In which I am reminded that I am only male. 

I’d been hoping, today, to meet the girl and get things moving. I’ve been thinking about it properly and also getting pep talks from a few friends, so it got me pretty keyed up. And then she’s busy today and tomorrow, and said maybe when she comes back from Paris. I’m hoping we can still make it for Thursday. I admit to feeling an odd sort of pressure to get my say in before she goes back to Paris. 

There she’s in another environment, not least including being around her mother who, even right after she broke up with her boyfriend, was already trying to set her up with new guys. It would be nice to be something for her to come back to, is my point. 

And these are all nice thoughts, but today I was reminded that I am still just male. 

My single class for today was about Environmental Governance. We were given a case study about the Nile as a resource from 2004. Since the Nile is such a long river, real “possession” of it as a natural resource is contested. Egypt and Sudan have long had a near monopoly over it due to their British colonial heritage in a treaty signed in 1929, but new powers further upstream, like Ethiopia and Kenya, wanted in on the action. We were to have a short debate between the upstream and downstream countries. 

I was probably the most outspoken in my group, representing downstream Egypt and Sudan. I’ve been rereading Superfreakonomics, so my brain was slightly full of economics and environmental factors. The next most outspoken person was an apparently Swiss girl with a curious accent to her English, whose cynicism and slight apathy in regard to international politics was oddly enticing. There was also the way she rolled her own cigarettes. 

I don’t know, I just found it really attractive. Possibly I’m weird.