In this week's issue
This is my reply
Right off the top – I want to apologise for not getting back so promptly in print and in person, to all the lovely Friday people who take the time and effort to write in.
- G*Nice
- Published: 23:55 October 23, 2008
As many of you know, if you give a personal e-mail on your letters I always fire back one-to-one eventually, and those that don't, we deal with it in the magazine, the good the bad and the ugly!
Madhavi has an interesting observation.
She likened the thing we have going as "almost like being in the movie You've got mail". I don't know if that makes me Tom Hanks who I always think of as Forrest Gump but maybe that's a good comparison because she also notes "you weave in soo many different stories by going off on a tangent about something that for a moment seems to have nothing to do with what you started out with!"
That's spot on right. Is that a nightmare for you guys to follow? I sometimes forget that this stuff is written down. In my scrambled mind I just imagine that I am writing e-mails to loads of people who know me. I appreciate your tolerance of my freestylin' and Friday for just letting me empty my mind – but that's just what I am like in real life. I confuse myself sometimes with my tangents.
A really good example happened at lunch with some mates last week. While we were in a deep meaningful conversation about girls or football or such like, I pulled my friend aside and out of the blue discreetly asked him, "Can you do an impression of any international personality?" as it just struck me at that moment that I thought I could.
We laughed like hyenas for the next half-hour, slipping our Nelson's in at every opportunity! Ms Mad also picked up on a common theme of many others, asking why my column is slowly drifting further away from the front pages of the mag.
The obvious answer is the advertising, that at the end of the day pays the bills, but I would like to think that by using a food analogy, I have progressed from being a starter like a plate of raw peppers and lettuce to something a bit more appetising like hummus!
Kinza shared a thought-provoking theory.
She explained how she is a Pakistani national who has grown up here in Dubai so feels that she straddles two cultures, and feels more at home here than the place of her roots. She ponders "with the opportunity Dubai has given us, a new ‘culture' has evolved possibly the culture of misfits, or simply of people who have blended their cultures with a million others".
I think there's a truth in that… I feel that I am privileged to be here, immersed and welcomed within cultures that arguably I would not have ever got to be part of back in the UK, and I have changed. I feel I am as much from here now as I am from England. I speak some of the language, have as many international friends as Brits, and have a different outlook and knowledge on life than I had before.
In terms of proposing a name for us "misfits" ... how about New Dubyans! One of my older school readers, 63-year-old R. Ganeshan, explains how after 42 working years in 16 different places, he has "fond memories of friendships that linger on that will keep me ticking as I grow older" . Now that's some words from the wise that we should all keep close to our hearts and think about every now and then.
I thought I would leave you with one funny question and it's one that still comes up quite often ..."that picture of the guy with a laptop – is that really the back of your head? Or is it just a random picture?" I can reveal that it's me and the thought of it being just a stock picture of an English guy cracks me up – if it were a random shot he would surely be eating fish 'n' chips with a huge mug of tea!
Keeping it real-ily yours
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