Ages ago Leyli invited me to a game called Shabeh Yalda where you reveal five things about yourself that you haven’t already and invite five other people to do the same. Now I haven’t been around for a while so, sorry about the delay but here it is anyway.

راستی این فارسی هم داره اگر ترجیح میدین.ل

1- I hate it when people say, ‘Guess how old I am!’
In my opinion this is the most pointless exercise known to mankind and nine out of ten times, it ends in tears. Well it does if I’m the person you’re asking!
There was this one time at a friend’s house when I was talking to this guy who I thought was still at school. Then he said something about his military service and it surprised me because I thought he was about sixteen or seventeen. Turned out he was twenty or twenty one, the baby face type.
Anyway there was a woman there who I was meeting for the first time that night and who overheard our conversation. For some reason this woman found this little mistake of mine absolutely hilarious and then no matter what, would not drop the subject. She kept laughing and going on and on about how funny it was that I had thought this boy was about sixteen or seventeen when he was twenty or twenty one.
‘Oh you don’t have a clue how old people are do you?’ she kept saying while giggling. I think she was a bit tipsy but I was getting a bit annoyed with her anyway because I wasn’t!
After about ten minutes of laughing she finally asked the question, ‘So how old do you think I am then?’ and as quick as anything, I blurted out, ‘Forty two’
Turned out she was forty two. And from the look on her face, she was not too happy about it either! Well she asked for it, didn’t she?
She was right about one thing though, I really didn’t have a clue how old people were; I had thought she was about forty eight and basically I had tried to be nice to her by saying forty two instead!

2- For some reason a lot of people seem to think I’m a lot smaller than I really am. My dress size is ten or twelve, very rarely eight (depending on the shop I’m in) but I’m normal size really. However some people I know seem to always be trying to push my dress size to see how low they can go before I actually burst out of the outfit they have given me!
On occasions I have even been given children’s clothes. I’m thirty one. With breasts and everything! I mean they’re not big but they’re there.
So I get given these tiny T-shirts made for ten year olds and as if that’s not enough humiliation for one day, then I am often made to put them on there and then as well to see how it looks.
So I come out taking care not to take deep breaths because I’m afraid the T-shirt might rip if I do. My belly is hanging out and I’m being choked by the neck line and they go, ‘Oh great! It fits!’

When I worked at this restaurant for a short while, on my first day my manager looked me up and down and then handed me a uniform. I went into the changing room and put it on. Then I looked at myself and thought, ‘Odd! Is this T-shirt really meant to flatten my chest like that?’ I thought maybe they had some sort of no-chest policy or something.
I took off the T-shirt and looked at the label. It wasn’t small or extra small or petit or anything like that. Oh no. The label said: Age: 5-6 years. 5-6 years! I’m not joking. The bastard had not even given me a normal staff uniform, he had given me one of the kiddy T-shirts that we sold in the restaurant. Needless to say I looked like a retard.
Talking of retard, I always wondered how I still got tips even though I was a very bad waitress, now I’m thinking it’s possible that people just felt sorry for me.

3- I can’t stand it when people say, ‘I never give a hundred percent in what I do, I give a hundred and fifty percent.’
What on earth? I don’t know which idiot started this whole stupid over hundred percent business but whoever it was, should be ashamed of themselves.
Suddenly giving hundred percent to something is not enough anymore. If you go for a job interview and say, ‘I give a hundred percent in everything I do,’ they will probably think you’re a bit lazy! You have to say I give a hundred and ten percent at least or two hundred percent if you really want to impress them.
In sports, everyone has to give hundred and ten percent now or it’s not good enough. If you watch interviews with football managers they always say, ‘My boys are going to go out there today and give a hundred and ten percent.’ Which basically means, they will do the best they can and then give a little bit more.
So why do your best and then do a little bit more then? Why not do your best and then do a lot more more? Hmm, let’s see what percentage that would be. Hundred and fifty percent? Two hundred percent?
So where does it end then? Nine hundred and ninety nine percent? One million percent? Absolute nonsense.

4- I really envy those people who can come out in the middle of winter wearing just a vest or a T-shirt and not even shiver. I don’t know how they manage it but I wish I could do it too as it seems like a very useful skill.

5- This blog was very nearly called, ‘Communication, no!’ But then I thought it was probably best to go with a title that did not need explaining.
The story behind ‘Communication, no!’ is that there was this guy that my cousin and I once met in a party in France. He was very sweet and kept trying to talk to us. The problem was, he didn’t know much English and we didn’t know French. So he would start to say something (by the way he was completely coked out of his head) in English and then suddenly he would get excited and say the rest very fast in French. And then we, not having understood a thing, would say, ‘Sorry, no French.’ And every time, he would slap himself on the forehead and stamp his foot and totally helplessly shout out, ‘Communication, no!’ Then after a few moments he would try again.
Unfortunately we never found out what was going on in that poor guy’s coked up mind that he was trying to tell us about but I doubt I will ever forget his desperate cries of ‘Communication, no!’

And now I’m passing this onto these guys if any of them are interested in doing it:

Homeyar
Foulla
Amanda
Amir Sharifi
Chakameh Azimpour