Today is Wednesday. Big deal you think, it’s right in the middle of the work week, what’s so great about Wednesday? Well, let me tell you, here in Saudi Arabia Wednesday is not is not the middle of the work week, no, it is the end of the work week. As Saudi is a Muslim country the Sabbath day is not on a Sunday as it is in the Christian world, it is a Friday; and that means that my weekend begins at 5pm today! Wohoo!!!!!! The Literary Penguin however, has to work every other Thursday morning, so his weekend doesn’t really kick off until tomorrow afternoon, but am I going to let that kill my buzz? Not on your Nelly!

There is more to why I love Wednesdays than the weekend feeling though. The Penguin and I hold our writing class on a Tuesday evening and last night was the third meeting of the Creative Writing Guild of Khobar (Al-Khobar being the city we live in). When we thought up the Guild and planned it all out we hoped and prayed it would be a small success, five or six people who regularly attended and were passionate about writing. That would have been a success to us when we sat and planned out a sixteen week syllabus, yes we are just that organized! Who knew eh?! Well, we have ten “members” and they are all super committed and excited by the group, and we have new people expressing an interest every week! We are both a bit in awe of how well this is going down. People think it’s great, and the best part of it is they actually believe that we know what we are talking about!

Ok, so we do kind of know what we are going on about, and we’ve based our syllabus on the best aspects of our own writing education, but really, people are excited about it and they’re having fun.

That’s why we started the group, to have fun, relax, and get us both writing more. All three of those goals have been achieved, but there has been a pleasant bonus. A couple of entries ago I posted a descriptive passage I had written for my homework assignment that was due in last night. Now, none of our assignments are compulsory, and we know people are busy, but all bar two members stepped up to the plate and came with their 500 word passages. One member didn’t come, but she is an 11 year old girl and our location last night meant that by the time she had got home it would have been too late for her as she had school today, and the other guy had been on holiday. I was a little disappointed he didn’t do anything as the last piece of writing we did and read out he did really well on and I wanted to hear more of his work; but it happens and it wasn’t a big deal. The focus of last night’s lesson was Constructive Criticism; how to offer it, how to receive it and why it is important. After Ger and I had been over the basic ground rules and explained the importance of criticism to development as writers we dove in and started reading our work out and dissecting each passage as a group.

Not only did everyone in the group jump onto the praise and suggesting improvements band wagon with brilliant vigor, everyone keen to encourage and help each other, they also produced some fantastic work. I knew everyone in the group was creative in some way or another, or desired a creative outlet – they wouldn’t be in the Guild otherwise – but what I did not expect, so early on in the course, was such a high level of talent. I was amazed at the quality of work that was produced; all I could suggest for improvements on a lot of them were simply ways of refining the chosen style, or moving away from clichés, both of which will come through practice.

So I am flying high on the success of our course, I am looking forward to de-camping to the Penguins for the weekend as I usually do on a Wednesday evening (don’t tell the authorities!), and I got an e-mail this morning that pretty much tipped my good mood over the edge into full blown euphoria. Yesterday I enquired about two kittens that I had seen up for adoption on the Saudi Paws web site, they were gorgeous, really pretty cats, and according to the bio they were full of fun and snuggles. I got a reply this morning telling me they had already been adopted. My buzz deflated a tiny bit, but then I read on, the lady I had e-mailed knew someone who had a cat that had just given birth, and if I wanted and was willing to wait until they are weaned I could have two! Two of my very own kitty cats! I’m so excited right know you wouldn’t believe!!

Oh yeah, and we have a party to go to tomorrow night after we have interviewed the head of the British Trade Office at his house; you know, the house where the real alcohol is. Things just keep getting better and better!

Enjoy the rest of your work week folks, I’ll think of you whilst I’m riding high on my happy weekend mood!!

Yours,
Alrac Tabb

 

Last night The Literary Penguin attended a new member’s evening. We have both recently joined the British Business Association (BBA) as a way of meeting new people, and to get access to the beaches and clubs (rugby and cricket club for example, not night club!) in Bahrain. I’ve been a member about a month and Ger joined this week, he kept on forgetting his forms ….

Anyway, moving on, the two of us are putting our writing and editorial skills to good use and have taken over the BBA newsletter; Ger is editor-in-chief, and I am the committee representative. Yes folks, I am on a committee. It’s brilliant really, it’s such an old boys club and I, as a 22 year old female, am on the committee! All of the guys are wonderful though, and as Ger pointed out after seeing me interact with them last night, they treat me as an equal. This fascinates me because I am not their equal. It is not the age difference, or my gender that makes me unequal, it is my lack of experience and knowledge regarding business; particularly Saudi business. I’m learning, and I am a very fast learner, but I am not on a level footing with these guys. Yet they all treat me with respect and are not condescending when I don’t understand something, they just explain. I love to learn new things, so you can imagine I’m having a whale of a time!

So, as I was telling you, last night was new member’s evening and it was hosted at the home of the head of the British Trade Office (BTO) in Saudi. The head of the BTO sits on the committee in an ex-officio capacity, but as both the trade office and the BBA work to improve business communication and development they both work closely together, so David (the head of the BTO) has offered to host business dinners and functions etc at his home. We are all there in the gallery (yes the art gallery, he’d had a gallery evening recently and the paintings were still up and for sale) the waiter’s are circulating topping up people’s drinks and offering sushi and mini-quiches and all sorts. That was the second highlight of the evening for me, no not the mini-quiches, the drinks. The BTO gets real alcohol. Yes folks, you heard me, real alcohol. Not the death defying, take your own life into your hands home-brew; actual, proper, lovely alcohol. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a big drinker, but every once in a while after a busy few days of work and rushing around I love a nice cold G&T; and last night I got one. Bliss.

But that was the second best part of the evening – I’m building up to the best part.

We’re circulating, chatting about politics, travels, the MPs expense row, enjoying the company and fitting in rather well I have to say. Ger, of course, is in his element. He turns on the charm, he throws the jokes around, he tells anyone who will listen how he was counting down the days until he left Saudi and then he met me. He really clicked into place. The dress code was smart/casual and there was a mix of the varying degrees of this and the two of us fell nicely in the middle. Ger was wearing a shirt, not tie, and some smart trousers. He’d left the shirt un-tucked, but that was fine, it looked good that way. I had on a yellow and brown, knee length skirt, Milano kitten heels, and a loose fitting brown top that hung off one shoulder. Very classy, the both of us.

At the end of the evening we thanked our host and his wife, who is awesome by the way, called our cab and left. We’re strolling through the compound that the BTO’s house is on, and as it’s within the compound the two of use can stroll along arm in arm. Ger drapes his arm over my shoulders and my hand reaches round to slip into his back pocket … or what I though was his back pocket. We come to the highlight of my evening ladies and gentlemen, the thing that put the biggest smile on my face now and that is making me grin now just remembering it.

You ready? Across Ger’s left bum cheek there was a horizontal rip in his trousers! My God did I laugh! That’s why his shirt had been un-tucked all night, it was nothing to do with what I had attributed to style; he just wanted to his the rip in his trousers! We’re pretty sure no one noticed, and he was, luckily, wearing dark boxers. I mean, I didn’t notice, and I regularly glance in that direction (he has a really nice bum, what can I say?!). But still, it really tickled me. I’m not sure Ger thought it was quite as funny as I did, but hey, it was the perfect end to my evening!

What was it I was saying about looking classy? Well, at least I was presentable!

Yours,
Alrac Tabb

 

My homework for mine and the Penguin's writng course:

I sit here, typing away, the sound of the clickety clacking keys the only thing to grace my ears. Peaceful and productive, I love the first hour at work. Four of us are in the office and all of us are silent, cocooned in our own comfortable morning stupor of tranquility. It’s what you need at work, especially first thing in the morning.

I step off the bus each day and stroll into the office, usually I’m still half asleep and the cozy feeling of my quilt tangled around me lingers, all warm and happy. The AC is perfect, cool enough to take the edge off the effects of the sweaty sun, but not cold enough to disturb my wonderful post snooze internal temperature. I slip my abaya off my shoulders and settle in for the day. My cold water, three bottles, lines up to my left, close at hand to keep me hydrated and my diary is produced from within the murky depths of my handbag.

I work way like this for a little over an hour, I revel in the serenity and enter the zone. Nothing disturbs me in the zone, in the zone I zip through work like a fly’s ass through its brain when it hits the windscreen of a car doing 80mph on the motorway. I’m unstoppable, I’m a machine, I’m on the fastest moving roll ever known to man!

And then it happens.

They arrive.

Jabbering jackals, hell bent on disturbing the peace, my peace. Barks of shrill laughter and silly undertones of childish attention seeking explode into the room; my bubble, my cocoon, my zone, implodes. I can feel the bile start to blister throughout my body. It starts deep down in my gut and it bubbles its way slowly upwards towards my mouth. I have to battle with it, wrestle with myself and try to control it.

I grasp at the fleeing whisps of the mornings contentment and focus, I catch a few and pull them close. The oozing bile is placated and simmers for a while. The muscles that had contracted, in my arms and along my spine, at the initial intrusion begin to loosen slightly. I force myself to work through it.

But now it’s work, it’s laborious and slow. The cacophonous chorus of twittering, nonsensical nothingness rises and falls in discordant harmonies; it’s never quite in the background as productive chatter should be. The voices are always there in the forefront, waving at me for attention though they’re inches from my face. The irritating guest at dinner parties that demands everyone’s notice.

Can it get worse than this? Eight hours of inane babble, giggling and intermittent shouting? No, you think, there is nothing worse when you are trying to concentrate. Think again. They’re out to get me, I know they are. They are trying to break me, to wear me down with techniques akin to Chinese water torture.

As if their intrusive voices were not enough they go and fuck with the AC. Now, when they do settle for fifteen minutes of work, all I can focus on is preventing frostbite.

I love the first hour at work.


Yours,
Alrac Tabb
 

So yesterday I made Ger and myself a cup of tea, I shuffled through my notes, I took a deep breath, and I started to type. Yes, yesterday I got back in the saddle and I took up the reigns of my novel for the first time in almost a year.

I’ve mentioned Death, Dragons and Destiny to you all before. This is a project I have been working on for years now and I haven’t done any work on it for so long for several reasons. One reason is I have been unmotivated. I completely lacked the need to write. The desire was there, don’t get me wrong, and on a regular basis I would pick up a pen and scribble a few lines of nothing that would lead nowhere just as a way of scratching the itch. But I just couldn’t see the point. What was I writing for? There was no deadline, no tutor to encourage me, and quite frankly I couldn’t be bothered and I knew that DDD deserved more than that I guess.

Another reason was a sheer lack of inspiration. What were my characters going to do next? How would the face the situations I had put them in? Where was my story actually going? How would it all end? I had absolutely no idea. When I let myself think about DDD I could not see it going anywhere. It just seemed like a collection of characters on the brink of a story in fantastic situations that should act as springboards to wonderful, heroic adventures and I just couldn’t see it moving anywhere. I’ve never lacked imagination, never, but I just couldn’t take any of the tiny, whisps of imaginings out of my head and put them into any coherent order that would move DDD forward.

Then of course came the pressure, the self imposed, castrating pressure. I’d told myself that I had to do this; I owed it to myself to finish the novel. I was a good writer, I am a good writer, and I should prove it. But the more I tried to make myself do it the harder it became. I started to deliberately put it off and procrastinate.

When I moved to Saudi I left all my work on DDD behind. It sat alone and forlorn in my mom’s dining room gathering dust. If it hadn’t been for The Literary Penguin it would still be there. As you all know he had to make a trip to the UK to meet with a publisher about his own novel. He offered, ever so sweetly seeing as we had only been together a matter of weeks then, to take the time out on his trip to travel to the midlands and pick up anything I hadn’t had room to pack. I had two essentials on the list, my university hoody and my DDD work.

Ever since I moved here and met the Penguin I have gradually become more inspired, more determined, and more excited about writing. In a sense I have been reborn to it. I feel completely free of the pressure now, and yesterday the time was right to just start again. I’ve begun by re-drafting what I have done already as a way of re-familiarising myself with the story. It’s amazing how good it felt to work over the lines of the story and feel how close I was to them. I’ve been feeling a bit homesick recently, but the words I had written and how intimate I was with them took that away to a degree. I feel so at home here with the Penguin, but now I have something of my old home here too, I am home in a different sense and it feels like I spent yesterday catching up with an old friend.

I’ve got new ideas on what’s happening next, and I have a new found confidence and inspiration. Hopefully that will hang around for a while. I’m looking forward to writing for the sheer love of writing again. So three cheers for writing!!

Yours,
Alrac Tabb

 

A man walks into a bar, and after he says ouch, the barman asks him what he would like to drink. The man, in a battered coat and worn out shoes says to the barman, "I'd love a pint of bitter, but I have no money."

To which the barman replies, "If you can't pay I'm afraid I can't serve you."

In response the man reaches into his pocket and, after rooting around for a minute or two, produces a small frog. He places the frog gently on the bar and says to the barman, "I bet you a pint of bitter that this frog can tap dance."

The barman laughs and, knowing full well that frogs can't dance, agrees to the wager.

The man bends over the frog and whispers something. After a shortpause, during which a small crowd gathered to watch the man make a fool of himslef, the frog stood up on his rear legs, pick up a discarded match from the ash tray near by, and began to tap dance up and down the length of the bar better than Fred Astaire.

In a state of awe the barman pulled a pint of bitter and handed to the man as he put the frog back in his pocket. He drank his beer in one drag and left the bar.

The following day the man returned to the bar in the same filthy coat and worn shoes. He says to the barman, "I'll have a pint of bitter please."

The barman replied, "I know you haven't got any money to pay for it, and unless you've got a tap dancing squirrel up your jumper I can't serve you."

By way of reply, the man reached into his pocket and after rummaging around he produced the same frog that had danced the day before. "What if I told you that the frog can play the piano too? Would that get me a beer?"

The barman looked at the tiny frog, and the looked at the out of tune, upright piano in the corner and said, "If that frog can play that piano I'll give you a pint of bitter."

A crowd formed again as the man carried the frog over to the piano and placed him on the dusty stool infront of it. After a short, whispered instruction from the man, the frog lept up onto the keys and by hopping here and there he performed and exquisite rendition of Greensleeves.

As the frog was returned to his pocket the man reached out and took the pint of bitter that was handed to him and again drained the glass in one and left.

On the third day the man arrived in the bar again in the same coat and shoes and ordered a pint of bitter.

"Now look here," said the barman, "I know full well you can't pay for it and I'm not giving you another free drink because of that frog of yours!"

The man reached into an inside pocket of his coat and, after a quick rummage around, he placed a bedraggeld hampster on the bar. "How about if I get this hampster to sing the national anthem, will that get me a beer?"

The barman stared incredulously at the man infront of him and decided that for his sheer audacity the guy deserved a chance so he would see what the hampster could do. "Go ahead, I'll give you a pint if that hampster can sing the national anthem."

So the man, surrounded again by a small crowd of people, whispered to the hampster and stood back a little. After a bit of a pause the hampster launched into a beautiful rendition of the national anthem. As he put the hampster back into his coat he took the pint that was waiting for him on the bar and drained the glass in one and turned to leave.

"Hold on a second," said the barman, "How'd you train a frog and a hampster to do stuff like that?!"

"I didn't," said the man as he paused as the door, "The frog's a ventriliquist."

Yours,
Alrac Tabb
 

Let me ask you all a question today, how easily do you get stressed? I don’t mean a little fraught, or feeling a bit hassled once in a while by a few things, I mean really stressed. I am talking about being stressed to the point of making yourself ill and worrying yourself to death.

I don’t get stressed or worried very easily at all; it takes a hell of a lot to push me in that direction and then it all has to pile up and pile up until I snap. Even then though, I don’t really stress in the true sense of the word; I yell, I expel anger and energy (usually at the wrong person, and if those people are reading this I’m sorry), and then it is out of my system and I can deal with the root cause.

Part of my being able to cope in this way comes from a part of my character that I have alluded to in a previous blog. I can sit back and detach my mind from myself in a sense, I am able to critically look at myself and analyze my behavior and work through the way I have been feeling and acting until I strike the root cause. Because I can look at myself this way it is relatively easy for me to notice a change in my behavior or emotions very quickly and so I tend to catch things that bother me before they get a chance to develop into a major problem.

Another reason I cope so well, I think, is it is just my nature to let things wash over me. I tend to compartmentalize my life into things that are really important to me like eating, washing, getting to work on time, and the things that are not as important to me, or can take a back seat as it were, like what people think of me, whether or not I will get made redundant, how much money is in the bank. Maybe these priorities will change as I get older; in fact I know they will. I will have children one day and a mortgage, and then the security of my next pay check and how much money is in the bank will be much more important. In general, I have found that by being calm and sectioning things off like this I prioritize events and so they just seem to work out; maybe I’ve just been lucky. Well, yes, to a certain degree I have, and I do feel guilty about it.

Why should I feel guilty about being lucky? Well, I guess I shouldn’t, and not all of my good fortune is luck. A lot of my achievements have been damn hard work, and my attitude towards stress came from some pretty tough lessons.

When I was 10 my adored grandma, a woman who was like my second mother and who I spent nearly as much time with, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. At 10 I wasn’t told much about it and all I really knew was that she went to hospital and wasn’t very well. After a hysterectomy she was declared free of cancer and everything seemed fine. The obvious stress it caused my family didn’t touch me, as it rarely seems to reach children who live in their own head, and believe me, I was very firmly rooted there! At 11 though, that all changed. My parents divorced and my mom and grandma bought a house together that the three of us and my younger sister moved into. I thought this was great. All I really got from the conversation to explain that mommy and daddy weren’t going to be living together anymore was that I was going to live with my grandma. I think it really hurt my dad that I was quite so excited.

At first everything was great, hunky dory, mom worked until 5.30pm, but my grandma collected my sister and I from school as she had always done and it was all fine. Then the cancer returned. This time it really, well and truly reached me. It was the first thing that had really penetrated my little bubble of safety and fantasy; it more than penetrated it, it damn well shattered it. It is impossible not to feel every emotion, every shred of pain and dread when the tumor is in the same house as you. I was there every millimeter of the way as my grandma, the most beloved and worshipped woman in the world, went from bad to worse, and then even further. My mom had to shave her head for her, she couldn’t climb the stairs so we had a sofa bed, she got so frail from chemo and skinny that her body couldn’t cope and all of her digestion went to pot. In the end she could only eat liquid foods. It wasn’t the cancer that put her out of her misery in the end; that bitch of a disease would have dragged out the agony and pain for much longer if it could have, but her body rebelled and told the cancer where to shove it. It was constipation that killed her.

All of this is a bit of a detour from my point, but it is a necessary preamble to explain what I am going to tell you about the main reason I think I cope with stress so well. After my grandma’s death my mom was left with a house that was only a very small way to being renovated (my lovely grandma had wanted a project …), a mortgage that stretched her to the hilt financially, an ex-husband who took every opportunity to take advantage of the situation and was exceedingly little help when it came to looking after me and my sister, and my mom also, obviously, had two kids. Is it any wonder she ended up on anti-depressants? Ever since then she has stressed, worried, and made herself ill over every little thing. I didn’t give a gnats chuff if we lived in a partially finished house, or that you had to prod certain places on the shower to make it work, I just wanted us to all be happy and make do. However, understandably I guess, making do was not enough for my mom; she wanted the best for her kids. She didn’t want us to not have what all our friends had. I adore my mom for worrying because of that, but I hate that she always went to extremes. Part of that were her hormones; you see she had a hysterectomy herself shortly before my grandma died and so was going through early menopause as well as being depressed.

Nevertheless, from there on in I have watched my mother stress to the point of tantrums over the smallest things that she has very little control over and I have borne witness to how it has gotten her absolutely nowhere. By stressing so much and making yourself ill over things (and my mom has been ill through stress) you just make all the big stresses so much worse – who cares if the cooker’s a bit temperamental, or the driveway is cracked, or someone scratched your car? I don’t. I care about the people I love being happy, healthy and safe. That’s the long and short of it. All I let myself stress about as I went through my teenage years was getting good grades (because, in all honesty, that was the easiest way to gain a bit of space from my mother’s whirlwind of emotion [though she has got better in recent years]) and my mom’s health. That’s it. That’s the only thing I worry about to this day.

What brought all this on? The night before last I called home and spoke to my younger sister. She will be 18 in a few months and is working as an apprentice hairdresser. In August she will be qualified and the salon she works for should be sending her to finishing school and providing her a job. It turns out that as my sister was fast tracked she will be qualifying at the same time as another girl in the salon and the manager has decided there aren’t funds to send either of them to finishing school and only one of them might get a job. I get that the uncertainty of this is scary, I get that as an 18 year old who got to grow up normally (I had to mature very quickly after my grandma died as I became the second adult in the house and so acted as a kind of buffer for my sister and absorbed a lot of my mom’s problems) applying for new jobs and moving somewhere new is a scary prospect, but my sister is acting as if it is the end of the world. She’s barely 18, has no debts, no dependants, and has a hell of a lot going for her, and yet she is so worried about all of this that her hair is thinning. It must be genetic …

It scares the crap out of me that she’s reacted like this. She has seen a couple of jobs advertised for someone at her level, but it is going to take some convincing to get her out there and applying for them.

So last night I wrote her a CV and e-mailed it home, and at the weekend I shall job hunt online for her. I can’t be there to give her boss a piece of my mind like I would like, I can’t be there to drive her to interviews and boost her confidence like I would like, I can’t be there to cheer her up and distract her like I like, but I can do what little I can to help her and by God I will. The health and happiness of someone I love dearly is on the line … I may get a little stressed.

Yours,
Alrac Tabb. {c/}

 

What am I but a nothingness, an invisible, unwanted entity to be squandered and whiled away. I wander between you all, but you pay me no heed. When you do you whine, you complain, you bemoan my restriction, my control and my passing. You care not for the feelings of one such as me.

Life and Death get a better press than me; you respect them, you cherish them, but what are they without me?! Without me they would not be, they would hold no sway, they would be static, and limp, and command no fear.

I am an enormous, vapid nothingness that oozes through the cracks and absorb everything. I push you forward, I hold you back. I gobble up the merry-go-rounds and the flashing lights, and I grow and shrink as I see fit. You would get no-where without me, and yet you never see me pass.

You are blind, ignorant, rude to me; why should I not play my tricks? Why shouldn’t I have my fun? You deserve to never know where you stand with me, to never know whether you come or you go or if you’ve been there already.

Unobservant, unappreciative, you will not look for me. Until it is too late. Too late to go back, too late to hold my hands and savour the sweetest moments that you let dribble between your tight grasp of forward motion and selfish movement.

I am Time; if you were just more observant, more organized, more prepared to make space for me, perhaps I would not be so cruel; perhaps …

Where has the week gone?!

Yours,
Alrac Tabb


 

We’ve all met them haven’t we? Most of you out there have probably lived with them, or at least known someone who has. Yes, I am talking about the nightmare that is bad flat mates. I am no different; I have had a nightmare experience with some so-called ‘roomies’.

It started out just fine, only one of them moved in and we got along really well. They were fun and interesting and always tidied up after themselves. Then we had a party. Fine, you think, big deal, a party. That’s what I thought too. Nice and simple; yes people would make a mess, and yes a few people might crash and spend the night, who cares right? It’s a party. So we had a party, and a good time was had by all. My roomies friends were a scream, they kept everyone laughing and playing games and the night was a total success. Many of my roomies laugh-a-minute friends fell asleep where they were so we just left them there.

The next day we were too hung-over to care much about cleaning up so we all hung out, you know had a laugh and ate a lot. But then the weekend ended and a new week began. I got up and left for work and they were all still sprawled around my apartment, reveling in the filth of the weekend. Shrugging and assuming they would be gone by the time I got back I headed out to the office.

The days passed and turned into weeks, my grocery bill increased as I seemed to run out of food a hell of a lot faster than before, and my ‘guests’ had become tenants – or to be more precise, squatters. I was infested. To make matters worse my original roomy was behind with rent (meaning they’d never paid any) and all of the squatters were unemployed bums living off my back.

This state of perpetual relaxation and partying got too much for me and I started to avoid going home. Imagine, avoiding your own house because it is overrun with disgusting party animals who were gradually taking over! And they were animals, I mean these people would be at it like rabbits and I swear to god they were multiplying as fast too.

I had to do something, the mess, the noise, the constant partying, drinking the milk straight from the carton and leaving the toilet seat up – it had gone far enough!

Yesterday I did what I should have done a long time ago – I evicted those damn dust bunnies!!

Alrac Tabb

 

Motivation; where does it come from? More importantly, where does it go?! I blogged recently about being very active socially and I am and I love it. However, I think it might be sapping my motivation to do other things.

I have a much quieter week ahead of me this week but I just don’t have the drive to do anything productive with it. When I first came out to Saudi Arabia I lost a ton of weight; I looked fab, I felt amazing and I was very happy. Obviously because I’ve been very happy I’ve been eating with no reserve and I haven’t had the time to exercise. That’s not an excuse, I honestly haven’t. Now, I actually eat a hell of a lot less now than I did before my move; but I was in a physical job before - now I sit on my backside all day, and it’s starting to show. I haven’t put back on everything I had lost, but if I don’t start to actually move my fat ass I will. Do you think I can get motivated to go to the gym that is literally a two minute walk from my apartment?! An hour in the gym every other day is all that it would take to make me feel, and look, better; it is in my best interest and I just can’t face it. Pathetic isn’t it? To make it worse I know that as soon as I get into a routine of going again I’ll have no problem with it; it’s just that initial visit. Like when you haven’t called a friend in a while, the longer you leave it the harder it gets to pick up the phone and call.

I also need to clean my apartment this week. For the last two weekends a woman has meant to be coming to my apartment to clean (seriously I haven’t had time over the last few weeks!) but she hasn’t turned up. So, that is tonight’s task. Yet again, motivation is lacking and it is something that I know will make me feel better – and it burns calories! I don’t mind cleaning really, once I get into the groove I quite enjoy my little self; but like the gym, it’s the first move syndrome!

Another thing I seem to be struggling with motivation for is writing. I haven’t written anything (good) in ages. Since my second year at university (nearly three years ago now!), I’ve been working on a fantasy novel. I haven’t added or edited a word of it since April last year. In fact, I haven’t even looked at it until recently. I’ve had absolutely no inspiration. Until now that is. This weekend I actually scribbled out the first few pages of the next “chapter”.

I’m not working with traditional chapters, I simply flit from one character to the next when there’s a natural break and so far it’s working pretty well. It’s all in third person but I have three main characters that are all separated at the moment. The general idea is that they will gradually work towards all being together; then I will be really stumped as to how I break up the sections of action!

All of this is a side track from my point though; I’ve found motivation from somewhere. Where?! Where did this sudden, burning urge to return to my neglected characters come from? I don’t write stories, I write characters. It’s the long lost friend that you need to work up the courage to call thing again, all of a sudden the fear went away and I could just talk to them again; I could just write about them and it all came naturally.

I think it just answered my own question; fear, that’s what controls where and when motivation rears its head. I’m afraid of going to the gym because I will have to face the fact that I can’t eat the way I did five years ago and not gain weight; I’m afraid to clean my apartment because I would have to face the fact that I have neglected something that is important in favour of things that are more fun; and I was afraid to write because I would have to face the fact that I might actually finish my novel and have to let people see it, I was afraid it wouldn’t be as good as I want it to be, I was afraid I couldn’t write and I was afraid of admitting to myself that I wasn’t a student anymore. From May last year I wasn’t writing for a deadline or a tutor, I was writing for me and for publication and that scared the crap out of me.

I will not be afraid anymore. My novel idea is great, I am a fantastic writer and tonight I will clean my apartment!

Yours,
Alrac Tabb
 

I went with the Penguin yesterday to watch him and his football team play their last game of the season. I’m not a massive sports fan and to be honest I’ve never really been the kind of girlfriend to go along in my high heels all dolled up and show off and cheer for her boyfriend as he gets all sweaty and muddy; and there were plenty of women there yesterday in their heels and their make-up done to perfection. I mean really, it’s pushing 40 degrees, and you’re tottering about on grass, sand and cracked pavement ... get a grip people; you look ridiculous!!

But that’s not what I’m blogging about today. I’m blogging about actually appreciating watching my partner do something he loves to do and doing it to the best of his ability and with dignity. Any of you who read his first blog will know how he has a certain level of fondness for taking advantage of the opportunity to kick people up and down the pitch, but he was either exaggerating or he’s mellowed in his old age because I didn’t see any of that yesterday. In fact, I was very proud of him. Aside from scoring an excellent goal he displayed excellent sportsmanship.

Towards the end of the second half of the match the penguin is passed the ball and he makes a speedy dash for the goal, we’re all on tenterhooks on the side lines waiting for the inevitable goal, when a player from the opposing team runs up behind him and throws himself into Ger with some nasty force. Both of them crashed to the ground and I have to admit to you all, my heart was in my mouth for a second; it was really quite a nasty tackle. My concern seemed unfounded though because the Penguin bounced straight back up and was on his feet almost immediately. The other player, however, didn’t get up.

Now, at first I thought he was just milking it and trying to get himself out of being reprimanded for the foul, and Ger obviously thought the same initially as he started to walk away, but as the time went on and he didn’t get up Ger went back over to him and knelt down beside him to try to help him. After they helped him off the pitch Ger’s coach pulled him off and as he come over to us on the side lines we could see him limping,;he was really hurt, and he’s still feeling the effects today. Did that stop him being the perfect sportsman? No, he went and sat with the guy who had tackled him and made jokes and tried to make him feel better.

Now, I know how much Ger hates to be taken off before the end of a game and if it had been up to him he would have played through it, but he put that aside and made the effort to help the other player. And then he proceeded to wipe the floor with all of us at bowling later on. I was very proud of my Penguin yesterday.

Yours
Alrac Tabb.
 

Since I’ve moved to Saudi Arabia my life has changed dramatically. Not only have I had to adapt to a new culture and embark upon a new career I have also had to go through the next phase of “growing up” as it were. I am 22 years old, and as mature as I have always been for my age, it is impossible for me not to see how much I have grown in the last few months. I’ve always had the ability to detach myself from my life and clinically analyse myself so I know that when I do look back over the last three and bit months I do so critically and with surprisingly little bias.

My job here in Saudi is my first “proper job”. This month is the first anniversary of my leaving university and for the first time in 12 months I actually feel like I am doing something with my life. When I first left university I struggled to find work due to the economic climate and the ridiculous desire of most employers for a new employee to have a degree plus at least two years experience in the field. As a result I worked jobs in retail and became depressed. I didn’t know it at the time but I was. I spent a hell of a lot of my free time doing absolutely nothing; I had no outside interests and I told everyone, and myself, that because I worked hard all week and was always surrounded by people at work I needed the alone time. What I was actually doing was isolating myself.

Now, three months down the line of my new life I can see how I seem t o have come through the next stage of my development. I am busy 24/7 out here and I have never felt better. I can now see the value of making the effort to have outside interests, I love being social and I feel amazing because of it. But more importantly, those rare moments where I am alone and free to do absolutely nothing mean so much more to me now. It is actually a break from the norm and a chance to recharge the batteries.

Alone time and my own space was something I took for granted; now I see it for what it is, a luxury that makes all the other aspects of life that bit more enjoyable.

Yours,
Alrac Tabb

 

As most of you probably know I am the girlfriend of The Literary Penguin , and if you scan down my blog you will find a comment on my last entry from daddy Penguin (hi!) and it got me to thinking … how does one go about looking after a penguin?

Being the little swat that I am I immediately type penguins into Google and begin to read up. Well, I’d hate for my Penguin’s family to be worried about him thinking I am not being thorough in my care – I have always been, and will always be, a responsible pet owner!

Did you know there are 17 species of penguin? This is where I came across my first hurdle … exactly what kind of penguin is my Penguin? I mean, he doesn’t really look like an emperor penguin (he’s not tall enough, nor does he gain weight as easily as they do), he doesn’t look like a chinstrap penguin (his facial hair grows far more wildly than their thin line!), there are no similarities between him and a yellow eyed penguin (unless you count the time he got a hold of my gold eye shadow…) so I was stumped.

However, I soon recovered myself as I realized he was a breed all of his own, 100% unique – so rest in peace everyone, there’s only one and he’s in Saudi Arabia; you’re all quite safe!!

So breeding out of the way I began to look at the needs of penguins. What they eat was the most obvious place to start. I have to brag a little bit here, I didn’t need to look this up; I’ve seen Madagascar, I know penguins have ice cold sushi for breakfast! I also know that my Penguin loves chocolate, so there’s plenty of that on the menu too (I have to do something to fatten him up for the long winter stood on an egg whilst I’m off fishing; that boy just doesn’t gain weight!!).

The next hurdle in penguin care was predators; those darn leopard seals! After penguins their second favourite food is chocolate, and what do you think my Penguin carries with him at all times? Yup, chocolate; and even when he doesn’t have a huge bar of Cadbury’s dairy milk tucked under his wing he usually has the remains of the last bar smeared all down his front and stuck in his feathers! Leopard seals are all over chocolate covered penguins like plaque on teeth!

So how do you go about protecting a chocolate addicted, messy eating penguin from these maniacs? Well that’s pretty easy really; you make sure they fall in love with a sparkly winged sand fairy that loves them enough to magic all the nasty seals away.

Yours,
Alrac Tabb

 

I am going to start this blog with a confession folks. Yes, I can’t hide it from you any longer, I have to let it out or else it will eat me up from within and I’ll end up a good for nothing bum sitting next an ATM begging for change to fund my stationery addiction. Here it goes, try not to judge me – I am one of the most forgetful people on the planet. I try to remember stuff, honest I do! I write everything in my diary and read it every morning, I have post it notes everywhere on my desk, I have good intentions but I am so easily distracted that I would forget my breasts if they weren’t firmly attached!

Last night I went to the Penguin’s for my dinner as I am wont to do on a Saturday evening, or any other evening for that matter – I get waited on hand and foot and it’s awesome! I’m spoilt as well as forgetful, but I think that’s a confession for another blog.

So anyway, I get to the Penguin’s apartment and put my phone on charge; again, nothing out of the ordinary, in fact it is pretty routine as my phone has decided it can’t go longer than two days without getting some TLC from an electric current. So we have dinner, go over the newsletter we are both taking over, and then we head out to grab a cab to take me home. What did I leave behind? Yup, you guessed it, my phone.

Now, although it looks like it, this blog is not in fact about my forgetfulness, but more about my inability to function without the collection of tiny chips and technology that is the mobile phone. As soon as I realized that I didn’t have it with me I went into a sort of anaphylactic shock. Seriously, I’m not exaggerating! My lungs contracted under shivers of panic and I started to hyperventilate, sweat materialized over quivering goose bumps on my skin and I couldn’t work out what to do. I mean, my phone’s my alarm (I don’t have a clock in my room [don’t ask I’m still settling in!])! What if there’s an emergency? How will I know what time it is if I wake up in the night? What if I have a bad dream?

Really, that was a genuine worry, I have the Penguin on standby incase I have bad dreams so I can call him – I’m pathetically spoilt remember!

After what felt like eons of being cut adrift from the world, shivering and alone on my little technology-less bamboo raft in ragged clothes with only a smiley faced basket ball for company, I managed to pull myself together enough to face problem one – how was I going to get up in time for work? The Penguin starts work an hour before me so obviously all I had to do was get him to call my landline and wake me up. Thank the Lord I took my mother’s advice and wrote emergency numbers in the back of my diary! So that was sorted and arranged and I headed to bed prepared to face any nightmares alone.

But I couldn’t settle. I kept thinking about my poor phone alone in a strange apartment with no one to have set its alarm. No word of a lie, I felt like I was missing something, or like I was worried about a relative in for an operation and I wouldn’t know the results until the next day!

Am I that intricately wired to and dependant on technology?! Pretty soon the human race is going to morph into robots and meld all of the technologies that we can’t cope without into our physical beings – it’s the next step on the evolutionary scale!

So how did I settle myself to sleep you ask?

I got out my iPod …

Yours,
the pre-programmed and computer chipped,
Alrac Tabb

 

My mother was a single parent and she worked very hard to make time to spend with myself and my sister, and not just to make sure that we didn’t kill each other! She wanted to make sure we were raised properly. She worked long hours at a job she hated and battled a spectrum of emotional problems but she didn’t give up and made an excellent, and effective, effort to instill a moral code in the two of her children. She taught us that stealing is wrong, that hurting other people is wrong (even if they seem tot deserve it), she gave us both a sense of pride in ourselves and a code of honor and decency to measure ourselves by, and she taught us the value of manners.

A huge part of my education in manners and their application to daily life came from just watching her. Over the years Life has really crapped on my mom, and I mean serious ‘post-dodgy curry’ craps, but never once has her moral code slipped. If someone blanked her at work she would still say hi to them next time she saw them, if the Government had screwed her out of her working family tax credits she would still be unbelievably polite on the phone, if the company she worked for didn’t value her and had her in line for redundancy she would still dress impeccably and be early for the meeting to tell her she was no longer wanted. Behind closed doors she would cuss and moan and bitch and cry, but NEVER did she allow any of that to influence how she treated other people; and she swears like a trooper in the house – but I have never heard her let out even the smallest expletive in public.

This amazing example was hard to ignore. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am nowhere near as perfect in my manners as she is, but I would never let her, or myself, down by ignoring or forgetting the code of respect she taught me. I believe everyone deserves to be shown respect, and I believe that everyone should respect themselves – the easiest way to do that is to make a small, miniscule effort to respect others. I always say please and thank you, I hold the door for the person after me, I give up my seat on the bus for the elderly or people with children, I try to watch my language, I dress well when I meet friends, I take responsibility and apologise if I am in the wrong and I am punctual.

I hate being late with a vicious, fiery passion! It drives me potty when I have to wait around for other people and I fell unbelievably offended if someone is excessively late and can’t even be bothered to send a text to explain or apologise! Because of how it makes me feel I do not like to make other people feel undervalued by being late myself. I would like you to bear all of this in mind whilst you read the following account.

I live in Saudi Arabia and women can’t drive out here, so I am reliant on company provided transport to get me to work. Now, I am meant to start work at 9am; however, the mini-bus that collects me, and one other woman from the compound next to mine, does not arrive until 9am. That in itself really grates on me, but there’s nothing I can do about it and it doesn’t reflect poorly on me at work so I deal with it. The bus driver gives me a missed call when he is nearly at the gate to my compound so I can head out and meet the bus as it pulls up – a smooth transaction … or so you would think. He is regularly late, or he waits until he is parked up then calls me, adding time to the journey.

Today was worse than normal. At ten past I was sick of waiting for the call so I headed down to wait by the gate and be ready just to hop in and whizz off. As I emerged onto the road he was pulling up. Late, but perfectly timed so I was quite satisfied. Normally, when I get on the bus they other lady he collects is usually there as it is easier to collect her first. Today she wasn’t there. Anyway, the bus heads out of the security controlled gates and then does a U-turn straight back into the compound! I guess that he is heading back to get my usual morning companion but not one word is said to me; he’s gabbing on the phone. So we follow a truck through all of the security checks which takes forever, and then we get to the house of the lady in question; here we wait for her to finish messing around before she gets into the bus! We FINALLY got underway at 9.20! I didn’t get to the office until after half past.

Neither the driver nor my companion uttered a single syllable of apology to me; they did not even acknowledge that anything out of the ordinary had taken place. Had they just said one little word that begins with an S and ends in a Y I would have been absolutely fine about it. This woman has my phone number, she could have called me, the driver has my number he could have called me, they both sat in the damn bus with me and neither of them deigned to treat me with enough respect to apologise to me for making me later than usual to work.

Though had they said sorry, there wouldn’t have been a blog today, so I guess it wasn’t as irritating as it would normally have been!

 

So, this is the first voyage into the virtual world that is blogsphere; be gentle with me! I'm just a fairy!

What to tell you to begin? I guess I could be generic and give you my name, age, tell you where I come from and provide blood samples for screening upon request, but that's far too boring. Besides anyone who reads the The Literary Penguin 's blog will know all about me anyways. So I'm going to tell you, instead, about Alrac Tabb.

Alrac Tabb is the most splendiferous character I've created to date and I LOVE her! Hopefully I'll post one of her adventure's for you soon, but untill you can meet her for yourself, here's a brief description. She is a fairy that lives in the realm of Faylinn, she is about 18 inches tall, has a slender but tough frame that is surounded by a ferociously wild mane of red hot orange hair that sticks out in every direction imaginable, and she has enormous wings that are bigger than the rest of her put together that dwarf her. These oversized and fabulous wings are a hodge podge of colour; everything from reds and purples through to blues and greens. Let me tell you - she looks spectacular!

She's tough too; tough as petrified tough stuff! She's always optimistic, she moves at lightning speed and can't keep still even when she's not excited. Hyperactive and fast talking Alrac is always getting herself into mischief of some sort or another!

I created her to add some colour to the novel I am working on called "Death, Dragons and Destiny" as most of my characters were worryingly serious. I fell in love with her and she has become my biggest project; a myriad of tiny adventures have sprouted from a silly idea inspired by an old flat mate (Carla Batt - Alrac Tabb backwards with a stylistic change!) and I know think about her all the time.

I wish I was half as cool, interesting and colourful as her and so I have named my blog in honour of Alrac Tabb and her never ending adventures!

More of me soon,
The 'wannabe' Alrac Tabb.
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