One of the most amazing things about international mobility is the fact that every couple of years or so, you meet up with groups of people with whom you don’t have regular contact but still melt right into.
Convening in Portugal this weekend is a group like that. Friends from school of Mr K, former boys who partied together and where wives and girlfriends have been welcomed in as they appeared. And now with the addition of a string of children of varying sizes.
Last night we made a new acquaintance of a guy from Karachi. In the back room of a smoke-filled bar in Lisbon’s Barrio Alto he told us of a business plan he has for Pakistan. “It’s fabulous – there’s a 90% chance I’ll get killed but there’s a 10% chance I’ll get rich. I’ll take the odds, I want to turn the country upside down and say fuck you and the culture you’ve built for the past 200 years. This is my country and I want to be the guy who changed it.”
In contrast, my own life is so vanilla I might as well put it in a milkshake and drink it.
My feet needed a break today. Hello Havaianas. They count as shoes, right?