Even after looking for jobs almost four months in Birmingham, I haven’t been able to land one. Adele’s lyrics came to mind unruly while I walked around City Center (centre here), even if I understood that the Birmingham in her lyrics was about the Birmingham in Alabama, not the one in West Midlands, as I was looking for “Help Wanted” signs on store windows, but finding none.

I never would have hitchhiked to Birmingham
If it hadn’t been for love
I never would have caught the train to Louisiana
If it hadn’t been for love
Never would have run through the blinding rain
Without one dollar to my name
If it hadn’t been, if it hadn’t been for love

I have three volunteer jobs to choose from, but none that would pay me at the end of the month. Yes, end of the month because, unlike in America, they mostly pay here monthly, not weekly or fortnightly.

After applying for jobs to at least five different companies or positions online almost every day for almost four months, I have been called for interview only four times so far; two times by some con artists trying to make me sell something for almost 10 hours a day for a meager £ 60.00 per week. It was lucky I googled them while preparing for the interview.

To be honest, my joviality is waning.

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I apologize if what I am going to write below sounds too direct and obscene for some but I am just telling the truth. Not verbatim, but close.

My Polish friends invited me for dinner one beautiful day. We talked about Poland, Nepal, England, and about America; drinking many varieties of Polish tea. We talked about life, death, flowers, books, food and jobs. We talked about religion, health, corruption, music, films and museums.

Finally, Anna announced it was time for dinner. She had made some kind of soup. Soup, bread, salad, chicken, cakes and again tea; I ate and drank so much, I wished I hadn’t because I could hardly move.

The soup was delicious. I asked Anna what it was called. She said it was called gulasz.
I said, “Huh?”
She said gulasz.
I gave her my usual dumb look, frowning in spite of myself.
She asked, “What? What did I say?”
I said, ‘nothing.’ But the paradox lingered in the air.

Anna’s husband Mirek doesn’t speak English at all. He asked me, with Anna’s help, whether I liked the kurczak, which is chicken in Polish.
I said, “Huh, kur what?”
She said, “kurczak!

I said I did, very much, and laughed. Anna asked why I was laughing and I said, “nothing” and the paradox still lingered.

To put an end to it, I said, “Today I learned two Polish words for food and both of them have something to do with body parts in the Nepali language. She asked what they were.

I said, “gula (apologies, only humor intended) means testes and “czak” in “kurczak” is butt in Nepali.”
Anna almost threw up her “gulasz” and “kurczak” laughing. “Mirek” laughed a little later.

During our conversation later, I asked Anna how to say: “I am Nepali”, in Polish.
She said, “ Jestem Nepalczykiem.”
I almost threw up my gulasz, kurczak and the herbaty (tea) this time.

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I had sent my driver’s license from America to be exchanged at the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) the counterpart of the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicle) in the USA. They sent it back because they did not “recognize” it. I thought it was probably because here the driver sits in the passenger seat and the passenger sits in the driver’s seat because the steering wheel is built like that in cars here, and I was used to driving the other way round. That’s understandable, but they told me that I could use the American driver’s license for 12 months. That’s cool too. But I needed a driver’s license from here to open a bank account, because you can drive with an American driver’s license here but an American driver’s license won’t help you open a bank account. Therefore, I gave up my 12 months driving privilege using the old driver license and applied for a provisional driver license. Another reason for doing that was that I needed a driver license to get to job interviews. Since I had job interviews coming up, I filled out the provisional driver license form, pasted my ugly photo on it, bought a £ 50.00 money order as required and send it to the DVLA.

I waited. I waited another week. I waited yet another week. I would have waited longer if waiting were not getting on my nerves, and the dates for my interviews were not approaching like death.

I called the DVLA. A gentleman answered. I told him the situation and my predicament. He told me that he could not find my application. I seethed. He told me he “will ‘investigate’ it and will call me tomorrow.” Tomorrow never came. I called again in a couple days. A lady received my call this time. She told me that they have a confirmation of the receipt of my application in their system but the actual application is nowhere to be found, along with my £ 50.00 money order, along with my ugly passport sized photo that I made in Shambhu Moktan’s studio in Jackson Heights, New York. She told me to wait a week. I seethed harder. I lost a bit of enamel on my canine. I called again the next week. Another lady told me that they sent my application back because I hadn’t sent my original documents. I told her it was because I got a letter from the DVLA telling me that I did not have to send original documents because while processing my USA driver’s license the DVLA already has all my personal information in their system. I also told her that, for the very precise reason that I wanted to avoid confusion, I had actually mailed THAT letter with my application the second time. She said, “Oh, I am so sorry.” I told her that was all right but I asked for the names of staff handling my file. She said she would not be able to give me that. Then I asked her to give me her manager’s name, which she happily gave me. When the returned application form arrived at my address, I wrote a letter to the manager that I had interviews coming up and I needed my driver’s license for that, and if I don’t get the driver’s license before the interview, I am going to feel that “my right to work has been willfully deprived by the DVLA.” The driver’s license came in the mail after two days.

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Speaking of driver’s licenses and driving, it is indeed weird looking at people driving on the wrong side of the road and from the wrong side inside the car. When someone comes out of the car, I always expect them to come out from the left door but no, the inevitable happens from the right door, as if they were playing hide and seek with me. And to see a kid of six or seven whirl past you driving a car at such speed gives you a real fright, until you realize that—oh , it is not the driver’s seat he/she is sitting on, and there is no steering wheel on that side.

Parking cars seems so much fun out here. It seems as if you can park your car anywhere, any time, at any direction. I am amazed by the lines of parked cars along both sides of the road; each parked in a way that two side wheels are on the road and the other two are on the pavement. It gives one an impression of countless dogs peeing, standing in single file, only sometimes the dogs are facing each other because, as I said, you can park your car at any direction, even facing each other!

Once I was standing at a bus stop, when a car came rushing from the left lane of the road, which was exactly opposite from the way he was driving, and parked right in front of me. Right at the bus stop! The driver rushed out of the car, slammed the door and went to the coffee shop just behind where I was standing. I thought he was in a hurry and was trying to grab some coffee and stuff really quick. I started feeling uneasy when the driver didn’t come out from the coffee shop even after almost ten minutes. I was thinking when the bus arrives the bus driver will make a din by honking to rush this car driver. But to my great surprise, the bus came, it stopped further down the bus stop, as if the driver was, for some reason obliged not to disturb the car; I, along with the other passengers, walked that little distance to the bus, got into the bus, and the bus drove away. I was perplexed and thought it was better to remain petrified and shun asking questions, as I was strongly warned against ‘meddling’ with bus drivers here. And I had good reason not to do so as well, because of a little ‘encounter’ I had once.

I was talking with a friend on my mobile while getting on the bus, which was full, and I happened to stand next to the door to the driver’s compartment (buses here have driver compartments, with a door with glass window). The driver said something which I didn’t hear because I was talking with my friend and I had my back towards him. All of a sudden, he opened the door to the compartment, and slammed it on my back. He gave me such a look, I never needed any more advice on how to behave on Birmingham buses.

My friend’s boss almost got her eyes pierced by the broken glass from the bus window, when the bus driver didn’t stop at the bus stop where a passenger was requesting him to stop. That passenger angrily smashed the window. My friend told me that it was the bus driver’s mistake because the passenger had requested him to stop again and again to no avail.

In another incident, a teenager was barred from entering the bus for some reason, I didn’t comprehend. He kicked at the door and showed (with gestures) the driver his thingy between his legs.

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I haven’t yet seen dusk here; in fact, I haven’t been able to tell for certain, that it actually occurs, God only knows when. When I wake up at four in the morning it is already dawn and until ten at night you can still see light outside. I have been given to believe that dusk is the time when the sun goes down (or the sun does not move at all but the earth rotates on its axis around the sun obediently, a principle for which Galileo lost his life), which generally is between 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. in summer. But since I have been living in Birmingham, I haven’t actually been able to perceive dusk as such. I am busy talking with friends and family, occasionally peeping at the light in the window, and lo, it is 10:30 p.m. already, and it is dark outside. I knew for sure, just a minute ago that I had seen light at the window, and now it is dark already.

But strangely, closing time for shops is at 6:00 p.m. in City Centre, the main hub for the city. Everything is closed when there is such a beautiful day still unwilling to leave. How I wish they would close at 10:00 p.m. so I would have all the time to walk around dazzling stores, even if just window shopping. I would immensely enjoy it. I asked people I know about the rationale behind closing stores so early but I could not come across any satisfactory and logical answer. If you close your business in the middle of the day (so it seems) what is the use of the daylight time saving system?

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Marta told me that I must have gotten Helicobacter pylori, an ulcer causing bacteria, when I started emptying my bowels with such blitz and uproar that I started feeling paranoid when neighbours greeted me with innocent smiles early mornings. I still have suspicions that they must be talking about me within the walls of their rooms, comparing me to be as good a predictor as Nostradamus, owing to the fact that my ‘blitz and uproar’, which seemed to predict the London riots, started a couple of weeks before the riots which started in Birmingham like a wild fire one fine evening.

To make sure I was not harboring the infamous H. pylori, I went to my GP. She told me to bring my stool for a culture and gave me a plastic bottle. I brought it back to the Surgery the next day, fully wrapped and with ‘all pertinent personal information’ written on the form that came along with the bottle.

The lady receptionist, the one with short hair like a boy’s and a nose like the beak of a heron, with a matching pair of bird claw wrinkles on either side of her vulpine eyes said, “May I help?”

I gave her the bottle.

She asked, “Water sample?”

I said, “NOOO, stool sample.” The involuntary emphasis over ‘no’ was because I already had an unpleasant experience with her in the past when she made me to go to the Surgery three times to get one prescription. Also, I was preoccupied thinking, “Why in the name of Lord Almighty, would I bring a water sample to a clinic?”

She took my poo poo between the end of her thumb and index finger as if she were holding a dead mouse, which is understandable, owing to the fact that handling other people’s poo poo is not a pleasant experience, and took it to the other room. She came back to the room. I asked, “That’s it?” She said, “That’s it.” And I left.

I was hoping that the doctor would, as usual, send me a letter or that the receptionist would call me to make an appointment when the report of the culture would arrived at the Surgery. But a week passed, and nothing happened. Another week went by, but I neither received any letter nor any call. Meanwhile, my stomach was revolting as fiercely as those ‘yobs’ (thus dubbed by local newspapers and other media) down Birmingham streets vandalizing and robbing, fine stores and pubs, as if to take revenge for their cannabis shortage.

Desperate, after waiting for almost three weeks, I went to the Surgery to enquire about the whereabouts of my stool. The receptionist, a different lady this time, checked in her computer and told me that it hadn’t been sent back from the hospital where it had been taken for a culture. She also told me to call her back in a couple of days. I called her back a couple of days later and she told me that they don’t have my poo poo.

I said, “But!!”
She said, “Yeah!!”
I asked, “Where is my stool then?”
She said, “I don’t know.”
I said, “But!!”
She said, “Look, we are not the only ones who are handling specimens. We send it to the hospital after we collect it here. The people at the hospital might have lost your stool.”
I said, “But I gave it to you.”
She said, “Me?”
I said, “Well, not exactly you, but I gave it to that lady with boy’s haircut and wrinkles, who asked me whether I was handing her a water sample when I gave her my stool sample. Why in earth I would bring a water sample to a Surgery?”
She said, “We have three ladies with boy’s haircuts and wrinkles. And urine samples are sometimes called water samples.”
I said, “But, I gave it to someone from your Surgery, so they are responsible.”
She said, “All I can say is I am sorry.”
I said, “Ok, but you lost my poo poo.”
She said, “Come here and I will make another appointment for you with the doctor.”
I said, “Ok, but who is going to ‘compensate’ me for the tummy pain I have been going through all this time?”
She said, “I am sorry.”

I hung up. I had good mind to tell her few more things but my belly gave a piercing “rebel yell” just then. I rushed to the toilet, and “unleashed” myself confidently, as it was high noon when all this happened; time for the neighbours to go to their work and their own business.

The petty anomalies of life, when they add up and come in a series, seem to justify the saying, “calamities come in a chain”. When this happens one tends to lose his cool. But looking back at these events, after the primitive instinct of fight or flight—which is dubbed ‘stress’ in modern society—subsides, everything seems so absurd. What if someone misplaces your poo poo? What if someone misplaces your driver license form? What if there are weird coincidences among words in two different languages? What if they park their cars haphazardly here? Or what if the sun goes down at 10:00 p.m. and stores closes at 6:00 p.m. here? Life goes on!

I remember David Lindley crooning, “The world keeps on turning, turning/All I can do is smile.”