the fake blog

recieving texts from my sister (who is currently visiting london), it was certain that the topic of marriage would come up. of my marriage.
mum brought it up very casually indeed. would you like living in england? she knows the answer to this. i prefer home. home is norway.

growing up, my sister and I always envied indians in england. the food, the music, the clothes, the culture, the family (?) and last, but not least, peer indian friends.
being told we would one day be married off to someone in london was a good thing. we were too young. we did not understand what this meant.

love marriage has never really been an option, well not untill recently.
my parents have been having bigger marital problems than usual lately. i think this is what lead them to giving me the option.

summer of 2003 the story was completely different. one of our "missions" in england was to find my match, or atleast let everyone know we were looking.
it did not go too well. i made sure of that.

admittedly, i did not meet any of the two (three?) guys out of total free will. before i knew it, i had meet them. everyone kept telling me there was no pressure. that did not help me. the fact that these guys wanted to marry me after a 30 minute conversation did not help either. i felt pressured.

luckily for me there really was no pressure.

looking back on this now, i remember going into it with a fear. i feared having meet a couple of guys, and being "rejected" or "rejecting" them, my parents would come to a point where they would just want me to marry someone. soon.
good thing not all my paranoia thoughts do not come true.
i returned to norway. the topic has hardly come up since that summer.

i hate to admit it, but i have always been a romantic at heart, and therefore love marriage has always been the ideal. this romantics notion is a bit old fashioned thought, and maybe that is why it belongs to dreams.

these days i look at it much more practically. (much to my parents delight, i am sure!)
some time back i had a chat with a friend who told me about her cousin and how she had gone through somewhat the same emotions. atleast this reassures me that i have not gone completely mad! maybe arranged marriage is not that bad. that is the realisation i have come to lately.
apparently when a girl reaches a certain ages, she is willing to marry a guy cause he is decent. the fact that she may not have any feelings towards him does not matter. this is also how parents want you to look at it. this is what my parents hinted summer of 2003.

who knows, maybe by this summer i have "learnt" this and soon i will be moving to london. even though it is not home..

fake time: 1:58 am sunday, march 20, 2005

i got hold of three cd's today. two that i'd already 'ordered', 'tank' by asian dub foundation and 'join me in the park' by nathalie nordnes. the last one was just something i picked up cause of the album name. i think it's a compilation of artists. i've never heard of any of them. 'jazzland remixed' its called. hopefully it'll be a pleasant surprise.

wierd thing though, the first cd i put in was nathalie. there's something about this album. i really like it. i've only heard some of it so far, but its so pleasing to the ear. one of the song's (open your eyes) has a edith piaf feel to it. probably not literally because i can't remember ever listening to any of her stuff. yet it does take me back. to the time before the war. do let me know any of you, if you've heard it.
the album seems so chilled, yet popy in parts. a nice mix i think. highly recommendable by my standards!

and i can't believe i still don't feel the urge to listen to adf. what's happening to me? or is it them? i choose to blame them. and yes, this does mean that i've yet to buy the cd! and i'm not even ashamed to admit it!

fake fake time: 10:20 pm wednesday, march 16, 2005

i went on a negotiation course today, held at my university. it was rather good. most of the covered topics are found in 'getting to yes: negotiating agreement without giving in', but the course gave a rarely found view as the examples were based on norwegian companies. it was interesting to learn how many businessmen go into negotiations without any preparations at all. taking the potential loss into consideration, i find this very odd. these days with the profit margins being tight and potential new customers being few, negotiation should really be given the attention it is due. but then again, this might be just a norwegian phenomenon. what do i know?

fake time: 8:44 pm wednesday, march 09, 2005

i can't believe it. a guy at work is vegetarian. (i know i strongly dislike working there, but the people are really nice!)
apparently he's always been. his parents turned vegetarian after visiting india. how cool is that?
suddenly this guy seems much more interesting. just because of his diet.

another good by-product of work is finally finding out where the organic vegetarian resturant is. (does this mean i'll finally have my first soya burger? it sure does!) there are no other resturants/fast food places in the city so i'm totally excited about it. apparently they've got a broad variety, and it's supposed to be really good. i can't wait to try it out!

fake time: 6:42 pm thursday, march 03, 2005

i don't exactly love my job, that's no secret. one good thing about it though, are the answering machine messages that i stubble upon. the best ones, according to me, are those made by childen. nobody likes an answering machine, but cute voices make them more bearable.
all i know is that i want one of those. my answering machine message is pre-historic (ie from spring 2001 or so!).
all i have to do now is have a kid...

fake time: 7:01 pm wednesday, march 02, 2005

guys are supposed to have firm handshakes. the firmness signals across a man of action. don't ask me why, but in my head it always has. it's my theory.

we finally had our english negotiation today. it didn't start off with introductions and handshakes as we already knew one another. on my side i had another girl. our opponent was alone. his colleague for the negotiation was at the hospital being operated on for a fracture or broken bone or something. apparently he'd been kidding around with a mate, fighting.
the negotiation went quite well. overall i think we got most of our points through. there was one point though, our opponent wasn't willing to budge on. suddenly he didn't seem like the sweet guy that had asked me for my number the week before. who had thanked me upon recieving it. the guy who had left me feeling guilty for not thanking him for getting his number. suddenly he was this lean mean negotiating machine.
in the end we had to give up because our other points were more important to us.
the negotiation ended by us shaking hands. that's when i realised i had underestimated him. the firmness of the shake left me feeling that he had almost broken my hand.

theory strengthened.

fake time: 8:21 pm tuesday, march 01, 2005