The Routine

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I work and live in different cities, and I have to travel early in the morning to work, and travel back at dusk back where I live. Considering that I usually have very little time to do anything besides maintaining this routine with the necessary logistic support, I don’t waste any time to get home. First, I take off my clothes, call the dry cleaner to come pick up today’s shirt (I only have four formal shirt rotating on five working days), I take my shoes off, feed the cats, make a quick sandwich and water the plants. Once I’ve watered the plants, I go to the bathroom mirror and check if my beard is long enough to be annoying in the morning, if it is, I shave, if it isn’t, I don’t. After that, I sit down in my boxers and pour the first glass of cheap whiskey, smoke a cigarette, and sit in front of the computer. I check the news, Facebook and other random stuff, while pouring the second and third glasses, accompanied by the second and third cigarettes. After that, I call a near-by ghetto restaurant to order the same meal I eat every night: Spinach, rice and chicken.

By the time the food arrives, I had already finished my eighth drink (and eighth cigarette), so I play some film or episode on the computer (I don’t have a TV), and then I eat, brush my teeth, polish my shoes for the morning, set the alarm, set a sleeping-aid playlist of ambient music, smoke my last cigarette and go to bed.

When I wake up at 6.20 am (after snoozing twice), the cats are already hungry. I feed them, put on the next shirt, look at my puffed face in the mirror, and I go to the nearby bus station to take a microbus to the other city where I work. As soon as I get there, I call the dry cleaner and ask the guy to make sure that the shirt will be ready by the time I arrive in the city where I live.

This is all.

Thanks.

2

You’re welcome.

3

You also sound very organized and very on top of things at all times. For someone more scatterbrained, like me, your daily routine would be impossible to keep up.

I have three questions for you:

  1. What do you do if the bus runs late, and you get home after the dry cleaner’s has closed? What if there’s a problem at the cleaner’s, and you don’t get your shirt back on time?

  2. Eight drinks a night? Your liver must be far stronger than most people’s, my friend.

  3. Why not move to the city where you work? You’d get hours more per day to spend on stuff other than transit.

4

Scribble:

  1. If the bus runs late, or if there’s traffic, I call my manager before I get there and tell her what’s going on. If the dry cleaner doesn’t return the shirt on time and I don’t have a shirt to wear in the next morning, I go for one of my casual shirts and wear a blazer on top. If a casual shirt isn’t ready, then I handwash any available shirt and use a combination of alchemy and hope to get it dry before trying to get it ironed somehow.

  2. I’m more afraid of Gout than liver problems, to tell you the truth. My knees are in constant pain these days.

  3. I can’t afford to move right now.

5

I’m amazed (but so grateful!) that you found time for us.

6

It would be very helpful to your readers to have the context of knowing where you live.

Norway? Taiwan? San Francisco?

Also, how old are you? If you’re really young, 8 drinks a night might be considered a passing phase. But if your 35+ and 8 drinks a night is a routine, that’s a different thing altogether. So, which is it?

7

I’m 31 and I’m currently residing in the United Arab Emirates.

8

Good on ya, there a millions of us outthere but

your routine may be killing your plants

drink the water you would give your plants

buy better bourbon & cut your daily intake in half

Pick up a cheap temporary online subscription to a great publication (i read too much daily mail / daily news trash and trying get off the smack)

nicotine is a bitch to quit, get moving too

have another great day!

9

Is this a seven day a week routine? Or do you have days off during the week when you can do something different?

10

Yeah – I’m curious about days off as well.

11

A dry cleaner in the UAE is happy to send out someone to pick up an order of a single shirt each day? Here in the US, if I drop off my dress shirts for cleaning, I might pay one or two dollars for laundering them. Plus turn-around time was several days, so I had about two weeks worth of shirts and laundered maybe five at a time.

And yes, eight glasses of bourbon a day is not good.

12

You routinely have four shirts and fourty glasses of whiskey for every five days. That seems a little… unprioritized.

13

There’s a million stories in the naked city. This is just one.

I’m wondering when the dame with the shapely legs and a body built for trouble walks into the joint and asks for help because she’s being accused by the cops of murder. But she didn’t do it, see? She’s innocent, see? It’s a frame up by the the jealous wife and no-one will believe her.

Is the OP going to take the job knowing she’s nothing but trouble, but hell, he can use the money to buy better whiskey and an extra shirt.

14

Chela: Thanks for the advice; I do read a lot of the Internet, and I’m unreasonably addicted to the DailyMail too, but I also read on Foreign Policy, the London Review of Books, Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, Haaretz, BBC and many online newspapers and blogs in Arabic. There is no problem when it comes to me entertaining myself; I do know how to do that very well whenever I have the time.

Little Nemo and Kopek: On the weekend (over here it’s on Fridays and Saturdays), I arrive in the city where I live at around 8 or 9 pm, I uphold my daily routine, but I don’t eat. I wait until around 11.30 pm and I hang out with a friend of mine at a nearby Irish pub with live music. I drink before I go so that I would only have to drink one or two beers there. The night at that place consists of walking in, surveying the place and evaluating the crowd, getting the beer, standing right in front of the stage and watching the band play the same playlist they have been playing (and we’ve been watching them play) for the last few years. At some point me and my friend (and everyone around really) get drunk enough to go our separate ways. He starts looking around for any afterparty-goers, and I start planning my exit. A few minutes later I leave the place, stop a taxicab and tell the driver where I’m going but not without trying to make conversation, and I ask them where they’re from, and they say the name of the country, and I ask if they’re from this or that major city that I know the names to (I’m good at geography) and it turns out that they are, so I smile and they smile and we arrive at my destination so I shake their hand and go upstairs to pass out in peace.

The next morning I wake up, wash my face, brush my teeth, read the news and try to make some sense of problems I’ve been postponing the whole week, and I decide to postpone them again till the beginning of next week. I read some prose, or I watch a stupid film on my computer or do some long-due translation on freelance basis, until the sun sets and I water the plants, feed the cats in preparation for what is about to become.

Dewey Finn: The dry cleaner is only two blocks away. I’ve been their customer for a while, and this is why they send out a guy to receive or deliver one shirt, which they don’t do with all customers.

Lieu: The whiskey here is really cheap and good shirts are really expensive. I don’t go with any shirts; there are criterion. First, they must be 100% cotton, because the weather here is really hot and humid for most of the year and a synthetic shirt with polyester is liable to ruin your day. Plus, it must be well-tailored for many reasons that have to do with the fit and the fact that the movement involved in all the traveling I do in a micro-bus (seated) and the metro when I arrive at my destination (standing) is enough to ruin any cheap shirt if worn three weeks in a row, and I don’t want to be shopping for new shirts every three weeks.

Quicksilver: A successful songwriter decides to pursue the girl of his dreams.

15

Stems like that oughta have a flower blooming at the top. But I guess the petals fell off of this one, because all I saw on that blonde pistil of a head was the red lipstick on her stigma. Red, like a rose. Blood red. Gotta admit, I liked her style. She was all female.

“You got pluck, lady. I’ll give you that.”

16

You seem way too in love with your own story.

17

Maybe if you cut down on the drinking and smoking you could afford another shirt.

18

QuickSilver: Of course not. This is why I’m posting it on this specific part of the forum. It is mundane, pointless and very common, and there is nothing beautiful about it.

19

Speaking as an outsider, I’d say that you have a drinking problem. Your drinking appears to be defining your life and you seem unhappy with your life.

20

Who said it had to be beautiful?