Two days into the new year and I have yet to make a resolution.
I came back from Manchester earlier, exceedingly exhausted (or exhaust... *delicately sidesteps that can of worms*). More from the chilling cold than from the whole trip altogether. I think it is quite pointless for some place to be so cold and not snow. Like the weather was throwing a tantrum or something. Nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh. The wind was biting my face raw and I no longer had frosted breath everytime I breathed, I had icicles coming out from every pore. If I were a guy, I wouldn't be able to feel my man-bits and would probably kill every one of the reproductive tadpoles in my balls.
I managed to speak to Azim on New Year's Eve. He left me a lovely voice message in my assigned hotel room even before I landed into Manchester and told me he'll call me at midnight in Manchester on New Year's Eve so I initially planned to stay in and not join my crew for the crew's NYE dinner together. But my phone rang at 7.30pm, Manchester time and I answered it, half-expecting it to be my Purser or Captain, telling me I have to urgently operate some flight to cover some sick crew. Or the hotel staff telling me my TV's too loud and the dickhead next door is complaining.
But it was my Azim, excitedly wishing me Happy New Year. Apparently, he miscounted the time difference and confused Dubai time with Manchester time (exhaust jugak lah nie!). He was in Singapore, at 3.30 am, already in 2006 and it would be 11.30pm in Dubai, half-an-hour to 2006. Nonetheless, a wish is a wish and any chance to talk to my husband at that time was heaven-sent so we spent half-an-hour, bridging Singapore and Manchester via a very expensive overseas phonecall to celebrate the countdown to the New Year........in Dubai time. In a distant universe that is all mine, that would probably make sense.
The rest of New Year's Eve was spent with my crew and one of our pilots in a restaurant near the hotel, as we laughed, bitched and counted the hours down to 2006. As a posse of young, energetic people, we should have made our way to somewhere more loud and happening but no one wanted to make that mad rush for a cab in the cold after the countdown and since I was the only non-drinker in the group, the guys did not want me, one of the youngest and smallest of the crew (yes, the smallest! Surprise, surprise!!), to be the only one clean and sober and therefore, responsible for the whole group.
while waiting for a few other late-assed ones at the hotel lobby
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Smart move. I don't think I can handle a gaggle of drunk girls and a bevy of beer-guzzling boys. I'd get trampled silly, like a sitting duck in a bullrun. As it was, I left the group at half-past-midnight with Masako, a new stewardess from Japan, who did not want to get drunk (though she did have one glass of red wine which brought a distinctive flush to her cheeks!) and did not want to be left alone with drunk cabin crew. She is the other youngest and smallest one, you know.
sweetness Masako-san and un-sweetness Raihan-san.
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Next day, I wanted to partake in a little retail indulgence but most places were closed on New Year's Day, except Debenhams and I never fancied Debenhams in the UK much. There is a Debenhams in Dubai, which is much cheaper due to the exchange rate. I wanted to go to Primark, WHS and TopShop but they were all closed. So all I did on New Year's day and thereafter was watch CNN, crying my eyes out as they showed reruns of the tsunami, of New Orleans, of the London Bombings and of the Pakistani earthquake. I was such a gone-case that when they showed the clip about the IRA decommisioning warfare, I bawled like a baby.
I thought this Manchester trip would be like my the one I went on last year. I thought wrong. Boo hoo hoo. Literally.
My last trip to Manchester ten months ago, in March last year, was my first ever, with bitchy Egyptian, Moustafa Shalash and his bitchier friend, Craig DeSouza on my crew. I call them Jolie and Billy. They brought me shopping in Manchester. Yes. Two straight guys. Overseas shopping. Don't normally happen together.
(Moustafa should have been born a girl, he's so beautiful. With longer-than-unta eyelashes and lips that give Angelina Jolie a run for her money, he was too pretty to be a guy. He's the one I call Jolie, not surprisingly. And Craig's Billy as in Billy Bob Thornton. Just because he hangs out with Moustafa and they bicker a lot but they're not married (anymore). Heh. And no, they are not gay. Or so they claim. Moustafa's got a hot peroxide-blonde girlfriend (who is also with Emirates) and Craig's nearly married to his childhood sweetheart (who is somewhere back in India). I digress...)
Anyway, they introduced Primark to me and made me an immediate Primark fan. It was hard not to get lost in cheap wonderment. Even Jolie and Billy, who walked with me and protected me like they were my bodyguards, all the way from the hotel, to the train station, on the train to Picadilly, immediately took off on seperate ways the moment we entered the great Primark doors. They mumbled an almost incoherent (like they were high or something), "We'll meet each other here in two hours. Enjoy shopping!" and I was left to fend for myself in the madness that was bargain-hunting.
But I remember I went high myself as I got ten (yes, TEN) pieces of pretty little thongs and sleepwear like cotton striped pants and pretty pink girl-boxers. And Primark was where I got Azim his "Love Machine" boxers (yes, it says Love Machine above a cartoon of a guy in an afro on one side), which he saved in it's packaging and wore proudly during our nikah, wedding dinner and....ahem...wedding night. Heh.
Thought this trip, I could get more of the crazy boxers and more more more pretty underwear and perhaps the huge satin quilts, pretty bedsheets and homeware I know they carry. But I didn't.
All thanks to New Year's Day. How to make resolution like that when intended retail therapy is eliminated on the first day of a new year? I went home, many British pounds richer but a little bit sulky. What's the point of saving when you don't have that pretty satin quilt?
But coming home to the scent of twelve fully bloomed lilies (five were still shy) made the beginning of the new year feel a little bit better. I could smell it in the air (pun intended!). And Azim's coming home soon so I'll be very much uplifted. Expect the grinch to be gone in a couple of days.
Selamat 2006, everyone!
(lambat tapi ikhlas!)
Next day, I wanted to partake in a little retail indulgence but most places were closed on New Year's Day, except Debenhams and I never fancied Debenhams in the UK much. There is a Debenhams in Dubai, which is much cheaper due to the exchange rate. I wanted to go to Primark, WHS and TopShop but they were all closed. So all I did on New Year's day and thereafter was watch CNN, crying my eyes out as they showed reruns of the tsunami, of New Orleans, of the London Bombings and of the Pakistani earthquake. I was such a gone-case that when they showed the clip about the IRA decommisioning warfare, I bawled like a baby.
I thought this Manchester trip would be like my the one I went on last year. I thought wrong. Boo hoo hoo. Literally.
My last trip to Manchester ten months ago, in March last year, was my first ever, with bitchy Egyptian, Moustafa Shalash and his bitchier friend, Craig DeSouza on my crew. I call them Jolie and Billy. They brought me shopping in Manchester. Yes. Two straight guys. Overseas shopping. Don't normally happen together.
(Moustafa should have been born a girl, he's so beautiful. With longer-than-unta eyelashes and lips that give Angelina Jolie a run for her money, he was too pretty to be a guy. He's the one I call Jolie, not surprisingly. And Craig's Billy as in Billy Bob Thornton. Just because he hangs out with Moustafa and they bicker a lot but they're not married (anymore). Heh. And no, they are not gay. Or so they claim. Moustafa's got a hot peroxide-blonde girlfriend (who is also with Emirates) and Craig's nearly married to his childhood sweetheart (who is somewhere back in India). I digress...)
Anyway, they introduced Primark to me and made me an immediate Primark fan. It was hard not to get lost in cheap wonderment. Even Jolie and Billy, who walked with me and protected me like they were my bodyguards, all the way from the hotel, to the train station, on the train to Picadilly, immediately took off on seperate ways the moment we entered the great Primark doors. They mumbled an almost incoherent (like they were high or something), "We'll meet each other here in two hours. Enjoy shopping!" and I was left to fend for myself in the madness that was bargain-hunting.
But I remember I went high myself as I got ten (yes, TEN) pieces of pretty little thongs and sleepwear like cotton striped pants and pretty pink girl-boxers. And Primark was where I got Azim his "Love Machine" boxers (yes, it says Love Machine above a cartoon of a guy in an afro on one side), which he saved in it's packaging and wore proudly during our nikah, wedding dinner and....ahem...wedding night. Heh.
Thought this trip, I could get more of the crazy boxers and more more more pretty underwear and perhaps the huge satin quilts, pretty bedsheets and homeware I know they carry. But I didn't.
All thanks to New Year's Day. How to make resolution like that when intended retail therapy is eliminated on the first day of a new year? I went home, many British pounds richer but a little bit sulky. What's the point of saving when you don't have that pretty satin quilt?
But coming home to the scent of twelve fully bloomed lilies (five were still shy) made the beginning of the new year feel a little bit better. I could smell it in the air (pun intended!). And Azim's coming home soon so I'll be very much uplifted. Expect the grinch to be gone in a couple of days.
Selamat 2006, everyone!
(lambat tapi ikhlas!)
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