Reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

Ouch. Reviews like these will make any writer think twice about continuing his ‘career’. "Time of death: 8:42 am Mountain Time". "Your last post wasn’t very entertaining” (in Icelandic). “…Magnus a very unpopular boy”. At least some anonymous soul said “… but we still love you” (out of sympathy?), and my mother agreed.

But anyway... Yes, I haven’t blogged in a while. I won’t bore you with the ‘myworkworkbalancesucks’ talk. However, a lot has been going on in my life as well.

Lets start with the small things. I, at age 29, finally bought myself a car for the first time. I had cars for three years when I was in Portugal – but they were long term rentals, and paid for by the company. Not ‘mine’. This one is.

It’s a toy of a car too – I’m a little embarrassed to talk about it, and wouldn’t have mentioned it here if my mother hadn’t kept pestering me about it (of all the people… the same person whose usual question if someone gets a car is “Really? What colour is it?”)… but basically, I’ve had this fantasy about living in a lifestyle city on the beach and driving a convertible since I was a kid. So… it was either now or during my mid-life crisis. I opted for now, and found my toy. It’s four years old, and it’s logged a lot of miles. But it’s an amazing toy…

That was the small news.

The bigger news is that my girl Tal is here in Dubai. She and I first met three and a half years ago – but most of that time we’ve been on opposite sides of the pond (she in New York, I in London). She’s now picked up, left her job, and come to spend the summer with me.

It is a big deal. It’s the worst time to be in Dubai (the summer heat is slowly becoming unbearable), and it’s the worst time to live with me (I spend an average of five days a week traveling for work and even then need to work on the weekends). But we not only knew that it was going to be tough, we’re doing it on purpose – it’ll be like the opposite of the ‘honeymoons’ we’ve had to date when we met and traveled together without having to deal with the nuisances of real life.

What will come of it? There was and remains one way to find out.