Six degrees or less
October 23, 2004
Oh my god. My head hurts big time. I've never had much of a problem with Ramadan (other than discipline that is). I mean, I generally don't have problems with the actual fasting. I don't get too tired or hungry. Mostly just a little thirsty. In high school our basketball tournaments almost inevitably took place during Ramadan, and I would play just fine, not drinking water or anything. Anyway, I must be getting old. As soon as I break fast my head starts pounding, and I seriously worry some nights if I'm going to have a stroke or something.
Anyway, enough of that. On to other things. I'm linking Ms. Dolo below. Check her out. She's funny, although she's always giving other people credit for being funnier. Not true! Also, I am jealous. She is in the Bay Area right now visiting Notorious and her best friend. Waah! Ok, hope the trip is fun.
Speakina Notorious and friends, GreatSirG has put a little shout out to me in his blog and on the sidebar. Yay! I'm not really into bud, being an MGD girl myself, but it's all good. :)
You know, I really love the internets (heh). Some people, especially here in Cairo, still see it as this too impersonal form of communication, but not me. BK and I essentially met, befriended and�.more over the internet. A true 21st century romance, although it was a little less weird because we had a real life connection in his brother, and one of my best buds, Jing. I�ve just been thinking about it lately because I really do dislike talking on the phone unless there is a lot of leisure time and it�s cheap for both parties. I�d much rather chat online with a friend, unless it�s been too long since I�ve heard their voice or there is an emergency or something.
I�ve been thinking about it too because the internet totally feeds into what has pretty much been a lifelong obsession of mine�connecting people. I love that whole concept of six degrees of separation. And on a spiritual level too, I do believe that everything in the world is connected, and I think making connections with other people is just one way of realizing that connectedness. I�m not really explaining this well.
This, though, is why I love things like friendster. The other day, I was surfing friendster and I was randomly checking out the profile of the friend of my friend from early (as one does on friendster) and I found out that he was connected to me in two different ways. The other being through GreatSirG by way of the NotriousRRZ. How weird is that? My friend from early college who I am pretty sure doesn�t know Notorious is friends with one of GreatSirG�s friends whom I know because of my Texan friend also from college NotoriousRRZ.
To switch topics just a little thought�Living in the Middle East makes the world a very small place I think, because so many people from all over the world pass through it at some point or other. I really came to realize this when I got to college and within the first month I�d met three people who had grown up in the US, Turkey, Jordan but whom I was connected to by 2 degrees or less because of people I�d met while living in Kuwait or Bahrain or Egypt.
Anyway, this is all getting to some small point. I�ve rediscovered the diaryland diary of a friend of mine from middle school in Kuwait. I knew that it existed but for a long time I�d forgotten it existed and then I was spelling it wrong. Anyway, last night I spent like two hours reading about the past three years of her life. She was really close friends with a couple of girls who would end up becoming my close friends in Kuwait later on. And our paths overlapped for two years (grades 7 and 8), and we were definitely friends. In fact, for those of you who are aware of my scrapbook-making prowess, the first scrapbook I ever successfully completed was for this friend, Nadia, when she moved back to her mother�s hometown of Toledo in the middle of the eighth grade. We had a big going away part for her, and me and the girls put together a book of pictures of her time with us, and lot of pictures of her big-time crush whom we all referred to as �mushroom.� Don�t ask. Especially don�t ask why I remember these things. Speaking of her crush though, I remember that Nadia and I switched lockers in the first semester of eighth grade so that she could be closer to her crush, and I could conveniently be closer to the boy I�d been crushing on since I�d moved to Kuwait.
Reading Nadia�s diary got me thinking about the internets too because it�s been years since we�ve communicated. For a while after she left we would send each other letters and post cards and stuff like that. And we even started up again very briefly in later high school, but since then I�ve only heard about her from her two best friends from those years who then later became two of my close friends (many of the Philly folk will remember Lakshmi who was one of them). It�s funny, Nadia still signs off on some of her diary entries the way she used to sign off on her letters. Anyway, after all these years I am able to, in a way, catch up with what has been happening in her life, and with her family who I was kind of acquainted with because her mom was very close with one of my mom�s very close friends from when we lived in Bahrain, and when we were moving to Kuwait asked us to take some things with us for Nadia and her family so I ended up knowing of Nadia, sort of, before I ever even moved to Kuwait.
See how this works?
Or is this just totally confusing?
Anyway. One last thing. Nadia is in a band called Faint of Heart. They�re interesting. I like the music, but I�m still a little iffy about the lead singer�s vocals. If interested though check out some of the audio samples on their website. You can also, apparently, buy the album from antifolk.net, the same place where the album by Cheese on Bread (from a few entries back) can be found.
And with that I�ll leave you all to attempt to decipher what I have written here. If anyone can find a point to it, please do let me know.