I am making dhalpouri tonight.

I'm making dhalpouri tonight.

What's dhalpouri you ask? Well - Dhalpouri is yet ANOTHER reason why you need to find a nice Trinidadian and marry her. But I'll let you in on a secret, from me to you: Two very vital ingredients are salt, and black-pepper. None of which I had at home, I realized after coming halfway into seasoning some chicken. I headed off to the store instead to see if I couldn't rectify that.

As is usual in tales like these, I found that the point of interest wasn't the destination but the journey. During the journey I kept my head somewhat down. You never know when someone is going to throw a cup or something at you from a passing car (and I'd rather not lose an eye to a projectile straw), so I usually keep my eyes glued on the path directly ahead of me. No hassle there, I don't mind my shadow for company. Except this time I noticed something peculiar about the Shadow-Me spread thin before me. It swayed in a very, very particular way.

"Shit," I though. "This is how Andreas walks!".

Then I thought HA HA HA LOLZ!!1

Then I thought: "No, seriously. Shit. This IS how Andreas walks."

That effectively stilled the temporary joy of using internet-speak in my silent monologue. See, it wouldn't be the first time I'd copied someone's walk.

All the time I lived in Trinidad people would comment on how I had my mother's walk. I was happy about that. I quite like my mom, and if I could choose to inherit anything less substantial than her ass but more substantial than her cooking, then her walk seemed a good compromise.

After moving to Sweden though, I needed a new Me. The old me wouldn't do. Clothes seem a good start. Luckily I had my aunt's old cast-offs in the attic that I could pillage as much as I wanted. Sad thing being that in the late ninetees, the early eighties had yet not come back into style. As is often the case, I was both after and before my time.

I scored the highest points in every god-awful fashion mistake you could think of. Leather jacket and home-made dreads, check. Carpenter pants that my aunt had had during her third trimester, check. Highlights that bought out the sick yellow glow of too little D-vitamin, check. And the Bell-bottoms! God, the bell-bottoms were my staple. I wore bell-bottoms with the leather-jacket like some West Indian Fonzie, I wore bell-bottoms with short dresses, I wore bell-bottoms with long dresses. I wore bell-bottoms with bell-bottoms.

Atrocious as they were (in retrospect), I had gotten new duds. Now for a new walk.

The walk came from one single three-frame comic strip I read on the bus on the way to school one day. It was too long ago for me to remember the content of each individual frame, but the general gist was that these two girls were walking down a sidewalk, but the way they walked, oh!

One of these girls looked very Dutch and very much a pothead. Now I knew that there was nothing cool about being either Dutch or a pothead, but by Jove: She was wearing bell-bottoms. I wore bell-bottoms. This was no coincidence. The comic strip seemed to justify - assume the essence of ALL the fashion crimes I was committing.

And the walk, stilted and frame-wise as it is in comics, was the walk of someone who was pulling off bell-bottoms, and pulling them off well. Her upper-body was thrown back in a casual, obtuse angle in relation to her legs, which moved like autonomous creatures, while the upper body simply rode along, casually looking to this side or that for a car or a joint, who knows. She rode her legs like her legs were a horse. A fine horse.

So I started riding my legs like they were a fine horse. The trouble being that I always look down into the ground when I'm walking. So my walk, basically, turned into that of a person hunched over, with legs thrown out as far as possible ahead of her to give the illusion of their being independent entities. I was the perfect acute angle, if nothing else. And I wasn't unhappy with it. Looking into the ground and scowling while not caring where the legs were going implied a sort of double-blaséness, effectively topping that cool suave of even the stoned Dutch comic-girl. What a feat.

When I was much older, and slightly less rebellious and desperate to fill the requirements of a man ( who I wished would fill me) - having this walk laughingly labeled the walk of a lumberjack saddened me a bit. It was the first time I'd heard that and its negative connotations, and it wasn't the last. And to be quite frank, I believe that Andreas is the first person not to have an opinion about my walk. He really is the perfect man.

As for Andreas being the perfect man - well. It was pretty inevitable that I should come to copy his walk. Steal his cool, sway his way. And with this sudden realization that hit me on the way to pick up some black pepper, what happened last Tuesday starts making a whole lot more sense.

Last Tuesday Andreas and I went to see Supergrass. Supergrass was amazing, but this is not the point. As the two of us approached the bouncers guarding the illustrious Supergrass concert-doors, the one greets us in a loud and clear voice, such as bouncers do when they try to show that they've already sized you up and that your reply is integral to you chances of getting in.

My reply was one of an explosive "WHATTHEFUCK?!". Instead of turning me away, the bouncer looked shame-faced and waved us in.

But that was last-week-Me.

"Today's-Realization"-Me would have probably not responded with "WTF", but would have mustered a brave but sadly sweet smile for the bouncer who had greeted Andreas and I with the very enthusiastic : "Hello Boys."

Right! Time to roll some dough, Ta.

Just when I thought I couldn't get more awesome.

I admit, I'm a backseat driver. Not the positively annoying kind that sits behind you and tells you you're going too fast or too slow, or the kind that tells you that maybe you should have taken a left turn LIKE I TOLD YOU WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, but the kind who will sit quietly next to you, while you're playing whatever video game, and then, at the height of action - ask you if you were meant to die in that particularly gruesome way.

Just that one line. It never gets old, I laugh just as hard every time. I'm a comedy goldmine. No, correction - I'm a comedy goldmind.

Okay, sometimes I throw in a couple of other lines as well. That you're going too fast, or too slow, or that maybe you should have taken a left turn at the Citadel of Eternal Light like I told you. Followed up by "What's wrong with you", of course.

This has basically been the extent of my video-game playing career, except when it comes to fighting games - because there you basically just stand face to face with someone, punch, kick, win. When it comes to one-player games, things get more complicated. Mainly because you have to walk from one point to another. I can't do this. I moonwalk, I walk into walls, into pits I fall to my untimely and ultimately tragic death before the quest begins.

And yet, here I am - I've completed an actual quest in Fable II. I've become the kind of person who can use the word "quest", with an almost straight face, except for the fact that I'm so proud of myself that I can't not break out into giggles. My eyes are welling up with pride as I write this. Quest. Not the same as bungee-jumping or winning a hot-dog eating competition, nothing as glamorous as that. It's MORE glamorous than that. In the process my hands get cold from nervousness, I feel joy, sorrow, fear, mad stabbing-and-sword-wielding rage, the smug satisfaction of having conquered an army of beetles.

I AM THE KING OF THE GODDAMN BEETLES.



All this is, of course done in secret. Because Andreas is a horrible back-seat driver. I don't really know what all the buttons are called and I get stressed by having "press the incredibly obscure button" shouted at me. It makes me feel old, it makes me feel dumb. I don't do those two very well, they are very unbecoming.

So I'll just wait till I hear Andreas' key lock the door in the morning, stop pretending to be asleep, jump out of bed and become king of my own private kingdom of monster-beetles again. Best in my quest'in.

Just the way it should be.

Poor, poor teeth.

Being poor is hard work. I’m not poor enough to have to survive on water and mealy bugs, but poor enough to, occasionally get me into trouble. My dentist, for instance, now thinks that I have a mortal fear of him. I don’t. The reason for this is that I canceled an appointment with him oh-so-long-ago because I didn’t have the 3000 I needed to cough up to get a couple of teeth cleaned and fixed.

Now, a year later I find myself with an unpleasantly painful reminder of that I should have probably booked an appointment earlier. I made a new appointment for a check-up with said dentist. As soon as I enter the office, there he is, wringing his hands in disappointment that he has not been sufficiently sensitive to my needs during that check-up a year ago, fearful of that he had maybe scared me off.

Do I reply that I’d blown my dentist-money on a wild night out? No. The man is in obvious need of forgiveness, and so I forgive him, with an added "...Well, maybe we can try this again. Start afresh. Please be gentle". Because I realize that lame excuses will only enrage him, and I do not want to enrage someone who hypothetically might have watched "The Dentist" on repeat and gone a bit insane himself in the process.



You can NOT trust someone who makes his livelihood on drilling someone, unless it’s your friendly neighborhood hooker, and trusting even him is a stretch. I think that’s why so many people feel a vague nagging sense of insecurity after visiting a prostitute. Was it right to run away afterward? Were your fears legitimized or should you maybe not have killed her?

By the end of the visit, I had booked a time with not only the dentist but also with a dental hygienist, a woman that the dentist took the time to bring into his office so that she could "soothe my fears" in preparation for my appointment with her. I found myself adding the slightest quiver to my voice, showing just the right amount of wavering confidence. I’m not sure if I pulled it off or not – fact is no-one likes going to the dentist – but now I have two people who want to take that bit of extra care with me when I go to their office. And that feels nice. The tooth-ache, however, due to the long waiting period between appointments so as to not "overwhelm me" (was the explanation) – is not as kind to me. But this is probably what one should expect being poor. I think I’ll go get some comfort food tonight; a couple of Maine lobsters should hit the spot.