Meet "Maher"

I didn't see my friend Yasmine for a while, so we talked last week and she asked me if I'm interested to join for drinks at one of her friend's place, especially that Nabil, my friend and ex colleague from Leo Burnett Dubai, who is now friend with Yasmine as well is joining.

So I grabbed a bottle of wine and met Nabil in front of St Lawrence Market and we walked to Yasmine's friend place at the Esplanade..

Yasmine opened for us and introduced us to everyone there, especially to her friend Virginia who is hosting the drinks at her place.. And of course Yasmine was like: oh there is another Lebanese guy here tonight you should meet him, so I met Maher, who's been living in Canada for 8 years, and he worked for a while with Yasmine.

And then when Maher knew that I use to work with Leo Burnett on McDonald's he asked me if I know his girlfriend Rim who lives in Dubai and works at OMD, and works on McDonald's too.. And of course I knew Rim.. What a small world..
We talked about a Dubai, Toronto, and about the endless unstable situation in Lebanon which brought lots of Lebanese like us to move to Canada.

After having few glasses of red wine, and chatting with most of Yasmine's friends I left and hoped to see them again thanking Yasmine for her invitation and for trying to help me meet more people and new friends.

P.S.: if you're wondering who is the person wearing each pair of socks in different color, please ask Maher :)

Meet "Datcha"

Since I moved to Toronto, my cousins in Ottawa kept asking me to visit for few days, and I was busy settling in and fixing my house and starting the classes, and finally decided to visit for a weekend and they recommended the Winterlude weekend at the beginning of February, so booked my train ticket and was looking forward to see  them after very long time..

First night in Ottawa, my cousins decided to take me clubbing, at Babylon club, where there is a good DJ playing that night, so I took a quick nap and them got ready and we moved around 11pm.. We passed by a pub to pick up Datcha, a friend of my cousins, and just from the short ride to the club, I felt Datcha is so funny and he didn't stop making us laugh with his stories..

And one we reached the club, the queue to get in was huge and we had to wait outside shaking in the cold.. So Datcha decided to go and talk to the security guy and pretended he's the friend of the DJ, and at the beginning the security believed him and we were about to get in but it didn't take long for Datcha's game to get caught and we had to wait for 20 minutes until he knew that a friend of his is already inside and he managed to make us cut through the queue and get in right in time before we were thinking to leave..

Once inside the club, Datcha continued with his funny tricks, where he started blowing balloons and leave them flying between people, it seems he's a character, and my cousins like when they go out with him..

The music was good but some people seemed a bit weirdos for me (maybe I'm getting old), and a funny ridiculous incident happened to me there:

So this short guy came too close to me and asked me if I m Justin, so told him I m not (with his face full of anger).. And after a while he came again and asked me to see my Facebook profile to prove to him that I m not Justin.. Then he was like "swear to God you' re not Justin" So I told him to f... off and here my cousin, to avoid a fight, she swore that I m not Justin and that I don't live in Ottawa.. so he apologized and left us in peace but kept staring at me the whole night with his face full of anger like he wanted to kill me..

And the terror for me was the name... Justin.. Do I look like a Justin? Which Justin? Who's the F... is Justin? And imagine if my real name was Jusitn..

anyway, the night ended well, we had a good time, then I went with my cousins to drop Datcha to his place, and came back home, to get some rest and get ready for another day around Ottawa and meeting other new friends.