This beats my previous worst, doesn't it? The last time around I had not updated this long, ever since I became a blogistani citizen, was perhaps in the initial days, when I was learning the ropes. It was not as if I had run out of topics to blog about. Coori alone warrants another update or two, and frankly the intention had been to inundate knicqland with updates with Cooriisms. Not to mention the fact that UAE had been host to a blogger family everybody loves to love, and yours truly had been afforded the honor of hosting the family for about an hour, before being hosted for a SCRUMPTIOUS dinner at the groom's, and there was much to blog about, once the news of the wedding were announced.

However, two things happened simultaneously which led to an absolute lull in blogging activity in knicqland. I started work at the new place, where I was working before I had joined the old soodkhor company. Now, those who have been subjected to the intimate details of what went on, or to put it more precisely, what never went on in my soodkhor company job, will remember that there used to be little to do, and much not to do in that job. Whatever little there was to be done, never did get done because, lets put it this way, I was less than the diligent and ideal employee it takes to get a job done within two months after the deadline has passed.

Having spent all of sixteen months in that place I had somewhat forgotten the pace at which work is done in this new company of mine where I used to work before I had joined my old company. I do not know about you, dear readers, but I am having a lot of trouble introducing this new company of mine, where I used to work before I had joined that old company of mine, as that new company of mine where I used to work before I had joined that old company of mine. Perhaps, if I were an American, I could have found an acronym to define this new company....of mine, which probably would have gone something like this - NCOMWIUTWBIHJTOCOM, but hey lets face it, such an acronym is a bigger pain than that the sentence it attempts to abbreviate. What do we do? Why don't we just refer to them as the Finance Company and the Shipping Company?

Come to think of it, why not use acronyms for the two of them? Wonder why does it take me so long to figure out the simple things, which wouldn't be so bad if I could figure out the complex things in no time, but as things stand today I take longer to figure out the simple things than I do not figuring out the complex things. Oh, well... so, FC and SC it is. Just so everyone is clear, SC is where I have started work now, but where I used to work before I had joined FC.

Now that we no longer have to waste all that time referring to SC and FC in twenty words, perhaps I can tell you how joining SC has interfered with my blogging routine. For starters, I can hardly make time in the office to even look at a blog, mine or anyone else's. Updating from there is just not an option, while it was a compulsion in FC. You see there was only so much time you could spend gossiping, making tea, back biting, and talking to Jalali Baba. You had to do something constructive, and blogging was the automatic answer. On the contrary, I remember there used to be times during my previous stint with SC when some of my colleagues and I would wonder if there were enough hours in a day to just finish the jobs on hand. Its slightly better now, in that we do not stay back until after midnight writing reports and catching up on official correspondence. The operative word here is 'slightly'. I haven't got into the emailing routine yet, but I am trying to get back in the work-for-at-least-8-hours-a-day routine.

That is, however, not my excuse for not having updated. The excuse is that SC is located about 8-10 kilometers further down the road, which during the rush hour traffic can mean an extra 40 minutes on the road at times. The trouble is by the time you cover those 10 kms, everyone else also manages to join the party, so the same distance that it used to take you half an hour to cover in the past, when you had a head start on the rest of Charlies, takes you about 45 minutes now.

Cumulatively, it adds up to over an hour of driving in that bumper-to-bumper traffic coming back home, which would still be fine if home were a clean place with no clothes sprawled all around the place, or dishes stacked up (plate+glass+saucepan+tea mug)in the sink from the previous night, or an unmade bed. As luck would have it, home is not such a place. It has the clothes strategically placed on the various items of furniture for convenience, it has that sink overflowing with the afore mentioned kitchen items, and it presents a general picture of a place ravaged by a twister.

You see wifey and kids are in the land of the pure to attend a wedding. The date of the wedding coincided with my joining SC, and it meant two things: