My friend Eszter and I went to the beach yesterday, the first time this year. Weather is definitely getting nicer, the water was just perfect, all came with a gentle breeze, just what you need to feel the greatness of life.
Floating in warm water, we discussed our favorite beach topics (how boring baby blogs are, how boring life with kids can get, etc) (oh you guessed right, none of us have kids), when someone, who btw had extraordinary big ears,- said hello in Hungarian.
He said hello in a way how a friend would, so I looked at Eszter but she nodded to show she had not known him either. Having awful face memory, I searched for a clue whether I was supposed to recognize him. It turned out he is a tourist visiting Dubai for 11 days. He, his friends, and his extraordinary big ears.
He asked if we liked Dubai, and right there the second question, he asked if there was anything else apart of big bucks keeping us here. The third question was straight in the middle, asking how much our salaries were.
Khm. I love to travel places where I know someone. I love to get know new random people at places I travel to. I love to have advices from locals and non-local residents, who can tell me everything that is not written in the tourist guides.
If I were the guy I had taken the opportunity asking for recommendations on the best beach, best local restaurant, coolest place to go, ramadan habits, discuss some local weirdness that I noticed, etc.
No, he (and his extraordinary big ears) wanted to know the salary of a total stranger instead.
I told him "So I hope you will enjoy the rest of your holiday, Dubai is a great place" and he was laughing at my face with an expression "I cannot believe this" and "she is hysterical".
I bought a book the other day. It is The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. Some friends told me it is good and the new "hot one", but none of them could tell me clearly what was it about. So the audiobook version was displayed 100mm away my face on the counter at the shop where I bough something else, and suddenly I decided to check it out.
I am half way through, and have not decided yet whether it is worth to recommend or not. It is a kind of self-help book, based on positive thinking methods, telling you that all can be achieved what you want.
I realized most reasonable techniques described in the book as "ways to use The Secret" have already been applied by me in general, except I have never been thinking about them.
Some chapters are crap, like the "Imagine you make 100x more money next year and you will". Ehh. It actually takes much more than that.
But some is correct. A method that Rhonda Byrne mentions as basics to The Secret, is gratitude, to be grateful of what you already have, to say thank you and feel happy about your present situation.
Actually, I do stop time by time, have been doing it for 10+ years, look back, summarize where I am, notice the positive changes since my last summary, and feel happy about how I live and why I live. Rhonda reckons you should do it every day, I do it only occasionally, maybe every two months. Last time was about a week ago, I went to a huge building site near Abu Dhabi, which is just a piece of flat desert now, and by 2009-2010 it will be an operational district of the city. I drove through, parked at the massive big site office, walked in, and was truly happy to be part of this development.
Beach also often makes me think about rainy London and turns me truly grateful.
Back to the guy with his extraordinary big ears, he said he was working in London. He never mentioned what he does, but as Muegyetem, the name of the most famous Hungarian university did not ring a bell to him, I assume he never had the chance to enter higher education. Yet he was probably working hard and he could afford an 11-day holiday in Dubai, where there are no hostels and hotels cost a fortune. Yet he had the beach after rainy London with nice warm water and gentle breeze.
Why cannot you stop, look back, and be grateful of what you achieved? Why do you need to worry about the salaries of total strangers?
And why you are not the only Hungarian who could die for learning what other people make, in jobs totally irrelevant to your life?
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2 comments:
You're right. It is strange. Like you, I'd ask for recommendations of fun things to do. I can't imagine asking a stranger their salary. Unless maybe I was in the same line of work and we had already had a lengthy discussion about it.
Your beach day sounds excellent. It's gray and rainy here. But it should be good for the plants.
Oh I'm famous now! I open this blog and my name appears!
Well the story in the water was a bit strange, what really upsets me is that till now I thought we have a quite "secret " and difficult language (it took 1 year to my Italian husband just to pronounce my name)
but now we can't just chat on the beach because one guy whit extraordinary big ears can interrupt us.
By the way I know Agi for 2 years now but I never could find out anything about her salary :)
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