For the last five months, my fiancee and I have been establishing our new life together — and that includes finding an apartment to rent; furnishing it from scratch; finding, booking, and preparing a wedding hall; arranging a honeymoon; and, of course, completing absurd paperwork for the government to document our marriage.
We have already managed to do 73.2% of the above. Do not ask me how I calculated this percentage, but trust me — it is accurate.
After I had done an incredible search for a decent — and affordable — place for rent, I managed to find one in late December last year. I truly couldn't fathom the preposterousness of some of the advertisements I came across during my search. Most, if not all, of those weird ones were posted online. I remember one that read "all the neighbors are united as if they were one hand" next to the features the place had. I tried to explain to the landlord that potential tenants usually don't consider joining a fucking alliance when they look for a new house, but he blocked me. It was a Facebook post in some group. Another freaky advertisement was one that included a lengthy sentence next to "an extra chamber" the house had. It was something like this, but in Arabic of course: "There's an extra chamber that could be perfect if utilized as a storage room for items you rarely use, or stuff you want to keep temporarily before you eventually get rid of them." Seriously? What if I wanted to "utilize" it as a torture chamber where I punish my future kids "temporarily" before I "eventually" tuck them in bed? Why — in the actual fuck — are you telling me, in such intriguing wordiness, what to do with the fucking chamber?Anyway, thank God I have managed to find a good place. It has a huge master bedroom, two bathrooms, a balcony, a nice living room, and a spacious kitchen that could be perfect if utilized as a dinning room, as well, where we temporarily stay to have any of the three daily meals before we eventually head back to other rooms in the apartment.
Furnishing the apartment is still ongoing, but it is almost done. Speaking of that, I have a confession: The process of shopping for furniture is surprisingly entertaining. It might be a time-consuming activity; yet I have been enjoying the hell out of it. I can understand now why some people, men and women alike, can easily develop an addiction to renewing or buying new furniture for their house, which echoes what Edward Norton said when he was taking a shit while browsing an IKEA catalog in my favorite movie of all time: Fight Club.
The endless choices, colors, fabrics, and designs certainly made our task a lot more difficult than we had expected. Most stores we've been to have their own workshops where they manufacture more than 90% of the items displayed in the showroom, which means even more custom-made choices and variations. And actually, that's what we did with a couple of sets. For instance, we liked the modern design and good quality of a three-piece sectional set for the living room; however, we paid some extra money and asked for a different type of fabric, textile patterns, and colors we chose out of hundreds of available options. The process of envisaging the final custom-made product with our chosen fabric and colors was addictive. We eyed the three-piece sectional at the showroom, as it was with its own original fabric and colors, and then visualized its reincarnated version with the flower-patterned, dark brown, velvet fabric we chose — that feeling was priceless. And two days ago, we saw the final product in reality. It perfectly matched our envisaged piece!
Finding a wedding hall was the first thing on our to-do list — fucking duh — and that went quite well. Fatima, my fiancee, chose the wedding hall after walking down the stairs leading to the aisle while listening to music played in full volume to imagine how the real long-awaited night would be. The hall isn't that fancy; but considering what we could afford, I think it's really nice.
Due to the fact that Fatima is not Jordanian, documenting our marriage and obtaining the needed official approvals and shit has been a remarkably distressing experience. I innately despise everything that has anything to do with governmental entities, but this documentation thing has unequivocally resulted in more fiery despise from my side toward the government. They ask for things, no matter how hard you try to find explanations for, remain inexplicable. Next time I try to fulfill governmental paperwork, I'll make sure to bring two jars with me: one that contains a sample of my shit, and another that contains some of my piss. By doing that, I would be prepared to provide urine and stool analyses on the spot once they ask for them.
That's it for this entry, I guess.
