I greatly enjoyed a showing of “The Social Network” last evening. But that doesn’t make me any more likely to join Facebook!

Drowning in opera

Stacey’s life path has been remarkably different from mine. For instance, she’s lived with another boy before. I am not always OK with bits of information like this, and my lack of real acceptance manifests in sinister ways, especially when she’s away. Like what happened last evening at an Opera performance (in a shady bar themed to match a submarine!).

Pleasant conversation and fun people, the evening was going remarkably well until the negative stresses popped up. The cuteish mid-twenty year old cuddling up to an older guy. She was enjoying the show, and he was enjoying her touch.

I couldn’t help but imagine you with someone else. I looked around and I started to see your face everywhere. A younger you. A naïve you with an innocent face, clearly in love. The happiness in your face as you looked at him; it haunted me.

The music changed. The once cheerful lyrics now dark and ominous.

And I needed to leave.

Circle of friends

Well, my great plan to write an entry per day for a whole year lasted about a day. But who wasn’t expecting that?

My social life has improved tremendously since I left the States. For one, I have a loving girlfriend with whom I’m physically and emotionally intimate. I don’t live alone anymore. I have a few close friends to talk to, more to meet up with for activities almost every evening, as well as get to travel with on occasion. Life is good. In fact compared to my earlier situation—being completely isolated and having suicidal tendencies—my current state could be deemed life in Utopia. But even so, there’s been one thing that’s been constantly nagging me:

Everybody I know knows everybody else I know.

Let me try to explain this. Everyone I get to interact with from day to day: my partner, friends, flatmates, landlords, activity partners, … is either someone I work with or someone they knew and introduced me to. Every single person. This isn’t inherently bad, but I don’t think it’s normal. I feel like I can’t ever say or do or feel anything toward any of these people without everybody else somehow knowing. And that bothers me quite a bit.

This thought has been gnawing at me for a while, but only recently did it crystallise in my head. With which came the obvious solution to my predicament: I needed to bond with other people removed from this bunch. But along with the obvious solution came the obvious problem: I believe I’m borderline autistic, and that my current social circle materialised through pure luck. How could I possibly recreate that environment?

One times three-hundred and sixty-five

It’s taken me a long hiatus to realise this, but I need to write. I think putting my thoughts and feelings down in words plays an integral role in how I go about processing them. And so, starting today, I plan on rekindling my writing habit by jotting down at least one entry here each day. I’ve resolved to keep it up for a year, but we all know how well such proclamations usually pan out. However long this lasts, I expect that the writing style will be unfocused, raw and in the moment. Though today, you get a little back-story for the tales that are to follow.

  • After a month-long holiday in India with Stacey, followed by a couple months alone there doing very little, I returned to Oslo. I’ve been here for just under a month now, and live in a new home with a couple of housemates who are also my friends and colleagues. This leads to some interesting situations which we’ll definitely be getting into. Either way, this is a temporary situation as Stacey and I will be moving into an apartment together before the end of the year.
  • Things with Stacey have been almost perfect, and she makes me very happy, despite the fact that she’s needed to go to the States for a few months to study. She’s managed to take breaks and visit me in the interim, which has made it a lot easier on us. I’m much happier in Oslo than I was in India, and my feelings toward Stacey gives me a surety about my decisions that I lacked before she came along. Even so, I have some misgivings about her past, which is a topic of some consternation when I feel low. (Which tends to happen when I feel separated form her. Which tends to happen when I am separated from her.) I hope this changes as we spend more and more time together.
  • I am trying to make all sorts of positive changes in my life. I have started to work out and I dress better. I am motivated to work hard (to ensure my stay in Oslo). I am trying to form and maintain additional friendships beyond my current set. These changes help me feel better about getting older.
  • I work in a new scientific group, and not knowing many details makes me feel like an idiot. You’ll hear about this more and more if my reading doesn’t improve the situation.

I am sure a lot more back-story is required to orient you to subsequent stories, but I will stop for now. Instead, I’ll try to insert relevant bits as necessary, and now go to sleep.

Today is the day I turn thirty. Perhaps now is the perfect time to let all my unfulfilled dreams die.

My mom took me to a temple that supposedly blesses its patrons with a speedy, fulfilling marriage. Think she’s trying to tell me something?

If there’s one tenet I’ve picked up from my father it’s this: “Why know when you can assume?”

Two more kiddies!

I took one of my regular trips to the local SOS Children’s Village a couple of days ago. When I first started receiving my student stipend years ago, I began supporting two children there: a 9-month old baby girl, Maria Merlin and a few year old boy called Venugopal. Today, six years later, they’re both growing up to be cute, playful children.

Merlin and her mom

While sitting at the SOS offices to pay my yearly donation, it occurred to me that I really should be doing more, since I have come a long way (financially) since those early student days. So that’s exactly what I did! Starting from this year, I am proud to announce that I support two more children. Introducing Nagarajan (foreground) and Veeravimin:

Nagarajan and Veeravimin

Now, doesn’t this bit of news make you feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside too?

Spent nearly the whole day helping one of my mom’s (blind) students with his Ph.D. thesis. Feel cheerful and drained at the same time.

Found a weak wireless signal somewhere in the middle of a tropical forest. Just writing to inform you that I’m alive and well!

Breaking news

These past few days have been quite chaotic. Shortly before I landed, my favourite grandma had a nasty fall and ended up breaking her hip in numerous places. She’s not in pain anymore, but the doctor that performed her reconstructive surgery yesterday said she’d take a few months to recover completely. In all this activity surrounding my grandma—trips to the hospital, handholding old relatives (and coddling their grand-children!) who keep popping up to visit her, sorting out food for some of the longer-term stays, disseminating information about her progress, …—I haven’t had much time really to talk to my parents about my life; about Stacey.

A couple of months ago, I was lost. There were voids in my life I knew not how to fill. The wide array of choices I had laid out before me for when my contract in Scandinavia completed made it quite obvious: I was OK with doing whatever, wherever, in my search for something more. All this began to change as I got closer to Stacey. After spending nearly every moment with her since I first met her, it became clear to me that I was happy right where I was with her. I liked my job and my friends and my home and my city (fucking cold and dark as it can be!). Unfortunately, this realisation came just a few weeks before my current contract expired, taking down with it my intimately-linked European work/residence permit. We tried quite valiantly the last ten days or so to sort something out in terms of employment, but my months of telling people I was leaving (to teach kids) and turning down offers to extend my stay was hard to undo. Not wanting to take any chances, I decided to book a ticket back to India, and sort out how to return from there. Since we were confident things would work out on that front, I left much of my stuff back in Oslo with my friends and Stacey suggested she’d join me, transforming this hasty trip into a month-long vacation in India.

She’ll be arriving soon. We’ll be leaving soon to find somewhere relaxing that’s neither too hot nor too wet in July.

I wanted to sit down and explain all this to my folks. Talk about how I feel toward her. Talk about my life, the choices I’ve made and the ones I’m still yet to. That they needn’t worry for me. That I’m still their responsible boy. That no matter how unsure I am about the future, I’m nearly thirty years old and I’m brave enough to do the things I want to. And happy for it.

But I can’t. They’ve been distracted by another phone-call requesting them back at the hospital.

In India now! Now to hatch some sort of a plan.

It isn’t always easy to tell the difference between wanting a girly girl and wanting to be a girly girl.

I just saw the bluest, most radiant eyes I’ve ever seen. Behind a niqab.