Underthoughts

Happy Brazilians!

Workmates

Waffle place!

Crazy artsy techy

Haifa from T19

Haifa Bay

windy new year’s eve

Today was marked by the discovery of an old journal of a dear friend and with it some feelings of self-consciousness, for him. For me it was more a recount of pretentious phases, illuminating moments, a certain crudeness with words and struggling moments with one’s passion.

It’s an interesting experience to know the person now and to read him back then.  It’s like seeing a draft of someone that will later be elaborated and refined with some parts being added and others removed. Reading the journal, I found the early stages of many then emerging ideas that are now well-developed; struggles which have been long-won and some others which are still on. Talking about it with him brought up feelings of being teenagers again and many a memory now worth a reflective smile.

I was reading mine 6 months ago and I too had that same feeling of self-consciousness. Not sure why we are almost embarassed of what we were, did we expect ourselves to be little perfect beings right away? Although I’m sure that at that time we did not think we were embarassing at all. In any case we were who we were and maybe we should all look at the past with Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien” playing in our heads.

Any 31st December – 1st January outside of Mauritius without firecrackers, Amanda, Pamela, my balcony (reminiscence of Romeo that lead to tirom), smoky roads at midninght, Sonoo’s famous (or unfamous) ‘pétards’, non-alcoholic champagne, my mother’s tireless and spotless cleaning in the days preceding, the eternal washing and changing of curtains, lists of gifts and anticipation of those coming on the 1st of Jan, the exceptional shopping at London supermarket with 2 carts ( one of which is filled with all sorts of drinks only..) ; the one time of the year where Gavin and I get to chose any of the snacks we want and pile them up, going to the temple with my Dad, my grandparents, countless running back and forth between upstairs (my place) and downstairs (my gparents’ place), the famous ‘Moolkoos’ and endless ‘Coca’, the traditional dinners and lunch, annual visits to family and neighbours  creates a longing for me to be back there in my homeland. Thats the period of the year I miss Mauritius and my family the most because it was such a happy time (at least in my memory).
After 3 years of celebrating or rather not celebrating New Year in Canada, 2007 – 2008 new years was actually not bad at all. It started out with having no plans at all and depressing at having another crappy new year again to a call from Vidya inviting me over for dinner. Then going home after work, we ran into Marjan and Sam and we all spontaneously decided to go have waffles at that amazing place and  watch the fireworks at T19.

My mother and my brother are arriving in three days. They are currently in UK visiting my cousin, his wife and their two daughters. I realised a couple of days ago, while trying to plan their visit here that this will be the first time I get to host my mother, show her around, worry about her lunch and dinner and make sure that she is having a good time. It has always been the other way around, where I go on holiday to Mauritius and they take  care of me.

Because my term of service is only  year, I don’t have holidays so I was worried about having my family here without having any one to show them around. Luckily for me, Vanya who served here before and who also is a family friend of ours is visiting her parents for a month and is arriving the next day. So she gets the privilege to show them around while I’m at work!  It works out pretty well for me since I will not have to worry too much about whether they got on the right sherut to bahji, whether they made it safely to the hadar and whether or not they get ripped off by taxis.

Vanya and I have known each other practically since we were born. Our mothers are good friends and we grew up in neighbouring communities. With her being only a year older, we went to the same kindergarten school that was run by a Baha’i lady. People used to say we looked like sisters because we had the same straight black hair with the same haircut,  à la Mireille Mathieu :) . I am looking forward to spend some time with her.  The last time I saw her was maybe three, four years ago. Even though we both went back to Mauritius while we were abroad for our studies, our holidays never coincided.