we'll be the worst of best friends

I am so excited--Gavin Rossdale, the lead singer of Bush, is part of a new band called Institute. I downloaded the first single, 'Bulletproof Skin', off iTunes today, and I absolutely love it. As with most great Bush songs, the words make absolutely no sense even though they sound profound, and Gavin Rossdale does a fantastic job of sounding angry and angst-ridden even though he is married to a gorgeous woman and appears to have a pretty decent life. I love him, I love his style, and I love the song, so I can't wait until the album comes out. However, it may not be such a great thing--the last album that he released ('Golden State') was supposed to come out a week after 9/11/01, and the original cover art featured a plane falling from the sky, while one of the singles said 'at my best when I'm terrorist inside'. That required some quick reworking; this cd is once again coming out just after my birthday, so hopefully the world won't throw me another reason why my birthday can never be celebrated with anything more than sombre remembrance. The title to this post is from the new single, and sums up my feelings right now in a multitude of ways. One of those ways is that I haven't talked to Katie for quite awhile, and I tried calling her last night but couldn't reach her because the Louisiana cellphone system wasn't accepting calls. Her father told my parents that she made it to Texas, but I am anxious to hear more details about her exodus from New Orleans, whether or when she will go back to school, etc.

Anyway, today was pretty fun. I'm suddenly extremely busy again, so the rest of this week will be miserable. However, we had a funny meeting at the end of the day that brightened my mood considerably. Several weeks ago, Salim ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut, bit into the first slice, and loosened a filling when he chomped down on a piece of safety glass that was embedded in the crust. This story spread and Ismail found out--and he flipped out and called one of the Indian directors of Pizza Hut, for whom he used to be a driver. So the dude apparently flew down from Mumbai or something to check out the franchise and meet with us. Salim came into the office (since it's his fiancee who works here, not him), and several of us met with the Pizza Hut guys around 6:30pm. Salim described what happened, and the guy said that it was impossible because they don't use glass in the production of their pizzas. Salim said that he would never order Pizza Hut again, and the guy kept asking what he could do to change his mind. I don't think he realized that he should have been placating the rest of us; Salim is just a visitor and maybe orders a pizza a week, whereas the rest of us are in the office all the time and order loads of pizza all the time. He ultimately told Salim that he was 'very sad' that Salim would never eat pizza again, or even see pizza being made, without thinking of this experience. The meeting ended with absolutely no resolution, although I felt very young and unprofessional because I had to bite my lip during the entire meeting to keep from laughing out loud. I love India!

Then, we had a surprise going-away party for Shadie; it was quite fun, although I was subjected to quite a bit of teasing about my height (as normal) and the fact that I couldn't figure out how the remote worked in Sri Lanka (not as normal, since I usually figure out technology with ease). Shadie's cake was great, it said 'We missed you, Shadie', as though it was a homecoming rather than a going-away party. It was nice to hang out relatively early after work, and now I think I'll go to bed so that I can make it through tomorrow. Yay for extreme amounts of work. I was almost beginning to feel like I had a life again, but happily for me I've been yanked back into the corporate fold. Goodnight, everyone!