farts

I have used this week for contemplation. Below are some of the deep questions I’ve been considering:

Which password did I use with what username??

I’ve been very stressed by how digitalized my life has become.

I’m a woman who does not remember her children’s dates of birth (I’m not kidding). Yet I’m required to remember various usernames and passwords for several social networking websites I belong to, the various email accounts I have, the online versions of my bank accounts, and almost any electronic gadget I own. I have to remember PIN numbers for my bank cards. When I’m traveling I need to remember what funky code I used for my in-room security safe. At work there are codes that need to be used to access the outside phone line and phone numbers that need to be remembered. I need to remember what logic I used when I saved a certain Word document on my computer in order to find it again. I recently bought an Apple computer and now I have to remember my Apple IDs: the one I created for the Egypt shop and the one I created for the U.S. shop. I also had to set up my various gadgets (the printer, the camera, the video camera, etc.) to my new computer, so I needed to remember where I put all the installation CDs. Heck, I needed to remember what gadgets I even had that needed to be set up on my new computer! And then there are the cords. So many electrical cords! I need to remember where I put them all and which cord belongs to which gadget. I subscribe to a few online newspapers, research journals, and the likes. I have to remember usernames and passwords for those. Even the digital receiver I have at home has a code that you need to enter in order to access the menu. I have a diving computer (which is similar to a watch but it gives you information such as depth, time spent under water, water temperature, etc.) and I need to remember the sequence of buttons I need to press in order to input various variables according to the dive I’ll next be making.

Last month I went to an ATM machine to find out how much money I had in my bank account (I WILL name names. The bank is the CIB). Based on the amount the ATM machine said I had, I bought a computer with my debit card and left some 600 EGP remaining in the account. The purchase went through at the store. Two weeks later the bank calls me and tells me that I didn’t actually have that amount in my account. According to the bank, the ATM machine lied and the card machine made a mistake by taking money out of the account that wasn’t really there. And now I owe the bank a huge sum of money!

This is all driving me nuts!

Results of my deep thoughts on this issue: Severe anxiety. Solution: relieve my stress by meditating about the bigger questions in life (see below) and defame any fucking institution that pulls a low one on me by blogging the heck out of them.

Who is holding up the fucking traffic again?!…

Read the rest of this post where it was originally posted at CairoScene’s Scenario.

I abhor the whole concept of celebrity writers. What do I care about the life of Hollywood movie star X or talk show host Y? Heck, they don’t even write their own books. They get people to do it for them.

To my shock, horror, and utter disdain, I resorted to reading a celebrity book this summer. I needed something light and funny to read after an exhausting two months of work.

Tina Fey’s Bossypants was my first ever celebrity book. I’m not here to review it. But I do want to refer to one chapter she wrote composed of three simple sentences:

What Turning Forty Means to Me

I need to take my pants off as soon as I get home. I didn’t use to have to do that. But now I do.

I have been laughing for the past month over that chapter. I can absolutely relate.

I’ve decided to put together my own What Turning Forty Means to Me list. Men and women out there: feel free to add to my list in the comments section!

What Turning Forty Means to Me: