larose

Pretty good, some beautiful passages. Always nice to read a story where characters redeem themselves and each other through generosity of spirit.

More notably, the subject of my second book club meeting here, at my recommendation in January. Only a few people had read even part of the book -- there were some new faces this month -- but still the conversation was lively. Once again I'm glad that I went with that whim in January to discuss The Remains of the Day.

Also, I am WAY off normal book reading pace. Gotta pick it up. Reading What the Dead Know by Laura Lippman right now, and the book club book this month is Blindness by Jose Saramago.

dubai

The trip down was smooth and uneventful except that I did not sleep until 7:30 AM, and then for just an hour or so after arriving at the hotel. Forced myself out of bed, to breakfast, and to day zero of the proposal workshop. It ended up being really good: we spent most of the day in four small groups (gender; monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning; finance and budgeting; and governance and management), first writing down issues that had come up during implementation of the first phase, then coming up with recommended solutions that we could employ in the new phase, and finally sharing out from the small groups to everyone else. I didn't work on the first project so I participated in both MERL and gender as an observer. Learned a lot. Wish I'd been more awake and less cranky. One which note: I was in a bit of a glass case of emotion today vis-a-vis SRB. Much more so than yesterday. That is attributable in no small part, I'm sure, to the lack of sleep. But I'm confused about her and myself and that was in the back of my mind until the workshop ended around 4:45 and we returned to the hotel.

Then EAH, who's the Kabul counterpart of my team member LNT, and I went to the Dubai Mall. What an insane place. We both wanted a walk, and I wanted mainly to stay awake and see if I could find some hiking shoes. She had a couple of shopping items in mind, as well. Not everything is available in Islamabad, and way, way less is available in Kabul. Massive success for both of us on the shopping front, and it was good to spend some time with her. We'll be working together a fair amount on a couple of upcoming regional or at least bi-country proposals so having some non-work time to get to know each other a bit was good. Plus we seemed to enjoy each other's company. I enjoyed hers anyway.

Now I've got a few work things to do and then I am going to pass the f out. Party starts at 8:30 tomorrow. Woohoo.

trips

Early Sunday morning, I will leave for a proposal workshop in Dubai that's going to include something like 50 people from five different countries. That is way, way too many people. But okay, this is how we do things. I'm looking forward to it, my first overnight business trip in the new role (except Geneva last summer, but that was obviously before I'd moved to Islamabad). At the very least I'll meet some interesting people, learn some more about the project, hopefully contribute a bit myself, and do some shopping. Should put together a list. It'll include:

• Scrabble
• Boggle
• Scotch (obv to purchase in duty free on the way home)
• Wine if I have space in my bag

And something else I thought of last night that is escaping me at the moment.

Back Wednesday night, then work on Thursday and at least part of Friday. And then I'm going to Lahore for the weekend, for a big Sufi music festival and a food festival that coincide with each other. Quite excited for that. RF and I are staying a proper hotel this time, and several other friends are also coming for the weekend although I'm not sure where they're staying. It'll be fun to see the Lahore crowd again, even if briefly. The last trip was so fun. 

Last thing before I stop procrastinating and start boning up on the background materials for this workshop: The book club picked the book I recommended! So 22 Feb we'll meet up to discuss LaRose. I picked it up again last night and read until later than I should have -- see previous post for an explanation of why I might have had trouble getting to sleep -- and am enjoying it. 

girls

Hard to call it a breakup because we weren't really dating but SRB broke things off last night because, long story short, she's not over her ex. That's probably good in the long run, but at the moment it sucks.

1. being rejected is shitty
2. being rejected in favor of another dude she also rejected but still has feelings for is shittier
3. being rejected after making it clear that the only red line was that she be working on getting over the other dude, her agreeing to that, then getting all weird a few days ago and lying about why even when i asked point-blank about it, sleeping with her a couple of times but not having sex because of said weirdness -- is even shittier

Texted with my friend AK about it this morning (her night, she's in DC), and she pointed out that it's not personal: for SRB it's about herself and her feelings for this other guy and the fact that she likes me -- which she does -- is in the background. Also that if SRB is dealing with internal shit then it's way better to have a clean break than be ambiguous about shit. That's true, but still feeling hurt/pissed.

I'll get over it, just feeling a little bit emo today.

EDIT: After cooling down a bit and FB messaging with SRB, I had an epiphany: I've been taking our relationship way too seriously. It's not like we have a future together, she's leaving the country for good in May. (In my defense I didn't know that for sure until today, but it was always likely.) We like each other, and part of me knows it'd be dumb to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The baby in this case being hanging out with and sleeping with someone I like, and the bathwater being my quasi-suppressed desire to be in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Letting my internal expectations/status-meter race ahead of where we'd decided to be at -- and we talked about it several times -- was not good. Not good. Didn't realize how far ahead until she hit me with the "I'm not ready to be done romantically with my ex" last night.

But talking with her today gave some clarity on what she meant by that, and I think that if I can reset and recalibrate to a much more casual level, we can be friends with benefits. Which is what we should have been, and were, except in part of my brain, all along.