Martyr

Tahrir Square, Cairo. 


I was there, 7 years ago. I stayed at what was then the Nile Hilton, with a room that had a balcony overlooking Tahrir Square. And what I would do to be at this very spot again earlier this week, when the gathering crowd cheered the announcement of Egypt's first elected leader after more than 3000 years of autocratic rule. Hopefully, the results of this election will bring the people of Egypt a better life that is long over due. 

夏

拥有过就该满足


那年夏天天气很热
我跟着你向前跑
你看着我我看着你
一切都变的很热


爱情真的有期限吗
我们走的越进
却越模糊

Natanz

Somewhere like this.


Leaves that are starting to turn golden, a lone tile clad minaret, mud bricks and a winding alley. There's nothing remarkable about it but yet its all very special to me. I can still recall the smell of the cool crisps air and the blue of the sky very vividly. I always feel a sense of guilt when planning a holiday to a destination other than Iran; Just a tiny hint, but enough.  

Aleppo

Where the streets have no name. 


Brown. That is how I would sum up most cities in Syria, Aleppo included. I might even throw in a hint of grey, due to the smog of pollution that usually hangs over a Syrian city. But of late it seems like red has become the de riguer colour for most Syrian cities; red from the blood of innocent lives lost. We would do very well to also throw in a smidgen of black, from the plumes of smoke that engulf the cities; no doubt from the artillery shells and smoldering buildings. As the world is paralyzed by the fear of another global financial crisis, lives are lost with each passing day in Syria; almost as if a life lost in a distant land matters less than the loss of value in our dollar. 

01-53

Je ne sais quoi


A passing glance at a doorway, 
shadows, light, a shutter snaps.
The intangible yet indelible,
captured; Forever on replay. 

Voyeur

Boy, bread. Simple. 


It is a fact that we learn as we grow.  Along the way we pick up tips and tricks to sharpen the learning curve, we acquire mentors who guide us, sparing us the pains of what they have gone through and learnt. But implicit in this fact is the truth that no matter how hard we try,  what we have experienced will never truly prepare us for what we are to experience.


"We learnt about nettles and thistles, and how grass which seemed such harmless stuff could give you a sudden burn like sandpaper. We were warned about knives and scissors and the dangers of the untied shoelace... we were warned about gluttony and sloth and letting down our schools, about avarice and greed and letting down our family, about envy and wrath and letting down our country. We were never warned about heartbreak."
~Julian Barnes

Connection

城市的屋顶都是天线却收不到从前


“What do we look for in a partner? Someone like us, someone different? Someone like us but different, different but like us?Someone to complete us? Oh, I know you can't generalize, but even so, the point is if we're looking for someone who matches us, we only think of their good matching bits. What about their bad matching bits? Do you think we're sometimes driven towards people with the same faults as we have?”
~ Pulse, Julian Barnes

Constant

"I am as constant as a northern star"


It rained heavily this morning and as a result the morning paper didn't arrive before I had left for work. Although I do not really find the news or at least the news reported by the morning paper very newsworthy, I found myself strangely irate with the fact that I had no reading material to accompany my breakfast. The absence of my morning papers or rather a break in my morning routine made me realize how much of an automaton I have become, at least on a working day. I tried to remember if I shampooed my hair this morning and I was sure I did because, that's what I do every morning when I get into the shower but yet I could not visualize my hands lathering shampoo into my hair. It was almost as if my mind had blanked out for that moment in the shower. And perhaps it did. Perhaps that is what a routine does to you and does for you. Perhaps it is the fact that the mundane has become so monotonous, so unbearable that the mind soothes itself by disconnecting itself from the reality. It is at this very moment that I asked myself if this is really life, as it is meant to be, in all its full glory, undone by the inability to recall a seemingly trivial detail with sufficient particularity.  I was reminded of the opening lines from Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and perhaps this is starting to border on the absurd. 


"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or os not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental questions of philosophy. All the rest - whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. These are games."
~Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus