The Prolonged Diaries!

Detroit used to be known as Motor City, Hong Kong used to be known as banking city, Bangalore as garden city, Bangkok as sin city but where i was, is called Murder City! Jo’burg! I mean this is like a cats 7 or 9 lives (confused how much it is exactly) and i am just ticking! But this was a short trip but was looking forward to it for the first time as my friends had already told me about 'Phuza Thursday' (just a cool way of saying i will binge drink and forget who my parents are) and was supposed to drink at a place called Melville. Not a posh place but a lovely one. I was looking forward to this, finally landed in Jo'burg without calamities. Then i checked in to a hotel, had my shower and hitched on to celebrate what they call binge drinking! I would say a Mozambique bar, with some amazing food and on the pavement, with a lot of beer was simply sensational. This is how i have always wanted to enjoy. I usually don’t go for a place by how posh it is or how long the 'A' list is, i just prefer a place where i can have a good time. And the lady who runs it had a body to simply die for or maybe i was quite drunk. We drank into the late hours and then when i was being dropped off to my hotel, we decided to go through Hillbrow (watch the movie Jerusalema, amazing, and per sqm the most dangerous area in the world). Luckily one of us was in her senses and decided to avert the plan as i for sure was not ready to give up my seat. Then we just ended up at Sandton square, just like any other square in any other town in the world, but with a humongous single cast statue of Nelson Mandela. I was very glad to get a photo next to it (i look more drunk than him!) and then i had to call it a night.

One of the biggest challenges i have ever faced in my life by far has to be shopping for the opposite sex! The only woman i have been successful shopping for is my mother and that’s only because i simply hand over the phone to the sales people and then sell a kidney to foot the bill. But anyone else is a nightmare! I was at a big mall in Jo’burg (friends from Americas and Asia - hell no! It’s quite small), but Africans in general get all misty eyed about it! Ok it’s called Sandton City! Trust me it’s nowhere half as big as you would be imagining! So here i am walking about and i speak to this lady on the phone for whom i was supposed to get a couple of gifts for. Now it definitely doesn’t help if she says "surprise me, darling, i want to see how much you know me!" This is a catch 22 as firstly no man has ever understood or known a female well and secondly if she wants a surprise she will get one but not sure if it will be a pleasant one. I am only familiar with products which have wires and power and pistons. Anything else makes no sense.

So i get into a perfume store and that’s a bad start! I mean if i want to surprise her i don’t want her to smell like Beyoncé or Sienna Miller! Even worse if she smelt like Antonio Banderas! I have no problem if this girl looked like the girls but smell! Hell no! I don’t even know how they smell! Then there is Calvin Klein going insane and naming a perfume "ckin2u"! What the hell! Is it a perfume or a suppository! So i quit this nonsense and decided maybe clothing. If she wants to smell different and wants me to choose it then i would walk into a DIY store and get her a bottle of flavored turpentine! Now clothing is a bigger risk! I am your average Joe and the styles are unbelievable! Jeans fit says "taper slim, low waist, bum tight, half button half zip"! You have to be kidding me! I wouldn’t spend money on something she needs an hour to get into only for me to remove it immediately ;-) yeah we all know what we are on about! The only top which suits women well is topless! So i even got out of there. Jewelry was very expensive, she has too many watches, and she has too many everything. So i have decided that the best gift if you want to surprise the 'female' is to buy a chainsaw! Imagine her with that thing rumbling in her arms! That’s definitely a pleasant surprise to you, so this has to be the first gift where a man is happy with the money spent on a woman! Godspeed Lara Croft!

The time after shopping was quite boring as i was taking the evening flight back to Zambia. But in the meantime i had to visit a CAN manufacturing plant and was to be picked up. Now what you usually expect is a bloke with a very boring name and a huge title to pick you up. But my god! Here pulls in to the driveway of the hotel, one stunning blonde in a Mini Cooper. I always have maintained it that a girl in a mini is the hottest thing to have happened since Tabasco sauce. I don’t remember much of the can plant as sorry this lady was simply worth all my attention. Have been in touch with her since, let’s see where it all ends. After the CAN tour she dropped me off to the airport and for once i was actually sad to be leaving Jo’burg. I simply hate the place, it’s just everyone thinks they have the biggest balls, and there are others who go there for a few months and come back with new accents and also new clothing style. Sadly there is no more individuality in this world and people are not proud of where they come from. The definitive characteristics are simply not acceptable anymore, and people think they are and want to be cool! Hey, if wearing flashy clothes and swearing and talking nonsense in a fake accent made you cool, then i would be happy to die today. The reality distortion bubble will burst. So will any bubble. So let’s be who we are. What say?

So here I am on a short flight from Jo’burg to Lusaka, where me being just me, was on the lookout for something to crap myself with laughter! I try to see if i can amuse myself with the person who simply can’t physically accept that his hand luggage will not fit on to the overhead storage! Then you have the elder ladies who get their seats all confused and cause a ripple effect where some passengers just think they were not even meant to be sitting! There was this old lady once who mistook her window seat for the pilot’s seat! And as she was old the pilot wasted no time in having a futile argument and just let her fly. Of course I am kidding here! If it was that simple i would always have been at the wheel! I swear! Or is it a wheel? Whatever that thing is! As far as I know it’s what used to be "Joysticks" on old desktops. But that’s a scary thought as you can never behave when you have a ‘Joystick’ in your hand and i definitely don’t want somebody with my life in his hands, deciding to try a backflip somersault in a machine that has the acrobatical abilities of let’s say me, 38,000 ft. up in the air! That would simply not be a good idea!

So now getting back to my idea of having a laugh, surprisingly i was failing. People somehow were well behaved, air hostesses (not being emirates) were of not much interest, the seat next to me was empty, pilot was not drunk, the emergency exit door did not just fly open, and all in all it was sensationally (man! I love that word!) boring! So i got back to my own tom foolery and was reading a book by Jeremy Clarkson, my absolute guru! I am his reincarnation in many ways, but he is still alive, don’t know how that works! I mean i am fat, i do stupid things, i like to have a pint and a laugh, i tease and wind, i am also nice sometimes, i take nothing seriously, i don’t care much of how i look, i sometime let my beard grow like fungus, and oh yes, before i forget, i love speed! Anything that can take me close to death gives me an unbelievable rage on! "Hard on" is not even sufficient to explain the sensation (short version of my favorite word)! So here i am with my guru and his tom foolery and then something grabs my attention! I as usual could not get a class upgrade, so my next favorite option is seats on the emergency exits. There is a lot of leg room and i stretch like a sack of blubber and doze off. I was on the aisle end, and there was a huge lady on the window seat. I am no fattist (everything in this world ends with 'ist') as i am fat myself. But my god! What amazes me is the check in desk gave her the window seat on an emergency exit! I think she was thinking that if somehow we lost the emergency door she would work like a cork and clog it and maintain the air pressure! So here i am sitting next to her, with an empty seat in the middle and there comes a very pretty air hostess. Then she speaks to the woman and asks her "mam, you are next to the emergency exit and i just want to confirm if you are willing to open the door in case of an emergency?" Really! What if she says "No???” I almost told the air hostess not to worry, if s**t happened i would throw the lady through the emergency exit! If i could lift her first! Then this was a smaller Boeing and hence i heard the air hostess say that we should get out of the emergency exit and then get on the wing and then get as far away as possible from the plane. Hold on! That’s smart! Very smartly avoiding how you do get off the wings onto wherever that is you are getting off to! I mean this is not a spoiler on a boy racer! This is a wing of a Boeing! That drop would kill most of us! So if you are going to plunge to your death, then why not be comfortable in your seat, i would even run to first class seats and have my last glass of johnnie walker! I mean i don’t want to die nor do you! Even if you are suicidal, you wouldn’t bet on getting on a flight and then hoping something goes wrong! Because truth be told, by statistics air is the safest mode of getting your lazy ass from one place to another.

So i was quite amused with all the happenings and the Clarkson read, but as usual was looking for more. I am for sure the unrestiest passenger there is on any flight! I did recall that the cabin commander whose name was Ricardo had sounded quite gay when he gave the first safety brief. But as he was a commander it meant he would only cater to the business class passengers. Every flight has 2 kinds of people. One is the rich and famous who fly business or first and then there is me who has to succumb to the horrid conditions of the economy class. But when the decent had begun for Lusaka the commander came into the economy class to complete final checks, to make sure i am belted to my seat and not playing about with some snakes! For the record 'snakes on a plane' has to be the worst movie ever produced! I mean what they were even thinking! So here he comes and the guy on the opposite row of mine asks him for a cup of coffee without milk. I won’t use the word black coffee as i have been quite a lot politically incorrect off late! So i was watching the whole episode. Our man Ricardo just stands tall, buzzes one of the cabin crew, and when he has attention of the crew member at the far end of the plane, starts with his dumb shards game! He moves his lips in the tune to the word coffee which i am sure was understood. Then is the tough part, without milk! Our gay Ricardo does a 4 second pinch of his nipple and then says no! I mean i have nothing against gay people, one of my housemate was incredibly gay a few years ago, and I especially love the lesbian type. But this was ridiculous! Watching a grown ass man pinch his own nipples in a gay way in the middle of a Boeing cabin! I simply couldn’t stop myself and almost literally crapped myself bursting in laughter! This somehow offended both 'our man Ricardo' as well as the guy who wanted coffee which was not white! I simply couldn’t care less! I was giggly even when we reached Lusaka and i was driving home! These people should quit dumb shards and simply go to Pictionary!

Now back from Jo’burg, i get into work on a Monday and the first email i receive is that i do indeed get my Lebanese visa. I waste no time as i have been waiting for some time now to go to Beirut. I have quite a few Lebanese friends and as far as i can understand it is simply an amazing place. And of course the Lebanese women are known worldwide for their beauty. So i was to fly out the very next day and was like a fish out of water. I finally board the Ethiopian airways flight to Ethiopia and then would be connecting to Beirut from Addis Ababa.

Now Ethiopian has to be the only airline in the world with an amazing split personality! It can appease you as much as it can piss you off! There are some amazing + points but some of the things they do will absolutely leave you livid. Now let’s just get to Lebanon instead of wasting a paragraph or more on the Airline, they don’t deserve it!

Everybody sings in praise of their own country and this was exactly my conclusion when my Lebanese friends used to say the same. Thanks to Murdoch I still thought that Lebanon was amazingly war-torn and I would be greeted by not immigration department but by military barracks, I wouldn’t stay in a hotel but in makeshift concentration camps built on sites of severe bombing by Iraq, that I would not be going to restaurants but be on food stamps! Hands down, I have never been so wrong ever in my life! Ever! I mean my god! What a place! Blue sea, snow clad mountains, hundreds of high rise buildings, every brand in the world, the best night life, the impeccable service, the friendliest people! And yes! The most amazing women I have ever in ever met anywhere in my life! It is simply so vulgar and exotic! And then there is the food! And then ‘Arak’ locally made hard liquor with insane amount of alcohol (got a bottle back and got many people in Zambia absolutely plastered!)! Further there is ‘Argyle’ a very cool word for traditional ‘Hookah’ or ‘Sheesh’, by far the best I have had! Then the ‘Doudou’ shots! I met a fantastic couple who really made sure I had a great time! The only thing which puzzles me vividly is that with all these resources and huge imbalance in women to men ratio (lots more women, yeah!) how the hell is it that the men find time or interest to do things which has many times almost collapsed the country on all fronts! Some things are just beyond me! But one thing is for sure. I will not miss any opportunity ever to visit this amazing place!

Now back in Zambia, with the African Cup of Nations going on, the excitement levels have been amazing! But when we finally did make it to the final, my company and thanks to ‘kasha’ (a guy from one of my old blog) we booked the entire 1000 seats in the biggest cinema in Zambia! Tickets were given out to people from various walks and sits of life and it was going to be one big party! And due to unfortunate incidents many years ago this has to be the highest emotionally charged final ever in Football! And Zambia won! In style! Gave 15 million people a reason to go wild! We contributed to a 1000 of that proudly! This is one big party and let me get back to it! So till then, later.

For once, for Zambia, for not crying out loud!