2013 sucked in many ways with tension, stress and other things but it’s also been great as I started Decluttr Me, moved into my lovely apartment, went on lots of holidays in the Middle East, became spot free and got Oreo.
Still no man in my life who doesn’t irritate the hell out of me but I’m sure one day one man will turn up who is not a freakazoid.
Thanks if you were involved in the goods times, you have been blocked if you were involved in the bad times. Roll on 2014.
I recently returned from a holiday and landed at my local airport. Flying through the corridors and through e-gate I was as normal superfast next to the luggage carousel; then I had to wait.
It was a busy evening due to the end of the Eid Holidays but despite there being some empty carousels, the airport thought it would be wise to unload luggage for two planes at the same carousel. So after waiting for 30 odd minutes, we were suddenly beseeched with Indian passengers from the Indigo flight whose luggage was coming at the same carousel.
As always with Indian people, they don’t understand invasion of space. This young man was a prime example of this. With his dell backpack he stood as close as possible to me, hitting and pushing me with his body and bag several times. I couldn’t move back as there was a man standing close behind me. I wasn’t going to move away from my spot as I had been here for long enough and I was sure my suitcase would come.
After a few hits, the young man’s suitcase came. When it came, I was whacked with the backpack and suitcase. As I cannot seem to control my mouth, I tapped him on his shoulder and quietly said “will you be saying sorry to me for hitting me so many times”.
The man turned around and the following was what was said to me
“I didn’t hit you”
“Yes you did”
“It was my bag that hit you”
“Will you be saying sorry”?
“No, I wont be saying sorry to you, you don’t deserve it” [starts yelling]
“So its fine to hit a woman and not apologise”
“You are not a lady. No one would go out with you as you are so ugly”
At this point another man piped up and asked me what my problem was. I responded to him telling him to mind his own business and was he ok about another man hitting a woman. He shut up.
“So you are fine with hitting women then”.
“Yes you deserved it”.
(Under my breath I swore – slip of the tongue but very quiet admittedly even for me)
“See you are not a lady, you are a piece of shit and an idiot. I am from Dubai and you cannot talk like that”
“I’m from here as well so fine I will tell the police how you have behaved”.
“The police will do nothing, you deserved it”.
“Wonderful, so its fine to hit a woman like it is to rape women as well isn’t it” (Yeah I said that – not proud, but it shocked him enough to walk away slightly).
I finally gave up.
I didn’t move but during this time I was surrounded by other Indian men just glaring at me. If you have seen a Bollywood movie you would have seen the mob mentality that prevails when there is an argument or fight going on. Same thing here.
I was worried, but I am too stubborn to move and to allow bad manners to prevail. He hit me. Any gentleman or normal person would have apologized immediately and moved away. He started being defensive, yelling and getting personal. I am sure that this man and the men surrounding me thought I would shut up after being yelled at, but they didn’t realize I was a mouthy British girl. I was also concerned that no police or security came to help even though he was yelling very loudly at me.
It wasn’t just the men, an old woman decided to slam her trolley into my leg after this argument, and then push me out of the way as well. I had given up by then to say anything. The purposeful way she behaved, showed that she was not amused with me arguing with this man. The general consensus was that it was fine for this man to do what he wanted and get away with it.
No one came to defend me, but the passengers from my plane (mostly Sri Lankans) did not behave in the same manner. It sounds awful but it was all the passengers from Indigo who acted like animals pushing and shoving at the carousel.
I did have a chance to do payback. I decided that going to the police would escalate the situation too much and I didn’t want to wait around; I wanted to go home. So I went up to the customs man and kindly asked him to torture the bloke for a while with his luggage and just generally harass him. I gave him a description of the nasty boy and went on my way. I was reassured they would sort him out. Luckily there was also a CID man nearby who heard me and hope assisted with the harrassment. 🙂
Fortunately for us ladies, the local men generally deplore mistreatment of women so they were not amused by my story of what had happened.
What happened is unfortunately not an unusual occurrence with men from the sub continent. They have this desire to push and shove going into the lift, metro, anywhere. They will not hold the door for you and will be rude to you especially if you are an Indian looking woman. It is a generalization, and there are some men from the sub continent that I have met over the years who are kind, gentlemanly human beings; but the majority that I keep meeting on my travels and here in this town fall into the general category of acting disgracefully.
I don’t know if their mothers taught them to behave like that, they have learnt it from other men or have just been allowed to behave like this, so they just keep doing it. However they have been brought up, this behaviour has to stop. They cannot get away with bullying, hitting, harassing, and dare I say it, raping, women.
I will always speak up when treated badly but we all need to make a stand against these awful imbeciles.
Recently a new obsession has arisen with salt and pepper hair men a la George C and Dermot Mulroney (he is soooo swoonsome in New Girl currently).
The salt and pepper hair man is older, refinded, cultured and mature on the outside. They like good food and can chat without belching.The other positive is that they are great arm candy. I would prefer to have a man looking like above holding me rather than a justin beiber/one direction wannabe.
I recently went out with a salt and pepper hair man. He was close to his forties and had an air of maturity that is lost with these twenty somethings and early thirty guys who have been buzzing around. He was from eastern europe so there was a bit of a culture clash going on (not emotional visibly; deadpan), but I didn’t care when I could run my hand through his peppery hair.
He was a muppet (as are all men I seem to be attraced to) but for a brief time I had moved onto a different level of speciman. It was a brief dalliance, but it ticked all the right buttons for me at this time of my life.
While I wait for something more long term, I’m going to be pursuing these men rather than accepting the child-boy into my life.
I know that many people have written blogs about last year and what they thought of it. Well you might be bored of it now but hey it’s my blog so I’m going to write about my year.
2010 early on was shite for me. I had three days of being incommunicado which scared the shite out of my parents, brother, friends and work. I survived the hell and I got out of it a stronger woman but it haunted me for the rest of the year. Thankfully the people mentioned above were there for me with their support and love and I apologise for putting them in that position and thank them for being there for me. I would be a broken woman if it wasn’t for them.
The *insert swear words* couple who stole my money (see previous blog) have yet to be found by Interpol or to return my money. Hatred remained for the whole of 2010 and will remain until…
I also became one of those horribly boring 100+ hours’ working women. Due to a massive project at work and lack of a department except me, I have had to work like a dog with the help of various external counsel to do this project. I have lived on about 3 hours sleep, had near nervous breakdowns, screamed, cried and drowned in paperwork. But on a plus I had the steepest learning curve ever and got to go India (finally) and Geneva for the deal, as well as two visits to London which meant I got to be home more than I expected. Was it worth all the hours of work? I have yet to see, but hopefully there will be a decent size bonus at the end of this long tunnel and maybe a few people working for me??!
Due to the work issue, it meant I once again didn’t get to go on a holiday. I desperately needed a holiday to be away from my laptop and blackberry. I’m hoping this year I get a reprieve and can book somewhere far away to just unwind and read books.
On a plus I welcomed into my life my little nephew, my close friend’s third son and my little kitty Amira. All are completely adorable, lovely and cuddly and I miss them when I am away from them. So I have become an Auntie and cat woman again 🙂
I also had to live through my older cat going through her teenage bitch years for most of the year but she suddenly snapped out of it in November after a super duper hair cut. There was something in that shampoo I tell ya.
With regards to my love life, I decided it would be a brilliant idea to redate my ex from last year and get re-engaged to him. Of course we once again didn’t properly get engaged and he failed to buy me a wedding ring (or anything else for that matter). I realised after a few months that if I loved my cats more than him that it was a recipe for disaster and that it might be best to dump him. Of course, I did the new social media thing and dumped him first on this blog and then to his face. But hey don’t judge me, he dumped me via Facebook (changing his status to single) last year.
I also realised that although there were men to fancy and date this year that I didn’t love any of them or let alone care enough to have them in my life for very long. This realisation dawned on me at the end of the year which was surreally scary. I don’t like being alone and I want to share my life with someone but I don’t want to be with just anyone just for the sake of being with someone. I want to share my life, I want to be respected, I want to be loved – I think I deserve it now after all these years of being in the dating world. So I have decided I am going to wait with semi open eyes for that man to turn up. I also think it’s best I stop looking to the past men and also to the men who only want to be friends. For the latter, I need to stop making a fool of myself.
So that was 2010, but what about 2011? I don’t do new years resolutions, but due to the fact that I have become a bigger girl due to the lack of time to exercise, I have decided that I will start dance classes again – hip hop classes to be exact. Yep I will be dancing to tinie tempah (my new love) and hopefully will go down two dress sizes by March.
Due to the fact that everyone who is anyone can’t stop giving me a lecture about my smoking, I think it might be time to stop soon. Patches, gum and plain old will power don’t work so I will be visiting a hypnotherapist when I have some time to test that out. It worked for one person I know so it might work for me. Otherwise will try that needle thing that the Chinese do.
My other plan is to redecorate my pad. I cannot take the pink walls any longer and need to clean it up and make it livable again for myself. That will be project numero uno for this year.
Of course I would be disillusioning myself if I didn’t say I wanted to meet someone, fall in love, get married and have babies this year. But I hope for that every year and it’s failed so far so why start this year with a stupid wish. Let’s see what 2011 has to give and take it from there.
To all of you readers have a great year and if it goes shit, just believe that things can only get better. xx
Apologies for the postings disappearance for a while. It was due to external dramas which were off the richter scale.
The major drama revolved around my work. The environment of my workplace involves yelling, screaming, blaming, backstabbing and general bullshit. And thats not even from me. As strong as I am it got to a point were one conference call of being screamed at, getting told I was shit at my job and being hung up on resulted in a migraine which lasted for a few days. This is not how life should be. This should not be how work is. But that is the current status quo. Admittedly there are things that are happening within the busines that are causing immense pressure to all and is high level, which therefore requires my input on a regular basis but to be yelled at as if I am a slave should not be included in my job description.
Friends and family are worried about me but what you do in this environment currently. I have been without a job before and its not great to be broke, desperate and needy in this town. If I am being honest I enjoy the work I do, I just don’t like the majority of people within the business who I have to work with. I am a lawyer by trade but I have now become a politician, shrink, food provider (for two guys in my department) and a punching bag. These elements were not included in my lawyer training.
But how do you change the environment and the way that people behave. Can you ever change them or do you need to move onto somewhere more appropriate for your sanity? How do you deal with uneducated, sexist, backward thinking men (the office is run 90% by men of a certain nationality, with me being the only woman in management)? Can they ever be shown how to behave in a corporate environment?
This week was better. I didn’t get too many blackberry messages ranting about something that I had done that was incredibly wrong in their eyes. I didn’t emails every half an hour from 5.30am requesting me to be in a spur of the moment conference call immediatley (my bb was on silent and I was sleeping so was therefore a failure for not being in a conference call at that time!). Although work life improved slightly, the powers that be decided that I was incapable of being the head of the department and advertised for someone to be the head. Demotion is kinda of a shitty feeling, but there is a huge part of me thankful and relieved that I will soon hopefully not have to deal with ridiculous incomprehensible and unreasonable phone calls, emails and bb messages 24 hours a day and I can go back to having a proper 10-6ish life. Here’s hoping.
Shelo9's Cheeky Rantings 