Garlic shampoo in Kenya. Marketing moment

Tags

garlic, make up, marketing, prizes

As I reach for the garlic shampoo (yeah, I know, how cool is that? btw, this is not the sequel to my quest for a healthy breakfast the other day) she stops me in my tracks. 

She’s young, with the kind of beautiful heavy make-up I dream of decoding one day (what goes in that astonishing mix? and how do you make it stick? and look so perfect?) and braces. Carefully straightened hair. 

Hello! I want to give you a prize.

Oh good. Thanks. What is it?

Oh many prizes. How much lucky you are?

Not very. 

OK, give me 3 countries that start with the letter K. 

Aaaa, Kenya, KSA….Korea. (I give myself a big self congratulatory smile and a pat on my soon to be garlic-ed hair). 

Very good. You are the most beautiful.

Thanks. So are you. 

Can you go to my company to take your prize?

Probably not. What prize?

Many prizes. 

What company? 

Big company. Accommodation. 

How do you survive group dinners?

Tags

Bills, Bore, Dinner, Etiquette, Going out, Group behaviour, Restaurant, Socialising

The thing is I never know where to sit.

And I always hope to do better this time.

But as I plunge towards the seat next to the Funny Smart One, somebody outruns me and throws their bag on the chair with Olympic precision.

Ok, that settles it. Once again, I am wedged between the Drunken Chatterbox and the Self-Obsessed Bore.

There is something as implacable as a rainy November afternoon in Basingstoke about where you have stationed yourself. You are there for the duration of the next fraction of the Earth’s spinning class and there is nothing you can do about it.

And just as dinner comes to an end and you start to see the light of dawn (not literally, one hopes), here comes the bill. And there is always a self appointed Guardian of the Bill. And once the G of the B has stood up, glasses halfway down nose wrinkled in concentration, bill in hand, you know it can only go one of two ways.

The first approach is the communist one. Right, there are 10 people here, you are to dish out 27.52 whatevers. Don’t care that you here had 28 beers and half a cow and you over there in the corner had bread, peas and water. We are in this together.

The second one is the liberal school of thought. Why don’t you all put in what you owe? Oh jolly good. The Drunken Chatterbox has stopped droning on about his fishing trip to Scotland last year. He is now tasking you with adding up his beers and finding the forever elusive price of mashed potatoes on the menu.

Oh joy oh rapture, we are done. Nothing to do but look forward to our next dinner.

Top 3 Arabic words of all (my) times

Tags

Learning Arabic, polysemy, Spoken Arabic, words

My relationship with Arabic is one of puzzled yearning.

Every small triumph (reading a road sign or assuring the taxi driver that the weather is in fact nice) is followed almost instantly by the realisation that I am still far from the object of my desire.

The road that takes one from flirting with Arabic to moving in together is a long and winding one.

Spoken Arabic has such an abundance of synonyms you can never be sure you have used the right word for “nice” for example. Is it nice nice or just a bit nice or mainly nice or a quarter good and three quarters nice?

Three sophisticated, versatile linguistic beasts I particularly love are:

1. Yallah – Literally “come on” but wonderfully complex in use. “Let’s move on” or “I’m bored” or “Ok, we’re clear” or “Hey, you”, “Oh, you’re here”  or even “Blimey!” with the right intonation.

2. Marhabtein – This is a lovely variation from “marhaba”- “hello” and it literally means “double hello”. This word is a small gift. You get it when the giver is in a good mood or you’re having a particularly good hair day. Playful. Nice. Four quarters nice.

3. Hallas – Not this is the ultimate king of polysemy. If meanings were wives this word would have the biggest harem on the planet.  “Enough”, “stop it”, “I understand”. “Ok, we have a deal”. “Finished”. “No, thanks”. “That’s all right”.

So yallah, my dears, hallas for now and hope you get a chance to say marhabtein to someone nice nice today. 

The tyranny of a healthy breakfast

Tags

Breakfast, Dilemma, Healthy, Whinge

So I have spent the last week looking for the ideal breakfast. I can hear you go yeah, big deal, I’ve spent it looking for the ideal job or the ideal partner. Point taken but breakfast is no trifling matter.

Mainly because everywhere you look there’s a fierce expert shouting at you: You self harming fool, this the most important meal of the day! It’s the key to nutrition Nirvana! If you’re not doing it right you might as well jump off a building right now and hope you’ll be all right.

So my all time favourite breakfast used to be toast. Oh, big no no. Caloric bomb, think again.

Then there’s cereals. Which all my life I found a form of torture. One I had lately come to grudgingly accept only to be told that they are in fact bad for you. Cheerio then:)! We part with no regrets.

Have some spinach, says Jamie Oliver. Yeah, right. Cause everybody loves getting out the big pan at sunrise, lighting the fires and then proceeding to spend the best part of an hour cooking up a green paste (no offense to spinach lovers, but I can’t think of anything less appealing at 8 o’clock in the morning. )

Ok you fuss bag, then have an egg white omelette with canola oil and blueberries. Of course I will. And while I’m at it, I’ll also write my resignation letter cause I need three days and two plane tickets to first find out what canola is and then go get the blueberries.

So in desperation I surveyed some people yesterday. What do you eat for breakfast, I begged, hoping for the ultimate truth. Eggs, cheese, zatar, hummus, fried tomatoes they said.

Tasty stuff but labour intensive innit? And how about the calories count, I said? By this point my advisors had left the building having suffered attacks of boredom.

Gotta go now. Breakfast waits for no man.

Are we human or are we skaters? Cirque de Glace comes to town

Tags

athletes, circus on ice, Evolution, human body

Last night I went to see Evolution, a theatre on ice performance by Cirque de Glace retelling the story of the humans’ presence on and relationship with Earth.

This is the first time in my life I saw anything like this, which is why I went with no expectations.

And I loved it.

The show is basically a colorful eruption of magnificently flexible bodies, which fly around the room, cling on to improbable little hooks and ropes and then land on ice skates with the same assurance you and I get out of bed in the morning.

Magnetic feet, lean arms, iron legs and beautiful skating tell the story.

From the dark beginnings of Earth to the invention of the wheel, the Middle Ages and then a leap to the Industrial Revolution and climate change.

I spent half my journey through time pressing my knees together and hoping no bones will break and the other half musing over the limits (or lack thereof) of the human body.