the season of hibernation begins...

i cannot begin to tell you how absolutely full i am right now as i write this. ugh. i had thanksgiving dinner at a friend's and although i honestly didn't eat like a pig, i sure as hell felt like i did to the point where i was really uncomfortable for a good 20 minutes. or maybe it was the cheesecake. ;)

nonetheless, i'm absolutely stuffed!

and the weather in chicago is just atrocious. or at least it was yesterday.. no one in their right mind should've been out and about yesterday.. but there i was, walking around various shops looking for a friggin' bathing suit. of course they're out of season and therefore so hard to find these days, but the places that did have them, well, let's just say they weren't quite my style. maybe if i was about 30 years older... nah.. still not my style.

at anyrate. the hunt for a bathing suit continues, and i'm not a fan of ordering such items online as the hassle of dealing with returns is more than i care to take on. even niketown didn't stock them anymore! what the hell kind of sports store doesn't carry swim suits, no matter the season!?

so yeah.. the weather last night was atrocious! it was so windy, parts of my umbrella snapped apart. what started off as rain, soon turned into snow and not only was it coming down hard, but the wind was forcing the snow to blow horizontally!! what a freakin' nightmare. once i got home, i stayed home.. despite a party i was supposed to go to. when the weather gets like that, deshigrrrl goes into hibernation mode. call me when the weather hits 80 and i'll be back to my regular self.

in other news, we were shopping for a turkey the other day and came across a 12lb organic bird that had a price tag of.. get ready for this.. $67 big ones! are there idiots out there that actually pay that much for a damn turkey? i can just hear it now.. "darling, this turkey tastes marvelous!"...

i'm now reading monica ali's bricklane. so far so good! i'm really enjoying all these south east asian female writers lately. they're making me awful nostalgic.

supposedly the bangladesh government denied ms. ali a visa to visit her birthplace (i'm guessing she's a british citizen now) because she's a writer. it amazes me how some men can be so threatened by a woman with a pen and a brain.

darkie.. bad!!

so.. check it.. i'm really getting tired of all the backlash resulting from the whole war on terror. seriously. it chaps my ass..

as some of you may know, i'm headed home for the holidays. i'll be gone for an entire month, for which i am ecstatic to no end, but trust that after about a week my family will no doubt get on my nerves, and surely vice versa.

so my travel agent tells me, as i spend a fortune on the plane ticket, that i'll need a visa to transit through heathrow. and as i'm talking to him, no doubt sounding a tad baffled, i repeat the fact that i'm only transiting through and that i'm not planning to leave the airport to take a ride on the double decker or to have tea with the queen. but he insists that i look into it by contacting her majesty's consulate office here in chitown to make sure so that i don't run into any problems.

well, lo and behold my man was right! it turns out, that if you're a citizen of any country on the wrong side of the world where the majority of the population are brown and muslim, you need a visa just to sit in the transit lounge.

can i say that again? please, indulge me in this one.

you need a visa to sit in the heathrow airport transit lounge while simultaneously spending money shopping at their ridiculously over-priced "duty-free" (my ass) stores.

oh, and did i mention the visa costs a whopping $51? add to that a fedex fee of $16 if you happen to be one of those poor souls who literally can't afford to take a day off work to stand in line at the embassy. and yes, that would be me.

so i'm spending $67 to go sit at a transit lounge for 4 hours on the way to dhaka and 3 hours on the way back. that's almost $10/hour just to SIT MY ASS IN A FUCKING AIRPORT TRANSIT LOUNGE!!!

can you sense the rage here? can you? really?

no. i don't think you can. because i couldn't possibly curse enough in english to get my point across. if you all could read bengali, i'd have a mouthful for ya..

untitled..

there are no words....

there are just simply no words...

none at all...

to describe how i've been feeling since late tuesday night.

i'm sick. i'm sick and i'm angry, and i just can't shake the ill feeling that's been sitting in my gut for the past two days.

when i lived in bangladesh, i used to think so highly of america. outside of the whole "land of opportunity" hype, i used to think, wow.. their women are so free.. their society is so free.. people can do anything they want.. they don't have to answer to anyone.. they don't have to worry about being persecuted for their beliefs, they don't have to worry about being gay or being short or too dark or too tall (yes, i was a little naive). and to tell you the god's honest truth, those are the things that made america so wonderful in my eyes. i was so full of hope when i came to this country. in my view of the world as a teenager, america just seemed to be the most progressive nation in the world. a place where people moved forward not backward, in time.

i'm certainly not feeling that way anymore, and frankly, haven't felt that way in a long time.

i'm just so.......... pissed off and hurt and sad. i'm numb yet emotional as all hell. i couldn't bring myself to come to work yesterday. but here i am now, and really, nothing much has changed except that i look at my co-worker who voted for bush a little differently. i can't help it. i know that i can't pick my friends based on their political beliefs, but dammit.. this time was different. there was a lot more at stake this time than ever before. while he voted for bush simply for selfish reasons, i'm sitting here wondering what the fuck will happen to all the people (including myself) who are now negatively affected for the next four years by this overwhelmingly holier-than-thou administration that really, at the end of the day, doesn't give a flying fuck about anyone that doesn't fit into their agenda.

i'm even more mad at myself now for having actually invested a lot of time, money and energy into my stay in this country. so much so that i can't just pack up and leave without incurring some heavy losses. too many sacrifices have already been made.. and i've found myself stuck in a horrible rut.

i can't vote, so would you do me a personal favor?

please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please.....

GET OUT THERE TODAY AND VOTE!

never mind the electoral college, never mind the long lines, never mind the possible opposition... just make your voices heard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!