These days I don’t seem to be going much to this cafes and coffee shops because for one thing I have relocated to a far corner of the city. For other it seems that those places no more get my attention as they used to do. (Yes, it’s possible that these days the bill even for a ‘damn’ (Sorry!) cup of coffee scare me so much I’m trying to do justice to my nerves by protecting them from unnecessary stretches and maybe curls and swirls.
Who knows what is happening inside there when we aren’t watching! You know there were times when a couple of hundreds you are in a certain café and you still feel there weren’t a quarter of that many persons around you. Even we almost every other person is talking it appears no more than ten or so people are doing so. I don’t think it has anything to do with mentality or something like that I think it’s sad pole are conscious of the privacy of others and they do their best not to disturb their feelings say by talking too loud or making all sorts of unwelcome and even disturbing sounds.
Still, even then there this factor which could really spoil your day. You know the stranger who sits someway from where you are, and most of the time alone and somewhat seems to be over interested in you! By the time you are aware that a complete stranger who you’ve never seen in your life in picture or personally is continually staring at you believe me, it wouldn’t be a very nice feeling. It seems something which seem to have become some accepted norm.
Say you are sitting for your much-needed cup of coffee in a modest café. For few minutes you might be messing around with your cellphone. Who isn’t these days! In fact I’ve noticed that people who use the smaller five or sitter taxis for a hundred or so birr, a far cry from the thirty or so birr minibus fare go for their cellphones and mobile WiFies as soon as their anatomy hits the seats. Facebook, TikTok, Instagram you name it. People are all over the social media even when they are rushing to work!
Anyway you stay fixated with, want else, some social media app and it happens casually you lift your eyes for no legitimate reason and start a quick scam of the place. Midway you come to your first and maybe only shock. You ask yourself if you were really looking at what you’re looking! A very undistinguished looking fellow sitting in a far corner is staring at you! Or was he? Maybe your coffee shouldn’t have been as black and heavy as you ordered the waiters to make it. Yes in future your f coffee should be much lighter!
You return your eyes to your cellphone continuing with the story of a Selena Gomez crying her eyes out for the deportation of her fellow Mexican migrants or the unverified news of Jennifer Lopez fleeing Hollywood and America. Of course such news might have nothing to do with us as those people might even have no idea in which part of the world we are. (No, no need to raise eyebrows about that.
The fact is that we and then we hear and read pieces that even many college seniors might not know their own fifty states let alone countries thousands of kilometers away! Ages back I remember an Ethiopia-expert on some TV station asking me of we actually have cars in this country and if the Derg strongman, now in the southern part of Africa was a bad ruler. Mind you those were times when things around here were threatening to take Armageddon proportions and those who can were fleeing.
And that is what an expert about Ethiopia asks me…about the very place he claims he’s expert about!) You were trying to concentrate a piece that has caught your attention and what happens? a pair of very unwelcome eyes set in the face of a very unwelcoming looking guy are practically drilling into you from afar! The most frustrating chapter during such a situation is that you have to spend minutes upon minutes trying to figure out what the staring was all about.
In times when you may have have enemies and people who you know don’t like you and think very negatively of you, there might be equally as many whom you don’t know about and who are not so naïve as to make their feelings about you known.
You think of hundred and one things from x-girlfriends who don’t think very much due to your failure to keep your pants zipped up everywhere you go, to the guy with him you debated about certain political uses and he didn’t at all like you and parted with a sidekick of an accusation, “You don’t seem to like us!” images come and go. Who’s this guy? I don’t remember seeing him anywhere else ever! Why is he so much interesting me if he wasn’t entertaining some bad plans about me? Here the itches and aches start.
Oh, yes! You think you can be some sort of a hero about things you have no idea about! Still, you once again lift your eyes and those two eyes staring at you seem to have a few meters closer. Believe me the shrewd nerves start playing games with you! The last thing that would come to your mind is just going all the way to the corner and confuting the fellow;
“Do we know each other?”
The startled fellow practically whispers; “I don’t think so?”
“Then why are you staring at me! Who sent you to follow me?” Now the fellow’s facial contours take so strange curls and swerves. it would be difficult to read even guess his emotions.
“I’ m sorry; what are you saying?” Aha! The smart guy thinks you are the last dummy standing!
“Every time I turn around you’re here staring at me, and…” he doesn’t wait until you finish.
“Sorry if I did that. I wasn’t aware of it. I was in deep thought and I assure you I wasn’t deliberately staring at you!” ‘What!’ Wait…wait a minute! No need to work yourself into a frenzy! The fellow might be telling the truth. I have heard such stories of people unconsciously staring at others only coming out of their trance in the very last minute and maybe apologize.
But I could tell you few events could be as annoying, as frustrating and sometimes as scary as the unknown stares of strangers!
-So celebrities do cry !
It first appeared like a harmless piece of post just may be to break some monotony of the not-so-so-good days many of us confront. But it was serious; so serious that celebrity Selena Gomez filming herself sobbing her eyes out for real is no simple matter.
Well, I mean, looking at things from this part of the world we have to be try to be real frank in looking at the whole things because most of has no republican/democrat sort of political ax to grind. Because there are some who, in the weirdest of actions try to give Gomez’s tears some political touch! Oh she’s a puppet of the far left and all she is trying to do is to oppose Trump’s undocumented migrants’ mass deportation plan. What a plan it is turning out to be! From all we’re seeing the new president seems to be into it gloves off. People who thought all he has been saying during the campaign was just election stuff and forget all about it must be flogging themselves for having been so naïve knowing that Mr. Trump usually walks his walk and talks his talk.
Look we sit in the front of the TV and seeing how the burly security people handcuffing and even and cuffing their legs is a little uncomfortable, wouldn’t say? But they say they were rounding up the worst of the worst among the criminals and you can’t play hide and seek with such guys! I mean it might all be about making sure that ‘criminals’ wouldn’t have any crazy ideas when they are being cuffed and held to all those four wheels. But then that’s how they do things and that’s it! But I can’t help thinking what would they have said if in some third world country suspects are treated rather such heavily.
By the way was I surprised to see an Ethiopian among the worst criminals who seems to have done his tome for sexual assault and kidnaping? Well, a little. But it seems having done your time is not a receipt that you’re a fully free person. The thinking must be such type of criminals who would do it again once they are let out onto the streets. I also lot some document of deportation orders against one thousand seven hundred Ethiopians.
Let’s be frank and there is so much hate and loathing going on around the world maybe someone should come with the idea of organizing ‘Hate Prize’ or something like that. After all they have those the worst films and the worst actor prizes in film, don’t they? (Is yet for us to have some sort of a prize like that,. Forget the reputation coming with it. At least we could have some good laugh for a day or two and those people in the film industry would really know what they are really made of. Yes, that would do away with at least some unnecessary noise and the most bizarre types of ego. Look, many comments against the lady were without any camouflage pure narratives of people who don’t seem to have an ounce of love or liking for her.
I think maybe as emotionally charged as she might have been she wasn’t that good in her presentation. “I just wanted to say I’m so sorry. All my people are getting attacked. The children. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry, I wish I could do something but I can’t. I don’t know what to do. I’ll try everything,” a sobbing Gomez said.
In all frankness at first glance it’s a little difficult to think of those words having come from someone with ill intentions not only for the 41st president even to the millions of Americans. Yes, she was born in the US and it was her grandparents who first coming chasing the proverbial sounding American Dream. . SO her detractors say she should have sounded more American and supported the idea of freeing America from undocumented migrants. The sentence “All my people are getting attacked…” didn’t go well with many. “Getting attacked! She is talking of the detention of illegals as attack!” that really got on the nerves of many. Why she chose such controversial terms, only she knows. Quite a lot say being the good actress she is, the post was just another one of her performances scripted and directed by her. She didn’t real men those tears.
One post reads; “Billionaires make up about 0.05% of the world’s population. She said ‘If I could do anything to help, I would.’ Literally has more money than 99.95% of the world, and chooses to instead go online and video herself crying about how she’s unable to help anyone.
Looking at the politics side of it a person who they say is a republican congress candidate called her to be departed for her post. What! She is an American citizen and there is no terrorism or anything that comes an ocean and a continent close to that and he calls for a citizen to be deported for her comments. Luckily he doesn’t seem to have won a lot of applause for that bizarre and out-of-tune comment.
He writes on X ““She has an entitlement attitude toward America, like her illegal g’parents. Maybe Selena should be deported, too?” She wasn’t going to take that sitting down with folded hands. A publication writes, “On Monday evening, Gomez took to her Instagram Stories to hit back at U.S. Senate candidate Sam Parker, who called for her deportation. In her post, Gomez sarcastically thanked Parker for the “laugh and the threat” after he said she should be “deported” for a tearful video sympathizing with Mexican migrants.” Border Czar Tom Homman says that she had to go to congress if she wanted to change the deportation law.
And to cap it all up here one post from a visibly offended person; “When you live in a bubble, you don’t consider how the rest of us are living! So selfish! Having them do things the right way is not a bad thing. We can’t just allow people into our country without knowing they are here, making sure they aren’t going to harm American citizens, and letting the people in that have been waiting long before the ones just walking on in. The prices are already out of control, you can afford to buy what you need, some of us can’t! Go cry your crocodile tears somewhere else.”
So, celebrities do really cry!
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 2 FEBRUARY 2025
