Current Top 10

This is my current posse of songs - wherever I am, and generally whatever mood I'm in, they tend to be hanging around in the background. Enjoy.

1. The Scientist COLDPLAY
2. Where is the love? BLACK EYED PEAS
3. I like love SOLITAIRE
4. We want your soul ADAM FREELAND
5. Move your feet JUNIOR SENIOR
6. Lucky Star BASEMENT JAXX
7. Sexual Healing MARVIN GAYE
8. Ode to my family THE CRANBERRIES
9. Days go by DIRTY VEGAS
10. Oooh Dooh (DARUDE VS JS16 MIX) BARCODE BROTHERS
- posted by syed-m @ 4:09 PM

 
Dating sucks

I'm beginning to loathe the girl that I've liked for most of this year. And whilst my rational mind knows that this recent spate of anger is fueled by the frustration of constantly having to see someone, something, that is so close to me yet so remote, I cannot but feel, even rationally, that I have been wronged. Just to remind new and old readers alike, the girl that I've liked works in the same office as me. 5 metres from me in fact, albeit in a different office. Like a dream deferred (see the very first House Negro entry, of 5 August 2003), I feel like emotionally exploding.

Thankfully, this is unlikely to happen. Porn, ecstacy, and Saturday cricket have seen to that. It's strange how you work things out sometimes. Sometimes you realise things well after the event. Two Fridays ago I managed to find myself in the dark, sound-resistant foam-padded basement of a distant acquaintance's house, playing poker with five very pasty, very blokey guys smoking enough pot to put a baby elephant to sleep. Whilst I didn't enjoy in a puff (recently I've been quite averse to the stuff - after all I already get a sufficient depressant effect on my bodily systems from work alone), the smoke must surely have got me stoned. For by the third hour of play (at which point I still had no idea how to play poker) I started thinking about the last time I spoke to this girl (henceforth known as Plan A) about my feelings for her. I remember her telling me, in response to my suggestion that we make time to get to know each other, that she really valued her independence and therefore would not be making any extra time for us to get to know each other. Instead, we were, I was, to be penciled into the social schedule like any other person she knew. Ever the democrat I suppose. In line with this, it got me thinking about what she said previously to me, when I told her that I had fallen in love with her. She wondered how on earth I could love her, having hardly known her, and said that she feared that perhaps I had put her on a pedestal, with expectations that she could never live up to. I retorted that I thought she had feelings for me. Quite quickly she replied 'No' - she had lived long enough, had been in enough relationships, to know when there was no chemistry. 'Don't ask me to explain it' was her explanation. She just knew this to be true.

In my vicariously stoned state, I began remembering this chain of conversations again, and the thought soon popped into my head - just as she had asked me how I could be in love with someone I hardly knew, how did she know for certain that a relationship would not work? And why was she so adamantly against us getting to know each other better? I used to get quite angered by the fact that something so essentially fickle and trivial accounted for so much of my mental and emotional energies. Nowadays, whilst I probably still do think that, I am more inclined to get irritated by the nuisances of emotional life. And, in that sense, this is currently my greatest emotional nuisance.

In fact, the real catalyst for my current sentiments was a date I went on two Sundays ago. This time it was with Plan B, a girl I met only once, on a late night, at a farewell party for a mutual friend, after a long and protracted chain of e-mail exchanges. Somewhere in that exchange it was suggested that we have dinner some time. And so eventually the day did arise. It turned out to be a monumental fizzer. For not only was there no chemistry whatsoever (yes, the irony has been noted smarty pantses!), Plan B was, most significantly, nowhere near as attractive as I had imagined. Clearly, in the hiatus between initial and secondary contact, my mental picture had gone from a vague image of her, drawn from the memories of that dark and sleep-deprived night when we first met, to an image that was far more detailed, and idealised, than was the reality. Perhaps there is a message in that for every budding Cartesian thinker?

By the end of this painful dinner, during which I stifled no less than three yawns, I was at the very least looking forward to an opportunity to have a ubiquitous snog or grope or something of the kind. Nothing of the sort eventuated. She was tired, her parents had been visiting the whole weekend, she had had a busy week, and she wanted to go to sleep. Okay then, where's the bus stop? I had brought my car.

For the record, I did actually drop her home. And she did ask me to give her a call later. But after all that, after absolutely no sexual catharsis whatsoever, all I could do was curse and whine and bemoan the female species (after I had dropped her off of course).

And then came Monday, and with it, the real object of my disaffection. There she was, Plan A, chatting, as she is want, with yet another person in the office - giggling and carrying on as though she was having the most engaging conversation in the history of conversations (surely deep down my anger was born of frustration - why wouldn't she giggle that way with me?). It was at this moment that something dawned on me. For all of Plan A's niceities, she really was a social slut. For all the calm and comforting comments she had made to me in the past (that, if ever I needed someone to talk to, in confidence, she was there), and despite the fact that she had told me I was attractive, had been caught on numerous occasions staring at me during office meetings and social gatherings, and even though she spent a night with me, at the end of the day Plan A really was a phony - in the nicest possible way. I should probably add that when Plan A told me she was someone I could confide in, she also said that although she appreciated my counter offer, there were already enough close friends in Canbera for her to confide in. Case closed.

But what really tipped me over the edge, what really made me begin to hate her, was what happened later in the afternoon. We went for a jog around the lake, which we often do, mainly, I might add, because it is easier to jog with a partner than alone. During the jog she started asking me how I was, what I'd been up to, how my family was, and so on. I replied by giving her curt but polite responses. At the same time, I couldn't help thinking - 'do you really give a rat's arse, or do you simply pride yourself on being ultra friendly to everyone you meet?'

Perhaps I am overreacting, but it really felt like a slap in the face. I felt like saying - woman I already told you that I wanted us to get to know each other better, asking me how I feel for the first time in 2 weeks is not what I had in mind. Nor did I feel like having a session with a makeshift counsellor who felt obliged out of courtesy to show concern for my life experience.

I'm a petty, small man today and I don't care. Fuck you Plan A, and screw the rest of them!
- posted by syed-m @ 1:47 AM

 
The first one to settle down

Two Saturdays ago my brother took the first in a long progression of steps towards becoming a married man. While the closest western term to describe the celebration is probably 'engagement', the term doesn't quite do justice to the South Asian Muslim wedding tradition - after all, there are around 4-6 ceremonies to go through (and that's after our two families, the groom's and the bride's, decided to cut down on the number of ceremonies!). Nor does the term engagement convey the circus-like quality of South Asian marriage ceremonies.

As most nights tend to begin, the evening began quite slowly. At 5pm, when people were asked to turn up, only a handful of people could be seen sitting down reading the Quran in the gender-segrated separate prayer areas. For me and my brother, two people who have been atheist for 6 years each (my brother was an agnostic for many years before then, but about 6 years ago I convinced both of us that atheism was a more accurate reflection of our position on religion, etc), the religious ceremony felt incredibly alien. It was as if we were foreign guests, like any other white-Australian, stumbling upon a peculiar South Asian tradition that had no marked value in our eyes.

For the entire day my parents were little nazis as they forced the rest of us to move furniture, clean the tiles, vacuum the carpets, etc. My mother even got me serving tea and cleaning dishes during the party. Mind you, no one worked harder than they did; two little South Asian parents getting ever more frail but with an unfailing stamina. I've always admired that. At least I put these cheesey fairly lights on the roof.

Overall it was a nice simple night, perhaps the first time in a very long time that I've felt part of a non-Western cultural tradition. I even prayed, for the first time since last year. The last time I did my namaaz (prayers) was when I visited some Muslim community leaders seeking legal advice on their submission to the Parliamentary Joint Committee investigating the ASIO Bill. Ironically, they were all quite religious men, so I decided it was better to stay silent and sell out than to give them a brief run down on Camus and existentialism.

So here's to my brother, and the future. May it all pan out safe and sound, with happiness to boot! And lots of kids, boy is he going to have 'em!
- posted by syed-m @ 3:16 AM