It’s funny when you accidentally go and deflate a puffed up idea you had about yourself. I’ve sadly come to realize that I’m no kind of over-achiever and I can’t multi-task to save my life.

I’m supposed to be diligently balancing two and a half jobs these days. I stress ‘supposed’ because I’m not doing a very good job of it. I’ve got a near-fulltime requirement for news features, and a long-standing part time one for human interest features as well. I come home from my usual 10-3 at the news agency, eat lunch, pray the afternoon prayer and have a cup of tea. The next many hours are lost time that I can’t account for.

I’d like to blame it on aliens or a black hole that occupies the same space time continuum as my sofa, but I can’t. Sometimes I just do the cross word and the brainteasers in the newspapers. Sometimes I hit the dumbbells and elliptical trainer. Sometimes I grab a book. Sometimes I go bake junk I have to burn off later. And sometimes I just fall asleep. I tell you man, editing is the most somnolent thing out there.

Whatever it is, I rarely choose productive and worthy ways to spend my time. It completely slips my mind that I’m supposed to check out of one gig and check into the other. By the time I wake from my lazy stupor, it’s already dusk and most of the people I’m supposed to be calling for quotes and information have already left their offices. Then I’m left to moan about my ineptitude and hurry to catch up on the research and networking I need.

In order to actually meet my deadlines and not fail too miserably at this thing called career building, I’ve taken to carrying a daily planner (hello memories of sixth grade). Of course, knowing me, it would have to be already stale by a year. But not knowing whether today was Tuesday the 27th of April, or Sunday the 27th of April is the least of my problems. It’s all that blank space that bothers me. I filled some of nice ideas - like call Mush-man and tell him he’s an idiot who reminds me of Garfield the cat, schedule an interview with some wonderfully acerbic and inflammatory officials, finally get a hold of the Foreign Office spokesman – but it hasn’t been much of a help. Along with forgetting to work when I get home, I also forget I even have a planner.

If I was smart, I guess I’d quit my day job and focus more on the correspondence work, as it pays something like triple. But as my blog has testified time and time again, I’m not smart. I’m a stubborn little goon who wants to have her cake and eat it too, so I’ll probably continue with my one-third brained working until either agency gives me the boot.

I’m a sham of a journalist. Shoot me now.

I had a strange epiphany the other day. In all my years as a pizza consuming person, I have never once known a piece of pizza to go bad.

It’s not that I believe in the intrinsic indestructibility of pizza. Fudge is the only food I know of that lasts forever. No, my superior knowledge of science (I once dissected an earthworm and woulda got a 100% but I lost the gonads) tells me that a piece of pizza SHOULD, in theory, expire eventually. It’s just that, pizza has never lived long enough in my family to actually live a full life, reach proper maturity, and gracefully pass on to inedibleness. Pizza lives fast and dies young.

For the other types of food that are left to languish in the Gulag of our fridge we generally have a good idea of how long they’ll last before they’ve properly been turned into garbage and can then be thrown out. Bread lasts as long as you can still pinch the mold off it (approximately a week). Yogurt is good so long as it hasn’t dried out and turned into dairy chalk (five days). Fruits and vegetables can be eaten so long as whatever ails them can be removed with some quick surgery (days or weeks depending on the species). With all that spice and oil, salan never really goes bad. Strangely the only thing that always goes bad before we can finish it is …….. jam. I like my toast dry and salted. *shrugs*

The fact that we hadn’t a clue about the shelf life of pizza was realized last week when we faced the unusual circumstance of possessing a large variety of edibles. Usually, we live off of one serving of nihari or sabzi from my dad’s restaurant for a couple days until it’s finished (“Chez Daddy: Nihari so potent only a dab’ll do ya”). Then we get another. We lead sad sad lives. So aside from some hard old lemons, a few dozen bricks of restaurant cheese and a variety of ancient condiments (gelatinous horseradish sauce anyone?), there’s usually very little in our fridge.

Last week though, was an exception. A combination of party leftovers, restaurant leftovers, a neighborly food swap, and Abez madness with mashed potato powder and bouillon leftovers left us with more food than we could handle. Subsequently, it took us quite a few days to get to the slices of pizza waiting patiently in a toga of aluminum foil at the bottom of the pile. As we warmed up the last slice yesterday, six days after it and its brethren were brought forth into the world in a whirlwind of last minute cooking for an impromptu liver party, the question arose “How long does pizza live anyways?”

It’s like that commercial for the Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop from the good old days. In it a little boy goes around asking all these animals how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. None of them know, so they refer him to Mr Owl (his response proves he’s a relation of mine). He goes and asks Mr Owl the same question and the old bird takes his lollypop, whips off the wrapper and goes “Let’s find out…. A one, a two, a three *CRUNCH*. Three.”

Yeah, so what’s the lifespan of the average pizza (African or European)?

*CRUNCH*

The world may never know.

Driving to work in the morning I pull up at a red-light. Ahead of me there are many cars and behind me they seem to go on forever. Bored, I watch the other drivers in my rear-view mirror. As I scan over a hatchback I notice a set of unnaturally white hands peeking over a dashboard. I look to another car, and see an ivory hand resting on a steering wheel. To my left, a motorcyclist grips his handlebars with the same white gloved hands.

Whaaaaa? Why is everyone wearing gloves? Is there some new SARS thing going around transmitted through the hands that I don’t know about? Has Michael Jackson suddenly found fame in Pakistan, only to see his trademark single glove look be misapplied? Has mass hypochondria struck Pakistan? Am I in the Twilight Zone?

As I turn around in my seat to get a better look suddenly it hits me - it’s Tan Hand Season in Pakistan. The moment winter ends drivers here start wearing white gloves to keep from darkening. I glance down at my one hand gripping the top of my steering wheel and the other idling on the gearshift. One is brown and the other white. I’ve already got the beginnings of the seasonal affliction though it’s only spring.

Pakistan is a hot place, too near the equator for my liking, and thus exposure to the sun while can give you a mean bronzing on any bits of you left exposed – like the hands (or hand if you drive one-handed like I do). For most people, that would probably be a good thing. A slight roast-chickeny look is supposed to make you seem young, healthy and fit. Isn’t that why people keep roasting themselves in tanning beds back in the US? Here though, folks don’t want to look fit or healthy, they want to look like Anglos, damnit, and tan hands cramp their white-itude.

Yep, this is all part of the “dang I wish I was a whitie” mental disorder everyone and their momma seems to have here. Folks are so bent on looking Anglo they not only bleach their faces, arms, necks and feet, wear blue/green/grey contacts, and even dye their hair blonde (note: there’s nothing as unauthentic as a fat old Pakistani lady with a sunshine yellow poodle perm. I just aint buying it)– they also shield themselves from any possible tanning. And it’s not just we vain female creatures hiding from the sun. Men are wearing lovely white gloves as well.

I could wax poetic on the sadness of a cultural preference that smacks of racism and a collective inferiority complex, but I won’t. Whities like to be tan, Koreans like inner eyelids, the Chinese like moon-faced pale-skinned beauties, some African and Arab societies like ladies with gaps in their teeth and I read somewhere in South America there’s a tribe of natives that likes sloping foreheads. Cultures are whack like that. To each his own.

Funny though, I don’t mind having Tan Hand (sounds like an illness don’t it?), as well as the typical Pakistani sandal and hijabi forehead line that I get each year. That bit of color may be the closest I ever get to any amount of brownness and I say bring it on. This may have something to do with the fact that I’ve continually and maybe rightfully been accused of having ‘delusions of browndeur’ (sounds like grandeur).

*lays down on shrink’s couch*

As a half Anglo and half Pathan, color-wise I’m pretty pasty. Me and my sibs all came in the blah Punky Brewster motif, which means we look more Balkan than anything else. But as much as I probably look like a normal Caucasian, I’ve always considered myself a person of color. More specifically, I think I’m black. *cough* Yeah, I don’t know how that happened either, but I realized it years back when I’d watch Civil War movies and find myself thinking “damn white people.” And then there were those years I was totally into Motown, but let’s not talk about that.

Alright, maybe I don’t think I’m black, but I’m definitely not white. It’s not that I have anything against whites, seeing as how my mom is the blonde haired blue-eyed variety and I’m half white and technically Caucasian meself. I simply find myself relating to and identifying more with non-white minorities.

When I’m hanging out with your typical westerners, my Eastern acculturation (I know what real curry is and I can pronounce ‘rabri’) and unconventional views as a camel riding oppressed female mark me out. At the same time though, I really don’t consider myself Pakistani. When I’m here in Pakistan, my American accent, atrocious Urdu grammar, weird ‘modern’ views and non-desi Islam make me a Westerner. Growing up, I was always too white for the browns and too brown for the whites.

And I realize I use white and Western, brown and Pakistani interchangeably. It’s just semantics and a personal idiosyncrasy. I could splain, but I don’t wanna. Humor me.

This reminds of a silly debate that was raging back when Halle Berry became the first African-American woman to win the Oscar last year. I remember reading an editorial where a person rather indignantly asked why Berry was referred to as ‘black,’ when she’s actually half white.

To me, the answer was simple – what do you think Berry has been taken as? Yes, her lineage may make her equally Anglo and African American, but in her career, and in her daily interactions with people, do you think anyone asks about her parentage before deciding how to treat her and what to take her as? Meaning, she’s probably had to deal with the same biases and intolerance that every other African-American is confronted with despite having one white parent. When you face the negative for part of your identity, from those who would claim you as their own, it tends to color what you consider yourself.

So thus, though I’m half white, I don’t consider myself white. And though I’m half brown, I don’t consider myself brown. I guess I’m just a mutt of color, a caramel perhaps. Or maybe over-milky chai. Better yet, a maple ice-creamer. Yum. I just had me a scoop of that. Anyways. A tan hand, forehead and feet are probably the appropriate amount of brownness I need to make that claim. And yes, I’m probably nuts. We’re all mad you know.

Real telephone conversations from the insanity that is my life and attempt at a career in journalism.

Me:: Assalamu Alaikum, my name is ____ and I’m looking for information about Pakistan’s-
Brokerage house analyst (cutting me off): Vat? Kaun?
Me:: Yes, hello, I’d like some data on exports….
BHA: Where are you from?
Me:: From? I guess I’m from the United Sta….
BHA (sounding suddenly interested): You are in Islamabad, yes?
Me:: Yes, I’m calling from Islamabad.
BHA: Would you come to my office?
Me:: What? Um, right now?
BHA: Yes?
Me:: Uh, well, no, now’s not convenient.
BHA: Meet me somewhere?

(Why do I get the funny feeling I’m being picked up? I awkwardly decline and offer instead to send my questions via email. He sounds disappointed but agrees, and then asks me to add him to my buddy list. I’ll add you to a list, buddy, but it won’t be the one you’re wanting.)

**********

Me:: Hello, is this the Evacuee Trust?
X: Yes, this is Vacu Tarust.
Me:: My name is____. I’d like to talk to you about the recent Sikh delegations your group hosted.
X: Kya ji? Kaun Sikhs?
Me:: You know, the Sikhs yatrees who came to celebrate Baisakhi.
X (growing more confused): Hain, where did these Sikhs come from?
Me: (beginning to worry): They came from all over the world, India, the UK, the US, you know.
X (sounding wary and distrustful): Where did you hear of these Sikhs?
Me: Um, it’s been all over the papers.
X (getting defensive and angry): Which papers?!
Me: Um, The Dawn, The News, all of them.
X (speaking slowly as if incredulous and shocked): The Dawn, The News? Really…. they said all that?
Me: Yes they did! It’s been in the press all week! You know, the Sikh pilgrims from the US, UK, Gulf and India. You guys supposedly met them at the border and airport, arranged their buses to their shrines and even provided them with housing. Come on!
X: Oh, THOSE Sikh pilgrims. This is the Islamabad office. The Hassanabdal branch managed them.

(Did he have other Sikh pilgrims? And is it unheard of for the body set up to manage the shrines and holidays of displaced Sikhs to have dealings with the aforementioned religious group? I swear man, this is why I avoid telephones. I’ve been traumatized.)

**********

Me:: Hello, is this Panja Sahib?
Confused but happy pukhton: Oh han ji!
Me:: I was told I could be put in contact with some visiting Sikh pilgrims.
CBHP: Oh, them, they’re all gone.
Me:: All gone?
CBHP: Yes, they were here, but they’re all gone now.
Me:: How can that be? They have one more day of ceremonies.
CBHP: Han ji (yes).
Me:: Um, so that would mean they’re still here, right?
CBHP: But they’re all gone.
Me:: But you just said they’d be here for another day!
CBHP: Really? Oh, ok then. Call back in half an hour, I’ll have some Sikhs for you.
Me: Thanks very much!

(After forty minutes I have my dad call back, worried perhaps that my substandard Urdu was the cause for my confusion. My dad has a Masters in Urdu so there should be no problem. I hit record on my Dictaphone and put the telephone on speaker.)

Dad:: Assalamu Alaikum. I’m calling on behalf of ____.
CBHP: Han ji!
Dad:: Can we speak with some of your Sikh visitors?
CBHP: Oh, them, they’re all gone.
Dad:: But you said to call back in half an hour.
CBHP: Han ji.
Dad:: So where are the Sikhs?
CBHP: But they’ve all gone.
Dad:: But.. you said…
CBHP: Han ji?
Dad:: You have no Sikhs then?
CBHP: No, like I told the lady, they’re all gone.
Dad: Oh, alright. Thank you.

(I’m not stupid. Really I’m not. I do speak Urdu and I know the difference between yes and no. That dude was just nuts. And you know confusion is contagious. Me and my dad both were slightly addled and wandered around the house looking blank and uncertain after dealing with CBHP. It's catching.)

**********

And then there were all the other people who picked up their phones, verified that I’d called the right place, listened patiently to my introduction and shpeel, and then loudly and suddenly asked, “Who do you think you’ve called?” You know, when I ask you if you’re the Ministry of Interior, and you’re not, then please don’t say yes. A simple no, sorry, will do. I won’t mind. Really I won’t.

I’m so not cut out for reporting. I should just hang it all and go be the guru of K2, as planned.

Behind our new house there is a playing field. Every day, around 4 in the afternoon, a mass of boys converges on the field with bat, ball and wickets in hand. There they play hours of madcap cricket whose rules I suspect aren’t ICC-certified.

From a balcony I sit and watch them, remembering my days of playing in the park. My nostalgia is mixed with envy. At 21, I don’t think I’m too old to play sports any more. I certainly don’t feel too old. What I DO feel, is an unshakeable urge to hop down off the wall I’m perched on and join in.

It doesn’t matter that I’m a near proper adult running around in pinstripes and black leather mules with a job, car and a savings account. My years of schooling and work mean nothing in the face of this impulse. The sound of the crack of a ball against a bat, the smell of the spring air, the random laughing and the fall of sunlight reduce me to a little kid within seconds.

It’s only the bitter remembrance of what I am and where I am that keeps me from calling out “Mom, I’m going out to play!” with the bang of the screen door punctuating my declaration. You see, I’m a girl in Pakistan. Females above the age of seven don’t play outdoors here. It’s simply not done.

I did fight the social dictates when I was younger. When we first moved to Pakistan when I was 8 years old no amount of chiding and dirty looks from the family elders could keep me indoors. The moment I was free from the stifling confines of school I’d change out of my uniform into my house clothes and hit the streets running.

I’d tag along with my elder guy cousins when they flew kites on the rooftop and played cricket in the winding gullies of Karachi with taped tennis balls and makeshift bats. Their taunts of “larkoun main larki goo kahti” (a girl among boys eats crap) didn’t keep me away. I simply called the other girl cousins sitting bored in the dark stillness of the indoors, and when we outnumbered them, I reversed the gibe.

The boys would eventually tire of my asking to play and run off, leaving the bat, ball, kite and string behind. We unwanted benchwarmers – girls, littler boys and unknowns - would commandeer their equipment and play cricket and fly kites until the ball would be lost over someone’s boundary wall and the kite smashed or cut by a sky pirate.

I remember stealing outside to play pakran pakrai (tag), oonch neech (high-low), baraf pani (water and ice), langra pala (one-legged tag) and choopan choopai (hide-n-go-seek) on the blinding white rooftops and in the shaded lanes outside our homes with other little boys and girls whose names I wonder if I ever knew. We all went by nicknames. I was called Goorya (doll).

Later, when I had more language skills and understanding, I’d run the mile down to the kite shack and buy my own 5 rupee kites and string. When we had enough kids for a game of cricket or maranpeti (the desi equivalent of every-man-for-himself dodgeball) we kids would pool our 25-cent chawanis and 50-cent atanis for hollow plastic balls that were bought down at the candy store for 3 rupees.

I did get in trouble a lot for being such an awara lafangi (unruly punk). Time and again my aunts and elder guy cousins would sit me down and try to explain why I wasn’t supposed to run amok like a common brat. We were gentlefolk. Girls stayed at home and helped their mothers and played quiet indoor games. “Only bad little girls go out.” “You’ll get kidnapped.” “You’ll ruin your family name.” “This one will come to no good.” “You’re such a strange child.”

That I was and that I still am. The passage of time changes little.

In answer to Hemlock's question, why you always have to remind me to update ? phtphtpht. 0_0

For those who don?t speak extremely fatigued raspberry noises, that means:

- I still don't have a working computer w/ internet connection at home, so...
- I'm only online when I'm at work, and ...
- When I'm at work, all I'm capable of doing is editing and drooling delicately over my computer due to the coma that follows having to edit Pakistani Minglish.
- To top that off, anything I write when I'm at work is liable to be very grouchy and negative and reeking of pedantic journo-speak...
- And of course, writing from work can only revolve around the following things - the insects that periodically turn my desk into a base to launch their attacks on me (read my Xanga archives. I've done this one to death), weird coworkers (did that last week), horrible stuff in the news (ya'll read the papers, and you already know how crapular the world is) and the ambiance, or lack thereof, in the dreary cave that is my office.

So instead of a proper blog entry, here are some mental thawts (say with a tayt desi accent).

- I'm finally getting around to reading Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov after years of retaining a vague and erroneous idea of what the book was about. Not as fun as Gogol's Dead Souls but better than Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. It's big on theology and short on the hilarious Russian character studies I love. As it's the only literature in the house I haven't read, I must make do. And plus, 30 pages of Dostoyevsky is the best sedative money can buy. Hop in bed, grab the book, and you'll be asleep in minutes.

- Yesterday we had our third unexpected group of guests drop in since we've moved to the new house. Apparently word gets around fast in these parts. They'd heard we were from Los Angeles and were studying at the International Islamic University. The visitors on Sunday heard we were Afghani. And all have heard we're single. Just great.

- I've decided I'm not buying into the lawn clothes conspiracy this year. In Pakistan, every summer women here buy this stuff that's about near to fabric Kleenex that I've ever seen and have suits made out of it to beat the beat. Though stuff is well-nigh transparent and can't have much of anything in it, it's pretty damn expensive, and is so delicate a suit will only last one summer or two at the most. After three years of toeing the line I'm rebelling. No more lawn for me. I'm sticking to my lovely opaque cotton that doesn't stick to you like so much damp toilet paper and isn't see-through in any amount of light thankyouverymuch.

- I've discovered the secret to happiness. Well, my dad's happiness anyway. It's cholay - chickpea salad. I made up a big pot of some yesterday along with a couple chutneys and some crispy pappars to eat like chaat and it totally made his day. My funny old dad, a restaurateur and former chef, said it was the best stuff he ever had, better than quorma, and told me I could feed him that every day and he'd never complain. He'll be eating those words though. I made another pot of the stuff last night and who knows, maybe I'll make some more today. :)

- I'm a Weetabix zombie. Every morning, I stumble upstairs, fall into the kitchen, pour some milk in a bowl, throw half a Weetabix brick on it along with sugar and maybe a banana. I sit at the dining table and monotonously consume the bowl of mush like a good little drone. I've eaten the same breakfast for over a month now. I feel like I've been assimilated into the Borg. Resistance was futile.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. *falls off chair and crawls out the door*

After two weeks of having no phone line at our new house, we finally got the hook-up. In celebration, Abez called me up at work and ordered me to do the dance of joy. Standing in an office full of dudes, I took a rain check on the dance.

You see, Mr Bribe-Shah, as my dad calls him, suddenly discovered that the technicality that he said would prevent us from having a phone line for seven years, could easily be rectified. All it took was 2,000 rupees for ‘difficulties’ and ‘appreciation.’ The guy is now a picture of polite servitude. He went so far as to disconnect three other phone subscribers to bring the wiring to our door. Ah bless.

Incidentally, five minutes after we were reconnected to the world, El Dinator (a bastardization of ‘The Computer’ - le ordinateur – in French inadvertently invented by the linguistically challenged me) crashed. Our mounting anticipation for connectivity at home was too much for our finicky little PC to bear. It suffered a nervous breakdown and began threatening us with the blue screen of death. El Dinator has always been a drama queen. He’s French, need I say more.

So thus, the few blog entries I’ve kinda-sorta started at home are all in limbo and instead I’m updating nonsense from the office. Yes, that would be compared to nonsense from home. There’s a subtle difference between the two. Take my word for it.

For instance, when I’m at work, I’m liable to tell you about stuff at the office. Like how two of my coworkers, the ones stumbling about in pajamas trying to get me my files, actually live in the storage room. They’ve moved out the boxes, thrown two mattresses on the floor and that’s where they sleep. They’re both bachelors hired from another city and, as they’re related to the boss, it’s just too convenient and logical to let them live at the office instead of finding them an apartment. And techies are always on call, just like doctors. That explains the scrubs.

Of course, I pretend not to know this. It’s part of the elaborate farce of life at the agency. They pretend not to notice I’m just an upstart American kid winging it as a journalist in Pakistan and I pretend not to notice that they live in the closet.

Anyways, this is what I’ve gathered after working here for two years. They really never bothered to account for why I often come in early and find one or the other wandering around in crumpled neon shorts and misshapen tank-top, toothbrush and mug of chai in hand. I give my salam as I march through the hall to my office and pretend the startled ‘mrfarmrf’ to be the appropriate response to the greeting. They run off for half an hour and return in shirt cuffs and wingtips, freshly shaven and smelling too strongly of cologne, though still sporting bed-head. We carry on as if it's perfectly normal for a news agency to be moonlighting as a flophouse.

Sometimes I’d call the office very early in the morning, or very late at night, and be surprised to find them on hand. “They’re always at the office, seven days a week, early in the morning and late at night! Such professionalism!” methinks enthusiastically. One day though they forget to shut the storage room door and the piles of bedding and clothes explained it all. And of course, I've been in Pakistan so long, all I could do was laugh. Here, anything goes.

Well my files are here, ready to be edited – only two hours late. Ah bless.

And Fatman, if you’re reading this – I’m on to you. The jig is up. Come out of the closet. And quit sending the peons to ask me weird questions. If you want to know the English word for incest, look it up. I’m not a dictionary.