a confession, a tragedy + my first video post

My dirty secret for today is that I have a big soft spot for songs with falsetto. This explains my love of Muse and their gossamer wailing over rumbling bass, and my passion with The Rubettes' "Sugar Baby Love," which slaps you in the face with a full-on falsetto after a mere 15 seconds' diatonic warm-up. And now my obsession has turned to Mika and his "Relax, Take It Easy."

The problem is that, though I love this song and hear it in my head on repeat during most waking hours, it is not possible - in the name of human decency - to sing it aloud. I sound like a trampled cat. And if I sing it in the shower, I sound like a wet trampled cat. And if I sing it in the privacy of my car, zooming through the traffic of SZ Road, I sound like a gay ambulance siren.

And so I am sad. This is my tragedy -- to love a song, and yet to be unable to sing it...

Dubai, the BESTEST city - part 5

Because they've cracked the secret of linguistic alchemy.

Paracelsus couldn't do it.
Isaac Newton couldn't do it.
Tycho Brahe couldn't do it.
But here in Dubai, they've turned our leaden tongues into... you guessed it... GOLD!

A day in the life of Eva: bathroom surprises

I've been meaning for quite a long time to start a "day in the life" series. I think now is the time, considering I've featured a dent on my car without ever having shown the car itself which I've had for almost a year without yet posting any pictures of the gleaming white beauty (the car that is, not my pale albino self... though I will do my best to arrange a picture of me dressed in white lounging on the hood of the white car... it will be like one of those posters that you stare at for 5 minutes before some 3D images lunges for your jugular with a dizzying leap).

Anyway. I will never have the patience to document one real day in its entirety so you'll have to tolerate this "day in the life" series being out of order.

Let's start with my morning bathroom break at work...
One of the great benefits of my job is the incredibly diverse team I work with. We have over 30 nationalities in the headquarter office of my company and, despite the unusual odors from the microwave at lunchtime, this is overwhelmingly a positive thing. However sometimes it does sneak up and confuse me.

For instance, I was recently minding my own business in the toilet when I noticed a Listerine bottle out of the corner of my eye.
Fine, fine, until I looked a little closer and spent the next 30 seconds convinced I had been stricken with dyslexia:

Yes, the bottle reads:
Melawan kuman-kuman penyebab bau mulut, plak & radang gusi gingivitis

Dubai, the BESTEST city - part 4

Where better to experience the wild, wild middle-east?

Let me introduce you to another of Dubai's most excellentest visionarinesses:








From it's website: "Western City was designed using state-of-the-art technology combined with historical elements to create a country environment for tourists by including farms, cowboy shows, and sound and light shows. ...Shows take place the whole day until night giving the public enough time to enjoy each respective show. The public may even choose which show they wish to see at their own convenience, and these shows take place everyday so they may even see them again. The shows involve cowboys driving cattle, Indians chasing buffaloes, wagons of settlers, etc……."

Now, I am thoroughly convinced of the subtlety, class, and cultural tact of this future development, but I would like to clarify a few things about these state-of-the-art shows. For one, are the Indians chasing buffaloes AND wagons of settlers? And secondly, will they import real live American Injuns? I'm sure it would be cheaper if these Indians (like all the other minimum-wage workers in Dubai) were played Phillipinos. Or India-Indians. In leather chaps.

Actually, I'm quite sure I've already seen some of that in an evening entertainment venue in Deira...

Yeeeehaw!

An Homage to Ron

In honor of my dear neglected friend Ron, I am inviting you into my kitchen to enjoy a modern updating of "humble pie"... HUMBLE BROWNIES...

INGREDIENTS:
250 g dark chocolate
1 large rabbi, melted
2 dwarves, beaten
2 cups pixie stick
1 tsp. ABBA extract
1/2 cup puffyamiyumi
pinch of constitutional law
1 drunk olsen twin (doesn't matter which one)
walnuts

RECIPE:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Bring the chocolate and melted rabbi to a boil over low heat, stirring constantly, then remove from heat.

In a large bowl, beat the 2 dwarves until light and fluffy, then add the pixie stick and the abba extract and continue beating until creamy.

Beat in the slightly cooled chocolate rabbi mixture, and alternate in puffyamiumi with a pinch constitutional law. Fold in walnuts and the drunk olsen twin.

Pour into a 9x11 glass brownie pan and bake for 35 minutes or until the olsen is slightly browned on top but still gooey in the middle. Let cool for approximately 3 months so Eva knows how you felt when she ignored your utterly fabulous email.

"Cause every time I seem to fall in love... Crash! Boom! Bang!"

I crashed into my boyfriend from behind! Not metaphorically, really, I hit him when we were waiting at a light.

Here's my little dent. I don't know whether to be proud of her or embarrassed that she's so small. Or just embarrased that I crashed into a stationary object.

Though, it must be said, it isn't nearly as embarassing as when mahboyfriend crashed into the back of a Rainbow milk truck because he was busy making faces at Ve and I as we drove alongside.

The innocent milk truck:






The not-so-innocent provocateurs of the crash:

A poem for today: friday may 18

"Oatmeal"

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge, as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime, and unsual willingness to disintigrate,
oatmeal should not be eaten alone.
He said that in his opinion, however, it is perfectly OK to eat it with an imaginary companion, and that
he himself had enjoyed memorable porridges with Edmund Spenser and John Milton.
Even if eating oatmeal with an imaginary companion is not as
wholesome as Keats claims, still, you can learn something from it.
Yesterday morning, for instance, Keats told me about writing the "Ode to a Nightingale."
He had a heck of a time finishing it those were his words "Oi 'ad a 'eck of a toime," he said, more or less, speaking through his porridge.
He wrote it quickly, on scraps of paper, which he then stuck in his pocket,
but when he got home he couldn't figure out the order of the stanzas,
and he and a friend spread the papers on a table, and they
made some sense of them, but he isn't sure to this day if they got it right.
An entire stanza may have slipped into the lining of his jacket through a hole in his pocket.
He still wonders about the occasional sense of drift between stanzas,
and the way here and there a line will go into the configuration of a Moslem at prayer, then raise itself up
and peer about, and then lay \ itself down slightly off the mark,
causing the poem to move forward with a reckless, shining wobble.
He said someone told him that later in life Wordsworth heard about the scraps of paper on the table, and tried shuffling some
stanzas of his own, but only made matters worse.
I would not have known any of this but for my reluctance to eat oatmeal alone.
When breakfast was over, John recited "To Autumn."
He recited it slowly, with much feeling, and he articulated the words lovingly, and his odd accent sounded sweet.
He didn't offer the story of writing "To Autumn," I doubt if there is much of one.
But he did say the sight of a just-harvested oat field go thim started on it, and two of the lines,
"For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cells" and "Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours,"
came to him while eating oatmeal alone.
I can see him drawing a spoon through the stuff, gazing into the glimmering furrows, muttering.
Maybe there is no sublime; only the shining of the amnion's tatters.
For supper tonight I am going to have a baked potato left over from lunch.
I am aware that a leftover baked potato is damp, slippery, and simultaneaously gummy and crumbly,
and therefore I'm going to invite Patrick Kavanagh to join me.

Galway Kinnell

Slightly belated but still as weird as ever

What scandalous discrimination against coconuts. How can I celebrate Mahashivratri Day without my coconuts?

But in all seriousness, if anyone can explain to me why Mahashivratri Day this year was coconut-free, or what agarbatis are... or what Mahashivratri Day is, that would be grand.

Hole-in-the-Wall Bakery

From a midnight walk in Satwa, wearing my yellow salwar kameez, which makes all the Indians extra-smiley

My Brother, the Mexican Pimp in Training

I am pleased to announce my brother's recent acquisition of a vehicle to facilitate his various misadventures. It is a '79 Ranchero, which is indeed a very Metro-esque car, and I expect they will spread good cheer and cheap beer throughout southern California.

I conducted an email interview with him to learn a little more about this exciting new partnership:

Metro: "YEAH!!!! CAR!!!!"

Eva: "What is your car’s anthem song?"
Metro: "Donkey Butt by 2 Live Crew"

Eva: "What is your car’s drink of choice?"
Metro: "Bacardi's Watermelon Rum"

Eva: "If your car could pick its own dashboard decoration, what would it be?"
Metro: "Pizza"

Eva: " Is your car allergic to anything?"
Metro: "Crayons"

Eva: "Does your car like pie? What kind?"
Metro: "Yeah, Pizza Pie. On the dashboard"

Eva: "If your car could replace its wheels with something else, what would it choose?"
Metro: "Tank tracks"

Eva: "If your car witnessed a bank robbery, what would it do?"
Metro: "Honk cause it likes cookies. And robbers"

Eva: "Does your car wear tighty whiteys or boxers?"
Metro: "Boxers. Feel the breeze."

Eva: "If your car had a voice, who would it sound like?"
Metro: "Johnny Bravo"

Eva: "What would your car do on a rainy afternoon with a can of green paint, 3 rollerskates, a pair of ninjas, and a ham?"
Metro: "PARTY!!! Each ninja gets A roller skate to wear on their left foot, push themsleves around with the right foot, and chase the green painted ham that's been stuffed in the other roller skate and is being pushed around by my car. The rain means nothing."


Thanks Metro and Señor 79! I wish you many happy and speeding-ticket-free days together...