Buh Bye ‘06. a year of coming full circle. ‘06 has…

Buh Bye ‘06.

a year of coming full circle.

• ‘06 has been an odd year to say the least. but on the whole i’d say its been pretty good. heres what i’ve learned this year:

• my fingers werent really designed to play the guitar,….. i’m more of a bang on the skins kinda guy.
• i used to play drums back in school, so buying a drum machine made more sense than buying a guitar. i can however play a wicked sampled guitar solo which is done by sampleing guitar tones and then banging on my drumpads ……..so full circle number one.
• i used to vomit copious quantities of verbal diarrhea into a journal that i took everywhere with me. then i stopped for some reason. and now i blog so that everyone can wallow in the puke bucket that is my mind
• i used to be, and in some ways still am the stereotypical artyfarty kid who rammbled on endlessly about every “ism” there was while lugging paint brushes and canvases around campus. the creative side of me kinda took a back seat while the capitalist pig in me wallowed in the cesspit that is the stockmarket……….and if figured that the two sides were my jekyll and hyde, and never the twain shall meet.
• i was, however, wrong. theres nothing more expressive than ” i will buy your shares because i think youre an idiot for selling” or ” i will sell you my shares because i think you are an idiot for buying it at the price i want.” same paint brush different strokes fo’ different folks
• the creativity comes in doing your research and developing a concept that works…… much like prep work for a painting or a design brief.

• less egocentric selfinvolvedness stuff i’ve learned this year:

• people, in herds, and by nature, are like cockroaches,….. they search out other people like them, gather together, then collectively decide on what to do to ensure shelter and food……….. examples: brits on vacation in malaga, americans on tour groups, japanese on tour groups, chinatown, little bombay, edgeware road in london, the morons that marched to parliament in february when the market crashed, etc, etc, etc.
• no matter what it is, its only ever as hard as you make it, or as hard as you think it is. if you understand the basic principle, then youre half way there: neurosurgery is like a mechanic fixing your engine, NASA basically build fireworks for people to sit on, nuclear fusion is like you rubbing your hands together for warmth, only a kazillion times faster, which makes stupid amounts of heat there by burning you sweater, so you roll onthe floor to put it out and you set the carpet on fire, so you throw a blanket over it, which goes up in flames, etc etc until everyone in your building is dead.
• no one is truely evil, they all have their reasons, but thats no excuse.
• the moral high road will always give you leverage, even over a priest or mullah,…… oh and making a religious cleric feel guilty is incredibly addictive >:D , but try not to do it unless they really get on your tits.
• anything can happen, and it usually does when you think its least likely.

and last but not least:

• you know its time to move when you get comfortable,…… otherwise you get all starchy and fat, to the point where you cant feel the remote control under your ass.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE !!!

PAID! The Global Rich List. how many times have y…

PAID! The Global Rich List.

how many times have you thought that you dont get paid enough for what you do?

well heres a little something that will putthings into perspective, on a global scale:

its called the Global Rich List.

go there, follow the instructions, then sit and think about the result for a few minutes.

its a bitter sweet experience to say the least.

if you want to make yourself feel better, give your maid an end of year bonus. i dont have a maid so i’ll probably tip someone a bit more than normal. and that’ll be my good last good deed of the year.

A Kuwaiti White Christmass styrofoam is a loverl…

A Kuwaiti White Christmass

• styrofoam is a loverly thing. what normally comes packed around your new pc or hifi is normally made up of thousands upon thousands of tiny lil beads:

• i’ve only ever had one or two truely white christmasses where snow falls on christmass day. most of the time its been black icey sludge which is basically left over snow thats had time to collect dirt and melt together.

  but i have had the occasional christmass day snowball fight . and being in Kuwait this christmass, the last thing i expected was to have a white christmass of any kind.

• however,….

• driving into work on this sunny christmass morning, a truck with styrofoam boards hit a pothole, and since the styrofoam boards werent properly secured, a couple of them went flying all over the highway,…..

• the boards flipped and flapped in the wind until finally colliding with the road and exploding into a beautifull shower of this stuff:

• which kinda looked like this:

• here in the desert, i’ll take a white christmass however which way it comes

• hopefully the truck drivers boss will realise that god works in mysterious ways, and that this was his way of spreading a little bit of christmass joy to the drivers behind him,………

• well maybe not right behind him,…

• merry christmass everyone !

thats one big ass piece of calamari! Japanese rese…

thats one big ass piece of calamari!

• Japanese researchers have managed to catch and film a living giant squid for the first time in history. CNN has got an article and a video clip of the damn thing, which you’ll find here.

• at 24 feet, which is 7.3152 meters, the damn thing was apparently considered to be a baby as there were signs that it wasnt fully grown.

• dayyyumn!!!

• all i could think of was thats alot of squid sushi and calamari >:P

• i wonder what it tastes like,….

• when i was younger the family used to head to oneof our kuwaiti friends chalets down past mina abdullah, near the green house thing. i’m talking waaaaaaaaay before there was a macdonalds there.

• and we used to go spear fishing for fresh squid and crabs.

• the crabs we’d boil on the beach, and the squid we’d gut, clean and eat raw with a bit of soy sauce and wasabi

• ahh good ol days!

• if youre curios about the giant squid, as i was, heres a couple of pics i found from this site

i’ve driven a truck like that, and i’ve seen a whale like that, but i’ve never tried whale for dinner.

what can i say,…. big ass calamari!

Rome wasnt built on "insha’a allah". insha’a alla…

Rome wasnt built on “insha’a allah”.

• insha’a allah is the single phrase responsible for the dire situation here in the middle east. a saying that is meant to hummble ones self has been turned into the root cause of both the turbulence and the intellectual and economic stagnation prevalent in the middle east.

• insha’a allah basically means god willing. and is something that everyone has come to adopt, and i mean everyone, muslims and non-muslims, arabs and non-arabs alike. and its used a little something like this:

• ” so i’ll see you at the cafe at 7pm ok?”
• “insha’a allah.”

• doesnt seem like a big deal now does it?

• well it isnt really, until you actually take a look at the saying.

• “god willing” does one thing very well which is displace responsibility for ones actions.

• granted, most people dont see it that way, and the vast majority or people do take responsibility for their actions.

• but,…

• at the same time, the saying does exactly what its meant to do, ie, it hummbles you in the grand scheme of things.

• afterall who are you to go against gods will?

• saddly its been perverted to the english equivalent of “maybe”. its actually worse than “maybe” because “maybe” still implies a decision for which one would be responsible for, where as “insha’a allah” is often ” i will if i can but its really out of my hands and up to god, and therefore not really my fault if i dont even tho i said i might”.

• get me so far?

• yes = affirmative decision + personal responsibility for said decision
• no = negative decision + personal responsibility for said decision
• maybe = decision pending + no responsibility as the pending situation is made clear

• insha’a allah = if god wills it + …………………………………………………………………………………………………..

• see, theres no “responsibility-for-ones-actions-factor.”

• some will argue that it means you will do your best, and i’m sure many do try their best,….

• but ultimately if you dont make that appointment on time like you said,….

• no you didnt not keep your promise and neither are you a liar.

• instead,….

• god didnt will it, quite obviously, so can it be considered your fault for not making it or being late?

• now do you see what i’m talking about?

• so how does this result in the chaos that we see everywhere?

• when bush said he wanted to democratize the middle east, critics, mostly arab, said “we dont want your democracy, we want our own!”. saddly i’ll admit that i was one of those naive enough to believe that those critics were wrong. i think i had too much faith in the arab population. but then again thats my own fault because the arabs i tend to hang out with have all been “westernized” as the mullahs would call it. they are saddly only small in numbers.

• democracy doesnt just mean one man one vote, majority rules. its hardly ever that simple. what it does mean is that with one vote, you now have the responsibility that the one vote comes with. what you do with it is up to you. there is no maybe and no insha’a allah. you make the call, and you bear the responsibility of your decision.

• the bush admin learned that democracy means you dont know who will come to power when hamas got elected. and now the palestinians are learning that you cant just use your vote as a protest vote. whatever made them think that the west would continue to back and pay for a government made up of people classified as terrorists i have no idea. i dont really give a shit whether they are freedom fighters or terrosits, that makes no difference to me, so dont bother argueing that point.

• my point is that if you were in gaza to vote, why didnt you think: ok vote hamas, but since we get the majority of our money from AMERICA and EUROPE, maybe they wont be too happy. those evil jews must be waiting for a reason to cut our funding,…. so wouldnt electing someone they consider a terrorist organisation give them reason enough to do that?

• chances are it went more like this: fatah stinks and is stealing my baby’s milk, which is true, and therefore i will vote for hamas, cos they been good and when they get in we will rise to victory,…….. insha’a allah.

• so what happens if you dont? rise to victory that is…….

• if that question doesnt come up in your head then no youre not ready for democracy.

• here comes the second part of the insha’a allah thing i dont get. if you dont make it to the cafe on time, it was gods will that you didnt go right?

• if you dont rise to victory, then surely it wasnt gods will right?

• so that means its been 60 years and god hasnt willed a rise to victory let alone a peaceful settlement?

• insha’a allah leads people to end speculation with that phrase. there doesnt seem to be any question of why something didnt happen.

• try using that mentallity with your girlfriend when you dont show up at the cafe. think she’ll settle for god didnt will it?

• insha’a allah turns people into passive beings. which is why democracy doesnt work or atleast so far hasnt worked in the arab world. on the flipside, it turns others into more aggressive people, backed up with the idea that i’ll try jumping the que cos insha’a allah i wont have to wait.

• so when jumping the que works, and the quite philippino dude behind you doesnt say anything, you didnt do anything wrong because god willed that you jump the que.

• rude? i’m sorry i dont understand that word.

• this extends into a larger geopolitical landscape beyond the que into jabriya.

• ever wonder why the middle east is made up of despotic monarchys?

• cos someone used that line jumping mentality 100 years ago, and the rest of you said “ahhh it must be gods will that he becomes king no matter how much of an ass he is.” then the brits came and saw who was your king and spoke to him instead of you.

• democracy doesnt work here cos insha’a allah keeps the sheep sheep and leaves the sheparding to the shepard. condescending i know but theres no other explanation.

• but its not all bad:

• dubai and qatar are two of the shining examples of the middle east, and yet neither of them is a full fledged democracy like here. dubai is controlled by one family, so theres no bickering between families and the makhtoums get things done.

• qatari dude got pissed off with how his dad was handling things, so he kicked the old man out of the house, and now look at what qatar has become.

• the only thing i like about kuwait is that the amir here did something similar. he didnt wait his turn, and it worked. but now parliament is dragging behind him slowing his progress. now i’m all for democracy and free speech but parliament here is just one big diwaniya and nothing more.

• honestly, the kuwaiti parliament makes the british parliament look like,… well like a quaint tea party of quiet elderly accountants as opposed to the raucous mess it normally is.

• and yet on the flip side to that is what is currently going on in iraq, palestine and lebanon. alot of blood and tears are being shed because insha’a allah we will rise to victory by jumping the que and not waiting for the next proper elections as mr ayman zawahery said today. if god wills it we will win by killing all our opponents and we wont be wrong cos it worked before which proves we are on gods side and thus that he wills it now since he is by our side now too.

• and if he doesnt then thats ok cos he didnt will it…

• nevermind who or how many died in the process of finding out if he did or did not will it.

• if you think i’m full of shit, next time you ask someone to do something and they say insha’a allah, ask yourself how you feel about the reply,…. did he mean yes or no or maybe,…. or did he mean yes but i’ll take my sweet ass time?

• wouldnt you feel better with a definitive yes or no?

• bring on hate mail !!!

• i’ll answer each and everyone one of your comments,… insha’a allah

Thoughts on Sheep…… khahroooooofs! the lot of …

Thoughts on Sheep…… khahroooooofs! the lot of them!

• they came to the KSE in their tribal herds today.

• they were there to sell their tomorrows to feed themselves today.

• the young, the old, ewes and rams.

• each one willingly walked up the ramp that led them to certain mediocrity for the rest of their lives.

• theres nothing funnier than sheep pretending to be all wall street!

• but i suppose you cant really blame them, especially since wall street has its own fair share of sheep.

• i’m glad i decided to order the fish instead of the lamb.

• theres been enough bahhing and bleating today

————————————————————————————————

• to all the philosphers out there, or anyone who considers themselves a student of the human condition, no treatise or thesis on human psychology is complete without a trip to your local stock exchange.

• infact, i’ll go so far as to say that the stock market is the purest form of emotional self expression that you will ever find on this earth. mans best and worst traits are displayed in charts, his hopes and dreams, nightmares and catastrophes, his endless capacity for stupidity and brilliance, compassion and acts of pure evil……

• its all captured there if you know how to read it.

• everything is there, from the moment JFK was shot to the lunar landings, earthquakes, tsunamis, reagans assasiantion attempt, the day that the world thought the us economy would collapse, the day they realised it wouldnt, and then again, ….. 9/11, the subway bombings in london, the sarin gas attacks in tokyo, waco, etc etc etc etc ad nauseum.

• so put down that history and literature book for a little bit, and turn on bloomberg or CNBC.

• chances are you’ll learn what it is those history and literature books are talking about.

• if at the end of time, everything was gone except for the charts of our stock markets, even the next intelligent species of lizard people archeologists will understand what happened by reading those charts. it wont be sheep people cos hopefully the next big meteor willkill them all off in one shot

• and if all that still hasnt convinced you of the importance of knowing even a little bit about the stock market, theres always this:

• the next time theres a crash or a bubble being blown, look around you. there will be people crying, jumping for joy, having heart attacks, taking three or four mistresses, tearing their hair out or hugging complete strangers.

• wouldnt you be curious about what it is that elicits such extremes of emotions?

• nothing in the world can come close, except maybe having kids,.. but then i dont have any yet so i wouldnt know

• its not that the market is a good or a bad thing.

• it just is.

• and i love it!!!

• to hell with drugs, fast cars or loose women!!!

• I want my bloomberg!!!

• cos if you do things right, and ironically, if you dont focus on the money, the drugs, fast cars and loose women come as a bonus for a job well done!

• traffic tip for the next couple of days: if you dont have to, dont go down to the NBK HQ/ Stock exchange area forthe next couple of days,…. the sheep are clogging the roads…. lol they even all drive and park together!