Venial Sin

I asked my brother to send me a couple of books when my mother returned to Karachi from London. She arrived an hour or so ago, effectively ruining my weekend, since her flight landed at 3:00 a.m. It’s an awful time to arrive, because it’s too late for me to pick her up and then go out, and it’s too early for me to go out and then go pick her up.

Obviously, the torture chamber being used for this bondage scene had been stiffed on the budget allocations, as was made painfully evident by the sight of the restraints applied to Our Hero. He had his arms stretched over his head and “tied” to a length of chain, which only ran for about a foot before it devolved into a length of string masquerading as rope. I’ll spare you the description of the barely audible grunts and moans as Our Hero [...]

A series of statements today made clear to me, without a shadow of a doubt, the world in which I live. “I’ve been circling the fucking building for an hour and a half trying to find parking. I don’t have my driver with me, so I’m just going to head home now.” “You’re sick with cholera? How in the world did you get cholera? And…oh God, that’s so Third World of you!” “I think you should quit your job immediately. [...]

As I mentioned to ActualFactual in an online conversation earlier today, how the bloody buggery bollocking hell can I be so tired from a physically intense day, and STILL be fat? I just don’t understand. I must easily do the equivalent of an hour of cardio each day just in making sure that everything in my life runs smoothly (or what passes for it in Pakistan), but each morning, those love handles for the bucket of flubber that is my [...]

The entire room was pitch-dark, and the only sounds to be heard were those of people scuffling their feet and shifting about in their seats. The blackout only lasted for a second or two, but it seemed an eternity. And then came the Metallica vs. Godsmack remix of heavy metal from HELL, as the auditorium was flooded with ear-piercing screeches and enough noise to raise the dead. And if that weren’t enough, in order to really up the ante for [...]

I still have nightmares when I think back to that play. Über and I sat in stunned silence as it opened with two complete and utter drama queens hurling their hands about like Italian air-traffic controllers stepped out on stage and began to address each other as “Fer-NAAAAAAAAAAANDDDH! (Fernand)” and “Aid-MAAAAAAUUUNNNDD (Edmond)”. Sin: God, they’re not even hot. Über: I think *whispering* Aid-MAAAAAAUND may be good-looking with his shirt off.

After we had left the café and returned home, Über and I spent a very peaceful hour or so doing absolutely nothing, before finally deciding to attend a play to which we’d been invited. I was hesitant about attending the play, not because I had any idea of how it’d be, but rather because I had no idea what one wears to the theatre in Islamabad. Über’s dictum of “Islamabad casual: chinos and a button-down!”, delivered via SMS, wasn’t exactly [...]

ActualFactual hit me with a meme a few days ago, and I’d done the necessary, but for some reason my WordPress installation decided to magically delete it. And then I was just too lazy to sit back and write it all again, mainly because I put a lot of time and effort into hunting down links to the books on Amazon and cleverly tagging ‘em all. But bugger all that, we’ll go one more time:

My second baby nephew was born on June 9th, at 8:17 p.m. I’m an uncle again, and I can’t stop crying, even though I’m 6,000 miles away. He’s a month premature, and we haven’t picked a name for him yet. But he apparently looks just like I did when I was a baby. My cheeks hurt from the grinning, and my eyes are all puffy, but damn it all, I cannot stop bawling and guffawing.

I love going to Islamabad to visit Über, but you already know that. Other than the fact that he treats me as though he’s my saccharin daddy, Islamabad is just far more relaxed and laid-back in Karachi, regardless of the fact that the inhabitants of this city consume about 783 times more the number of sedatives and tranquilisers than do those of Islamabad’s. The roads are wider and cleaner, people are less intense and demanding, and of course since I [...]