not one of them wanting to flow well with another. So I best stop writing now, before my fever fully takes over and I lose all thought.

...is what it’s costing my father to secure more than 2 million dollars in personal assets and his sanity, with the end of the mediation process which took place earlier today. It’s most likely also going to be what kills my mother.

It’s all almost over. An interim agreement has been signed while the legal papers are now in the process of being drawn up. The process took two lawyers and a mediator, in addition to my parents. My mother’s words were so incoherent that she had the room talking in circles more often than not, stating irrelevant nonsense as facts, such that according to her I am not living happily here in Squamish, but rather I’m living in Delta with some guy. Or that my father didn’t transfer more than $100,000 to my Dubai account for the purchase of my apartment but rather, just $10,000 dollars. All irrelevant details aside, it looks like this may actually be the start to the end. Just a few more weeks and all papers will be signed, and my mother will be 90K richer with no restrictions.

It’s not going to take her long to piss that away. She’ll drink it up, possibly take her mother to Reno or something like that, perhaps buy more crap that she doesn’t need and won’t ever open. My bet is, it will all be gone in a few short months – and that’s only if she doesn’t kill herself with it before she pisses it all away. And that is my worst fear.

It’s all really sad for me. I’m glad to learn it’s finally almost over. I’m glad my father isn’t going to lose anything he actually cares about. I’m mortified at the thought of my mother having such a large amount of money at her whim – we’ve seen how’s she’s reacted to mass amounts of money at her disposal during the last year and a half. It’s also heartbreaking that I know their relationship is beyond repair, and despite the promise to consider marriage counselling, my father has long since moved on now and is seeing someone else. And the damage my mother did to the entire family is beyond reconciliation. Selfishly, I can’t help but wonder if I’m going to lose my father now as when I moved off the island I recognized the fact that I’d already lost my mother to her insanity.

It scares me a little. Ok, it scares me a lot.

I had a great day today. But this news now... now, I’m not feeling so great at all.

Yesterday, I woke up and left for work as usual. It’s was just past 6am, and for the first time since I got here, I had to idle my car for a good 10 minutes so the ice, not frost but thin layer of ice, would melt off my windshield. It’s getting fucking cold. Soon, everything will be covered in a pristine white blanket of snow. I am not looking forward to it.

I pop into the UAE blogs less frequently these days. The stereotypical bullshit bores me. I can’t help but wonder where the curiosity, flare, even uniqueness of UAE bloggers have gone in general. I guess with the demise of the infamous blogs like Balushi, or Sex & Dubai, the entire community suffered. It’s a pity really, because once upon a time, the UAE blogging scene was entertainment. Or perhaps it’s just me and how much change I’ve been subjected to?

I’m finally learning the value of the dollar, and what it’s like to not really have enough. I’m finally learning that life really is what I make it. Which reminds me, if you have an hour or so, watch this clip and all the subsequent ones (if you haven’t already seen the movie):

This is the first of 12 or so clips on Youtube for the movie, ‘What the bleep do we know’.


My mom is still crazy, my dad is still fighting the battle. I believe right now, my mother is being charged with credit card fraud for using my dad’s credit card without his knowledge. It’s the card company themselves who are pressing the charges and not necessarily my father. In addition to all of that, there is question as to whether or not I’ll be selling my flat in Dubai. The expenses of the separation are far beyond what my father anticipated, and if it comes down to him having to sell off the million dollar house he worked his whole life for and just completed building, or me giving up some studio in Dubai, you can bet your ass I’ll let go of the flat. That may very well mean I’m heading back there sometime soon. It’ll be so good to see my son.

I miss him. I miss him more than words can describe. I want nothing more than to hug and hold him these days. I know he misses me too.

Whenever I think I’m starting to miss Dubai, Youtube is all I need:


Home sweet, home:

~*~
I don't know if this says more about Dubai, or the presenter here:
~*~
I should have learned to ski while I was there... Maybe then I'd have reason to drive 30 minutes north of here, and hit the slops!

“Skip is MIA,” He says to me on the phone, “Perhaps tomorrow I’ll see him and I’m sure he’ll give you a call.”

Skip is my brother’s father. He’s the man who raised me from the time I was 2, until I turned 12 or 13. He is an alcoholic, and that’s an understatement. If it’s there, Skip is willing to take it, whether it’s a drink, a pill, a needle, or a pipe. In his mid fifties, he’s already had a number of strokes and most recently there was a black, potentially cancerous spot found on his lung. None of it changes him. And under it all, the man has a heart of gold. He spent the majority of my first few months back here, apologizing and asking me for forgiveness for the childhood he allowed me to have. I had forgiven him before he even asked.

So it came as a shock that when the boy Skip initially introduced me to, threw me out so suddenly, Skip took his side over mine; refusing to talk to me. I literally told Skip to fuck right off and swore he wouldn’t hear from me until he was willing to offer an apology. Last week he mentioned me to a few friends. He said he’d tried to call but I’d changed my number, and asked them to have me call him. I tried, three times with no response.

So yesterday I wasn’t shocked to hear he was missing. It’s not abnormal for Skip to go missing for a few days in a row. I was shocked after that call when I spoke to my father and he said he’d seen my mom pissed drunk before noon, sitting outside the house with some guy and a case of beer. The guy he described could have been none other than Skip himself. Looks like my mom’s taking a step back more than 15 years in time. Just when you think things can’t get worse, there seems to be away.

Don’t get me wrong, I love both Skip and my mom. I hate the idea of them getting back together. My mom has been so much better than this for so many years it hurts to see her heading right back there now.

Other than this, life seems to be moving smoothly for me. I got myself a kitten and named him TwoSix. He’s a pain in the ass, but I love him just the same. It’s getting fucking cold here, and it’ll be nice for me to come home after work to warm house with a little one waiting for me. I have a second cat on the way. My niece’s cat had kittens a while back, and I’d already claimed mine when I took in TwoSix from some strange man standing outside the supermarket, threatening to leave him on the streets if I didn’t take him home. Soon, I’ll have a happy little family in my doll house.

May you all have a wonderful Eid.

I woke up this morning feeling down. It’s the first time I’ve felt like this since I got here and I’m not really sure what to make of it. I’ve worn myself these last few weeks, in particular, these last few days have been rough. Not only did I start working full 8 hour shifts, but I stupidly pulled an all-nighter on the first of my nights off, with a Breast Cancer Garage Sale Benefit to take part in the following morning. I managed through that, selling my jewellery with a smile on my face; the proceeds of which made up for a large portion of the charitable profits. That evening I had a house guest come and he only left yesterday morning as I was off to work at 6am.

Last night was the first full nights’ sleep I’ve had for about 4 days. I woke up this morning without an alarm, and I sit now with my coffee listening to the children giggle, as they walk by on their way to school. The sun is shining and the air is crisp. I’ve taken my vitamins, and I don’t work until 3pm this afternoon so I have ample time to clean my house and get a few odds and ends done. I have no real reason for feeling as crappy as I do.

My father is planning on coming out here for a visit soon. He and my mother are still in the process of separating, though my mother has once again taken a spin for the worst. She had taken a minimum wage job at some dollar store only to lose it with her first paycheque – with money for alcohol, who wants to go to work? From what I understand her lawyer is on the verge of dropping her since, who the hell can represent a crazy person who is incoherent enough when she’s strait, when she’s perpetually drunk? I’m so tired of the whole situation and I wish it would all just go back to the way it was in Dubai, when my mom was normal and my parents got along brilliantly. It’s heartbreaking really.

I have little other than that to share right now. Perhaps as the day moves on, I’ll start to feel a little better, since really there’s nothing stopping me excepting me.

I was woken last night just after 1am to the sound a train thundering through my yard. The tracks are just a few feet beyond my fence, and every time the train goes by my whole house shakes, like a mini earthquake interrupted only by the sound of the trains whistle blowing. It sucks. My first few nights here the last train on the day seemed to go by at 9.40pm – which totally isn’t a problem. But for two days now they have been creeping up into the wee hours of the morning. The night before last, it was 11.30, and last night quarter past 1. If a train goes by at 3am tonight, I think I’m going to wake up crying.

But seeing how the time of the train is my only real stress around here so far, I really shouldn’t complain. I’ve moved into my own place. It’s a dollhouse. Actually, as the landlord explained, she initially built it for her children as a playhouse but accidently built it too big for that. She then decided to add a bathroom and half kitchen and rent it out. It’s a tiny little cabin with a loft upstairs. It’s perfect for the little girl that I am, and will be even better when I get my python back and keep him as the guard-pet!

Life is treating me real well. I haven’t had a lot of time for the net lately, thus the lack of posts or entertaining stories shared. I would like to wish all a Happy Ramadhan, forgive me for being late.

It was just before midnight when I snuck out the front door for a cigarette. Giddily talking on the phone I obliviously sat in the chair just next to the small garden and listened to the pouring rain in the background. “If I get eaten by a bear I’m blaming you,” I told him. If he hadn’t have called, I’d have still been snuggled up in my bed, a cigarette the furthest thing from my mind. To my left I heard rummaging, “There’s a coon, bear or cougar in the neighbour’s garage. I can hear him thumping around the garbage bins in there.” In the pitch of the night, I couldn’t see a thing beyond the car port just 15 feet away. As the thumping and rummaging continued, I stood starting to worry about what unseen creature was so close to me going about his business. Stretching my eyes as far as they could go, I peered into the darkness. After a few moments of silence my nerves got the best of me. I crushed my full cigarette in the garden and stepped back into the door frame of the house, one hand on the door ready to close in a moment’s notice.

Within seconds a black bear appeared from behind a car. “There’s a bear! Oh my god, there’s a bear and it’s the first time I have seen one this close up,” I whispered in a hurried voice into the phone. He must have weighed just 350 or so pounds. He was a little bear, the size I like to think of as a teenager. In his mouth he carried a small sandwich bag. The neighbours must have left the bear lock on their garbage undone. As I stood in the doorway he casually sauntered across our yard, not 6 feet away from me, stopping only next to the tiny tree in the yard to our right. He sat down with his prize and pawed at it for a while. Deciding it wasn’t what he wanted or devouring the contents, he picked himself up and this time walked back to his treasure chest of goods. He made his way back into the black of the garage and disappeared for a moment before the thumping and rummaging started again. Something spooked him, and he dashed out of the black and up behind my parked car, proving how quick he could be if needed.

With a bear that spooked and that close I decided it best to go into the house, closing the door behind me. I made my way to the balcony on the second floor where I watched as another neighbour switched on her balcony light and shot a flashlight through the streets. “He’s in Mike’s yard,” I shouted. Once she spotted him, she let me know and started calling her kitty. I watched the bear make his way back across the streets, and behind a house, certainly on his way to the comforts of his woodsy home.

I wasn’t sure if the boy on the phone believed me. And since he was driving across Canada at the time for work, the phone connection wasn’t all that great. Eventually, while I still gazed at this majestic wildlife in our front yard the phone had disconnected. We didn’t talk to one another until he was a few hours from visiting me here, yesterday.

So last night before dusk we sat on the porch eating, drinking and enjoying the company of a few friends. “Oh my goodness you guys, the bear is back,” Emily pointed to the apple tree in the back yard just 10 feet below us and a few feet away. We closed the balcony gate and watched as an even larger bear then the one I’d seen the night before, perhaps 500 pounds of him, swiped up an apple off the ground and put it in his mouth. He casually made his way across the yard where the real treat was left for him. We’d left a bucket of raked apples meant for the compost next to the green house. All the children in the house watched through a window as the bear sat with the bucket between his legs and feasted on the sugary treats. There was no disbelieving for the boy on the phone now.

Being this close to nature at its finest is one of the blessings of being here in BC. It truly is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. And there’s nowhere else on the planet I’d rather be right now.

Karma is a bitch, I wish I knew what I did to deserve this shit storm... He asked me to leave and I did. When someone else he knows shows interest in me, he says he’s fine by it. When I’m seen in public with that someone else, shit hits the fan and my life becomes a soap-opera again. I’m not even on the fucking island and I’m the center of attention.

My father and mother are separating and it’s certain. She’s been in touch with a lawyer who since got in touch with my father’s lawyer. I’ll end up having to testify and that’s fine. The truth will not work in my mother’s favour but the way I see it, she hates me so much without any reason anyway, what more can the truth cause? With any luck, I’ll at least be able to help my father out. Any financial gain she takes away from this separation will be pissed away on alcohol, lawyers’ fees and whatever random crap she decides to pick up from junk shops along the way. She’s already been selling off her gold and pearls to feed her habits. It disgusts me to know what’s she’s done, what she’s attempting to do, and where it’s all going to lead. I wish I knew how my mother became what she is today, and I dread the day I become the same.

I’ve been here just over a week. I haven’t taken a single anti-depressant pill and I feel fantastic – despite the drab things that seem to be happening in my life. I’m well on my way to finding a job and generally, I’m happy. Let’s hope it stays that way.

What the hell goes on in that head? -- Photography again by Sam C.

Most successful people seem to have a story of poverty in their past. Some of the more famous stories always seem to start with something like, “I hitchhiked into town with fifty bucks in my wallet and the clothing on my back...” and they end with, “Today, I’m a content multibillionaire.” Though my childhood was plagued with alcoholism and poverty, I wonder that I’ll never get that chance again. I’ve built and been blessed with too many security blankets and people that seem to love to save me.

Sunday, I leave the island broken-hearted with more than fifty dollars in my wallet and a car that’s insured in my name – with everything I own on the western content packed into the back. But the intent of leaving the island is to truly start over – and this time, with as little outside help as possible. True, my father lent me the money to insure the car (which used to be my mother’s until her license was suspended for being a drunk with epilepsy & other mental conditions). He is also lending me more money to make sure I have enough to start up, to put a down payment on a house and tide me over until I find work. On top of that, I still get rent paid to me from my apartment in Dubai, and alimony as well. And I’m not going to a town I’ve never seen. I’m heading to Squamish, where the one sister who actually has her head on right, lives with her husband and twin children. Perhaps I’ll never be able to start a story like the many famous successful people. But I will be successful & I will find contentment.

Perhaps, I’ll even get to writing that damn book I’ve been thinking about?

Some anonymous dickhead who got a hard-on for me on another site decided to tell me what my problem was in comments here earlier today. Oh feeble minded anonymous and those like you, please allow me to make it easier for you by pointing out what my fucking problems are, so you can gladly copy & paste them in the future and be at least remotely accurate in your findings.

My biggest problem is myself. I’m a fucking cunt, not only to you but also to me. There is NOTHING you can say to me that I haven’t already told myself. I suffer a number of psychological disorders, I grew up in an alcoholic family, I have been molested more than once. I seek love in the wrong places from the wrong types of men. I cut myself. I snap, and have attempted to commit suicide (and murder) on more than one occasion. I burn way too many bridges and I find it really hard to forgive. I have to take pills to get my pitiful ass out of bed most mornings. I over-analyze just about everything. I don’t trust people, and I don’t trust myself. I make piss-poor decisions. I judge harshly, and I’m even a little racist not to mention bias concerning some things. I’m a little over weight and on the verge of becoming anorexic, my mother lost her mind and thinks I’m the antichrist. My son is on the other side of the planet, and I have made a miserable mess of my whole fucking life.

I never should have been born in the first place. But guess what dickhead, I was. And I’m not going anywhere real quick, and most certainly not because you believe the world would be a better place if it only existed of people as oblivious of themselves as you are. I may be a royal fuck up, but I know myself and I know along with all these ‘problems’ (that many, many more people face without even realizing), I’m also more intelligent than your average twat, more loved than most online trolls, more intuitive, more artistic, more creative, funnier, more accepting, kinder, bolder, stronger, with a broader view of the world, and I have a brilliant future waiting me. I excel in everything I do!

I’m 27 years old and I’m well on my way to fixing my problems, thanks to the fact that I realize they exist. Maybe instead of telling other’s what you think their problems are, you should spend more time asking yourself what the fuck your own problems are and counting your fucking virtues.

I realized the other day a fair number of my girlfriends met their boyfriend’s, fiancé’s, or husbands online. It got me thinking, I haven’t met many new people here since I got back, period. It seems as though society as a whole is making its way to the internet. TV commercials here are littered with advertisements for dating, connection, and socializing sites such as eharmony.com, or plentyoffish.com. Is this today’s and our future’s way of connecting with people? Is society as it once was dying?

Growing up, I never had problems meeting people or making friends. It’d be a lie to say I have such problems now. Perhaps it isn’t me that’s cutting herself off from the world, perhaps it’s the world cutting itself off from anyone who isn’t online? I met a friend of mine for coffee yesterday. As I stood in line waiting to order my coffee, I overheard a girl chatting on her mobile, “They sent me the same thing on facebook!” Her whole conversation seemed to be about her life online. My friend arrived with her baby and we pulled up a few chairs outside. The girl on the phone sat alone on the bench, waiting I guess, for the phone to ring again. She seemed out of place without a laptop in front of her. She seemed out of place, alone in a coffee shop like Starbucks without a drink, with a little bit of an empty look on her face. I wondered if I looked the same when I ventured out alone.

Is the internet making it hard for us to socialize? Is it making it harder for us to be a functioning society? Are online dating sites worth checking out? Is there a stigma attached to relationships that are formed online? Could there be any romance in it at all?

Five or ten minutes after I hung up the phone with my dad, the phone rang again and the call display showed my ‘Canada House – Puckle’. He was explaining to me that my mother got the results of her EEG and the doctors have found signs of Epilepsy. They refused to act on it because she has not had a seizure that she can remember in the last month or so. There’s some hope that much of what she’s been going through and putting us through have been physical after all. No doubt at all, any and all symptoms were increased thanks to her severe alcoholism. He told me she seemed to be doing better these days. She was looking for work, asking about insuring the car (though he will never agree because it’s down-right out dangerous to let her drive) and relatively positive about the idea of visiting some of her old friends.

For the past 10 or so months my mother’s hate for me has seemed to increase. A week or so back, my sister was visiting from the mainland and got to spend a day with her shopping. They planned a BBQ for the evening and when my sister mentioned that she was calling to invite me, my mom responded with, “Fine, she can come, but I’m leaving.” The fight was on, because my sister, my father and my brother know that I have done nothing to encourage this deep a hate from her. My mother’s feeble attempts to defend her opinion were drowned out by her psychotic behaviour and words. She had just called and asked to talk to me a week prior while I was with my sister, as normal. Nothing had changed in that week.

So when the phone rang this time showing her house, I assumed it was my brother calling. I answered and was shocked to hear her voice. She was talking as though all was normal, as though she hadn’t hated me for reasons unknown to me. She told me about her EEG results, she told me about her job hunt she even invited me out for coffee sometime. At the end of the conversation she said, “I’m glad we got this chance to talk.” As if for some reason she felt she could not call me up at any time previously, like I had somehow cut ties with her and not the complete opposite.

I still don’t know what to make of the conversation. I am not sure how to feel about it, or what is going on through her head. I do now know that my father was distant from her yesterday, busy with his own things and giving himself a break from the insanity. Perhaps she was just that lonely. Perhaps she’s half snapped back into reality. Perhaps, the ice I heard in the background was her first drink of the day and getting drunk alone is never any fun. Who knows.

The international documentaries made on Dubai are careful with their camera work. It’s rare that you’ll see the skyline, littered with cranes and construction workers almost dangling from their deaths tens of stories up, without harnesses. The architecture looks brilliant on the outside. Sleek glass windows, buildings so tall from the ground you imagine they touch the stars at night, marble flooring, and in some of the higher-class hotels, faucets plated in pure gold. Look a little deeper and you’ll see the walls are cracking under the paint less than a year after construction was completed, the wiring is a mess causing random mini-explosions, plumbing backs up and the building itself is no more stable than a shack.

I fell into the trap of buying an apartment in Dubai. It wasn’t a month later that, that the air conditioner (a vital instrument for living in the UAE) stopped working. It wasn’t two months in when the toilet decided to continually flush itself with a constant rush of water making its way through the bowl, increasing my electricity and water bills to shocking amounts. It was the very first week I was there, that the pipes under my sink broke and my kitchen flooded. So very pretty on the outside, but its core is complete and utter crap. Still, that lovely little piece of property is worth about 33% more now, two years later then it was when I purchased it. Why? The illusion of Dubai is simply that grand!

Life in Dubai is much the same as most of these buildings. It is picture perfect on the outside, but disturbed at its core. Visit Dubai for a week and you’ll fall in love; stay there a few years and you’ll learn to despise just about everything about it. Dubai teaches you one thing really well, and that’s how to become a plastic person. The only problem with being plastic is, plastic can’t comfort your heart – nor can the plastic people you end up surrounded by. Material things take lead, while arts, emotions, anything that makes us human is forced on the back burner.

There isn’t a proper jazz club in Dubai. There isn’t a coffee shop where one can go and watch local talent, whether it be stand up, poetry readings or even a play. All of Dubai’s entertainment is imported for a short while – long enough to put on a show or two, then sent back home. In a place that populated, there has to be talent there somewhere. But who is actually looking for it? Who is willing to embrace it? And who is able to hold on to their own talents while the whims of personal belongings, and picture perfect life charades are taking over everything they do?

In the 12 years I lived in Dubai, outside of English class in school I met only one poet. He was a brilliant writer and most likely could have made something of himself on that talent alone. But he was Indian. And life in Dubai taught him that wasn’t ok. For months he lied to me and everyone he knew, taking on an assumed local identity, concentrating more on what people thought of him and how he could further deceive us of his roots, than he possibly could his writing. I don’t imagine he’s writing still. I don’t even know if I ever actually learned his first name. But he was a talent Dubai and Dubai’s society lost out on.

Dubai is an illusion. From the fairytale cities, to the Barbie-doll type people, there is no real life there; just plastic, paint and a decaying core.

It’s not just skin deep.
~*~


Thank you Sam C. for the photography.

160 of those pounds are the boy I just walked away from. The rest is all me...

Since the start of this uproar, I haven’t been able to eat. Initially, I tried to force-feed myself only to realize that just made me feel over-bloated and worse than I already felt. Soon, I decided not to fight it. This was the silver lining to my cloud, the good bit that’s coming out of this breakup. I look better, I don’t feel half as fat, and I’m able to fit into a bunch of old clothing that I haven’t worn for months. And it was all in a matter of a few weeks.

I’m starting to worry about it though now. Sometimes, I’ll go for two and a half days without eating a thing. It’s only when I remember that I haven’t eaten in so long that I’m able to force myself to eat half a cup of soup and maybe a piece of bread, or so. And now, when I put anything in my stomach, I automatically want to vomit. I try lying down for a while after I eat. I try drinking lots of water. Nothing takes away the queasiness food seems to give me.

I wonder if this is the start of one of those crappy eating diseases like anorexia or bulimia. No matter how much I feel like I want to throw up right now, I refuse to allow myself to out of fear of becoming bulimic. But forgetting or being unable to eat for days may very well be the start of anorexia. I don’t want or need such an added issue in my life – but I’m willing to bet this is going to end up being my next big challenge. Food feels like an enemy now. It's hard to make yourself do something that feels so shitty.

Always got to be something going on in my life... It’s really starting to suck.

By midnight, there was an attempt at murder/suicide that resulted in bruised arms and a gaping hole in the leather couch. By 3am the most passionate love making was being had.

Passion is a beautiful, and yet scary thing.

I still left the house the next day – taking all my belongings with me. I will never turn back. What I’m doing next, is up in the air.

I’m sorry you don’t want me anymore. I’m sorry you’ve decided it’s time to end it all. I’m sorry you did it in such a harsh way that almost makes me want to hate you. And I’m sorry, but I need you to know one last thing: I will not once wake up with regrets but you will.

I know I’m leaving your heart and home better then when I found them. Your house is cleaner, more organized and all around more mature. And I believe along the way you learned to keep it that way. Your heart is stronger, more confident, even more sensitive (when you’re not lying to yourself about how you feel and can feel for others). I believe you will continue to grow both emotionally and physically because of the confidence I helped you find. I leave you with a clean conscience myself, knowing I did the best for you I possibly could.

On the other hand, you will wake up one morning full of regret for letting me go. You will realize not only did you leave a relationship prematurely and fail to take all you possibly could from it, but you gave me nothing positive to take away with me. You left me more broken then I was when we met. You will wake up with regret, and on that day I want you to remember one thing... Everything we have done is what made us who we are today. So even though you fucked up real bad, you need not torture yourself thinking about it. One day, you’ll be given another chance. Please learn from this one and fight for the next. You’re still young and you still have a lot to learn about both life and love. If you allow yourself to learn from this lesson, you will find happiness one day. And I so hope you do.

I loved you and you loved me too.

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to face, but whether it is the same problem you had last year. ~John Foster Dulles

It was just over a year and a month ago my romantic life exploded into raging anger, so much so that I could not bear the idea of staying one more day in the same country as my ex. Today, I’m preparing to move out of my ex boyfriends’ and my house and out of the city both he and my psychotic mother live in. If there’s any truth in that beautiful quote above, and I believe there is, I am not a very successful person right now.

Completely tossed the other night and dealing with heartbreak I called the boy and asked him why he did what he did to me. A little over a year after the breakup, he has little to say except, “I’m deeply sorry for what I did to you. I miss you terribly and thinking about the love we shared almost brings me to tears. I still love you”.

There’s a lot to say about that and any comparisons that can be made between boys from the west and local boys. Both of them can be assholes, but local boys seem to be more passionate about their women (and note the plural). They seem to take better care not to inflict pain on a casual basis, where as boys from the west are colder, less considerate and can seem emotionless though more often than not, they’re faithful.

Since being home, I’ve learned to miss a few of the comforts a local boy would offer. I miss being almost force-fed when I’m not really hungry but clearly haven’t eaten enough. I’ve missed being dropped off at the entrance of a shop rather than a block away in the parking lot. I’ve missed being picked up when I needed a ride – and even when I didn’t really. I’ve missed being asked if I needed anything while he’s on his way to me. I’ve missed the small surprises. I’ve missed knowing that at 3am if I had a craving for a donut or pickles, he would be more than happy to go pick those things up for me. The list goes on and on, but to sum it all up I’ve missed being spoiled rotten.

But are those little things worth the pain that comes with knowing 9 times out of 10 he’s probably spoiling someone else alongside you? To be honest with you, I’m not even sure I know the answer to that one anymore.

Anyone who plays poker knows the person with the largest stack has the highest chances of winning, even early on in the game because they know they can bully their opponents out of taking huge risks with their smaller stacks by betting big, even on lesser cards forcing everyone to weigh their risks and fold. Relationships are much like that. The one who holds the ‘power’ tends to feel less pain when things go bad, and can thrive off the weaker person’s insecurities. But should the weaker person take a stand, and say “Fuck you, I’m all in”, the chances of them winning that hand seem to be greater as the power shifts and the player with the larger stack most-likely gets caught by surprise and makes the foolish mistake of calling on shitty whole cards.

People get high on power like they get high on bigger stacks of chips in poker. They make fatal mistakes, believing for that brief moment while they’re on top that they are invincible. But before they know it, the weaker player has doubled their stack and stands face to face with them.

I’ve been at my sister’s place for two nights now. On the morning I left, he decided to break up with me. That’s all good because I knew it wasn’t working out anyway. But the rejection hurt, and gave him the bigger stack – and I’d been miserable. Last night I went all in, and said, “Fuck it, and fuck you.” And now, I feel a billion times better.

So much so, I can share with you all we almost got attacked by a nice big bear and her baby cubs last night. My sister lives in an awesome place on the edge of the forest. With a couple of cherry trees and an apple tree in the yard, the bears like to sneak down at night for dinner. With a bear on the tree at the edge of the yard, we made the mistake of walking over there to get a better look in the pitch black of night. We didn’t see the cubs until the mama bear growled at us, sending us all flying towards the house and up the porch stairs – where we finally decided to get a flashlight and brilliantly walk out there again. Since running up the stairs I was tripped by my sister’s puppy and bruised up my knee and foot real well, I decided not to go much beyond halfway through the yard this time. I’ll tell ya, it was a thrill.

It’s not such much a pain anymore,
as a hollow in my gut,
an ache,
emptiness,


when love starts to die.

I’m leaving tomorrow for the mainland. I’m off to spend a few weeks with my sister. In preparation for that trip, I went shopping today. I have never loved clothing shopping. In fact, when I was in Dubai, I had a Lebanese girlfriend who would come shopping with me, choose the clothing she thought would fit and I would like, and only then would I bother trying stuff on and actually purchasing. If I had to go alone, I wouldn’t stop foot in a changing room. There’s one thing Lebanese girls have, and that’s an eye for fashion and that persistent nature of making you do what they think is right!

Moving on... today’s experience was of the most horrific shopping experiences of my life. I realize and accept that I’ve gained 25lbs since I’ve been back in Canada. I’ve enjoyed watching my breasts go from a B cup, to a D in no time – I had simply convinced myself that that’s where it ended. What I didn’t expect was to find my thighs too big to get into the size 10 I’ve been since I gave birth to my son. I’m not even joking more than once I almost cried in the changing room, realizing how my body now resembles a fucking pear.

So after trying on 20 odd pairs of pants or shorts, and realizing I wasn’t going to fit into any of the ones I would have a year ago, I left the shop buying only a few tops and nothing more.

I headed out that door and strait to lunch – and damn Thai Stir Fry tastes good when you’re dwelling on the weight you’ve gained. I picked up a 6 pack on my way home (which is probably the cause of the weight I’ve gained to start with), and I’m packing as though the shopping trip never took place.

Chapter II?

~*~

Nationality plays the biggest role in your life in Dubai, with it being one of the most racist multi-national societies on the planet, if not the most. Walk into any coffee shop or restaurant and survey the tables. The first thing you’ll notice are how each table has its own nationality and invisible borders seem to separate each of the races as starkly as black on white. This mentality spread as far back to my days in an International High School there, where the school cafeteria was just as divided. I remember disliking this reality as a naive teenager and attempting to change it.

A new Indian girl had joined a few weeks after school started. She didn’t seem to click right away with those of her own nationality and it wasn’t uncommon to find her eating alone during lunch. I invited her to eat with us, partially out of sorrow and partially because at that time, I believed I could fix the world of all its ailments. She refused. A few days later, I attempted again and to my utter surprise she jumped up and screamed at me that I hated her and I did so because she was Indian. She then burst out in tears and ran out of the cafeteria. Coming from Canada and before this instance not really grasping the depth of racism I was shocked and disgusted by the accusation. I never did talk to her again. It was only years later that I realized how it must have felt for her, after having her parents beat it into her that all white people thought they were superior and since we thought so, we must be. I shit you not, later in life I have come across Asians who argue that the only reason Canada is a better place to live than the UAE is because Canada is run by white people (a complete loud of crap, but believed by many just the same) and the UAE is run by brown people.

Despite that being as far from the truth as possible for most new comers to Dubai, eventually westerns are given a superiority complex and find themselves in an ongoing battle with locals about who in fact rules their country, because despite the largest part of the population being Indian or Asians, they simply aren’t competent enough to take on the roll – it must be the Arabs or the westerners. Look at any job listing in the local papers and three out of four times, you’re going to find a requested race. Next to managerial or leading high paying positions, Westerners or locals are requested. Next to low paying administration or secretarial jobs, you’ll find Indians, Pakistani or Filipinos being requested. I dare anyone to find a domestic help, construction labour, or table waiting position in a restaurant, offered to locals or westerners. No, no, those low paying, low respected jobs are reserved for the lesser races – who cares if they have experience and degrees that make ours look like they came out of a cereal box!

There is an invisible racial hierarchy in Dubai that tourists may fail to see, but those living there know where they stand. And there are a number of generalizations that can be made about each race based on that race living and working in the emirate. At the top of the racial hierarchy you’ll find the locals and the westerners, each of which complaining that the other thinks they rule the UAE. Most other nationalities will simply call it even between the two, once they put aside their own racial preferences.

Just below them, you’ll find the Arab nationals from countries like Syria, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. This nationality takes up few of the moderate to low paying jobs, and can somewhat rarely be found in the higher paying, more prestigious ones. However, when they do land such a job, they’re the first to flaunt it by taking out excessive bank loans to create the facade that they’re living the high life. This nationality is the one that drives beat up, old BMW’s and get ridiculed for thinking their cars are the shit, or should they stumble on a big enough bank loan, they’ll drive Mercedes spending their very last dirham (local currency) on it, along with a matching brand-named wardrobe, while having a barren flat to live in and little food to eat at home. And at the end of the day, who can blame them? If you don’t look good in Dubai, you must not be anyone!

The next tier is where the eastern Europeans fit in. The women in this category are more often than not accused of prostitution and you’ll rarely find them working a job away from serving tables at a shisha or coffee shop. They’re widely believed to have one purpose in Dubai, and that’s to find a rich local to marry for the sake of getting that all too famous Emirati passport. I lived with a Russian girl once. She was one of the hardest working, innocent sales people I’d ever come across -- but I must be wrong about that because UAE society says so.

The lowest form of life according to this hierarchy, are the Asians, whether they be from India or China, labourers even get their own lower-class, cheaper shopping centers. You’ll find that these are people who built this country and continue to make it thrive. They’re also the least paid the least respected and for some reason (perhaps the long, underappreciated days working in the sun?) the worst smelling. God forbid! Many of the major shopping malls have forbidden bachelors (another loose term given to the labour workers who build the country) from being in them – God forbid they clash with the shiny, picturesque interior. No nightclub will allow them entrance and many residential buildings have forbidden them from taking up residence in them. On the other side side of the coin, Asian or Arab taxi drivers will bypass another Asian or Arab for a western looking traveller a block or two down the street, based on the generalization that Westerners travel to less congested places, and they tip better*2.

One of the more complex observation of a society as racially fucked up as this one, are the numbers of people who actually seem to suffer racial identification crisis. Ask an Indian or Arab who has a Canadian passport where he’s from and he’ll tell you he’s Canadian, despite not having ever lived a day there. Ask an Eastern European who has married a national where she is from and she’ll tell you she’s local, despite having no local blood in her. In Dubai, there too much attention is paid on race, denying your race, judging others by their race, or denying you’re racist, when the truth be told... If you’ve spent enough time there and still come out claiming you’re not racist, you’re a liar and no Dubain (excepting those in denial) will believe you.

I’ve been back in the West more than a year now. I’m still trying to shake the idea that life is really only skin deep. I know some former Dubains who despise the UAE based solely on that that disgusting transformation of their once non-bias personality, conceived while residing there.

~*~

Should I continue? I think I'm going to have to. I'm just having too much fun writing... (And it's been a while!)

And this is how I'll start it...

~*~

An observation - all that is and could be Dubai

D is for Dubai...

There seems to be a fad of books being published with the layout alphabetic, one letter per essay as part of the overall theme of the book. Well, this book is about Dubai and I’m not nearly organized enough to actually follow an A through Z theme on the things that inspire me, enlighten me, or down right out piss me off about this booming Middle Eastern oasis. None the less, letters make for a great chapter titles and I’m too lazy to think up something original, so I’m ripping off that idea. And like any good start I guess I’ll start at the beginning.

A is for Assholes...

Whether you’re in Dubai on vacation or as an expatriate resident you’re bound to run into one constant there and it’s the assholes. Assholes on the roads, assholes in the clubs, assholes writing to papers, assholes on UAE blogs, assholes in the malls, assholes you pay your rent to, assholes begging for change, assholes jaywalking across the ten-lane highways with no regard for their lives or yours, assholes trying to scam you, assholes charging you more for products depending on your race, assholes being assholes, and assholes raping assholes in the front page news. Assholes, assholes everywhere!

There’s something about the transitional nature that is Dubai that transforms people into assholes. On the roads, there’s no consideration for life, period. It’s not uncommon to watch road rage take control of the sanest of people, causing street fights at red lights, or drag-racer-wannabes on the main highways. As of 2008, the second leading cause of death in the emirate, were road accidents; the first cause cardiovascular disease*1. At the rate of any in habitant seeing at least one car accident per day every day, this comes as no surprise. The roads are well paved and predominantly strait; the cars are more often than not new luxury models so there’s only one explanation to this anomaly – Assholes being assholes behind the wheel.

Late one night I left my girlfriends place and stopped at a red light at the intersection on my way home. I found myself whiteness to some of the biggest assholes of them all. In the middle of the intersection, plastered on the road was an Asian man, his head crushed under his helmet, blood seeping from what seemed like every inch of his being. His arms and legs twitched constantly and you just knew he was taking his last breaths of air. He may have been the erratic asshole motorbike driver just prior to getting his ass whipped off his bike by some even bigger asshole of a driver, who had since disappeared, but neither of the two could possibly beat the asshole-ishness, when compared with the spectators of this man’s demise.

Standing in the middle of the road, not a single meter from a dying man was a crowd of men; some watching this man with morbid curiosity, some sipping tea and smoking cigarettes, but the majority of them just gabbing away like death wasn’t staring any of them in the face. Not one person went to hold this man’s hand, not one person attempted to offer him assurance, hope, nor whispered a word of encouragement in this man’s ear while he waited in vain for the ambulance to arrive. There is nothing else you can use to describe such a group of heartless bastards who could idly stand by and watch a man die, other than ‘asshole’.

In fact, there pretty much only one group of people in Dubai in my mind, that measure so closely on the asshole scale as the group of bystanders who could watch a man die without flinching, and those would be the suicide-for-cash types. Up until recently the laws in Dubai said if you were driving a car and some dipshit jumped out in front of you and died, you would not only face a jail sentence but you’d have to pay obscene amounts of blood money to the deceased’s family. Not long ago, it was discovered that a number of lower-class labourers who found themselves not meeting their idea’s of wealth while actually working to send home to their family, decided the quickest way to get rich quick was to commit suicide by killing themselves in an effort to weasel the living driver out of thousands of dollars. This tactic worked for a number of years. Only an asshole would destroy his life, and that of another person’s for cash. Thank God the authorities caught on and are now revising that law.

In the shopping malls and clubs you have assholes of a different sort. You have the ignorant expatriates walking around like new money, dressed to the nines in designer fashion clothing, as if that somehow covers up that they’re soulless no-ones craving attention and acceptance of others. They’re the very same assholes you find abusing their domestic help in the line ups of supermarkets, screaming obscenities like, “I thought I told you to grab the Lite, not Low Fat mayonnaise!” They’re the very same ignorant twits that park across two parking spaces, because for the first time in their life they have a semi-luxury car and they fear someone should park beside them and scratch their paint opening a car door in the obtuse manner that they themselves would, had they still been driving their shit Datsun, or Toyota Corola.

These same assholes seem to migrate to the nightclubs, and once you add alcohol to the equation you get a whole dimension of the assholes that they are. Take said assholes above, add sluttiness and no inhibitions about being a racist, egotistical, dumb-as-a-board-self-importance twat to the conclusion and you’ve defined night life in Dubai. Assholes I tell you, all of them!

If you’re into a larger than life cinema experience, over the drunkenness that is a nightclub don’t fool yourself into believing you’ll find fewer assholes during the show. UAE nationals cannot live without their cell phones. And though this trait once only belonged to this small percentage of the population, it’s catching on and UAE nationals or not in the movie, you’re going to hear more phones ringing and full-fledged conversations during the show, then actual dialog you paid to see. And if the phones aren’t enough to ruin your night, you can bet your asshole at least one asshole thought it appropriate to bring screaming children along for the show. Enjoy the cinematic experience that only Dubai has to offer.

In the “Letters to the Editor” section of local news papers, you find the same assholes writing the same bullshit that can be found of the majority of UAE based blogs. The complaints about rising rents, the horrible traffic, the commentaries and critics of locals, the locals bashing the expatriates, at the end of the day it’s all the same, over and over and over and over again. Nauseating repetition is the theme in any written media composed by the general public. Thus, it’s only fit to close this with the reality that I’m an asshole too. Stay there long enough and you can join the club!

~*~

What do you think? Would it sell?

During his recent trip to Dubai, he noticed two major conflicting characteristics among the population. To start with, the smell; too many people there smelt as though a shower or deodorant were foreign to them and he often felt himself gagging as their fumes assaulted his nostrils.

The next thing he noticed were the beautiful people.

The eyes of the covered women were drawn up with make-up like he’d never seen before. The time and talent that must go into it, is incredible. He assures me, those eyes are one image most every western man takes home with them. Then there were the Barbie and Ken dolls casually walking around centers and malls – each and every one of them impeccably dressed, perfumed, and pampered. They were the perfect bit of eye candy.

It’s scary to think that anyone who has been in the UAE more than a year or two can place a race to each of the descriptions I’ve given above. From the smelly ones, to the perfect people, to those with extravagant eyes; we know from such little descriptive words that the smelly people are most likely Asian labour workers or overworked and underpaid Arab taxi drivers; the eyes are khaleeji women; and the Barbie & Ken dolls are most-likely Eastern European, Lebanese, or British.

With such stark contrasts between nationalities, with lines so easily drawn even by outsiders just visiting, is there any way the transitional society that is Dubai will ever mould together and work as one?

I’d rather be with someone who was proud to be Arab than someone who was too ashamed should someone, anyone mistake them for Arab. I have an Arab son, you dumb fuck.

I’ve had a fair number of bad days since I’ve been back to Canada. In the last year since I’ve been back, my mom has lost her mind and decided I’m a devil child – so saying all is and has been merry would be a fucking lie. But the truth be known, I’ve had far fewer bad days and far more great days then I would have had a year back in Dubai.

So we’ve had family visit us from the mainland – funny enough, one of them just got back from a stay in Dubai with the Canadian military. Last week, I took out guests for a short ferry ride to the inner harbour, where we fed live wild seals fresh fish, and did the tourist thing, watching street performers and eating world famous fish & chips. The fact that you can have such a great day and not spend a small fortune is just one of the things that make this city a much more desirable place to be, then the UAE and all its transitions right now.

On top of that, I can’t stress enough how beautiful it is here. Here are some of the photos from that tourist-type day. I was taking the pics, so I’m not in them.



~*~

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~*~

~*~

~*~

~*~

~*~

A day in the life... I came home sun burnt, and loving it. Dontcha just kinda wish you were here?

... May you one day google your name and find this little note.

Dear Michelle,

At this moment your name is splashed all over the net, in blogs, and in news articles and to be quite frank, you disgust me. I am a former Dubai expatriate who remembers what the UAE was like more than a decade ago, before the likes of you were swarming to this desert oasis to ruin it.

It’s people like you that make Dubai an undesirable place to be. It is actions like yours and the repercussions of it those actions make the society unbearable for everyone else who lives there. You have successfully given officers one more reason to be weary of and harder on drunken Brits – even those who are innocent of any crime. You have successfully emphasized and helped solidify the myth in Arab minds that all western women are as shameless, easy and trashy as you are – thus encouraging them to further treat us all like dirt. You have successfully shamed yourself and your nation and without any true remorse for your disgraceful actions, and yet you plea for public sympathy by talking to the papers and making sure we all know the situation your mother is in.

You fear you will be made an example of, yet you fail to see you have made an example of yourself and from that day on the beach forward, your life will never be the same. You pity yourself, and can’t believe the situation you’re in – like you’ve walked a mile from your house and can’t believe you have to walk a mile to get back. Your ignorance, arrogance, and sheer stupidity are beyond believable. The dream world you live in, believing the general public will have sympathy for you rather than concur that you deserved to lose your job and your comfortable life in Dubai, and any pride you may have had prior to your arrest is almost surreal.

“We all make mistakes,” you plea. Being drunk, slutty, and abrasive to a police officer in a Muslim country after he let you off with a warning is not a mistake. It’s a disgrace, and a true representation of a dirty expatriate woman who allowed herself to get a little too big an ego, in the luxurious lifestyle she has been given and has taken advantage of for three years already.

May your 15 minutes of fame be short lived – you don’t deserve the attention. May you go back to the UK where your face will forever be known, and may you find a new job in an office where every-single-person there knows how easy it is to get into your panties and sees you for nothing more than the whore you are. May you never be given the opportunities Dubai has given you again.

Sincerely,

Tainted Female

Found in an old newspaper article. The punch that landed him 6 more years in jail than the others, seems to be the critical punch.

“Nick's brain was severely injured - most likely from the initial punch delivered to the left side of his head (...)”

I haven’t seen many of the people I grew up with since I’ve been back. The few that I have seen have been my closest of friends all along, and for the most part the experiences have been fun. Yesterday was a little different though.

An old, old school friend of mine from like kindergarten to grade 6 or 7 called me up and invited me out for drinks. He was the first boy I ever kissed, way back when. The group of us were tight – really tight. As tight as we were, we were also shit disturbers as kids. When I think back to some of the things we got into as kids, it doesn’t surprise me that so many of us have grown up to be delinquents.

We chatted a bit about others. I was relatively shocked by some of what I’d heard become of people. Possibly even more shocked to learn my friends’ perspective on certain things. An example would be a really, really good friend of ours was incarcerated for 8 years, for turning some other guy into a vegetable. Turns out they were involved in some gang beating, where this friend of ours hit the guy in the face. When the guy fell to the ground, others stomped him repeatedly. The kids who stomped him, got 2 years – while the friend of ours got an additional 6. Somehow, friend I was sitting with yesterday had convinced himself that the only reason our friend got it so hard was because the authorities were trying to make an example of him. It’s understandable, seeing how he was the one who was predominant in the gang happenings. But it was also clear there was more to that story that was missing. Canadian law isn’t that bias – I’m sure. And somehow, the friend I was with yesterday, though was there, escaped without any legal consequences. Something’s not right there. Something’s missing.

Another friend of ours from way back when, has been accused of rape – three times. Once, maybe he’s innocent. Twice you have got to question. The third time, there’s no fucking doubt he’s a dirty fucking skinner. A few others have taken the real nasty root, become crackheads and crackwhores – some making it out of that life eventually, only to be plagued with diseases as serious as AIDS.

It was sad to hear about the others. It was almost sadder to see what I saw yesterday. He mentioned he needed to collect something owed to him asked me if I wanted to walk down the street with him. On our way, he went on about how they’d better pay him in cash and not dope. Of course, when the crackwhores appeared they paid him in rock. Back at his place he continued to tell me he doesn’t use crack, just sells it from time to time – and even that’s not really his thing.

It wasn’t long before one of his friend’s showed up. We shared a few beer before we took off to another of their friend’s places. There, I found I’d had just about enough. I sat on the couch, the guy on my right asked me for a massage – as casually as he would an actual crackwhore, and the guy to my far left went was on the balcony smoking rock. I went off on my friend, telling him how disgusting it all was. I went off on the crackhead, telling him he could have done better for himself – he was good looking and smart and instead decided to sell his soul to the pipe. He agreed with me. I went off on the skumbag who asked me for a massage. My friend decided to go off on me. His defence was that he used crack too and it’s not that big a deal. He started to argue with the crackhead who was defending my stand and agreeing with me. I left.

And now, I’m sorely disappointed in him and myself. He was the first boy I kissed. He was innocent and naive. He was good looking and kind hearted. Today, he fronts like he’s a hardass, he surrounds himself in trash, and he tries to defend it. He’s cut himself short of what he’s worth and he’s content with it. I’m disappointed in myself because a few people had warned me about him long before I ever agreed to meet up with him. I choose to see it for myself rather than believing second hand information.

Yesterday, I got to work on the first correspondence module I’d received. Long before noon, I had completed everything, taken three exams and graded and average of 98%. And the only reason it wasn’t 100% was because I got a phone call that interrupted me while I was taking one of the exams and I accidently ticked the wrong box without realizing, before moving on to the next question.

Now I wait for the next module. And I hate waiting. So in the meantime, I’ve been looking into the other course of interest; a real estate trading license for British Colombia. I came to realize last night that the two courses really have nothing to do with each other. Though every prospective entrepreneur should have knowledge of keeping books to insure financial accuracy and help with making business decisions, the course I’m taking goes a little beyond what’s needed. So what if I just continued studying accounting? Once I get this diploma for bookkeeping I can effectively open my own home based business – and if I ever decide to go back to the UAE, perhaps an accounting degree is something I can use there, whereas a real-estate license for BC; which includes learning all about the legal aspects of real estate, managing real estate and legal obligations when it comes to maintenance in Canada as well as many other things that UAE has no use for, will be of little help in Dubai.

I suppose that’s a good thing; that I’m considering the possibility of coming back to the city of broken hearts and shattered dreams. Every now and then I get a text message from a friend of mine, asking me, almost begging me to come back. I’m pretty sure it’s not so much that he wants me back, but rather is fed up of the people in UAE in general and he himself can’t leave due to his stateless status. The boy texts me every now and then as well, always saying the same thing, “I dreamt of you last night and just wanted to say hi.” I never reply. And once in a while I get a phone call from someone who just misses me – that’s always nice. But at the end of the day, the biggest motivation for me to come back is my son. And he seems to be doing just fine right now. I had a long conversation with his father recently, about whether or not my baby will be alright if I stay long enough to study these courses. And he seems to think it’s possibly the best thing for everyone. And with my mom the way she is right now, no one expects me to pick up and leave. I fear if I did, she’d die before I got off the plane in Dubai.

I’m glad I’ve had the chance to bore you with my ponderings. Nothing too entertaining here... So how about a song that’s currently playing on the radio as a type?

Yesterday was a rough day. With the news of Sleepless in Muscat’s demise at the top of the list of sad news. Allah yer7amak.

I woke up late. I’d forgotten to take my pill. And I was all around miserable thanks to the down effects of the pills I’d taken the night before. I did however, get off my ass and to the job interview, and I did end up at the post office to collect my study materials from the school I’m now attending. I’ve been waiting on them for nearly a month. And by the time I got home, there was a bittersweet treat from my ex husband in my inbox; a KG graduation photo of my son. And God is he beautiful Mashallah.

Last night I was eaten alive by mosquito’s. The gorgeous surroundings here come with a price. Perhaps I’ll get around to photographing some of the area here, as well as some of the critters that come with it sooner or later.

Anyway, it’s now 6.33am and I’m up. I’ve soothed my bites with Calamine, I’ve taken my pill and I’m drinking my first coffee. The sun is shining bright, and with any luck that’ll be the first sign of true summer around here. I’ll spend today studying, and perhaps getting some housework done. No matter what happens, today has got to be a better day.

Lorazepam is bad when abused.

I have a beautiful resume. I’ve been given a lot of great chances for great learning opportunities. And I continue to be offered them. But I have no aim, no motivation, no direction and little education. I have no routine. I am flakey.

My 5-year-old son is on the other side of the planet with his father, and new step-mother. I can’t stand to be in that country, though I sincerely have a love/hate relationship with it. His father won’t allow him to come here, and in all honesty, I know that’s best for him. I miss him and I know he misses me.

I’ve burned a lot of bridges and I continue to do so. I have a sister I don’t deal with and a grandmother I have not talked to for more than 10 years now. My mother is having seizures, dying from a combination of psychological and physical symptoms, combined with alcohol abuse that is killing her liver and brain cells. She currently believes I’m her nemesis and I have no idea why, when all I’ve done for the past year is try to help her get the help she needs.

I’m great at just about everything I do until I sabotage myself. My talents have all almost dwindled to past-time hobbies. I could have written a book – had an offer once from a publishing house. I could have continued painting and selling art – that went well for a while. I could continue making my jewellery if only I had the motivation to bother selling it – almost everyone says I should. I could have done so many things, but none of them kept my attention for long.

I’ve gained 25 lbs since I’ve been back in Canada, and I have no idea how that happened.

At the end of the day, I’m a 27-year-old loser. I keep asking myself if I’m ready to do something about that, if I’m ready to change that. But even now, I’m not sure.

I’ve enrolled in a correspondence school for a bookkeeping degree. Turns out I have a thing for numbers too. I’ve been offered a position as a financial advisor, a career that takes a hell of a lot of studying and work, with little pay initially, but a brilliant future if you stick to it. I’ve been offered an opportunity to get a real estate license here, but again, that is a career that takes a hell of a lot of study and work, with little pay initially, but a brilliant future if you stick to it. I’m considering taking a part-time job, while I study bookkeeping, and one of the other two options, but I’m not sure enough of myself that I’ll even stick with anything till the end.

It’s about time I threw my hands up in the air and said, “Screw the past when it hurts. Screw my mom for hating me. Screw the fuck-up I’ve been. And it’s time to turn a new page and work on me and my future.” But how the hell do you kill old habits, when it’s really hard to determine exactly what they are and which ones need to go in the first place?

~*~
My actual resignation letter said something like this:
~*~

"Dear L...

Please consider this letter my official resignation effective today.

Thank you for the opportunity you have given to me to work with you and the experience I have had the chance to learn.

Sincerely,

Tainted"

~*~
What I was actually thinking was:
~*~

Last week, you came back from your cruise with a horrid frown on your face. You had a nasty cold, maybe a touch of the flu, but when we asked what was wrong you clearly stated you were pissed at what happened in the office while you were away and it wasn’t you being ill that was getting to you.

I’d still like to know, what exactly you think happened, because as far as I was concerned, the office was running as smoothly as ever while you were away. I don’t recall any conflicts, or issues after you came in and put an end to the initial and as far as I’m concerned, only problem that occurred before you actually left. I know whispers hit your ears that pointed fingers at both myself and another of your employee’s being culprits in something. Initially, I figured even with the far-fetched tattletale being one of your longest devoted employee’s, you’d see through the bull, since during your entire leave, that other employee was out of the office at least 90% of the time. There literally was no time for conflict!

But you stayed miserable for a full week. And your misery rubbed off on others. Friday, I asked for help and the response I got was, “Can we do this some other time? I’m not in the mood today.” I agreed, and asked what was wrong. The response I got was, “She’s being a bitch, a real bitch,” and to that I agreed, but also stated you’d been that way since you came back and no one really knows why so we needn’t take it personally. None-the-less, she told me not to bother completing the task of getting her resume formatted, since she intended to do it herself over the weekend. I almost laughed when she admitted in a staff meeting to seeing your employment ads, then stating she can’t remember what she was looking for on the recruitment site!

Anyway, come Monday, you had prepared a speech and held a talk with four of your staff members. You talked about the problems, the petty bull, then you apologized to two of the members, explicitly expressing that they were not a part of the problem and you regret them having to be a part of the conversation. You then make clear that you have already held conversations with the other staff member present, and turned to me and stated I was certainly part of the problem. You had held no private talks with me concerning this as you had with other’s; in fact, you’d simply treated me like shit period since you’d been back. You choose not to bother, before taking whoever’s words for gold. And pointing a finger at me (despite you not seeing it that way, when you eliminate 3 of the 4 people you’re talking to, there is only one left and metaphorically speaking - that’s pointing a finger), wasn’t a real motivational factor.

I hope you have half the true will to learn that you believe and profess you have, and that you will hear these words and if not agree with them, at least consider them...

I could have succeeded in your office. I could have been one of your best employee’s. I wanted to expand and grow there. Your office failed me as much as I failed you. Here’s why:

You gave me a trainer (without actually telling me she was my trainer, forcing me to learn that by asking the wrong people questions), who could not and can not teach. I brought this to your attention, but it slipped into one ear and out the other. Then, when my ‘trainer’ takes emergency leave, you expect that I know everything I need to know - when in fact, I knew very, very little. Trying to accomplish the tasks at hand, I ask the only other person available to help me. Time and time again I’m told not to bother, that she will just do it as she is too busy (training others and what not). And if not that, I was simply ignored. Concerning one project, I almost beg her to tell me how to do it, but she insists she needs to go through the files herself, because she can’t know what the problem is otherwise. I ask her to do so, then when she finds the problem, to point it out to me because I want to learn; she agrees. Amazing, the next day during a staff meeting, she insists she already taught me what to do, implying I really am that stupid. Fact: If she had taught me, It would have been done rather than sitting on a bloody waiting list!
This may be petty to you, but it’s not the first time, and I was sure it wouldn’t have been the last time your staff members placed undeserved blame on me. Let’s take for example our client, the cancer patient. Before you decided to blame me for not noting we should only be calling only one of them, did you even LOOK at the T1 take in sheet? I did - when I scanned it for you. It clearly shows that I did in fact note that we should NOT be calling one of the pair. Funny enough, that last little bit of bull was the last I was willing to take at your company.

Most of what I learned in your company was taught to me by the girl who quit just 2 weeks prior to me (which is one of the reasons I hated to see her go so bad, I knew if she left, I’d be short behind because there was no one else to help me learn (one of those aspects you pride your company on!).

I told you when I joined I have one really strong weakness, and that’s the inability to work in a place where I am not happy. Feeling stranded up shit creek without a paddle, because there is work on my desk I don’t know how to do and have no one to ask for help or to teach me as it piles high, is not my idea of a happy place to work. Especially when that work is time sensitive and I’m going to get shit for it not being done in the end. Being lied about, and made to feel stupid is not my idea of happy. Being talked about behind my back, to you and to others, not my idea of happy.

You may not feel that you lost much when I quit, mutually, I don’t feel I lost much by leaving. But I hope you realize your office has its faults and helped me fail, through as much as it taught me. I spent a few months taking responsibility for faults that weren’t mine as well as those that were mine. I hope you take responsibility in recognizing the faults in your office and doing something to fix them, before hiring your next staff member.

Last night around 5pm my brother was walking home through the fields. He spotted my mom across the field. Upon seeing him, she ran off. By the time he reached the place he'd seen her, she was gone. He searched the house, the fields, and everything in the area and could not find her. He figures she must have gotten into a car or something to get away.

In the house he discovered she had taken off with the cordless phone. He had to buy a new one.

She hasn't been seen since.

It started first thing in the morning. My brother had called me to let me know mom was missing again. As he was telling me about the charade the night before, with the police creeping up on him while he slept because my mother had gone to the police station and started to file a complaint against him only to walk out when the officers left her alone for a minute. They had no choice but to look into the matter. Mid-conversation she slammed into the house, in a rage asking if my brother and father were having fun. She started slinging insults and acting down-right-out belligerent. My brother hung up with hopes of my mom swinging at one of them again, so they could press charges and hopefully get her into the system with some psychological, medical attention she so desperately needs.

Not a half hour later, my father was on the phone again letting me know he had called 911 and intended to get the police out there to take her away. She had kicked and hit him - but at a whole of 90lbs, it hardly hurt and he felt stupid for attempting to press charges; but hoped it may actually get her help as he’d been previously advised.

The next time the phone rang, it was my father with an officer who told me that pressing charges will do mom no good, since it will restrict my father from being able to go over and help her, and really he is the only one trying to make sure she eats. The same officer said she could not arrest my mom or have her taken to the hospital again. Suicide is not a crime here, according to Ruth C. The police are not the right people to be in contact with, she insisted. We needed to get in touch with a doctor because they have the authority to have my mother evaluated against her will, according to the Mental Health Act of British Colombia.

We decided pressing charges wasn’t the best option. We decided to take the day and as a family try and get help from the medical society. Our first stop was a clinic that specializes in Mental Disorders & Addictions. Being a public holiday, they were closed. So at the advice of the officer earlier that morning, we headed off to the Royal Jubilee Hospital. The officer said they had the mental facilities and a doctor would see us even with my mother absent. Not to any of our surprise, we were not received there. We were told we needed to contact EMHS, the Emergency Mental Health Society, a society we have been in contact with for more than 10 months now and has done nothing to help us - except maybe neglecting to make the right diagnosis during the 45 minutes they evaluated her (after she had been arrested for kicking my brother in the balls and spending the night in jail), and thus helping her become a full-fledged alcoholic by sheer neglect.

After being turned down there, we headed off to the walk in clinic my mother frequents. Perhaps a doctor who had seen her there a couple times could help us, by giving us the authority to having her evaluated against her will. Don’t misunderstand, at times, my mother is willing to get help. She even cries often that she has tried the hospitals and the police and no one will help her. I even have her on video stating this. But she gets frustrated not getting the help she needs - probably because she is not able to coherently explain the symptoms or the problem she perceives (she has tried to press charges against my brother and my father and she has tried to get the hospital to document bruises she claims are from police brutality, but as far as we know, never once explained ALL her symptoms and problems to one person in authority). Part of losing your mind just might be the inability to articulate yourself accurately. Anyway, she then gets stubborn and refuses to seek help; angers at anyone who suggests it. She’s given up time and time again.

At the clinic, the doctor on call was not the one my mother sees. None the less, he has access to her files. He should be able to help us make some assessment; after all, the police officer that morning told us a doctor at the clinic should have the authority to have her evaluated, and we most certainly should be trying to get that done as a family immediately. The doctor on call was flabbergasted at the suggestion. He explained legally he had no right to help us, especially because he had never even met her. The tapes couldn’t help him. Legally, his hands were tied, even if we somehow convinced her to go in and see him, and since my mom is a danger to herself, it’s the police’s responsibility to hold her and get the evaluation done.

So back at square one, we headed off the police station again. We asked to speak to the same police officer who had given us the brilliant suggestions that morning. As stubborn as I’d ever known a person to be she asked , “Do you think we wouldn’t help you if we couldn’t? We see these situations all the time, we see worse and more often than not, even when we do call EMHS, they are let go within the hour for one reason or another.”

A year ago, my whole family had a brilliant future. My parents were wealthy, healthy and had the ability to retire and travel the world for the rest of their lives. Today, my mother looks like a drunken malicious baglady and she acts like one too. She’s nothing more than skin and bones, my guess weighing less than 90lbs. The system failed to help her when she initially begged them for help with physical and mental conditions. They almost forced her to self-medicate through alcohol and now that she’s a drunken alcoholic, they refuse to treat or even attempt to diagnose her apart from being alcohol dependant.

Over the past year, trying to get her proper help we have contacted EMHS, the NEED helpline, Police, the hospitals, the clinics, The Umbrella Society, and the Quadra street clinic. We’re still being shuffled in circles from one administration to another. The society so far that seems to be even trying to help us, is The Umbrella Society. And for that we say thanks. Otherwise, every other department or society agrees something has to be done, but denies having the authority to help; sending us somewhere else.

Right now, my mother is missing.

This morning I called the Mayor. City Hall had the Saanich police call me, who have promised to try and get her re-evaluated by EMHS. This morning I talked to a clinic with hopes of finding help and the receptionist there confided in me that she had lost a loved one because the system failed her in exactly the same way. An officer told me just recently they had a case where a gentleman was in and out of the system for similar things for years, until finally he killed himself. I WILL NOT STAND BACK AND LET THE SYSTEM KILL MY MOTHER.

I intend to start petitioning the Prime Minister of British Colombia. And if my mother dies or kills someone in the process, I honestly believe I will have every reason to sue every and any organization that has refused to get her the help she needs so far.