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renatoobeidsworld   Thursday, October 25, 2007   Juz kickin' back in da crib wid ma homie E. Diddy. Eli is insisting that there’s an actual technical term for a guy who works at a shoe shop. I disagree and am trying to get him to bet on it like I do with his other wild suggestions. I maintain that there’s a term for someone who makes or fixes shoes – a cobbler – but that there isn’t a specific term for someone who works in a shoe shop. Maybe there is in Kazakhstan. I even searched it on Google Kazakhstan to humour Eli but without any luck. I thought that there may have been a medieval or Victorian Era English term (like haberdasher or costermonger) for such a thing (they had a title for every conceivable job back then) so we went to ye olde websites and checked ye olde terms but alas to no avail. So we’ve made a bet for five thousand lira but I’ll end up forgiving this like I’ve forgiven most of Eli’s other gambling debts. Eli learnt the hard way that, amongst other things, room temperature is so not twenty eight degrees as he insisted it was (maybe in Jamaica it is). UPDATE 8.00pm Monday 21st April 2008 I asked Eli (in an instant message exchange) if he’d been asking people at shoe shops what they’re called and he replied that he hadn’t been to a shoe shop since he was in Lebanon last summer. And to think that he regards himself as an expert on shoe shop employees! Five thousand lira is the minimum bet I will make. Don’t waste my time with anything beneath five thousand lira. Sometimes I make ten thousand lira a day (which is Eli’s cut-off point) off Eli. I could make a living out of betting with Eli but, as I said, I more often than not forgive Eli his debts so he can keep on betting like a fisherman who catches fish and then throws them back in again. I forgive Eli his debts but I don’t forget them – I find that I get more mileage out of always reminding him of his debts than I would have had he have actually payed them. Eli also found out the hard way that there are no such words as ‘’subconcial’’ and ‘’insulitive’’ and would have found out the hard way that the late Diana Princess of Wales was not actually Welsh (despite the title) had his father not have explained it to him before he could bet on it. It hasn’t been all loses for Eli. He won one bet with me regarding how many American soldiers died in the Vietnam War. He bet correctly that it was fifty eight thousand. I bet that it was seventy thousand. I don’t know where I got that figure from – maybe I was ‘’subconcially’’ factoring in all the allied losses. The secret to my gambling success is that I’m not smarter than Eli nor anyone else but that I’m very canny – I only bet when I’m absolutely certain of something (i.e. very rarely). Not much different than Eli actually – Eli only bets when he’s absolutely certain of something but, like most twenty year olds, he’s absolutely certain of everything. My cousin Omar used to be another good source of gambling income for me until he grew out of shooting off his mouth when he wasn’t sure. And that’s exactly the reason why I do it – to teach them the value of their own credibility. Whenever they’re bullshitting, I’ll demand that that put their money where there mouths are. Omar has learnt this lesson, Eli hasn’t yet. Omar has also learnt, amongst other things, that a tomato is a fruit not a vegetable. I got him on the oldest trick question in the book! Are there still people in the twenty first century who don’t know that a tomato is actually a fruit? When I told Omar’s father about my gambling exploits he quoted an Egyptian proverb that ''the madman chases the idiots''. He wasn’t being ‘’insultive’’ and neither am I, it’s all jokes. Sometimes I go into chat rooms for a bit of a laugh. I was talking to a woman from China today and when I asked her what she did in life she replied ‘’I sell batteries’’. That’s got to be the most random job I’ve ever heard of – straight out of Borat. UPDATE 6.00pm Thursday 24th July 2008 How’s this for another random job? “…Mohamed Ibrahim a university student who works part-time selling watermelons in the southern part of the city (Aman)’’ (some online newspaper). The watermelon selling industry must be so hard to break into that there are only part-time positions available. 9:45 pm

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