Disengaged, Mr Crusher

Ramadan, the month of fasting and prayer.

The time when eating, drinking, smoking and sexing are all forbidden during daylight hours. Thirty days of sleeping all day and waking up at sunset, then getting together with your extended family and eating far too much...which you then have to sleep off.

A mashup of lent and christmas, a time when my school timetable gets shifted forward six hours and I find I'm teaching night classes, and a time when no one wants to be in night classes because it's the one month of the year when Saudi has a nightlife of sorts.

I was planning to spend the downtime writing my great detective novel and catching up with philosophy lectures on youtube.

Instead, I got food poisoning. And spent the hours between bouts of diarrhea on a two-week Star Trek TNG marathon.

Eating just made me ill, so unlike all the sneaky muslims who cadge crafty snacks behind each other's backs...this atheist has spent the month of fasting...fasting.