Things I think about

How can some people be SO fucking fat? Like, I understand people who just simply enjoy eating and refrain from any form of physical activity, thereby resulting in a few extra kilos. That’s fine. But there’s a limit. Human beings should not be the same size as baby elephants. And they shouldn’t be allowed to wear bathing suits and walk around in public. Or at least anywhere I can see them or feel the earth shake from their stride.

Which flavour ice cream came first? Chocolate? Vanilla? Who comes up with the flavours? “Oh I have a brilliant idea! Let’s make a delectable frozen treat that tastes just like banana nut muffins!”

I want a boa constrictor and/or a baby tiger as a pet. By the end of this week, preferably. But I don’t think my roommates would be too down with either of those options. So a bunny will have to do. Maybe. If I’m lucky enough for even that. Do bunnies make a sound? Like, cats meow and dogs bark, but do bunnies do anything audible to the human ear? I don’t think so. But then again, I could be wrong. I’ve never had a bunny before.

I hate how the concept of time works. It’s so warped. When I’m smoking a cigarette, for example, five minutes can pass like that *snaps fingers*. But when it’s 19:55 and I’m waiting for those last five minutes before I can close my position so that I can run and catch the bus home, it takes fucking aaaaaages. 

I saw this lady swimming with one of those waterproof iPod things the other day. I want one. I didn’t know they actually work! I thought it’s just a case that you put your iPod in, and if you’re on a boat or something and it accidentally falls in the ocean, its innards are protected from the corrosive salt water. I didn’t know that you could actually hook it up to headphones and listen to music while swimming! That’s awesome! Maybe some day I’ll come up with a genius invention like that. I’ve already got an idea that involves a virtual alarm clock that somehow programs itself onto your brain and even when you’re dreaming, it can wake you up in the form of like, a guy that takes hold of your shoulders and starts shaking you and screams, “wake up!” But there’s still a few technicalities I need to work out.

Why do kids always run everywhere? Is it that they’re short little legs are incapable of walking? Or do they just choose to run because they have heaps of pent-up energy after being immobile for those first couple years (including womb-time)?

My nails are really brittle and ugly these days. And my fingers are all cut up. I think the chlorine is to blame.

I don’t think Michael Jackson is really dead.

Back by popular demand

Okay so due to a number of requests, I’ve decided to be so kind as to enlighten you with a blog update. You should feel very fucking special, because I could be spending this time taking a nice hot shower because I reek of chlorine and sweat, but instead, I’m being generous. So appreciate.

My once-wonderful brain is now dead. The daily sun exposure has definitely taken its toll on me and I’m officially more insane than I once was. Therefore, this post will be completely unorganised and lacking in the usual structured humour.

Uhm… yeah. So let’s see. I don’t even know how to start. It’s like I forgot how to write, which is slightly depressing. I’m sitting here, still in uniform, drinking my billionth cup of coffee for the day and smoking yet another cigarette, waiting for the washing machine to finish so I can put in my next load of laundry. As you can see, my life is exciting. Wee!

The new semester started. I’m taking two super boring classes. Which I suppose is better than taking five super boring classes, but I’ve reached that stage in my education where I’m like COME ONNN! Fucking finish already! But whatev.

I’ve come to learn the meaning of my name in like, a gazillion languages. Because everyone who asks me what my name is seems to think I care about what it means in their language. But because I don’t care and I’m still forced to listen politely and smile and say something nice like “Oh that’s cool,” I think it’s only fair that I share this useless information with you as well. “Ona” apparently means she, look, sister, one, under, and I. Now that I typed it out I realise that it’s not really a gazillion languages, but yeah. Point is, I have a boring ass name. I wish it meant something cooler like gorilla, cactus, umbrella, powder, second cousin twice removed, and sprinkles. Alas. I’m not the creator of name meanings. Which may or may not be a good thing. 

My eyes are burning again. Oh did I tell you that story? Nay, I think not. Kay so like, I wear contact lenses. Daily ones. Which means, if you’re normal, that you put them in in the morning, and at night before you sleep, you remove them and throw them away. In the morning when you wake up, the process repeats itself. However, since we’ve already established that I’m not normal, I decided to change the definition of “daily” to “monthly” (in my head). So for 24 hours a day, for several weeks, the same pair of contact lenses sits on my eyeball. And after about the one month period, my right eye begins to feel as if a Hiroshima bombing just happened, and the left feels like Nagasaki. I don’t know which one is worse, but it doesn’t really matter. Point is, my eyes fucking burn. And when this happens, my smart lil brain sends some sort of signal to my hands, which then attempt to pry the now-welded contact off of my eyeball. I then have intense pain for about three days (during which I need to wear my glasses), and repeat the process because I’m too stupid to learn from my mistakes. And yeah, now I’m at that stage again when I feel like ripping my eyes out of my sockets, but I’m too lazy to do anything. So for now, I shall rely on eye drops for temporary relief until I go blind in a few days.

Oh my gosh I’m so tired. Constantly. Because I swim like a fucken migrating sea turtle in the mornings, and then work inside the sun (Literally. Like, you know the big burning star that provides light and warmth to the universe? Called the sun? Yeah that’s where I work. Fifth floor, come visit!) and I have those boring classes on Sundays and Tuesdays, and I have little to no social life because of all the aforementioned reasons. 

In other news, I have a new phone. I’m eating some potato thingies that Azra just brought back for me. I have a shorts tan. I have a swelling bruise on my thigh because I’m an idiot who walks into things. I’m reading two books at the moment (The White Tiger and Hannibal Rising). I like rusty spoons. I’m no longer obsessed with Heroes because the second season is shitty. I feel like puking because I ate too many of those potato thingies. And I’m going to shower now.

Young Vaughn’s pretty sick

So my friend Young Vaughn, a really talented artist, just released his new album (The New School Cool) and a video for one of his tracks entitled “Loser!” And I think awesome pretty much sums them both up. Click here to download the album for free, and click here to check out Loser! on YouTube.

If you’re into Hip Hop, you won’t be disappointed, and if you’re not into Hip Hop, this guy just might get you hooked.

A few signs that Someone up there doesn’t like me very much.

Okay so I know my life isn’t like, horrible. I mean, I’m not crippled, I don’t have any debilitating diseases (yet), I’m not living in a bunker made of palm leaves in the middle of a war zone, I don’t have twelve kids to take care of, and I’m not ugly. However, despite my gratefulness for having a relatively good life, I still wanna complain once in a while. These are my stories. *cue Law & Order “dun-dun”*

I’ve recently developed a new addiction, far worse than heroin and crack combined. My drug of choice is known only as Heroes, and it is the greatest and best series ever created in the history of television. That’s a fact. If you’ve never seen an episode, I strongly suggest you don’t. Unless you have exceptionally strong willpower, in which case you definitely need to watch it, but view with caution. Because it’s sickeningly addictive. Sign number one that Someone up there doesn’t like me. Because He/She creates this shit, knowing very well that I will not only become obsessed with it, but also jealous of everyone’s super powers. I wanna be Sylar. Minus the whole brain-cutting thing. Oh yeah by the way, I’m only half way through the first season so don’t ruin anything for me! Or I will cut your brain out.

Tomorrow, I officially become a Jumeirah slave. My duties as a lifeguard will include interacting with nasty demon children, saving them if they start drowning (which I initially thought was a joke, but apparently senior management was serious – I’m not allowed to drown kids, even if it’s with all my best intentions to make the world a better place), becoming a victim of skin cancer as I bake to a crisp in fifty-degree weather, exercising on a daily basis which translates to cutting down on smoking, waking up at ungodly hours of the morning and being forced to wear a smile at all times, and more. Sign number two that Someone up there doesn’t like me. There are some benefits as well though! For example, I get paid. But because I need to buy a car and a new tattoo, I have to save my paycheck and can’t really spend it. Sign number three that Someone really enjoys laughing at my misery.

As the end of July approaches, summer slowly rolls to a halt. August is right around the corner. In uni-talk, August equivocates to Hell. Because it’s enrollment period, and students sit at their laptops like hawks, and within the first thirty seconds of the classes being posted, they’re already full. Which means someone like me, who’ll be melting in the sun and will not have the luxury of Internet at my fingertips, will most likely have to manually enroll, which is a bitch. Because those people at the Registrar and the Cashier are kinda retarded and don’t really like me. Sign number… what are we on now? Four? Yeah, sign number four that Someone likes picking on me.

My beautiful baby princess Ten Ten is no longer with me. She didn’t die or anything, God forbid, but she’s about a billion and a half kilometres away from me right now. Yeah that’s right, on Venus, baby! No actually not that far; she’s in Boston. But still, that might as well be Venus. And it’s so not cool. It makes me want to fall to my knees in the middle of the road during a rainstorm, shake my fists at the heavens, and scream “WHHYYYYY?!” But since it never rains here, this is an unfeasible desire of mine. Signs five and six that Someone wants me to suffer.

Sign seven: my wisdom teeth are still being nuisances. For the past couple of years now, they have been embedded in my gums. But beneath the surface, they are angry little fuckers who wanna grow and take over my whole mouth. Unfortunately, there isn’t any space between my last set of molars and the end of my jaw for them to happily sprout out and be wise. So instead, they have decided to be conniving, mischievous bastards, and are growing at an angle, forcing themselves onto the roots of my other molars (who’re just casually sitting there, minding their own business). This chain of events is causing a gradual shift of all the teeth in my jaw. Mind you, it’s occurring at a glacial pace, and so far the shift is subtle and barely noticeable, but something must be done nonetheless. Crooked teeth are nasty. Braces are even nastier. And due to my current financial situation, I’m unable to get them removed. Although now that I think about it, I have a wrench in one of the kitchen drawers…

My hair isn’t growing as fast as I’d like it, I miss Omar and wanna go visit him, my photo printer decided to die on me today, I still haven’t found my sheet music, and I really wanna build a pool table, but I haven’t the supplies nor the skills. Signs eight through twelve that Someone isn’t too fond on me.

There’s more, you know. I could keep going for a while. But instead, I’ve decided I’d rather smoke a cigarette and then conduct research on how to make my own crystal meth lab in my bathroom, so that I have a supplementary source of income each month. If you’re the police, JUST KIDDING! If you’re a child, come to Wild Wadi and ask for the awesome lifeguard called Ona. I’ll hook you up. *wink*

Blame it on the alcohol

For those of you who don’t know, I quit drinking back in February. Like, quit quit. As in, not a single sip. Not even the occasional whiff. I just 100% quit.

Now, many people are shocked and ask me, “But…why?!” and I thought I would take a moment to explain to the world my rationale behind quitting the art of drunken belligerence.

The dancing. For those of you who know me, Drunk Ona likes to dance. And by “dance” I actually mean “stagger around the dance floor and bump into people, all the while lacking rhythm and grace.” However, this isn’t so much the problem. The issue arises when I have to wait until the next day to hear about my dancing stories and how I made a fool of myself. Either by getting kicked off the dance floor by security due to inappropriateness and public indecency, or starting a bitch fight by dancing with some chick’s boyfriend, or whatever. Basically, drunken Ona-dancing was never a good thing. And now that I’m sober, when I go to clubs, I just look at the drunk dancers with such admiration disgust that my friends have to tell me to snap out of it because I look like I’m about to kill someone.

The puking. Normal people throw up like once every five years or so, and it’s due either to pregnancy, or food poisoning, or swine flu, or something of the like. I, however, used to easily throw up twice a week. And not necessarily in the private comfort of a bathroom stall, no. I’m talking about public fucking puking. The dance floor, under the table, in some chick’s purse, the parking lot, someone’s car, a taxi, the side of the road, the front of someone’s house… you name it. My problems with vomiting are twofold. First, it’s unhealthy as hell. I mean sure, you’re getting the alcohol out of your system. But your esophagus and mouth shouldn’t be exposed to the alcoholic acid mixture that projects from your stomach. It’s nasty and corrosive. Secondly, puking is just fucking unclassy. It’s not that I can’t hold my liquor (because trust me, I might as well be Irish), it’s more of the pace at which I drink, and the fact that I mix my alcohols. And that induces unclassy vomiting.  Nowadays, when I go clubbing and see girls just double over and hurl a puddle of vomit on the dance floor and then get back up and continue dancing in their own filth as though nothing happened and then two seconds later give their boyfriend a big wet kiss, like, that shit’s disgusting. And did I mention unclassy? And ironically, it triggers my gag reflex. But it makes me so happy that I am no longer able to classify myself as one of those people.

The emotions. Back in my days of alcoholism, I would have severe and uncontrollable mood issues. I was rarely a happy drunk. Either I was like The Hulk and got really really angry and aggressive and could stab you to death without so much as a single flinch, or I’d have a waterfall of tears streaming down my face, crying about something or another. It was pathetic. And now that I’m usually the only sober one, I like to conduct observational research when I go clubbing. And my observations lead me to conclude that once the ratio of alcohol to blood (in your body) exceeds 1:1, your conscience shuts down, and the alcoholic sub-conscience takes over. This is bad. Because you say shit that you’d normally keep to yourself because your sensible conscience tells you it’s offensive. Or you do shit that you’d normally never do because your sense of reason and judgement is still intact. And then the emotional downfall begins, and you just keep spiraling down into deeper depression slash rage until finally you pass the fuck out next to some train tracks and wake up the next day, shivering, alone, and confused. Not like that’s happened to me or anything…

The blackout. Now, I don’t know about you, but because of the lack of control I have whilst drinking, I drink until the point of blackout. As in, I’m still walking around and functioning, but my brain is literally dead. And I won’t remember anything I do in this period of blackout the next day. Not only could this lead to embarrassing happenings, but more importantly, I could do stupid dangerous shit. Let’s say I’m in blackout mode and I get behind the wheel of a car? Impending death by impact. Or let’s say I’m in blackout mode and since I’m at a beach party, I decide to go swimming? Impending death by drowning. Like, I guess this is one of my main reasons for quitting drinking, which is that I don’t like to not be in control of my own body. I’ve seen it too many times before. Alcohol makes people ugly. It changes people’s personalities completely, and it’s some creepy ass voodoo shit. I don’t like it. Hence, quitting.

The hangover. You wake up, reeking of booze and cigarettes. You’ve got that nasty ass fermented taste in your mouth because you were too drunk the night before to brush your damn teeth. You roll over and regret it instantaneously. Your head is throbbing, you feel motion sickness even though you’re not moving, your eyes are sensitive to light, your hands are probably still shaking from alcohol poisoning, you may or may not have heartburn… As you get up, the symptoms only worsen. You stagger to the bathroom and catch a glimpse of your still-drunk reflection and groan in dismay, as you realise you’re still wearing the same clothes as the night before. Is that a tattoo on your forehead?! How drunk were you? After a quick pee, you make your way downstairs to the kitchen. You’re super hungry and could kill for a huge English breakfast. Sadly, your sense of smell is heightened, and anything that even vaguely reminds you of food makes you nauseous. So although you’re dying of starvation, you can’t eat. It’s a cruel, harsh world, and for the next five hours, all you can do is mope around like the pathetic alcoholic that you are. But then, it’s happy hour at your local bar, so you make your way over for the best hangover cure: a pint of beer.

So yeah that’s pretty much it. Now that I don’t drink anymore, I’m relatively happier, my liver is no longer at the brink of failing, my mom isn’t as much of a paranoid freak as she once was, and I haven’t suffered any fatal injuries. But it’s still difficult. I crave a beer every morning when I wake up, and every night before I go to sleep. I constantly fight an inner battle with my alcohol demons, although the better of me has thus far always won. Can you still buy me a drink, you ask? I’ll take a sugar-free Red Bull on the rocks with two slices of lemon. Stirred, not shaken.

Typical?

Before I go on to tell you about these retarded Asians I saw today, I wanted to comment on the fact that I’ve been slacking on my blogging. I know, it’s so not cool, and I apologise. Therefore, I’ve decided to make it up to you by posting my latest creation. 

It’s still a rough draft, so I’m open to critique and comments! 

Kay, now that that’s out of the way, onwards to my story. It’s short, don’t worry.

The temperature was probably around 45 degrees Celsius today, with the humidity levels exceeding 70% for sure. I don’t really know because I’m not a meteorologist, but that’s my rough estimate. Anyway, I was just in this lame new shopping mall for the past hour, when I finally decide that it’s time I should leave.

Upon exiting the sliding glass doors, my sunglasses (which were already on my face, because I’m cool like that) immediately fogged up like woah. This is a normal occurrence for Dubai at this time of the year. So I just took my glasses off, wiped them on my shirt, and put them back on my face.

I lit a cigarette. About thirty-four seconds later, this group of typical Asian tourists comes out of the same sliding glass doors through which I existed just a few moments prior. I use the term “Asian” because I don’t really know which country they were from. But let’s just say they looked like anime characters. Complete with the unnatural hair colouring and spiky up-dos. I noticed that only one of them was wearing sunglasses.

I was about to avert my attention elsewhere when the dude with the glasses started freaking the fuck out. With his hands outstretched before him, he proceeded to walk like a blind guy without his stick, and shouted something in a worried Asian voice. His friends were all looking at him with equally horrified facial expressions, but after a couple seconds started laughing at him.

As it turns out, Naruto’s glasses simply fogged up, but he thought he had gone blind or eaten some magic mushrooms or something. He and his Asian clan were so fascinated by this event! They started laughing and jabbering away in their language, taking pictures of the glasses and the guy wearing them. Then they opened their little fanny packs and took out their own glasses, but looked completely devastated when they didn’t fog up the way their friend’s had. 

I couldn’t help but laugh, and that’s when they noticed me and in broken English, with smiling faces and many head-nods, asked if I could  take a group photo of them. I couldn’t possibly say no, so I snapped a picture, and went my way.

Too bad I don’t have a copy.

 

EDIT: I just saw what this post looks like from your (the reader’s) point of view, and I can already say that I’m not feeling the clouds. I gotta work on that section like heaps more. So let’s just ignore it for the time being, shall we? Excellent.

Brain Freeze?