2008 recount

I had an interesting dinner conversation with a friend last evening where we recounted each quarter of 2008: the highs, the highlights, the lows. I found it a really fascinating thing to do: reflecting aloud had me stumbling and stuttering. Is that all I did in those 3 months? Can I be satisfied with it? Or am I viewing my achievements through the prism of society's notion of success? It was all, to repeat fascinating.

But there was definitely one theme so to say that came across from my reflections on 2008. It was a strange year in more ways than one.

What I mean is that what should have been tangible was actually intangible and vice versa. We can always attach metrics to our professional life but 2008 was that rare year where my gains were intangible but paradoxically extremely felt and experienced. My supposed intangibles such as travel, sights and sounds were more tangible than ever before in terms of what they have left me with. Usually our travel gives us a momentary high, when we are in the moment and then leaves us with a faint afterglow...a warmth revisited when we look at pictures but rarely do we experience an almost physical sense of ....something ...undefinable yet very whole ...that we take away from these experiences.

That was 2008 for me...a year of experiences, of elevating the aesthetic, of appreciating the as yet undiscovered, of finding more ways to define oneself...of accepting that despite 27 years there's more to know about myself.

2008 was:
Montmarte. Champs Elysée. Orry la ville! Hampi. Yogyakarta. Borobudur. Friends in Singapore. Radiohead. The Act! The Seine. Croissants. Learning French...well a little bit anyway. The Mairie. Neil Young. Hampi. My first half marathon! Dudok. Croissants. Lucky. Bitter...and Sweet. Remains of the Day. Ben Harper. Leidseplein. Charity fundraising...lots of it. :-) Kanua. Sacré Coeur. Aap ki Khaatir. Leffe. Running. Murakami. Learning. Venturing. Kipling's quote. R.E.M for the 2nd time. Lightening up. Cote du Rhones. Cousins. The Bulldog. New beginnings. The Louvre. Zakir. Shivkumar Sharma. Goodbyes. Reunions. Cricket. Weddings.

And before I end my post of 2008 from my blog...a hands down winner: :-) and how appropriate to begin 2009

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Apropos of nothing here is an excerpt from P.G W's " A D in Distress"

"Consider his position you faint hearted and self pitying young men who think you have a tough row to hoe just because, when you pay your evening visit with the pound box of candy under your arm you see the handsome sophomore from Yale sitting beside her on the porch, playing the ukulele. If ever the world has turned black to you in such a situation and the moon gone behind a cloud, think of George Bevan and what he was up against. You are at least on the spot. You can at least put up a fight. If there are ukuleles in the world, there are also guitars and tomorrow it may be you and not he who sits on the moonlit porch, it may be he and not you who arrives late. Tomorrow he may not show up until you have finished the Bedouin's Love Song and are annoying the local birds, roosting in the trees, with Poor Butterfly.

What I mean to say is, you are on the map, you have a sporting chance. Whereas George...well just go over to England and try wooing an earl's daughter whom you have only met once and that without introduction; whose brother's hat you have smashed beyond repair; whose family wishes her to marry some other man: who wants to marry some other man herself - and not the same other man, but another other man; who is closely immured in a medieval castle...Well all I say is - try it. And then go back to your porch with a chastened spirit and admit that you might be a whole lot worse off."