Three Staropramens to the Wind
Oof. Am drunk. Had three Staropramens with my good friend Hannes and am already at the point where I’m starting sentences and forgetting what I had started them with.
I had a lovely time with Hannes. He’s the sort of guy I’d like to be dating, if only he liked me. He likes spending Sunday afternoons in pubs. We wandered around Spitalfields Market for a while, then made our way over to Brick Lane, where we ran into two of his friends. Freezing after having been outside for a while, we all headed to a bar to get a pint and Hannes and I ended up staying there for hours talking about Middle Eastern politics, techno, and studying. We had three pints, by which point I was thoroughly at the moment where I wanted to lean over to kiss Hannes. We went to get salt beef bagels.
Hannes told me rumor has it that the man I’m sweet on had an affair with one of his students. Not so surprising, I suppose but it was still difficult to keep a straight face when he told me that. Okay, I’m dismayed to hear it. It’s not like any of the men I’ve liked recently have been good for me or good people, but oh please, just once could I fall for an upstanding guy?
Ugh, I'm Sweet on Him
Last night my friend Natalie asked me about a man I like, someone I’m in a very nebulous relationship with, one that seems to be petering out slowly as I approach my moving date. I stuttered trying to explain how I feel about him, repeatedly saying ‘I don’t know’ confusedly. She laughed and said ‘You’re so sweet on him.’ I looked at her and realized that I am sweet on him, that I’m sweet on someone who’s as completely inappropriate for me as say, a frilly dress.
The thing is, you can never predict whom you might like. In the past year I’ve discovered that all these rules I’ve had about who I would and wouldn’t date have gone out the window. Smokers, divorced, fathers, non college-educated: they’ve all popped up in my life recently and I’ve enjoyed spending time with them.
Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday; I think maybe my mom and my friend Cara know that. I like it because it revolves around three of the most important things in my life: food, family, and friends. To me there's nothing better than eating good food with people you care about and a holiday designed just for that is splendid.
Today I woke up, had tea and raspberry jam toast, lazed about, and then checked my e-mail and set off for the city. When I got to Tottenham Court Road, the weather had turned blustery and wet, hard drops of rain pelted walkers. I darted over to Covent Garden and a cozy coffee shop there, where I ensonced myself at a table for one that was just big enough for me to rest my elbows on and dig into my book, a cappuccino, and a cookie.
After sating myself with good coffee and a novel, I rounded the corner to a bead shop and found exactly the item I'd been looking for to complete a scarf that I'm knitting. While browsing in an accessories store, I realized the dangly bit on one of my earrings was missing, and hastily rushed back to the bead store and then to the coffee shop to see if it had by chance fallen off there. Serendipitously, it was in the coffee shop, and I felt good about Thanksgiving all the way to the bead shop, where the owner lent me her pliers so I could repair my earring.
My Thanksgiving dinner was spent with three married Mormon couples. We ordered in some pizza (very American) and each of us talked about what we are thankful for. For dessert, the couple who hosted the gathering surprised us with a lovely pumpkin pie from Harrod's. It was delicious and made us all deliriously happy.
On the tube home I noticed a woman with sparkly, green, dangly earrings. She'd better watch out for those dangly bits. The young woman sitting next to me was wearing too much makeup and arguing with someone about the way they were treating her on her birthday. She kept getting fed up and teary, hanging up on them, and then calling them back for more arguing. She had a large black bag with sequined straps she lugged around as if it contained a bowling ball. Perhaps it did. I was thankful for all this, the warmth of the day, and for feeling at home even though I'm very much home-less.
Words
I went to the Scrabble World Championships on Sunday and started wondering why I love Scrabble so much. Then someone posted a comment on my blog about a development called The Pearl currently being built in Qatar and I remembered that the Arabic world for pearl, Lu'hlu'h, is one of my favorite Arabic words because it’s consists of a syllable repeated. All my other favorite Arabic words, like ‘filfil’ (pepper) or ‘waTwaT’’(bat) follow the same pattern. There’s something really beautiful about how words are constructed, which is why I think I appreciate Scrabble.
Don't Answer Your Mobile When...
You're in the bathroom. Today I rang one of my friends and he said he was indisposed, that he would ring me back in a few minutes. When he rang, he said he had to learn when not to answer his mobile; I laughed and said 'oh yeah, the other day I was in the library and three people answered their phones.' To this he responded, 'There are some rooms you just shouldn't answer the phone in'.
Yeah. Don't answer the phone while you're in the bathroom. I really have no desire to talk to you while you're peeing. Whatever it is I have to tell you, it can wait.
In other news, I'm moving to Doha.
Tomorrow I Will Stop Stressing Out
Tomorrow the human resources department will get back to me about my salary negotiations. My salary demands, I should say. So tomorrow I will either have a job in Doha or I will be back to square one.
To distract myself, today I read Maureen Dowd's New York Times Magazine article on what women are to do. Basically, she concludes that, for contemporary women, having a successful career and a family is a myth. She also argued that, while successful women tend to date or marry men who are are at least as smart as them, successful men tend to marry women who are not as smart as them.
While I don't agree with this, I do think that smart, career-driven women have a harder time dating than smart, career-driven men. Most of my male friends my age are happily partnered or married while most of my female friends my age are single. That's a completely unscientific observation but it's all I have.
The fact is that people don't view this as a problem so it's not something that's extensively polled; most people seem to accept that, at some point, a woman *will* have to choose between getting married and/or having a family or having a career. Governments seem happy to live with this as well: while women get maternity leave, in most instances men don't get paternity leave. The UK recently introduced a scheme to grant limited paternity leave and there were outcries about the pressure that would put on small businesses.
While I empathize with small businesses and realize the strain it could put on them, I do believe that governments and societies have to find some way to allow women to pursue both a career and family and paternity leave is part of that solution. Finding men who appreciate smart women is another problem altogether.
Having now written all of this, I recognize that I'm quite possibly moving to Doha, a complete career move and one that's not likely to better my chances of marrying or having kids.
