Reminiscing

A Cynic and a chicken apparently…..

…..I did it – I got rid of him, I beat my own record of 2 weeks of perfect harmony and happiness. It was too good to be true. Something had to give. It didn’t so I made it happen.

A perfect and happy start. He calls me, he’s attentive, supportive and sweet, says all the RIGHT things, he clearly has done his homework, I guess it’s normal for a man his age to be ready the way he is. I felt a glimmer, nay a molecule of distance and I find myself running for the exit. He calls me a chicken cut cut cut coooooooooot (and I roll my eyes)... yes I am and I would rather be a chicken than a broken woman.

I have now relaxed about him - there are so many men on the scene I got bored all together - I am focusing my mind on other things right now, and it's working, it got my mind off these mini dramas we create to make our lives more interesting...well I though my life is interesting so no more dramas, well maybe one last one perhaps as I am sending the chocolates in a few days - so stay tuned!
Ps: I have no good or bad feeling about the outcome of this little manoeuvre

.....Whatever happens, I will be FINE.

RelationSHITS - PART II

Going back to the relationSHITS blog...I have news, some of you might say: as expected!

I have ended the pseudo-relationship I had with him last night. I feel somewhat sad but relieved. No longer have to worry about contact or lack of.

His argument was quite clear – we have to wait until we meet in the flesh to be able to decide whether we can start something together. He is so obviously worried about physical contact; his exact words I believe were “what if you won’t even feel like kissing me, what if you won’t even fancy me, I just hope you won’t get any nasty surprises”

My argument went something like “I don’t mind the distance and the waiting, but I cannot wait for someone who doesn’t encourage me to, what are you promising me or what are my guarantees for waiting for you? Anybody can meet someone else or anything could happen, you need to give me something to wait for, you ask me to be patient, yet you discourage my patience with your total absence and lack of contact or compassion, so I am taking my bets off the table and if fate has it we meet again – so be it”

This gentlemen holds precise and accurate information about my future (short term) plans, he knows where he can meet me and how. I am going to leave it to fate. If he shows up on the day of my arrival, then I will be happy to give it another try…I like this guy…I gave him up last night but I know in doing so I probably saved what we have. I feel there is some kind of cosmic reason for all of this…that or I am just hormonal and a bit erratic.

Things will unfold…I feel it in my bones….stay tuned.

Table for 1 Please!

...anytime of the day it's a completely normal thing to hear or say, post 8pm it's considered tragic...what on earth makes us feel this way?

I learnt that eating out alone isn’t tragic at all…unless you’re in a hip down town restaurant on Valentines Day or Christmas Eve …then feel free to be sad, because you are, if I was single I wouldn’t be caught dead in a restaurant dining alone.

Well I used to have a boyfriend, so the need for table for 1 never really occurred. Now that I am single, it still never really happens due to the large number of good friends I have around me and my networking schedule doesn’t allow me to dine alone, as there is always someone to see or something to meet about, So unless it’s in the daytime at Starbucks or in some joint grabbing a quick bite you wouldn’t hear me utter the words – Table for 1 please or no it’s just me!!. The fact that I feel it’s sad to go out to dinner to a nice restaurant on my own is really getting to me though hence this blog– I resent the feeling, why should I feel like that? What makes us feel like that? Is it people’s expectations? Judgment?

We all have the same dilemma, we don’t even realise it, we are all conditioned to pick up the phone and dial a friend’s number to accompany us to our favourite restaurant or to the theatre! Even when some of us could really do with some alone time, just because people will probably look and think “wow eating alone!” You see I don’t think people would necessarily find it sad, they’ll find it endearing and feel envious, wishing they could have the guts to do that themselves.

Well…I eat alone but mostly on holidays since I travel alone most of the time, I have no issue in getting a table for one, also knowing that you'll always have someone join you for a drink or desert especially when you're an attractive young lady – That’s right gentlemen I am. But I don’t always accept the company; sometimes I get on with writing my travel journals and report my daily adventures, in my–try-to-be witty but inevitably failed way.

It is a different story once you're back in town. I would feel rather weird going to dinner alone unless it's my local place where they'd know me and I'd feel like I am at home or if I was waiting for someone or doing some research or reading, it’s almost as though you need an armour and a book, a blackberry or newspaper provide just that.

Now the cinema is a different story. I respect people who go to the cinema alone, no no I go one more I encourage them to do so. What is wrong with that? I got a few sad looks from some people once because I was alone!! I laughed, I mean what’s wrong with going alone to a place where you need to keep quiet anyway…you wont be having a meaningful conversation and going solo is recommended for so many reasons, where do I start; you get to choose your seat without anybody interfering with their specific requirements of – the seat has to be 5 rows down and 10 up, with 7 seats one each side! The arm rest is mine on the left so you can have the one on the right but I also get to hog the one between us because you got to choose the movie. What a palaver it must be to be in a couple.
Go alone and enjoy the experience which you’ve paid for, you come out and there is still plenty of time to get together with your friends and talk about the movie.

It can be the same for theatres or museums. For me these experiences are to be cherished so best to go alone, obviously there are exceptions where it’s best to be accompanied for museums visits so you can bounce ideas off one another and share knowledge of paintings or pieces. And musicals or theatre, well just to dance together at the end when they make you all stand up! (cringeworthy really)

I have come to the conclusion over the years that sometimes yourself is the best company you can ever wish for and spending time with yourself is a very positive, cherished, enlightening and above all a relaxing experience so maybe we should all stop worrying and set ourselves the challenge of asking for a table for one after 8pm, maybe start off with just a coffee, second time maybe a quick salad and if you feel totally comfortable with it, go for the whole meal, after all I am the best person I can ever be with so why not have dinner with ME.

Cynics Anonymous

Hi, my name is **** and I am a cynic - aholic.

I believe cynicism is intractably linked to high expectations and the result of these expectations being unfulfilled, which results in disappoinments and the loss of faith in the subject (regardless of it being people, a profession or government) in my case it’s mostly friends and men.

We all start off as optimistic, happy if a little naive - growing up, your life experiences start to mould you into who you are today, a hopeful optimistic or a negative pessimistic or a cynic all together. Which is worse since you don’t believe in the good or the bad - you just don’t believe in people anymore.

After a series of disappointments, how can one keep the level of optimism one needs to survive the next batch of disappointments that is to come - oh yes trust me - there is always more.

I am cynical in my humour, I am cynical in my outlook on life, and I am cynical on my take on men and work and everything else...what happened to me! I used to be the happiest person I know, but I do still have an element of naivety – maybe there is hope yet for me

This interest in writing about cynicism came about after I "met" someone, who claims to be very interested in me and has "serious" intentions towards me, calls me and emails me, says all the right things, he is perfect and I guess could be believable to any women ready to believe - well the problem is - I AM NOT. I do not believe him and I take everything he says with a pinch of salt, I don't return his calls or respond to his emails. I deleted his number to restrain myself from calling him - not because I am playing hard to get - but because I am so cynical that I cannot allow myself to believe anything that WILL result in me getting hurt again. I can see the whole scenario like a movie in my head already - I will fall for him, He'll have someone else or cheat on me, I will leave him and I go back to being cynical and single.

I admit I feel vulnerable - because these disappointments have slowly chipped away my armour, so my heart is ready to believe but my brain screams NOOOOO. And being a logical person with very strong will power I evidently follow my brain.

I really want to believe him and give him and myself a chance to make it work and maybe even -god forbid- be happy...do I need help? What a scary thought.

Algeria's Social class system...

Algeria’s social class system, as it evolved from the Boumerdiene’s Socialist society going on capitalist.
Our society is defined by money and material possessions rather than blood and nobility, we have no monarchy and therefore no “blue blood” or noble blood lines to define our upper class, so we judge it based on wealth and ownership., as is the case of most modern societies.

Our Upper class consists of: politicians and military officials (Generals et al), followed by people with money, what we call old money and Business men, and then come the new money (nouveaux riches) and they usually don’t have the savoir-faire or savoir-vivre so they never actually reach the upper class level due to their lack of education and general good manners! And because in Algeria the upper class is a closed circle, the latter group will find it difficult to integrate into the upper class as noted by some sociologists, it is almost impossible to get into the upper class. They (upper-class) keep their activities (marriage, education and peer groups) as a closed system. This creates further resentment from the aspiring upper class members and nouveaux-riches or equally from the middle class.

Now the Middle class and the upper middle class, consist mainly of members of society who earn their money through relatively high level paid work, or what we call "CHAHAR" such as teachers and doctors, ownership or run small businesses that bring in a consistent income and will be enough to get the children through university, have a nice car and afford a nice house or sometimes not. A key criteria for the middle class is Education, college degrees in some cases could be the only thing distinguishing the middle class from the working class.

The new phenomenon we are seeing is that the Algerian middle class is being wiped out. You cannot exist in the middle class anymore in Algeria because you wouldnt be able to sustain the level of average income or average living any longer, this is due to the escalating richness of the upper class. In fact the upper class is so much richer nowadays that everyone else is poor in comparison.

The middle class is being abolished. Money laundering and the urban move of land workers’ third generations to the city (A-Zahf Erifi), Property and land prices have risen by at least 100% in the last few years and especially since the end of the civil unrest. So we have less people to work the lands and agriculture and more people buying properties in the cities trying to get into the urban middle to upper classes. No wonder we have problems. Even Karl Marx couldn’t analyse our society.

Working class consists of everybody else, who doesn’t belong in the two above groups! People holding blue collar jobs and living in certain popular districts such as Bab el Oued, Belcour (Hamma), Rouisseau, bech jarah...etc if we are talking of Algiers the capital. In fact what I can see is that there is an almost perfectly positive correlation between wealth and poverty in Algeria, the more people get rich at the top, the more people will become poor at the bottom, we are heading for social apocalypse. It’s inevitable.

So there you have it: a society like any other, with a social class system, that basically is based on the “la loi du plus fort” and who has money has the power. Our society functions on the après moi le deluge concept which means, after me – the deluge…I shall do and take what I can as long as I can, for the repercussions would only go downwards – if you get my drift.

Interesting related link: http://countrystudies.us/algeria/56.htm

Blonde vs. Brunette

Brunette vs. Blonde, since the dawn of days and the existence of the blonde and the brunette genes, there was a certain rivalry, in ancient Rome; a blonde daughter would make a good connection or marriage for the family…in present time Rome…well! Things probably haven’t changed that much! A blond child is always preferred to brunette!

We all know the sayings: "Blondes have more fun, brunettes are smart"Such a stereotypical analogy! The fact is this is simply not true, well not always anyway. I know blondes who are perfectly capable of telling time and doing simple mathematical calculations! No seriously, hair or skin colour cannot be a factor in defining your IQ. It’s true that if you check there aren’t many blondes that went down in history for their intelligence or life-changing discoveries, you’ll find more blondes in history known for their beauty, entertainment talents or promiscuity such as Marilyn Monroe or Anna-Nicole Smith…Brunettes on the other hand they represent the more intelligent portion of women in History, Marie Curie is a great example of this so is Frida Cahlo in a different genre or Assia Djabar who is a writer.

Blondes get more attention generally from men and women, something about the bright colour I guess! More attention means more opportunities and more fun. Brunettes fall more into a niche group, where not all men are attracted by the sight of a brunette or a brown lock of hair unless the brunette in question is strikingly beautiful. Having said that there are exceptions where men find themselves also drawn to brunettes purely based on their own assumptions or conditioned belief that brunettes are more mysterious, more natural and make better life partners. The intelligent blondes find it understandably unfair, so you’ll find them trying to assert their intelligence and their allegedly high IQ to reassure themselves! And that in turn is so unattractive!

NOW this colour correlation doesn’t translate exactly to men as it does for women. If you ask any women what kind of men she prefers, I guarantee her answer will be a dark men or a men with dark features! So you see being a brunette for men is definitely an asset and intelligence doesn’t even come into the equation. Because Men are intelligent anyway it seems, their intelligence is not debated nor is the quantity of the fun they have, it doesn’t matter what colour their hair is! Such bigotry.

Now I am brunette, I am intelligent if I may say so myself and I have even more fun than blondes! So! Is this Blond vs. Brunette; a hair-dye man-made myth or a reality?

And what about Gingers?