Monday, October 29, 2007

Stuck in different dimensions

Yesterday evening, I sat on the Thalys train from Paris to Brussels, reading « A thousand splendid suns » by Khaled Hosseini. And I came across a wonderful fragment that really explains my side of the INSEAD experience so far :
“…Laila had learned a fundamental truth about time : like the accordion on which Tariq’s father sometimes played old Pashto songs, time stretched and contracted depending on Tariq’s absence or presence.”
Or simply said: weekends in Barbizon fly by at the speed of light, while Brussels seems to be stuck in another time dimension…A dimension where one day feels like one week.

P feels as if P1 was over before he even realized he got admitted at INSEAD :-). For me, P1 just went on, and on, and on, and on…..It’s an easy one to understand : P wants this year to go on forever – so it flies by. I want P1 and P2 to be over as quickly as possible, so they are lasting an eternity! Moreover, I’m still stuck in the same daily routine, while in P’s life literally everything changed (except the girlfriend, ha!).
Also, we all know that time simply flies by when you’re having "fun" (the most recent INSEAD-definition of fun: all living together in the campus library, just going home to shower and get a few hours of sleep ;-).

Apart from the “time warp”, other strange things are happening. I feel far more at home in Barbizon than in Brussels. Barbizon, where I spent three weeks + 2 weekends, opposed to Brussels, where I’ve been living in the same apartment for more than four years. And I know it sounds ooooh soooo corny, but the only explanation I can find is that “Home is where the heart is” (permission to go "Aaaahhh" granted). Every time I come home after spending some time in France, I feel like an unwelcome visitor in my own apartment, totally out of place. And only one question pops into my mind “What the hell am I doing here?”.

Anyway, I’m trying to make the best out of it. I’ve made some fresh veggie-soup (which I know would taste ten times better if P would give me compliments on it), I try to watch some tv (but there’s nothing on; if P would be here, there would be this great reality show, and we would be arguing about watching it or not), and I’ll go to bed early (although I’m not tired; if P would be here, I would start yawning at 22.00pm, and our different bio-rhythms would prove an issue again).
God, now I already start to miss our arguments and issues…How bad can it get?

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