Friday, January 30, 2009

Between Dreams and Economic Playground

This morning while squeezing Hellmann's jalapeno sandwich spread on hard boiled eggs, I noted the "this is the time for real excitement" slogan on the container. I like food, I even enjoy it, but excitement sounds more like the brainchild of an avid copywriter than something I might feel when thinking of sandwiches or even caviar.
Yesterday night in a news item, elegant women claimed they are excited that now, because of the economic crisis, they can afford buying designer items they could only dreamt about until now. I like nice clothes and accessories, but dreaming about them is really not me.
Our dreams and aspirations, among other things, define who we are.
As a teenager in Romania, a Jewish American student tried to court me, but we had no connection. His dream was to buy his mother an exclusive shoe shop, a dream I could not relate to for different reasons. Being born and raised in a communist regime with no private businesses, I could not relate to a dream about any private business in general, and a boring shoe shop in particular. We were indoctrinated that real work produces a usually tangible something, buying and selling was considered parasitism.
Our dreams change during the years as we open up to new people, ideas, places, and experiences. Now I can at least understand such dreams, but not dream them. The transition is usually from one extreme to the other, until the pendulum stabilizes somewhere in between. When coming from a communist experience into a western economy, one usually embraces the political right and free market theory.
To understand where my economic pendulum stopped, imagine a sports ground with boundaries and rules defined by the state (laws and regulations), that also provides the referee (police and judiciary system), and players who play freely all sorts of games. No wonder in communism, where the state controlled all the games and winning or losing had no meaning, the players lost their motivation to play.
So what do I dream about? Affording a comfortable living.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Moments of Happiness


My own defitinition:
A moment you don't want to do anything else, but what you are doing, you don't want to be enywhere else, but where you are, you don't want to be with anyone else, but the one you are with, a moment you'd like to prolong.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Hypocricy


Thursday night.
Hairdresser salon.
Hairdresser: "Is your watch real?"
I wear an Omega Constellation.
Me: "Everything with me is real."
Except my haircolor, he is just dying it to hide the gray hair.
I'm a combination of vanity and hypocricy.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Dates

I love dates. I mean the food type, not the meeting type. The majhool species we buy dried is soft, sticky and sweet. Perfect dessert after dinner.
About 2000 years ago, some guy was eating a date in Masada, watching the Romans as they prepare for the seige of the fortress built by Jewish Roman King Herod the Great. The stones he spat were found by world-renowned Israeli archeologist and former army chief of staff, Yigael Yadin, in 1963 and recently sprouted by Israeli scientists.
The seed, nicknamed Methusaleh after the oldest person in the Bible, is now a ~1.5m baby palm tree.
Read the entire marvelous story here.

Saturday, January 10, 2009

Small Mercies

The routine of a full workweek (9.5 hours/day) with something to do almost every day after work, followed by housework on weekends is quite tiresome as doesn't leave much time for fun or relaxation.

A couple of weekes ago, Tom who learns in a boarding school, announced us he cannot bear the food at the boarding school any longer. Since then, my weekend routine contains more cooking and boxing a week worth of meals and cakes. Of course the cake vanishes minutes after his arrival there on Sunday.

This weekend I managed to finish all the cooking and baking on Friday, so Saturday morning my husband dragged me to the beach. As I've already mentioned, I'm not much of a beach person, but I must admit this time wasn't half bad. We walked along the water line and then I sat in the sun and read a paper. Fishermen, people strolling and jogging, dogs, even 3 horses, cafes, quiet music, jellyfish bodies in the sand. Free parking!
In the book I'm reading, (Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier), I found an interesting definition of love, something I'm always loking for: Love = passion + enjoyment + security. Since all three are temporary feelings that can't survive real life, loyalty, a decision rather than feeling is more important. I'm not sure I agree with the author's conclusion, but he definitely offers a good definition.
Tom says my food is the best among all of his friends' at the dorm. Don't all the kids say the same to their moms?
I have to finish my week by folding 3-4 machine loads of washing.
Thank God for small mercies.