The Cairo Complex

There aren’t a whole lot of sappy romcoms or stories written with a flare for the sentimental that can get the better of me. In all truth, there aren’t any at all. I’m a fairly cold hearted person, and that’s what makes my love affair with the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti surprising (how can such a man love?!?!) and apropos (figures he’d be in love with a machine).

Indeed, my love for one of Pininfarina’s most recent triumphs extends beyond its beautifully classic exterior; though, its clean curves and scalloped doors are something to behold. My love extends deeper than the all aluminum, hand-crafted chassis. Even when marveling at the amazing 6 speed, V12 engine it is clear that my love for the Scaglietti is not merely the the resulting sum of its astonishing parts…

No, my love is deeper. It reaches back into the automobile’s heritage. Well before the time that the Scaglietti was a twinkle in its engineers’ eyes. Well beyond the time, in fact, that those engineers were a twinkle in their parents’ eyes.

My love reaches back to 1954 when a real life love story played itself out when Roberto Rossellini commissioned Ferrari to build his wife, Ingrid Bergman, a car as beautiful as she was. The artisan coachbuilders in Modena birthed the 375 MM (what would later be the inspiration for much of the Scaglietti’s design) and “Grigio Ingrid,” a special hue of grey meant to compliment Ms. Bergman’s eyes. The color is still listed today as one of Ferrari’s signature finish options.

She hated the car… But that hardly matters. In this sweet fairy tale, the princess is almost unnecessary. Roberto’s admiration birthed art with a ferocious ignition note, and today the Scaglietti stands as a glittering example of love’s beauty and power… And it makes me sigh every time I see one.

• Star Trek
• Wolverine
• Terminator
• Transformers
• GI Joe
• District 9
• Anything else that will rot my brain.

Being rather neurotic and a tad obsessive/compulsive, I’ve managed in my lifetime to amass quite a few quirks. Some of these quirks are rather obvious and I’m helpless to hide them from people, like my penchant for only getting one haircut a year when it starts to warm up. Others are pretty discrete and most people would never notice them, like my conscious decision in 2007 to being always type “ok” instead of “okay” because I hated the way the Y looked in most common instant messenger fonts. The latter was a decision arrived at despite several days of inner turmoil regarding the fact that Microsoft Office red squiggles the two-letter spelling.

Whether subtle or radical, however, one thing remains the same: the sheer ridiculousness of the rituals I find myself committing to for absolutely no rational reason whatsoever. In the spirit of humbling myself through public self-deprecation, I’ve decided to list a small sample of my idiosyncrasies.

1. I make it a point to use the word “idiosyncrasy” at least once a week. I haven’t missed a week in about a year and a half. I sometimes plan for this days ahead of time in anticipation of specific conversations which I know I can sway in the direction of a satisfying usage.
2. If I’m in bed and I wake up with a digital clock in view, I will challenge myself to arithmetically manipulate the digits into a result of 8 (my favorite number… because it’s infinity turned sideways) before I get up.
3. I once was told that I used the acronym “LOL” too much and so I resolved to only ever use the word “hehe” during typed expressions of humorous appreciation. This lasted for several years until someone told me I typed “hehe” too much, at which point I decided to alternate usages of “LOL” and “hehe” across conversations. I’ve kept this up for about a year now.
4. It took me over a year and a half to find a pair of sweatpants that fit my exacting criteria in all of five separate categories which I had identified and documented in an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was archived in a special folder of similar decision making aides until I successfully made a purchase.
5. I’ve been known to lose my friends at malls when I absent-mindedly stay behind to organize messy store shelves.

It dawned on me rather quickly as I was leaving the gym following an hour-long, non-stop, circuit workout. The way steam billowed out from inside my jacket when I stepped out into the cold only helped to make visible what my nose already knew. I stunk. 

It was a ripe stink of the variety only a boy who rushed out to work without a shower could attain. A crusty mix of recirculated office air, gym sweat, depleted deodorant flakes, and a night and two day’s worth of porous secretions. Add in the contact stink I got from my cubemate’s leftover Indian lunch, and the fact that I may have overcompensated with the cologne during my frantic prep for the office, and you’ve got a pretty foul smelling mess.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders recognizes a unique phobic condition related to the prospect of offending others with personal odor.  The condition is prominent amongst pubescent females in East Asia, and first generation Egyptian Americans named Karim. Usually an odiferous situation such as mine would warrant a b-line to the bathroom followed by some vigorous scrubbing… But then I remembered how I almost slipped in the shower a few days earlier while violently shaking the last few drops of body wash into a luffa.

Luckily a grocery store is located next door to my gym, and if I could manage to avoid the twitching nostrils of the late evening shift staff for long enough, I could snag a new bottle of soap and be well on my way to my own personal foam party. Then I wandered into the personal care isle and noticed that amongst the Library of Congress sized shelves, my preferred brand was not present. I swallowed hard.

Now, as any one of my friends who suffered through my year-long journey to find the perfect pair of sweatpants knows, I can be rather indecisive. Rather, I can be excessively and chronically over-analytical about things that don’t really matter. I lost many loyal comrades during my pensive pacing through the isles of the local Sports Authority, pouring over the artificial fiber content of various garments. Similarly, my sudsy conundrum was setting up to be quite a difficult situation.

Though easily unsettled, I’m seldom easily deterred from accomplishing my objectives. I immediately started snapping open bottle tops and taking sniffs. It’s important that my soap be unscented on account of my strange phobic condition. As Ling Chen from my support group once pointed out, I seem to be equally distressed when I have an obvious scent whether it’s good or bad. I just don’t like to be smelled.

My phobic quirk quickly helped me eliminate most of my options. Specifically, I was able to instantly dismiss anything with an AXE label on it. AXE, if you don’t know, is a brand of soap marketed to young men with a desire to smell like a jackass. Indeed, if I wanted to smell like sex lubricants and vanilla, or cucumbers and pot then my choice would’ve been easy.

After nearly an hour of reading labels, and contemplating the difference between gentle and deep exfoliation (I imagine it’s like the difference between first and third degree burns), I finally decided on a new soap. I’m a little anxious about it, but I think it will be all right. At least I’ll be clean again, but if you should catch a whiff of me one day and then notice me mumbling nervously in Korean don’t be afraid, it’s just Ling rubbing off on me.

I have always felt a deep connection to my desk spaces, whether they’re at home or at work. A lot of stuff goes on (and goes on at) that surface that we go to whenever we have an idea or a thought that needs to be wrangled into the real world from out of our mental ethers.

Needless to say, I always thought this was just one of my crazy notions and that verbalizing the importance of a desk would only get me strange looks and chuckles…

But I am not alone :)