Saba Imtiaz: Everyday is a winding road..

Sitting at the airport in Amman. Stealing wi-fi. Spent the morning running around picking up my flight ticket from my harangued travel agent who got me off the Gulf Air waiting list and on a flight for today, shopping, eating at Hashem, meeting people, answering phone calls and arguing with cab drivers. Apart from the travel agent and airport, this could be any day in the life that was mine until I stepped through the gate.

This doesn't seem right, and it doesn't seem wrong either. I'm just waiting for my real life (version 2) to begin, yet again, I suppose.

Labels: jordan journal, random musings, travel

Back from a weekend in Damascus, Syria - and wishing I was back, wandering through the Old City, drinking orange juice and chatting away in Arabic with the people I meet. More here..

Labels: photos, travel

..or Telecommunication in Transit

Alright people, you'd better watch your feet cos I'm about to drop some knowledge. Haha, I love Barney Stinson's lines! :D

Anyway, over the course of many a discussion and random caffeine inspired moment of idle thinking, I have come up with the following theory: 'Telecommunication in Transit/the Airport Call theory'. Its been born out of listening and trying to interpret the countless stories people tell me (read: my friends with 'extremely interesting / the stuff soap opera dramas are made of' love lives).

Now basically how it goes is this: you're at an airport, killing time in a departure lounge. Depending on your luck, the lounge probably has minimal forms of distraction & entertainment, but you have your cell phone. Obviously, you can pick the phone up and call a friend who will undoubtedly listen to your ranting and raving, but thats not what you do. You call or text someone who you truly care about - whether its a new crush, your boy/girlfriend, someone you're undeniably attracted to.

However, you don't do this intentionally, and this is where it gets interesting. They're the ones that currently matter to you the most, so you call/text them. You think you're doing it because hey, maybe h/she is an insomniac or you miss speaking to him/her - but the truth is, you just want to be with them. See, this is a sign of how you can tell if you really like someone - if you can talk to him/her at an ungodly hour from a different timezone, this is the person you want to end up with.

So the next time you're in transit, desperately trying to find free wifi or thanking God that your cell phone has extensive roaming (instead of window shopping at duty free or drinking at 7 AM at an airport bar), or trying to hide your phone from the flight attendant because you want to send one last message before the plane takes off - remember: this is who you (regardless of how much you convince yourself or tell your friends that its just a fling/random crush) want to be with. The Airport Call theory has spoken.

Labels: random musings, travel

Total number of hours of sleep since Friday night: 14
Total number of hours worked since Saturday*: 26 (that I can remember)
Total number of resumes downloaded and EP forms reviewed from Insight: downloaded - around 170 / reviewed - who knows how many I looked at..
Songs of the week: Feel - Robbie Williams / Secret Garden - Bruce Springsteen

Anyway. The flight back to Amman was great (RJ's food is awesome, funnily enough the steward who I briefly talked to on my flight into Jordan 6 months ago recognized me 'you're Pakistani! you traveled 5 - 6 months ago!', and I saw Tel Aviv from the plane!) Being back in Amman is awesome, and being able to speak (read: repeat the few words I know) in Arabic. And I had yet another identity crisis, yay!

So at the airport..
Two queues. One for foreigners. One for Jordanians.
Me: 'I have a Jordanian residence card, but...I am a foreigner. Oh crap, where the hell do I go!?'

Thankfully I asked, and I got to be in the Jordanian queue! They even wrote 'muqeem' (translation: resident) on my passport stamp this time. And then - because the bus outside the RJ terminal wasn't leaving anytime soon for the city, the bus driver drove me to the next terminal and got me into the right bus..yay for me :)

And here's a collage from rainy Rotterdam!

Labels: jordan journal, photos, travel

So I'm going to be in Rotterdam this week for the Global Communications Crew meeting kicking off tomorrow! I arrived this afternoon..and my thoughts so far:

I saw some of the very famed windmills. and cows. All on the pretty comfy train ride from Amsterdam to Rotterdam.

I've seen pigeons for the first time in 6 months, and sunlight for the first time in 3 days.

I fell asleep off and on during the direct flight from Amman to Amsterdam, despite my insistence that I can barely ever sleep on planes. Guess working all night till literally an hour before I was supposed to leave does that to you.

Rotterdam's multi ethnicity is rather interesting..just on the street itself I've seen people of all faiths and countries, and restaurants touting everything from roti to Turkish fare to shawarmas.

Seeing the supercool Monika has been fantastic! Here's to chance meetings :)

The AI office is very cool! The TMU is here too for their meeting so I ran into Juanita on the street yelling 'SABA!' loudly while I was trying to figure out where 126 Teilingerstraat actually was. Though I didn't get lost as some of my other GCC teammates did (must be all the training-on-getting-lost-and-finding-your-way-out-without-collapsing-into-hysterics from Amman)

I saw a poster for a Himesh Reshammiya concert, touting him as India's number 1 superstar. Seriously..

The absence of hills to climb up and down is good, considering I spent the past 2 days in Amman downtown doing precisely that. In the rain.

The search for actual coffee shops in Rotterdam continues..

More to come.

Labels: travel