That's How We Roll

Moe, Reaz, myself and Faheem

You know you've had an interesting and eventful week when you finally settle down to write a blog piece and smell the burnt rubber on your soles and notice the smoke emanating from the rear of your pants.

Between working on a new business venture which has me more excited than Oprah at an all-you-can-eat buffet, and my home renovations, I've had more highlights than Snooki from JerseyShore (don't ask).
For those that follow me on Twitter (@kaloo5) or are friends of mine on Facebook, you may have seen the pics from our recent family photo shoot. Tons of fun.

My ankle is still in the healing phase which means a drastic reduction in physical activity has resulted in an equally drastic increase in girth. On the plus side, my dream of emulating Marlon Brando in The Godfather is now within reach. Or maybe the Oros man. Either or.

I'm tempted to write another politically motivated piece, what with all the recent shenanigans our elected officials have been up to, and two retarded models having put the icing on the cake this week.... but I figured I need to ease myself back into my blog.

Did I mention the new business venture?
If there were smiley faces on this blog, right here --------> (___) is where I'd put a big fat smile.
All will be revealed soon, suffice to say that it's been a long time coming and I think the time is right. Sometimes you need to be in the right place, sometimes it needs to be the right time, and sometimes you need the right partner to pursue the dream.
This is the right time in the right place with the right partner.

The Siblings : Myself, Shamima, Aadilah, Faheem

Princess Sabreen & cousin Sameeha

In other news, Princess Sabreen is doing splendidly.
She turns 6 this year, with an attitude that turns 26 before that. Next year she starts at primary school. I'll be sending out apology letters to her classmates parents in advance, and maybe keep a few on standby for use throughout the year.

A Time To Kill, A Time To Chill

Is it just me or are people generally more highly strung lately?

Maybe it's all that processed food and coffee we're shoveling into our bodies. Maybe it's something in the water, or the music we're listening to. I don't know.
I wish I did, because then I would have known how to handle the incident of road rage I witnessed yesterday.
Some huge crazy poster-boy for McDonalds Supersized Meals driving the regulation Hilux Bakkie issued to all steroid junkies tried to skip a clearly red robot, but was impeded by a skinny Ethiopian-looking refugee cyclist crossing the same road.

I sensed a fight a they both began a screaming match.
It was like watching two angry women fighting over the last pair of shoes on sale at Socrates.
So I did what any decent peace-loving citizen would o an whipped out my camera. Unfortunately it never escalated from a screaming match, which was a waste of time for at least 8 cars that had stopped to watch the show.

Remember when we would be kind and courteous to strangers for no other reason than it being the right thing to do? Remember when a kind word and a smile achieved more than anger and violence did? I recall such a time fondly. I want that time back, for myself an the generations to follow.

I think we should start by banning fast-food, processed foods, and coffee.
But not KFC HotWings. They can stay. Nobodies ever had KFC HotWings and then gone out to pick a fight. Nobody I've ever heard of. 

Of Fathers & Daughters

To Sabreen, for today and everyday

Before you came into this world, I said a few special prayers for the things I wanted my child to have.

I wanted a child who was intelligent.

I wanted a child who was beautiful.
I wanted a child who was funny and pleasant and sweet.
I wanted all these things because I wanted you to be perfect.

Then you were born, and I held you in my arms for the very first time... and I realized...
That you would be more intelligent than I could ever imagine.
That you would be beautiful beyond words or description.
That you would be funny and pleasant and sweet and everything else in-between.
But mostly I realized that you were healthy and smiling and just so perfect.
From that day to this, you've blessed me with the kind of joy and love only a parent could ever understand.

I wish you many things in life, but mostly I wish that you live your life with passion.
In all that you do, do it passionately.
In all that you aspire to be and all that you hope to achieve, strive toward these with passion.
Live your life fully and live it completely, but mostly live it passionately.

When you write the final page in your journal of life, as some day I will write mine, let it end with the words 'Love, always' for this is the truest sign of a life well lived :)

Love, always
Dada

On Children
 Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Car Shopping, Men vs Women

The missus decided that she had had enough of her rust-bucket Renault Scenic which had served her like a dutiful slave for the last 4 years. More dutifully than I had served her, she remarked... which in 'Married English' simply means I was less maintenance and more reliable. Armed with a choice of colors and no cooking clue about make or model, she suggested I chug along for advice and emotional support. Personally I think I was just there to carry her handbag and sign on the dotted line.

This turned out to be an exercise in the difference between the way men and women shop for cars.

Women start off with a color.
Once they've chosen a color, it's all down to storage space, number of mirrors, cup-holders and the smell. Yes the smell is very important. It must smell like musky leather, even if it's cloth. It must smell like cookies and cream, even if it's made in Korea. If it's a French car, it must smell like David Ginola.

 

Men shop for cars slightly differently.
We start off at the BMW dealership. This is a default setting. Women should never try to change this.
Depending on age, we head straight to the Top Of The Range for our relevant bracket.
1-series for under 30's
3-series for 30-40
5-series for 40 and above
7-series for those getting the hang of sitting in a hearse.

Without giving away my age, my peer's and I would make a bee-line toward the M3 coupe' or cabrio.
Next we'd pimp it out with extras, 19inch wheels, sound system, Sat-Nav and all the bells and whistles.
Lastly we decide on color.
Then we sit down with the finance lady, 3 cups of free coffee later and we sneak out through a side-door and head toward Toyota.
If a guy tells you he doesn't shop for cars this way, he's either a gay Renault driver or he's lying. 

I guess this is why married couples make the best decisions when it comes to big ticket purchases. There's a healthy balance of practicality, sensibility and class. Left alone we'd either all be driving pretty cars with no resale value, or expensive sexy cars we can't afford.

The missus finally settled on the Peugeot 3008 pictured above.
Sure it's French, but it's also practical and sensible and smells like David Ginola.... but mostly it has a warranty and service plan no other make or model can compete with.
See! Practical and sensible.

Tomorrow we decide on color. She didn't have the right handbag with her today to make that decision.

Hello Blogger My Old Friend

This is probably the longest sabbatical I have taken from blogging, and it finally got to a point tonight where I felt like I either needed to write something or snort some coke. Since I'd never done the latter before, and also because writing is so much cheaper, well here I am.

For those who may not have known, I tore a ligament in my leg a few weeks back and the recovery has been rather slow and painful. This is partly the reason why I've been so scarce. The other being that Murphy in his infinite wisdom also decided that March will be the busiest month I have ever experienced in my business.
Back to my leg. How did I tear a ligament you ask?
The concise version is that I was trying to be a hero during a game of action cricket.

So here I am, a month later and still wobbling about on an unsteady ankle like your favorite grandfather carrying his overweight wife at a drunken orgy. While you pretend like you don't have such a relative, I'll make me a nice cup of Rooibos tea.

My sister arrived from Manchester this past weekend. She's married there and had a kid about a year ago, so this was the first time we got to see Maali. What a handsome boy he is. Reminds me so much of myself during my youth. I use the term 'my youth' very loosely, since I'm still at the prime of it. If it weren't for these damn crutches, I'd show you exactly what I mean.

Also, I closed the chapter on another long friendship this week. I may have mentioned it in a previous post. I'm too lazy to check and link right now. About my friend who kept complaining about her life and yet refused to do anything about it to make it better? Well, I finally decided that she was simply sucking my soul dry and I hated that every conversation ended with how much her life sucked. At the beginning of every year I set myself a quota of how often I want to hear and use the word 'suck', and usually I have about a 3 week supply left over by New Years eve. Lately though, she's been ravaging my quota with the grace of a hungry hippo at a House Of Cards convention. It's March and already I'm all sucked out. So it was with Ninja precision that I sliced off that umbilical chord.

Oh I almost forgot. My home renovations are going along superbly :) The new thatched roof should be complete by this weekend, and then I'll begin with the bathrooms and kitchen. It's going to be awesome once it's done, and I'll be sure to post pics, but in the interim it looks like a bomb site in Afghanistan. Last week the marines dropped a bag of rations and some medical supplies in my pool!

Now wish me a speedy recovery with my leg and I promise to blog again soon.

Revolutionizing Revolutions

It's been a while since I did a post about politics and revolutions and health.
So today's post is dedicated to revolutionary smoothies. People like Che Guava RaRa and Malcolm Eggs and Chris Honey.

Not a day goes by when we're not hearing about another scandal involving bribes and ministers or their wives, daughters, sons or pimps. I don't mean "not a day" as a figure of speech. I mean that literally. Even Sundays. The good Lord in his infinite wisdom rested on Sundays. Not so our corrupt government officials. Two years ago there was a story about tender rigging that broke on Christmas Day!
Nothing is sacred anymore.

Speaking of Sacred, what's up with the crappy quality of Sparletta 2L plastic bottles?
Yesterday I had some guests over, and since I'm a classy and sophisticated kind of guy, I poured them some cool refreshing Pine-Nut. Everything was going splendidly until the damn neck of the bottle caved in!
I looked completely ridiculous in my silk gown and snakeskin slippers with damn Pine-Nut spilling all over my vinyl floors!

Normally I would write them a sternly worded letter and escalate the matter all the way to the board of directors at Sparletta, but I heard somewhere that school comes out at 1pm and they are not allowed to use the Internet when they get home.

On the topic of directors, what the heck is up with these scammy pool maintenance companies?
I had one that started in the beginning of Feb. They promised to keep my pool sparkling blue. A month later and the pool is neither sparkling nor blue. They come once a week, usually on a Monday, get the pool looking brilliantly, and by Friday it looks like I was using the pool as a dip-tank for Mad Cow diseased death-row bulls. You know there's something wrong with your pool when you dive in and come face to face with a bullfrog taking his kids to frog school!

Finally, I need to voice my opinion on this whole American primary elections issue.
They're all a bunch of douchebags.
That's my opinion.

Until next time....

Here's To Goodness

People are always talking about Karma, but how many truly know what it means or how powerful it really is?
The word Karma has become like the phrase 'Social Responsibility' or 'Going Green.' We all sort of kind of know what it means, and we'd like to think we're doing it somehow, but the truth is that if Social Responsibility or Going Green were a train and we were laying naked tied to the tracks, we still wouldn't know what hit us.

One of the people that I have known for a few years now in the business environment proved to me this week why I regard him so highly as a person. There are a handful of people, just a handful, who are doused in as much ethics as my grandad was in Old Spice. They just reek of ethics and integrity. They're almost annoyingly good and ethical and so full of integrity, you just want to smack them and then shag them.
Except in this case it was a dude.

I want people to regard me that way someday.
There goes Kaloo. So full of integrity and ethics, I want to shag him and smack him.

Not like the guy I met on one of my building sites last week.
He came over and introduced himself as one of the sub-contractors. He hardly turned to walk away and answer a call when everyone in the group started talking about what a deceitful shady character he is.

It's the one thing I constantly tell my loved ones.
You can lose everything you own, but never lose your name and the value that goes with it.