Prolific Immigrant

We went out this evening and before heading out, Sharon and I fooled around with my mobile camera. I’m not allowed to post her photos on here, and so instead all you’ll be getting is me.

Check out how cool her following shots are; if you were to string them together, you could flip through them and watch me laugh in real time but without the sound effects which are the best part of my laugh because I sound like a braying donkey.

The potential flip-book nature of these photos is the most exciting thing to happen in a very long time. So sad is my life.

Sharon has an affinity for ‘up close and personal’ shots and so if you’re interested in playing connect the dots with the pores on my face you can find the entire set of shots here. Here you will find more shots of me cross-eyed.

OMG! Also make certain to peek at my awesome clutch (thank you Baby J):



(The inside’s satin!)

and then check out the lines on my new Crack:

There’s no denying the art deco influence on the heel. It took me a moment longer than usual to decide on the purchase but that’s only because I was a little discombobulated by their low nature and their hippie front braid. But I love them now. (Thanks to S for helping me pick them out.)

I possess a slight phobia of communicable disease for many reasons, none of which I care to discuss here (sorry). When I’m on the bus or walking on the street and I’m wearing a short sleeved shirt and someone (who I don’t know and of whose habits of hygiene I am unaware) else’s skin brushes against mine, I kind of get a little sick to my stomach. Or: I get a lot sick to my stomach. Like this morning, a woman on the bus kept sliding her arm back and forth along my arm and I very nearly passed out. But I didn’t! Instead, I squeezed myself into the body of a nice smelling older softer full-body-covered grandmotherly sort seated on the other side of me.

It took everything out of me not to yell STOP TOUCHING ME I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU COULD HAVE AND THEN GIVE ME.

We all have our crazy sides and this is mine. Welcome and please wipe your feet and take a quick shower in bleach before you walk in.

Another slice of The Crazy is that when I get nervous, I stick my hands beneath my armpits and then I smell them.

I DO NOT. But I do love that skit from SNL.

What I do is I peel my lips. I bet you read that as ‘pee my lips’ which would have been both crazy and a ticket right into the elite employees of Cirque du Soleil.

Anyway. I have very large lips and without really noticing what I’m doing, I’ll sit there in concentration or a state of nervous and…I’ll peel at them. One of girlfriends pulls her hair out and the other scrapes her tooth (one tooth in particular, I really don’t know why she chose that one or what it ever did to her). I’m only telling you that because I feel like being in good company with other Crazies right now.

A couple of weeks ago, I was sitting back and reading IHateMyselfBook when I started peeling my lips. And I peeled enough to bleed. Not a little, but a lot. It was as though I had taken a razor and sliced off a perfectly square portion of my lip. It wasn’t very big, but because my mouth is the size of Arizona, it was big enough.

Remember The Crazy. Well…our lips are probably the worst place on which to need to develop a scab because every time we speak, laugh, smile, or breathe, we split the scab open again. Needless to say, it finally developed a scab long enough to heal. BUT for the duration of the week it took for it to heal, I was experiencing The Crazy every moment I was in public trying to control myself from screaming I DO NOT HAVE A COMMUNICABLE DISEASE, JUST A REALLY BAD HABIT. I CROSS MY HEART.

Instead of starting conversations with “hi, how are you”, I began them with “let’s talk about the giant elephant in the room, shall we? Let’s talk about what happened to my lip” and even one with: “I don’t have herpes, just a nervous habit” (to which the girl responded by placing my change on the counter rather than in my hand before she quickly turned to the next customer).

If you look at the photos from Montreal you can sort of see it; my wound was not-so-cleverly hidden beneath lipstick.

Anyone else want to share their Crazy?

Earlier this week, O and I met for a little sushi and a lot of conversation. After dinner, we headed over to Woman’s Memorial Park on Elgin Street and found a picnic table on which to lay. Although this was not our original intention it served as a perfect addition to our evening.

The air was warm and hazy and it didn’t feel natural to be staring at the concrete when there was so much more to see above our heads. So, I quietly shifted and laid down on my side of the picnic table, hoping O wouldn’t notice and/or stop talking. But O’s a smart cookie and so as I laid down on to my back, she enquired:
“What are you doing? Where are you going? Maha?” (I could never get anything past her.)
“I’m lying down to look at the trees.”
“That’s a great idea.”
“Do it.”
“Ok. Only I’m going to lie on top of the picnic table.”

And so continued our conversation about love, life, religion and friendship as we looked up at this:

O and I met 12 years ago at Oliver’s on campus. One of my most vivid memories of us centers around our first (of what would later become hundreds of) political and theological discussions.

A group of us had begun our evening at Mezzanotte Bistro in the market where O had one too many and by one too many I mean that she likely had a glass of wine because that’s where her tolerance ends. She was wearing a body suit and couldn’t snap the buttons closed because she…had had one too many.

After her disappearance into the washroom and subsequent resurfacing with a smile and a “I’m buttoned up! With the help of S & P!” she came over to my side of the table and sincerely asked “So, what do you think of the State of Israel?” & “What about Zionism? Zionism is good, right? I’m a Zionist. I like the way you think. Clearly. You’re clear. It’s good. Tell me what you think, please. What are you eating? Is it any good? Can I have some? So back to Israel, eh.”

I have to admit that first conversation about politics and – inevitably – religion exhausted me. What began as an evening of light fun turned into an evening of emotional and intellectual exertion the likes of which I’d not experienced before. I believe the reason it was so unique was because I’d never had that sort of a discussion with someone who had adopted the identity of ‘Zionist’ without really understanding the consequence and history of that word to an entire other People.

Moreover, I’d never discussed ‘God’ with anyone before, most definitely not in the oxymoronic definition of the ‘secular’ Jewish State.

Twelve years later, her politics and religion have shifted. If you look out into a crowd of Palestinians during a demonstration you will likely find O carrying a sign that reads: “I am Jewish and I do not support the State of Israel”. She once said that if she had to describe herself as anything, it would be “a Jewish Palestinian” rather than “a Jewish Israeli”. Obviously, O’s come a long way…

…reason being that she has a sincere curiosity about life and the elements we choose and use to make up who we are, the stands we take and the battles we fight.

During every moment of the day she is thinking, challenging, deciding and acting. She is fearless and has more guts and heart than anyone I know, not to mention a reserve of energy accessible to everyone around her. She manages to balance a fierce loyalty to her friends and an honesty that will sometimes anger you. Even with the anger, one always understands that she tells the truth because she loves.

More admirable is that she will never say no to something about which she does not possess a great deal of knowledge. I don’t think her mind ever sleeps, it most definitely never gets enough and she will never reach the point of stopping her own – as she calls it – “evolution”.

She is one of the few people I know who will always bust her a** to continue growing emotionally, spiritually and intellectually; lethargy will never become this girl and for that she is to be admired and respected.

As equally important as all of the above is that if I desperately need a good laugh, then it’s to her I turn because I have yet to meet anyone who can match her quickness of wit. What is least surprising is that each person who meets her loves her. It is inevitable and you can’t fight it because You. Will. Loose. Believe me when I tell you that it’s easier to just follow her around and adore her.

As with her politics, so too have her views on God changed. Over the course of the last three years, O’s experienced some of the most traumatic times any one of us would hope to never live. More incredibly to some (but not to those who know, love and respect her), she has a sense of humour about her life that most others would be incapable of possessing.

When we were together earlier this week, I was amazed to hear her speak of God and spirituality as though she were in fact narrating what was going on in my head. Considering the chasm that used to exist between us in terms of this particular subject, I was at moments left winded by what she was saying. We’d never thought to discuss The Big Cheese before and so it was a complete surprise when she initiated the conversation and spoke to her ideas with such definition and eloquence.

Over the course of the last 12 years I’ve had the pleasure and the honour of watching O become the woman that she is today and can’t wait to see what the next 60 or so years will bring…apart from the occasional “stop making me laugh, I just peed a little. I have to go change. STOP! IT! Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhaaaaaaa! Peed. Again.”

.1. Please meet my new hero: Roy Bailey. In light of Rushdie’s Knightedness, this is quite appropriate.

.2. To the person who coined the phrase: “There is no such thing as a stupid question”, I call: Bullsh*t.
&
Thanks for making room for a generation of Stupids. (More on this later.)

.3. The following is an interesting philosophical look at predestination in the religious sense.

“The question, “What is the value of [life] if God has already predestined the future?” assumes that in some way God has a future. That is, it assumes that God is situated in time and peering into a preordained future as we [live]. But in order to have a future, one’s existence must be contained within time and, as a result, finite. The reason this question leads to contradictions is that it assumes a contradiction in the first place – that God both transcends and is finite in time. Any question that assumes two mutually incompatible premises will always result in conflicting conclusions. Assume, for example, that a circle is a square. With this assumption in mind, we can ask if a circle has corners. If we emphasize the circle’s roundness, then the answer is no. If we concentrate on the properties of a square, the answer is yes. When the consideration of a question inevitably ends in contradiction, it should be asked if the question itself makes sense.

The word ‘predestination’ alone is problematic. If it is used to mean that at some time in the past God programmed all events for the future, the underlying assumption is that God exists in time [as time is understood by the human mind]. If we mean that God’s wisdom and knowledge encompass all and that nothing in creation can conflict with that, then it has to be admitted. But that is not the primary sense of the word ‘predestine’, which means ‘to determine in advance.’”

And to that I add: Because the human mind can only comprehend that which it has already experienced and that which it is capable of experiencing. We can not conceive of something beyond the very limited constraint of the human condition. We understand ‘time’ in a very specific way; it advances and what is past is lost. Whereas the above asserts that there is necessarily a multitude of ways to live time, humans are only party to one unless you’re like me and you time travel in search of the perfect Crack. At any given moment, there are a bazillion different events occurring during that very moment – that is something we may see as a ‘dot’ in time within which there are infinite events. Perhaps the experience of ‘time’ mentioned above and with respect to that which is not human is exactly like the ‘dot’ only the ‘dot’ is the entire history of the whole of humanity, including what we have not yet experienced in ‘human time’.

Whereas the human condition is to experience the passing of ‘time’ and the movement in a horizontal model in a multitude of ‘dots’, perhaps the Divine experience of ‘time’ is both horizontal and vertical and so the shape of that ‘dot’ is not one any of us can experience…but definitely something worth contemplating…

It’s basic philosophy and mathematics, really.

I am falling in love with Dr. Jeffery Lang, imagining all of the conversations I could have with this man. I’ve ordered all of his books and look forward to meeting him, Inshallah.

This is my gorgeous and dear girlfriend Aalya:

Although I didn’t take the following picture, I’m posting it so that you may see her beautiful eyes:

Aalya and I have been a part of one another’s lives for a little over a decade. We met while she tended bar in my office, Mike’s Place. (I used to receive phone calls there from my MA Supervisor.)

Mike’s Place remains the graduate pub at Carleton University and if you go in today, you will find on the wall a huge collage of photographs reflecting our ‘generation’, several of which are of your blogMistress and Aalya. Mike’s Place has the best chicken curry, Jamaican patties and cheese/sun dried tomato nan bread. All staff were either MA or PhD students and conversations usually centered around Foucault, Habermas, Gramsci and Althusser while the occasional philosophy student would scream out “I LOVE Derrida!”.

Neither the science students nor the undergraduate students were allowed in. More importantly, if you didn’t believe in existentialism, wrote poetry, belonged to the union, enjoyed Ben Harper, watched only foreign films, you weren’t allowed in.

Yeah, we were up our own asses. Far.

Over the years, Aalya and I have had some exceptionally long nights with never a dull moment. There was that one particular weekend in Montreal when we stayed at Bibi’s place and I dragged Aalya all over St-Laurent.

The weekend was filled with hilarious moments, the most important being Aalya and I seated at Globe’s bar eating shrimp and listening to Bob Marley, surrounded by complete and total whack-jobs and a whole lotta cleavage.

Every time a man would try to approach us, Aalya would bury her face into her plate and actually groan. It was amazing. (As an aside, even she will admit that it was a pretty fun weekend if for no other reason than because we just walked into all of the clubs without hesitation or a moment in line.)

I fall off the radar for short blips of time and in these moments Aalya compares me to “a wounded animal that needs to be left alone to work everything out and make a decision. I know that when I see you, you’ve made your choice and you’re ready to talk about what’s been going on”.

I resurfaced on Monday evening and went to visit her in her beautiful new home, the history of which is described by Aalya as follows: “According to the City, the house was built in 1920 and the record we have on our deed is that it was given in 1925 by a woman named Angelina Robinson to what must have been her sister in law, a lady named Lucinda Fournier, “en propre par amour et affection”. Lucinda then lived in it until her death, at which point it was willed to family members, then the property, which originally comprised the house next door too, was divided up and sold in 1981 to two different families. The house changed hands again in November, 2003, and was then sold to us in 2007! So that makes it a venerable 87 years old. We hope we’ll still be living in it to celebrate its centenary in 2020, without having to tack on any more additions!”

When I pulled in, it was by this smiling face that I was met:

I’ve never known Aalya to not have the most welcoming home. She is of Fey descent and wherever she lands magically and instantaneously comes to life with vivid yellow, green and orange walls, a suspicious ottoman, several cats who reign supreme, and a violin. Proof of this can be found in the following photographs of her new home with the lucky Dietrich:

The door to her office

Her “dressing room” (an actual dressing room!)

The music area

The kitchen (check out the servant’s staircase and the crazy lighting)

A corner of the bedroom

The living room

Warmth and love swallow you whole when you walk in and tea is always at the ready as is a good (or bad, which makes it better) horror movie, classical music and conversations that begin with:
“I was once exoticised.”
“But we already understand that marriage is more often than not driven by the economic manipulations of our society.”
“So there was this ‘feminist’ who just last year discovered the concept of the Other and SO every email I get is filled with ‘WE speak for so-and-so’ and ‘WE speak for so-and-so’ and I feel like responding with ‘YOUR WE does not represent ME, because I AM so-and-so’.”
“I’m really angry about this and I shouldn’t but I am and so here’s what I’m angry about…what do you think?”
“Do you like my shoes?”
“I was reading from some of my journals that I kept in my early twenties and I’d written: “Don’t they get it? I don’t have an agency!” God, can you believe how sad that little girl was? I just wanted to cry for who I was when I read that.”
“We really should write an article together.”
“Let me tell you what the problem with our society is…”
& of course:
“What I’m about to share with you, I’ve not told to anyone else.”

No matter how much time may lapse between visits with Aalya, there never seems to be space between us. Although we live in the same city, we have in the past gone close to a year without seeing one another, but came back together without feeling as though anything had shifted or any time lost.

Her insightfulness, loyalty and straightforwardness are treasures I kiss and pet every time I see her and hear her “cackle” (her word, not mine) of a laugh. She will always be my Crazy Cat Lady and I only have room for one such individual in my heart. (No others need apply. But thank you, anyway.)

All photos can be found here.

Jascha Heifetz
Bach, Sonatas & Partitas
The Heifetz Collection, Volume 17

Listen to it as you daydream, laying outside on this beautiful gift of green earth while the grass kisses you and the leaves cool you.

Two couples I know recently purchased their first homes together. Aalya & Dietrich in old Gatineau and Katie & Michael off of Pretoria Bridge in Ottawa.

Visiting their homes has given me an itch that I will scratch in a little while. I’ve decided that should I be single by a specific date, I too will purchase my first home.

I was too shy to take pictures of the later’s home, buil in the early 1930s (likely 1932) and is a gorgeous three bedroom with the world’s greatest bedroom nook, attic and kitchen. The kitchen is enormous and entirely new, including the stainless steel appliances. They also have a beautiful mudroom in which the perfect light fixture would be a chandelier of sorts in order to lush & warm-up the entrance.

More importantly, they have a deep soaker tub in their upstairs bathroom beneath a window, the colours of the bathroom being blue and white, I couldn’t help but envision the complementary nature of nautical decor.

Because they’re intelligent folk, they’ve turned one of the upstairs bedrooms into their television room. This then leaves their sitting area on the main floor just that: a welcoming sitting area the focus of which will be the people and not the television set.

My two favourite spaces are their bedroom nook and attic, both of which I have in my head and heart assigned to Katie rather than Michael. The bedroom nook is a perfectly square corner linked both to the bedroom and an enclosed sun-filled side balcony that would be perfectly met with a hammock, plants and white lace curtains. The nook itself is screaming for either a perfect vanity (also for Katie) and a Persian rug or a reading chair, an ottoman and a thin long side table on which Katie (not M) can place candles, pictures and reading materials beneath the window to be drowned in sunlight.

Due to the size of the window, Kate (not…well, you get it) could place heavy velour drapes that would swoop along the floor and which could be pulled back with luxurious and maybe even sparkly rope tie-backs.

Finally there’s the attic that, even though needs some work, serves as the perfect ‘girl’ space. There’s a beautiful slant to the ceilings and one large window at the far end which brings in enough sunlight to light up the entirety of the attic.

As soon as I walked up the stairs, all I could see was the area’s future; soft carpeting, cream, and sage walls, a couple of single sink-in-to reading chairs and rounded glass vases filled with white flowers next to the window that will be covered in a cream coloured lace curtain and tied back with a red satin ribbon. This is where K will hide either alone with a book, a good cry or a girlfriend who needs the comfort of private conversation.

They will be listening to Bach. This is the same space that will be taken over by Kate and Michael’s daughter when she wants to daydream in private; it may even be the space in which she explores her artistic side through the artwork she’ll create and hang on it’s very walls.

As the title of this entry suggests, K & M’s place is already a home and not merely a house. This home is a space created not on the architectural foundation, but rather based on the team that is Michael and Kate. There was a moment of interaction between them which I will share with you and which I hope you have already – and if not yet, then you will some day soon – experience in your lives.

This house already has a history of families and living memory, and to which their own family story will be added; the next owners of the house will say “…and then we bought it from Michael and Kate who moved in in 2007 and it’s in this house that they built their family. When they handed us the keys, they walked out holding hands and Michael said: ‘Check out that awesome railing. Now compare it to that railing! That’s my work. Do you remember when I did that?’” The house will be filled with thousands of stories, of which the following is the one I will likely remember most.

It was Kate who lent me the book The Time Traveller’s Wife. When she handed it to me, I noticed how immaculately kept it was. I’m looking at it right now; the spine is not cracked, there is no writing anywhere, no passages underlined, no fingerprints on the pages or even dog ears.

I joked how each and every one of my books was a mess compared to this. On the inside cover of a book, I write my name, phone number, address, and the most important points of my current autobiographical situation (e.g. “Had Vietnamese last night with Di and Pierre and ate too much hot sauce. Tummy hurts.”).

Worse still is that throughout my books there are notes in the margins, passages underlined and more autobiographical data (e.g. “Just had a slight row with X, am feeling sad and this book is the only thing I can concentrate on. It’s 2.12 pm and I am seated alone in the park on a bench.”).

Kate had run upstairs to find the book. When she returned, she handed it to me and then sat back down across the coffee table from me next to Michael. As I was explaining the trauma I inflict on my books, I looked up and noticed that they were looking at one another smiling, but Kate with an obviously ‘made for us’ look of worry on her face. Michael laughed, nudged her and said “Hey. You should get that book back, I don’t think you should even lend it to her!” and we all started laughing while I clutched the book even harder. 

There was something in that moment that can only be understood between those who deeply love and cherish one another. I know it may seem insane to some of you, but to me it was clear: They were a team. There was a solidarity between them and even though it was in reference to the slightest object, a book, I understood immediately that an interaction such as that sheds light on to the rest of a relationship.

It is only natural that in all relationships there are moments of tension and hurt and anger. Hopefully, these moments are outweighed by love and tenderness, secrets shared and moments lived that will never be experienced beyond the couple.

As with Michael and Kate, this is because: They are a team. It’s a small sentence but its sense is great enough to touch anyone who sits near them.

I left that evening thinking about what defines a healthy relationship, and I now believe that a great part of that definition has to do with looking out for one another and sharing a sense of humour.

It is placing ourselves into the shoes of our partners and understanding their psychology and their history, their wounds and their happiest moments.

It is redefining everything we understand in order to add as much of their comprehension to our own.

It is never letting them fight on their own but always fighting next to them and maybe even fighting one another in order to protect that very Team.

It is doing the impossible to never let the other one hurt and always making certain to protect and cherish what the other one loves. It is a challenge that we must face and overcome every day. To some this may seem the most difficult aspect of a relationship but to me, it is this very vulnerability and demanding nature of love that makes us different and hopefully, better people than we could ever hope to be on our own as single individuals.

Most times and more often than not, we fail at this for any one of a multitude of reasons. In the case of Michael and Kate, likely never, Inshallah.

Thanks to A for sending this along:

“Confusing, we know. Here’s how it came to be. The CBC teamed up Student Vote, an organization geared towards educating youth on electoral processes, to create something called the Great Canadian Wish List hosted on Facebook. You know, cuz the youth like the Facebook. Culminating on Canada Day, the unmoderated Wish List is a call to submit and vote for ideas on how to improve Canada. The “wish” that can gather the greatest support will receive an hour’s worth of airtime on an upcoming CBC program.

blablabla

Turns out, there’s pretty good reason for that. Almost as soon as the Wish List voting started just under a month ago, a vocal and persistent group of pro-lifers have overwhelmed the site. When pro-choice users fought back, they found their Facebook privileges dramatically limited by Facebook administration without adequate explanation.”

Read the rest of the article here and pass it along.

This is my beautiful friend Ranoon, with whom I spent close to a week in Montreal. In this first elegant shot Ranoon is gracing us with the Thou Shalt Not Take My Photo pose:

Moments before she got up and ran away from me, I managed to catch a glimpse of her gorgeous face, which I share with you here:

…her dimple will melt the heart of a lucky man some day.

Until then, she’s busying herself with Bio Genetics (I think I have that right, she will correct me, if need be). You can’t see it, but Ranoon has a massive brain that fills up half of Montreal. She writes and publishes things like: ”Volumetric Characterizations of Protein Denaturation and Ligand Binding”.

To me, that sounds like something about steaks, leggings and added volume to your hair. But I know that’s not the case and that’s because I’m the girl who once thought that peanuts came from…I don’t know, actually. I had to think about it when asked “Where do you think peanuts come from?” in response to my surprise that they grew ‘beneath’, like potatoes. I guess my mind simply assumed that peanuts grew in cans made by Mr. Planter. So it’s really not a far stretch that Ranoon’s work holds no coherence where I’m concerned…but I am super proud of her when she wins Awards, as she recently did for her ground-breaking work on…something to do with molecules and how they break it down when no one’s looking.

As you can see, Ranoon is a tad shy of cameras. Whereas your blogMistress is anything but, as the following pictures shall illustrate. We spent the better part of our days waking up relatively late and enjoying coffees at home and then at Shaika Café on Sherbrooke. The ambiance of the place is simply: local. It’s obvious that everyone knows the staff, that all locals congregate there for weekend breakfasts and coffees and daily conversation.

After my second day there, I expected the staff to call out “Maha!” as I walked in to order my café latte “in a bowl, please”. No one did, so I did it back to myself. Ranoon turned around and left the Café until I stopped giggling.

This is how happy it made me to sit across from Ranoon and drink the yummy lattes:

Our evenings were generally infused with dining out in Le Plateau and Old Montreal and then an early night’s walk around the city or a drive around Westmount and Mount Royal where we ogled homes we can not yet afford.

Amidst our adventures, Ranoon and I learned that I have a nose for rain. It’s weird and it’s new and I don’t know to what I owe the pleasure, but I am your regular Rain-Bee (if there be such a thing) and I can tell you whether and when it will rain. I would come in handy if I could be packaged and sold.

Here’s where I realise I am actually cross-eyed. It’s hot:

Every night we watched a movie and I nearly killed myself after watching “The Good Shepherd” which I hear was originally titled “Matt Damon Is A Piece of Wood, Angelina Jolie Used To Kick Small Furry Animals After Shooting A Scene Because She Had To Pretend To Play Passive And Demure, No One Believes That Kid Wasn’t Queer And What’s The Plot, Anyway, Because I Can’t Hear Them?”

I then usually read and fell asleep at the crack of dawn.

I dragged Ranoon into Holt’s in order to play. I played with the hats and we both played with the sunglasses. Here’s the proof (again, please note Ranoon refused to have her picture taken for reasons I am not allowed to mention or else I am not allowed entry back into her home!):

(See: I’m cross-eyed again.)

(I’m not posing here, I was trying to tuck my hair into the hat and I was blinking while trying not to laugh out loud at something Ranoon said.)

& the crazy thing is, I’m considering buying those sunglasses. They’re Tom Ford Margaux. I’m in love and I’ve dreamt of them. I may just do it, even though I was told I looked like a cross between Lisa Bonnet and Michael Jackson in the photos.

While in Holt’s, we ran into my old friend B. B and I went to high school together and I was the first in our school to know he liked boys. B and I were dear friends and he is Montreal’s finest make-up artist. If you’re ever in Holt Renfrew, make certain to visit him at the Bobbi Brown counter and tell him I sent you; just look for the beautiful Asian man. (You may call him “Kiki”, his stage name.)

It was the perfect week. Relaxed, filled with introspection, laughs, excellent conversation, much love and the occasional “No, that’s not right” as a footnote to “If you were standing outside of yourself”.

Good friends are a rare thing and I keep thanking my lucky stars for each and every one of mine. This is how happy I was at the end of that trip:

See the entire lame-o photo stream here. I’ve learned that I have to – from here on in – sneak up on Ranoon and take photos when she’s not looking. Otherwise I’m not allowed. And in case you’re interested, she comes with a portable air conditioning unit that has wheels.

Thanks ya Ranoon! (And p.s. I *was* in Montreal last summer for a couple of days, as the hotel staff mentioned; right before leaving for Beirut. How odd that I forgot.)

If anyone knows how to make a smooth transition over to a three-column face for this place, please contact me; it’s what I’ve been trying to do and failing to figure out. Unlike TypePad, there seems no proper and simple way to set up Blogger in this manner and I think I’m really screwing with my Template. Should you see ‘static’ here over the next little while, please know it’s just me playing (and failing!).