Saba Imtiaz: Everyday is a winding road..

It won't hit me that I'm supposed to be home in a little less than 2 weeks until I actually have a ticket in my hand, absolute proof that the streets, sights and sounds of Amman will be a part of my past, will be remembered in fragments and anecdotes, from pictures that will soon be relegated to an obscure folder on my laptop. I don't want to write a 'reflecting-back-on-my-year' post just yet, I want time to stop still and let me live and breathe each moment - and for the past few weeks I have been doing exactly that.

In other news & randomness..

• My successor, Akos Szakaly, arrived from Hungary a couple of days ago! In true tradition, he had to wait for 25 minutes at the airport, and I took him to Hashem and Danesi on his first day here (and felt like I've been living here for centuries as he stared wide-eyed at everything, and I argued with cab drivers and talked to all the afternoon staff at Hashem)
• I randomly chanced upon EP 18 for Gossip Girl (I thought the season had ended at 17!) You know you love me..xoxo.
• Weekend conversations (or weekday ones for that matter) with people from home are the bestest. Thats why I now know all of the gossip and news from Karachi courtesy Emad, and how Adeel Naeem's room in Singapore looks like, or what he bought on his last shopping trip :P
• Shops in Amman have strange mannequins. Enough said.
• The AIESEC Lahore video is the coolest! And now I have 'Get down tonight' stuck in my head..but oh well, I miss those guys!
  
• Last weekend was the most fun I've had in a long time! If someone had told me a few years ago that I'd be cooking biryani, watching Rang De Basanti with an American (who went to school in India) and Canadian (Iranian/Brit actually..), and dancing in a gay bar on a weekend..I'd have thought they were repeating a sitcom outline..
  
• On that note - I'm going to miss Laura and Nadim and Shamsy! And if my picture is in Layaleena's next issue..I'd better get a scanned copy.
• Random events in Amman can turn out to be pretty cool. For e.g. the Syrian film @ the Royal Film Commission was rather boring..but what a gorgeous venue, replete with free popcorn & drinks..score. And despite how long it took us to find Cups & Kilos in Al Rabieh today, the jazz gig there was absolutely fabulous.
  

And as a last note: Laura's blogpost on Amman has this great quote on life here, which even a year later - still rings true for me:

"What an unexpected night....and one that brought so many interesting realities into light. Everytime I think I've finally come to understand something about Jordanian (or more accurately, Amman) society, something comes along and completely contradicts it. I still haven't figured out Jordan, and I don't know if I ever will."

Labels: future, jordan journal, random musings