crazy.

GURGAON, India — As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed said, he felt an acute pain in the lower left side of his abdomen. Fighting drowsiness, he fumbled beneath the unfamiliar folds of a green medical gown and traced his fingers over a bandage attached with surgical tape. An armed guard by the door told him that his kidney had been removed.

Mr. Mohammed was the last of about 500 Indians whose kidneys were removed by a team of doctors running an illegal transplant operation, supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, police officials said. A few hours after his operation last Thursday, the police raided the clinic and moved him to a government hospital.

Many of the donors were day laborers, like Mr. Mohammed, picked up from the streets with the offer of work, driven to a well-equipped private clinic, and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo operations. Others were bicycle rickshaw drivers and impoverished farmers who were persuaded to sell their organs, which is illegal in India.

Although several kidney rings have been exposed in India in recent years, the police said the scale of this one was unprecedented. Four doctors, five nurses, 20 paramedics, three private hospitals, 10 pathology clinics and five diagnostic centers were involved, Mohinder Lal, the police officer in charge of the investigation, said.

Read the rest of the story here.

trash.

My excuse for not posting regularly this time is that I'm currently on a mission to exhaust myself to such an extent that when I go back to Vancouver in less than two weeks, I can fully take advantage of what I do best in the no-fun city: sleep.

So far I think I'm on the right path towards complete physical exhaustion. Last weekend instead of getting through a to-do list of chores that must get done before my departure, I decided to spend most of it in a haze of partying and sleep-deprivation that I did not get out of until Monday morning around 6:30am, thanks to a healthy cocktail of champagne, wine and Jack and coke. Sure, it wasn't the best way to start the work week, but I stopped pretending to give a shit about my job a long time ago. Furthermore, what good is living in Paris if you don't plan on experiencing all this wonderful city has to offer, including underground afterhours tranny clubs.

But I'm all about balance and I did manage to squeeze in a few enriching activities this weekend. I checked out Sweeney Todd on Friday afternoon. I was incredibly excited to see this movie. In Grade 2, our teacher got us to perform it in front of the school and our parents. Tim Burton's adaptation was fantastically dark and gory. Also, is there anything Johnny Depp cannot do? What's next, a major exhibit of his artwork at the MOMA?

And then I actually dragged myself out of bed twice this weekend to play some Ultimate with the national women's team. Granted, on Saturday I showed up almost 2 hours late, to the amusement of the coach who could probably tell just by looking at me what I had been doing the night before. Nothing like 3 hours of intense running to sweat out the night's excesses, right?

Guadeloupe

the comeback

I didn't even realize it had been a month since I last wrote an entry on this blog. Oopsie. Things got a little hectic once Christmas vacation rolled around and haven't slowed down until very recently, now that all the visitors and guests have gone back to their respective countries and I'm back to a more normal schedule.

The Maftei family went south for the holidays. We spent ten blissful days in Guadeloupe. The toughest decisions I had to make all week were what bathing suit to wear and whether or not my base tan was good enough to stop applying SPF 30. I did all the obligatory tourist things; eat fresh coconut, drink insanely strong rhum-based cocktails, roast in the sun all day and scuba dive. Although the highlight of the week was without a doubt the cheesy day-trip we took out to an island that was recently converted into a national park. I thought this was going to be one of those lame Mexico-all-inclusive style boat cruises where you're told you're going to swim with the sharks but instead you stand in line for half an hour only to find out that by "swim" they mean "hold" a disgruntled-looking mini-shark.

Instead, we were given scuba gear and were left to our own devices on a beautiful wild beach until lunchtime. Then the booze started flowing. Before I knew it, I had downed 2 Planteur (rhum and fruit juice cocktail) and 3 ti'punch (rhum, cane sugar, lime slice) and was trying to hide my glass from the captain, who kept filling it up. I narrowly escaped being temporarily married to one of the crew members, to the dismay of my brother who was thoroughly enjoying the fact that I was the target of most of the captains' jokes. And once I had sufficiently sobered up, I headed back into the water and swam with baracudas and sting-rays until we had to pack up and leave.

Obviously upon returning to the cold temperatures of Paris I got sick, and the excessive partying and lack of sleep since being back have certainly not helped. I long for those lazy days spent lounging around in tie-dyed hippie pants, sipping cocktails and reading trashy magazines, instead of sitting in this cold, dark office without natural light, struggling through the US Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Manual...