'Going over to Michael's house...'

The title of this blog's a slightly different take on the lyrics of an Eel's song called 'Susan's house' because I just happened to remember it and thought I'd rip off the name of the song, a most excellent song in my opinion.

So anyways I've sort of been bumming around at home moreso since the sister left for Connecticut last Saturday. So I thought since I'm not working today - nor does it look like I'll get any work before I leave in the next two days, I might as well go up to see an old school friend in a place called Horsham which is about an hour's train ride from london, its basically in the English countryside in the county of Sussex.

Michael's the only person I know with too much free time on his hands just like me, so any time is a good time to visit him and while away the hours in each other's company.

So he picked me up from Horsham station and we just went to his place to chill out and listen to some funny odd music (and pretty random music in my opinion, although he'll hate me for saying that). Especially music by the Bonzo Dog band, a rather bohemian sounding 60's British band....I really have nothing more to say about them. We messed about on his PC and I helped him install a P2P file-sharing software that I've used....yay!

After all that strenuous activity we decided to go and grab a pizza at Pizza Hut and then watch a movie. Once we sat down to our table and ordered our pizza I decided to have a bowl of salad so I went down to the salad bar and I suddenly felt like the only brown person in the whole of Horsham as my paranoia got the best of me and made me think that all the white customers were looking at me. I wonder what gave me away, was it my disheveled look combined with brown skin and the standard issue military skrim warm neck band that looked a bit like a skimask? I'll let you be the judge of that, observe:

Do I look like a threat to society? Note: I just took this picture now for authenticity

Horsham's a very white area but NOT bigotted but nevertheless I felt a sudden chill in the air. Again I can be very suceptible to bouts of paranoia so don't take any notice of what I just said, infact look at it as filler if anything.

So after we had a few interesting short debates over media consiparcy theories and the other social ills in the world over our pizza, we made a bee line for the cinema across the car park and watched a gem of a film called 'The Constant Gardener'. Its an independent film directed by Fernando Meirelles who also directed City of God - a film I've yet to see, but its right up there with Lord of War and Crash in my opinion and will probably be up there with Syriana when that comes out here in March. The film is an amazing present-day thriller with a real axe-to-grind storyline about the corruption of drug companies and how they abuse the third world by paying western rich governments to turn a blind eye. Its the kind of all-encompassing universally hard hitting message that really attracts me to films of this genre.

It really makes a change from the Hollywood crap we must endure, and if it gets people thinking and taking positive action against the status quo then all the better! I don't intend to sit around working for bluechip companies for the rest of my life thereby making the rich richer and the poor poorer in some indirect way. Once I get my immediate priorities straightened out I'm going to at least make an active effort to do something more worthwhile with the little time I have on earth, I think we all should.

This isn't me ranting on about some obscure humanitarian cause and it sure as hell aint a passing fad or phase. There's far too much wrong with the world for this to be JUST a 'phase'! Don't get me wrong, this isn't my ultimate mission statement its purely how I've been feeling about the world that I've found myself growing up in over the past 10 years.

(Sigh...) I'm going to have to shelve these thoughts of peace and justice for now and get my life back on track, besides I need to catch some serious Z's.

But before I go, I've been meaning to give a mention to fellow blogger and school friend Nafie aka 'random culture' for a long time now. His mother died of cancer a few months ago now and I'd like to think that he still checks my blog and knows that my heartfelt prayers are with him Inshallah! Take care bro and I hope you've come to the conclusion that this is simply a part of life as that should help to ease the pain for everyone in your family.