I love strangers who smile at you when you accidentally catch their gaze. Especially the ones who let you into their life for that fraction of a second. It’s just something about the levels of “genuine” that you can catch in their smile. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but you smiled at me like we were old buddies, and I love you for that.

I love strangers who say something to you, especially when you’re stuck somewhere together. I don’t feel the same way about strangers who converse. Often, I want to be left alone. Yet, I do enjoy acknowledging the fact that the person waiting with me is a person with a voice, a sense of humor, and a character. A simple comment or a quick joke about the shared experience is a form of acknowledgment, and I like that.

Speaking of humor, three years ago, there was a horrible traffic jam around the Al-Wadees roundabout in Shmeisani. When my turn finally came, my eye caught the eye of a young man in a huge gas-guzzler. He must have been in his late teens, and he looked flustered, so I stopped my car and waved him in ahead of me.

I will never forget what he did next, although its been three years.

In front of Al-Wadees, the young man stopped his car, pressed his hands together (palms touching and fingers pointed upwards), and then bowed deeply with the happiest smile I’ve seen in my life. Then he sat up straight and drove off. I was in awe for a week. The interaction lasted less than 30 seconds, and I don’t even remember his face. But his smile, my god, I’ll never forget his smile. That stranger made me feel so good. I still feel happy when I think of him, whoever that stranger was.

I love strangers who are comfortable. Like when I’m sitting at Turtle Green and I share my sitting space with a person whose name I don’t know, but whose body language shows that he or she has accepted me into their life for the remainder of our shared experience. Even better, I love it when I’m trying to plug in my charger and a stranger looks up and says that his or her Macbook is fully-charged, and that I can just use his charger instead of plugging mine.

I love strangers who compliment my glasses. I love strangers who laugh from the bottom of their heart. I love strangers who you can connect to on a level that is ironically deep.

I told you about my recently-found deep appreciation for honesty, and the kinds of strangers I love are the honest strangers. The people who don’t leave their souls at home when they’re in the midst of ones they don’t know. The people who remain true to themselves, regardless of who’s looking.

And I really, really love it when a stranger you see so often stops being a stranger and becomes a friend.

Strangers I love, thank you.

Find pictures of food that looks awesome. Stare. Drool. Share.

The sad thing is that I just had lunch.

From the numerous things I have received from media and brands as a “social media person” during the past years, the Sunny 105.1 “Feel Good Kit” that I received today is definitely my favorite, and probably the first and only one that I ever blogged about.

Ras ilabed. Soos. 3elket il beseh. Popcorn. Who doesn’t smile when finding these things in a bright yellow box? I’d take this kind of stuff over fancy chocolate any day. There’s also an awesome spa voucher, which is heaven-sent for us working people.

What also made me smile is the perfectionism. The kit is produced with beautiful attention to detail. The box is gorgeous and bright, happy yellow. My name is printed AND spelled correctly. There’s a cute little card that also shows effort, a mishmash between my Twitter page and their Twitter page. I love it.

Great job, Sunny. You’re already my radio station of choice in the car, and I already like the people who started the company and who are involved, so it brings up my like status to that of fan. That’s social media outreach done right, if you know what I mean.

The best thing is that I’ve been having such a long, horrible day, and the kit came at the perfect minute (right before I was about to kill someone. Killing averted. Yippee). So, thank you.

You’ve made me feel good, indeed. I wasn’t even bothered by the superfluous usage of exclamation marks in the card.

If you were forced to lose all your senses and keep two, what would you choose?

It’s a morbid thought, I know, but it’s one that I have consistently thought about since I was a little child. Two senses instead of one because I can never get myself to choose between the two senses I find most precious.

I’m a visual person. I see form before I understand meaning. My career is all about visual organization. I’ve been trained since childhood to look at the world. In fact, my very existence revolves around my eyes’ ability to perceive things more acutely than the eyes of others. Thus, the sense of sight is not something I take lightly.

The other sense I equally appreciate is the sense of touch. There is something magical about touch, perhaps even more magical than sight, don’t you think?

I’ve always been exceptionally aware of sensation in my fingertips. Even when I type (and I do a lot of that), I am very conscious of every key that my nerves experience as they crash against the plastic to type words. I can feel the slightly embossed letters printed. When I used to draw, I was often more aware of the texture of the paper than the shadows of what I would be seeing. When I want to really “look” at something, I have to run my fingers over it or else my vieweing experience wouldn’t be complete.

It’s the magic of touch that makes me really love hands. Hands do all the work that the brain dictates. A person who works with his or her hands must be very aware of them. He or she must be constantly conscious of every nerve, must really know how to use them.

And there are those few amazing humans who use their hands to think with their eyes. When I look at photographs of Picasso, for example, my eyes first land on his strong, well-defined hands, and then they get lost in the brilliance of his own eyes.

Look at the tapering of his fingertips. The hard texture of his palms. The thickness of each finger. These hands painted things that changed the world. It’s amzing.

What sense would you never be able to lose?

I’m turning 27 in a few months. I know, that’s not old. Yet, for the first time, I feel that I’ve reached a tipping point in my life.

I am not young anymore.

Think of it this way. I started this blog when I was 18. I was in the summer semester of my freshman year in college. We had just moved to Jordan. I had bought a car a few months earlier, and I was excited to explore the world I knew nothing about.

Today, almost 10 years later, I am a different person. The world isn’t the mystery it used to be. I did a little traveling. I’ve been pulling 9-to-6 shifts for five years, working with people who have almost put a dent in the universe. I’ve been through death, divorce, and dire situations. My friends have thinning hair, children, and loans.

In the past 10 years, my life changed, and not just because of age and experience. Today, there’s Facebook, Twitter, and 3G smartphones.  The Arab Spring has changed my part of the world, and everyone’s outlook on life. The Internet is maturing, and with its maturity, the world continues to experience new things.

You know when the feeling of age settles in? When I Google pop culture icons from my youth. Long gone are the carefree, youthful rebels. They simply look like they’re out of place. Remnants of a bygone era. Britney. Green Day. Joey. Madonna. Leo.

You know what’s worse though? Going through my own life and the lives of my friends, as told by Facebook. Facebook does, after all, conveniently display pictures in chronological order: your life, passing by, as quickly as the pictures load. Sagging smiles, thinning hair, eyes whose brightness has dimmed. Faces with no more baby fat, noses that have grown larger with the years. Friendships lost, friendships gained. Experiences dead and buried.

Life is so short. And we’re growing old.

She closes her eyes and tries to take pleasure in the tugging sensation in her brain for as long as possible. She concentrates on the thin strings connecting her consciousness to the world beyond. The thinness of the strings make her head feel hollow, like she has a big gaping hole in the middle of her cranium. Her mind is currently its own entity, miraculously still maintaining consciousness. She can feel the strings tighten and expand as she drifts in and out of awareness, like dough developing holes as it is being stretched.

Oh. She loves the feeling.

It’s the ink, she thinks to herself. She hasn’t inhaled the particularly sweet scent of ink in years. In her state of disconnection, the smell dislocates her in time. She can feel the cold laminated formica of her highschool desk pressing against her right cheek, as she lays her face against it in a futile act of note-taking. With her nose so close to the paper, the ink goes on a joy ride through her olfactory system.

It smells so sweet, and the sweetness breaks the flood gates to the rest of her senses. She can suddenly hear Lou Bega’s Mambo #5, taste Al-Safi’s chocolate milk, and feel the rough summer bed sheets against her back. She can see the hazy sky of Riyadh, and wallow in the dry, stuffy heat of the safety of her childhood.

No.

She shakes her head, attempting to regain concentration. Here comes the safe sound of typing, coming from many places at once, with different rhythms and patterns. The light is bright neon, adding a slightly clinical hue. The pursed lips on faces around her signify high levels of concentration. She can’t smell anything particular. And it’s well over ten years later.

The gap in her head immediately starts to close.