Hard to caption August. A wave of similaritude occupied that month. Every day, same routine. Routine is slow and painful torture for a person like myself. I never use the same toothpaste twice. Or eat the same sandwich every day in a row. Or be obsessed with the same chocolate bar for over a week. I’m a creature of un-routine, and Ramadan is a month of routine, even for the unreligious, such as I.

Hello, autumn. You’re a little early.

Can you really archive time?

2007: On March | On April | On May | On June | On July | On August | On September | On October | On November | On December

2008: On January | On February | On March | On April | On May | On June | On August On September | On October | On November

2009: On July  | On August | On September | On October | On November | On December

2010: On January | On February | On March | On April | On May | On June | A Captioned July

Each child has a different mental benchmark for considering him- or herself an adult.

My benchmark was a little absurd; it was the day I was allowed to user super glue.

Growing up, my dad was always a handyman. He could fix everything and anything, and he could turn an any useless object into a bed, into a coat hanger, into a small table. One of his favorite tools was super glue.

He would flip one of the small tea tables on his lap and work his magic with the tube of glue using its underside as a working surface. That way, our house remained relatively free of glue stains (at least as far as the eye could see), and all our household items were in perfect and improved condition. He would also tuck any glued object beneath the leg of the dining table so that the glue holds properly, whether it was a Herfy’s paper crown or our Atari’s joystick.

I was dying to try my luck with that magic liquid, but super glue was my dad’s territory. My brothers and I were too young to be meddling with toxic material and my mother saw more advantages go homemade white glue (which I must admit often works even better than it’s super counterpart when used properly, but I didn’t care for it, as I was allowed to use white glue and UHU sticks from the day I was born).

The moment of reckoning came many years later in my young eyes. I had to wait till I was 8, a fourth grader, to squirt my first pinch of super glue. It was during after-school craft class, and I was probably the youngest person in that room. I used it to very carefully glue a tin can, and I was so proud of myself. The art teacher was also impressed my gluing meticulousness. To this day, I have no idea how a person as sloppy and as messy as myself can be so graceful with scissors and glue.

That day, I had the driver stop by the bookshop on the way back home to buy my first very own tub of super glue. I went home and announced to my parents that I was now an adult; I was allowed to use super glue.

I spent the next several years of my life gluing and discovering more about my favorite kind of epoxy. You can even read an essay I wrote debating the best kind of glue way back when I was 13. I glued everything I could get my hands on, making mental lists for best-use case scenarios.

These days, I mostly use glue for fixing items, just like my dad did. I enjoy fixing things, or tinkering with objects to increase their efficiency.

What was your benchmark of adulthood? :)

Dear diary,

Today was the first cold night of a very hot year. By cold, I do not mean teeth-chattering. I simply mean thick cotton jacket recquired for sitting outside after sunset.

I believe that this was the hottest Ammani summer on my memory. Even the summer of 2006 was not as bad. Is there a direct correlation between the World Cup and heat? Or maybe it’s just that as I enter my eighth year in this city, my body’s tolerance for the desert heat is decreasing.

I do not know. But I like keeping records of the weather.

Yours truly,
Roba

P.s. Hi Moose.

One of my favorite branding videos, ever.

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