toronto the good

oct 31. that means i haven’t seen my house in almost six months. craziness. i never thought toronto was all that exciting and loveable until i left it. it’s a place where i feel very comfortable being myself. there’s little expectation of me, it’s reliable and predictable and generally clean. it’s the kind of place i want to raise a family, drive a car, and pay extraordinary high taxes. i miss it terribly.

in other news, i might be starting a new internship with an org. doing innovative work AND adhering to professional standards (which are so hard to come by these days)... i’m trying to decide between their legal dept vs. strategic consulting which brings me back to square one: what do i want to do with the rest of my worldly time? will a coin toss help?

script...

so having figured out the farsi writing function in xp (thanks to my lovely cousin), the first thing i did was figure out how to write my own name… that’s going to come in really handy. i mean all those places where i have to write my name. so numerous i’m losing count.

technically i don’t actually need the farsi language on my machine. but the truth is that all these farsi sayings and proverbial phrases have permeated my brain to the point that i think for the first time in two decades i’m better at expressing myself in a language other than english. that’s not to say that my technical vocabulary or command of business/formal farsi even compares to my english, but i think the two languages are getting equal playing time in my mind. they co-exist and the only people that i can communicate most effectively with are other bi-linguals sharing the same dual language issues. being lost for words is a common day occurrence though if i am trying to express feeling and emotion-based things in english, or technical stuff in farsi.

فلن خدا حافظ

summer has left the house

i’m fading but i’m not too worried about it. the summer sun worked wonders for me but now the pigments are fading. the strange part is that i don’t understand why it is cold. i have two calendars mixed up in my head and late october doesn’t seem to register with a specific weather pattern for me. especially here because i’ve only ever been here during the warm/hot seasons* so i don’t associate the city or country as a whole with anything but warmth.

*that’s not accurate: i was here one winter that i remember when i was 7... it snowed and my grandfather’s old garden which was beautiful and huge was covered in a thick layer of white. having not seen any snow in manchester my sister and i loved those days. the memory of standing my adorable and unassuming sister under a tree laden with snow and slyly shaking the tree to cover her with heaps of snow is perhaps one of our fondest shared memories :)

the dude of waterloo

i came across a dude today who goes to uni in waterloo. he was a real dude, in dress and speech, and the combination of attributes kind of cracked me up. it was hard to keep a straight face as we talked, but that could also have been cos i’m seriously cold given the recent plummet in the temperature.

back to waterloo, or water-abad as it is affectionately known by the large number of iranian students at its stellar engineering university, could easily be mistaken for a town in germany. judging from the names and language, as well as the blond/burlish-looks of its main inhabitants its as much duetcsh-canadian as you can get. but the great olympiad level minds of many young iranians who now find it much harder to make it to the us schools are attracted to this bland city and its beloved university, to be poached thereafter by some fantastic private company/university, or better yet start their own mega-millions-business.

coming full-circle, it was just too bizarre to see this dude fitting in with the legions of nerdy olympiad minds and computer geeks that are the main occupants of u-w. as they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover.

on a brighter note

mash’allah my gran has two beautiful goldfish that have far surpassed their life expectancy and continue to swim and play in their blue bowl on the dinning room table. thanks to some worried questions and emails i’ve realized that i have been overly pessimistic about the last two months and i should really talk more about the positive things that i see happening around me. i guess, the gold fish are a good example of the resilience of spirit that is so common here and to which i have become oblivious. despite all the challenges and difficulties people go on.

let’s go with that thought for a while.

currents

inevitably, every time i want to post something to this blog, i remember nyc and memories come flooding back. the reason is obvious as it all started one friggin’ cold day in the city after i had completed a nightmaresque exam. i start thinking up inane questions about how things would be like if i was there instead of here right now. i mean i’d be losing my eyesight poring over law casebooks instead of losing my eyesight poring over real legal documents... and there are things i miss quite a bit: some good friends, great eating spots, total independence, multiculturalism... life goes on. but i’m still fighting against the current.

corrosion...

i’m sure that even if i smoked a pack a day i couldn’t be destroying my lungs any more than the corrosive pollution in this city. at least those who smoke gain some amt of pleasure from their inhalation practices but i’m losing my lungs and youth cos of all the one-passenger-cars on the road. how pathetic!

it's getting cold...

Frozen in time
Frozen in space

Breathing in toxic fumes
No future in sight
The highest official rate of addiction

The fog thickens
The smog suffocates

Clinging to ancient civilizations
Torn by tribal inclinations
Illusions devour reality

The story continues
Life begins and ends

a glimpse of an eclipse

i actually didn't get a glimpse of it.
i remembered at 12pm. looked up at the sky but the sun was too bright. next thing i knew it was 2pm and i'd missed the whole thing.

i wouldn't have had the chance if i'd been buried in law school readings in nyc or driving around toronto, so the fact that i missed it somewhat disappointing.