With or without

It's lovely out there. The evening is silent, well, except the conference of the birds. I can only hear a passing car every now and then. Sometimes there are parents, taking the children back home from the park but not this evening. It is still and beautiful and the sun has gone down. We had a surface ice warning today but it was fine. I went on a short walk and listened to Maron interview Hasan Minhaj. I didn't like it too much. I thought Hasan was getting interrupted quite often. And there's a particular way that someone who is white and not Muslim approaches people from Muslim cultures, a way in which their questions are riddled with presumptions. I don't like that. And I don't like that interviewees are often too nice to not refute immediately.

Anyway, here is a picture from sunny Barcelona. I took it in January 2020. It was supposed to be the year I was going to travel more and do many outdoorsy things. What's funny is, it was already known in December 2019 that a mysterious illness was spreading fast from somewhere in the world. A week before my flight, my parents tried to persuade me to not go, warning me that I might get ill — or worse, stuck. Well, they weren't wrong. I could have gotten stuck were my plans delayed by two months. But I was lucky. And it was lovely. And I would go there again if I my travel anxiety allowed. What a pity it is to have an illness that doesn't let you fully experience the world on your own. Still, I'm so proud of myself for having made it so far.

Speaking of podcasts, I'd like to plug one of my all-time favourites (and I've listened to many). It's called The Trojan Horse Affair and it's available wherever you get your podcast but also here. I won't say much but it's about a mysterious letter and Islamophobia and it takes place in the UK. And what they don't advertise is that it's also about a budding friendship between a seasoned journalist and a rookie who come from very different cultures. I can't recommend it enough. I raced through it in two days because the suspense was killing me.

I've been thinking so much about friendships these days, thinking so much about how most of my friendships are and have been purely virtual. Been thinking of how I could have been a better friend. Thinking of how, perhaps, I didn't do enough. But that's not right. All relationships are two-way and mutual. One can only try so hard. What if the other person isn't giving you anything and you're the only one sharing your life's most intimate moments and feelings? At some point it really gets tiring and I give up. Yet there's always that hope. That the friend might come back. That you'll pick up right where you left off. That it's going to be different this time.