First class beef
‘Champagne Mr. Baz?’
I can’t sleep on planes.
I’ve often tried to rationalize this with war-child psychology, insomnia or overall discomfort. Truth is, I snore like a jet engine and tend to wake everyone up. This has made for more interesting nights in the past, and helped me develop an acute case of empathy.
Booze and comfortable chairs dull this, and on flights longer than four hours I splurge on upgrades. I figure if I plan to be awake for two days, I might as well do it in a couch-bed.
‘No thanks. I’m exhausted and just want to crash.’
‘Bad choice of words,’ she said. ‘But one glass might help you doze off though, what do you think?’
Booze, comfortable chairs and underwear models in tight skirts.
Call me Jack
Photo by Frédéric DuPont
Remember that part in The Shining, when Jack Nicholson breaks an axe through the bathroom door to better communicate with his screaming, cowering wife?
“Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in; not by the hair on your chinny chin chin?”
Well, I get like that when I don’t sleep for 40 hours.
It takes my mind about two hours to reboot when I’m exhausted, before which it is absolutely impervious to the outside world. The phone call must’ve come at around 4, and I had to answer. I had to; calls that late had to be important.
‘难道你真的花时间去翻译呢？你真的认为我记得说什么机器？你一定是无聊,’ a computer informed me.
Automated Chinese telemarketing at 4AM. Son of a bitch.
I didn’t drive the phone into the wall, hung up, and sank into my pillow; my head usually forgets this kind of crap by the time I wake up. But you are reading this, aren’t you?
It’s called an infinite loop. What it essentially means is that a programmer somewhere forgot to tie up his code’s loose ends, and ended up teaching a computer to call me continuously, forever and ever. And it’s fine; computers can generally get away with things that would otherwise earn a human being a fantastic punch in the face.
By 4:15 I’d tried hanging up, keeping an open line, not answering at all and beating my fist against the wall. I couldn’t turn it off; I had an important morning call coming in.
I needed to punch. I needed a face.
‘Hello Tommy.’
Tao Ming (aka Tommy) is my Chinese driver, and I’ve called this man at every possible ungodly hour for every ridiculous reason under the red sun or seaweed sky. He’s used to it now, and remains unfazed.
‘Hello Kaal. How can I help?’
The r is silent in China.
‘Tommy I have a problem, can you please come over?’
It took him about 20 minutes to get here. I could’ve silenced the phone while I waited, but I didn’t want to. I wanted more anger, because when I found an outlet it’d be that much sweeter.
‘Tommy, please translate this message for me; this machine is calling me every minute and I need to know which company this is.’
He listened and wrote down the company name and phone number. They were selling push-up bras, in case I was wondering.
‘Thank you Tommy, I’ll see you tomorrow.’
When in China
Photo by Troy Holden
When in Rome, do the Romans. Or something.
You won’t find many brothels in China; love for money is a legal no-no. But no worries, you won't need to.
I expected to land on a dirt runway, live with farmers and frolic through rice fields. For some reason *cough* Hollywood*cough* I couldn't help but associate westernization with modernization, and expected China to lack both. Truth is, China is as modern as it gets. This is good news for someone who navigates new countries with his privates: cosmopolitan women are far more likely to end up in bed with me.
I’d found an apartment already, and for a few days my only companions were the pretty receptionist, jetlag and a hard bed. By the fifth day it was high time for a drink.
I hit the bars as soon as I could walk, and followed the pretty lights in the sky until I stumbled upon a massive, modern club called Tang. Two bottles of Jack Daniels made me a table of friends – even managed to attract another Arab. An hour of serious drinking had me ready for company, and the bar was full of it.
There must've been four women to every man in this place; mostly Asian, most stunning, and all staring at me.
Yes?
A steaming dumpling caught my eye, and flashed me the peace sign, along with a fantastic smile. A minute later she walked up to my table and started chatting away in broken but coherent English, asking all the right questions and leading the conversation in a direction I thought I’d have to take care of myself. Independent women rock my socks.
'It's time we go somewhere louder,' screamed my Arab friend.
He was insane, surely, but it seemed like the right night for it. We packed our things and head out, but a tiny Chinese hang tugged at my shirt; my hot spring-roll had reservations.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘I don’t want to move until I’m sure you want me.’
Desert toes
Photo by Elvis Payne
In Cairo, there’s an overcrowded area called Khan el Khalil. There I was, wet, smelly and limping on what may have been a broken toe.
My high school was big on SATs. There were posters and flyers, lectures and awareness campaigns, and even free biscuits at one point. Classrooms were converted into think-tanks, hallways into math galleries, and teachers pushed vocabulary flash cards on us like crack dealers in a loft party.
I hated the damn cards. Some words were so obscure that you’d only ever see them in the SATs, and others so nauseously simple that they were a waste of ink, cardboard and Euclidean space.
‘I mean, seriously, overcrowded? And you have the audacity to flash me with that, Karl?’
‘See, it’s working already. I flashed you audacity just a few slides ago.’
I was kind of hoping she’d flash me. In a classroom of underdeveloped women this study-buddy had enough curves to make my head spin, amongst other things, and I – being the penultimate example of suave – had offered to help with her SAT preps in hopes of, umm, biscuits I guess.
Chinese dumplings
Photo by François
Imagine a world where your pleasure is of singular importance, where everyone eagerly caters to your every whim and defines the quality of their very existence through your level of comfort.
Damn, I should be writing their brochures.
Welcome to your typical Chinese Spa.
Six Chinese women bowed to me as I walked through the glass doors, greeting me softly in two languages. An attendant took my arm and led me to the front desk; good thing too as my legs weren’t going anywhere.
‘First time sir?’
‘First time for everything I guess.’
The attendant wrapped my wrist with a numbered elastic bracelet, led me to the locker rooms and yelled something in Chinese, presumably: ‘Scared Arab coming through. Be gentle.’
If you don’t know what a Zerg rush is then you really can’t imagine my expression, but after a few minutes of adapting I picked an escort from the swarm of Chinese teens that surrounded me. I named him Bruce.
Bruce took me to my locker, flashed my bracelet to the sensor and set up the seating area. Then pulled my shorts off.
‘Excuse me?’
Posts
Help me, I’m linear!
Recent love, or not
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- roupen: Ohhhhhh am bored so bored!
))) - Sukoon: hahaha! Wei ni hao? Oh man, at first, I thought you were just being out of control with your need to break...
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Linearity is overrated
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