Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Parting Ways


You will be shocked kids, when you discover how easy it is in life to part ways with people forever. That's why, when you find someone you want to keep around, you do something about it.

Ted Mosby

I Finished It: AGAIN!



I have been going back ,for a while now, to watching old shows and reading old books. Something in me was too lazy -and maybe too old- to connect with new charcaters and new arguments. So a few weeks before going to Cuba - YES dear blog, I did go to the mother of all destinations: CUBA- I started rewatching How I Met Your Mother.

It was on Youtube and it was easy to click on the next episode, and I needed something familiar that would make me think about "matters of the heart'' given that I have abandonded those for a long while now.

By going back to this very blog I found out that the last time I watched the show was in 2014, therefore my memory of the details was so vague and it helped me enjoy it as if it was almost new.

Half an hour ago I finished it again. I really felt abandonded and lonely when the credits appeared on the screen. That is a great show that won't have any new seasons and that I won't be able to rewatch in at least 3 more years so I will miss it.

But the thing is, as I watched it again it held new meanings to me. When I first watched it to the end I was in a relationship that I thought will never end, with a guy that I thought I would never leave. Now, 3 years later I am on my own with a strong inner feeling of "not wanting any of that" and watching how Ted, after many years, a marriage and two kids went back to his twenties flame, Robin, it made me rethink my "Together Forever'' theory. This post is just a pretext to write that one question that I thought a lot about in the past few years: Can we get two good love stories in a lifetime? Can we get what Fermina Daza from Love in The Time of Cholera got? A good marriage and a flame to go back to at the end of her life?

I know how unromantic that sounds. Is does sound like a plan B or a second dish, but what shall I do? At this point of my life I am always weighing the options of being in a solid medium-level love story or being in a turbulent Extreme-level love story. Can we get both? Can we at least get one? Can we?  

Monday, January 30, 2017

A Year Of Driving



Today I conclude a year of driving and owning a car.
I have learnt a lot in this year, here are some things:

1- People are confused, they don't know where they are going until they are at the crossroad. Distance yourself from them until they freaking decide or you will pump into them and it will be your fault.
2- People get confused when they see me singing and utterly enjoying myself in traffic jams. Confuse them even more and discover good music all the time.
3- Fear is real and there is no way around it. If you are afraid because this is all new to you then be afraid, there is no shame in it, focus on calming yourself down rather than focusing how others perceive you. It gets better. It DID get better and driving DID become a second nature for me.
4- People in our streets are constantly trying to commit suicide behind the wheel. They drive silly cars that would turn into a bundle of metal in a simple accident, yet they still think that they are in their own Formula1 show. Spot them and avoid them ALWAYS.
5- Taxi drivers are ruined beyond repair. The streets brought out the worst in them. They can't be that mean, selfish, reckless and harmful by coincidence. I must find their clandestine annual meeting that they probably hold under the title of "How to make everyone uncomfortable on the road".
6- Park whenever and wherever you are comfortable. If the parking spot seems too tight you don't have to park there. Arrive a minute late, park a hundred meters far but don't pressure yourself into an unsafe spot. If you scratch your car you will have to pay for it yourself so don't do that to yourself.
7- If anyone says that men in Jordan respect women I will invite them to take a ride with me and they will see for themselves that men get extra cocky when they see a woman driving and they become extra assholes. I managed to put them in their place and forced them to respect me when I made them realise that I have no problem in pumping them if they dare to get in my lane.
8- It is a skill like any other. Practice makes perfect.
9- I just miss being able to read in my commutes.
10- Music is one of the reasons why we take rides. Music is life and it had helped me back in my fearful driving era, and now it helps me to endure the traffic jams and poorly designed city.

That's that. Over and out.