I first read the daily Guardian on my honeymoon in London in 2004. It was love at first sight. I remember spending a whole day reading the articles and enjoying the quality of the content and the professional photographs.
Back home in Tehran, there was only one newspaper that I considered readable and even that one was often closed. When I moved to Boston later that year, to start my graduate studies in global health, I was disappointed by the quality of the newspapers. A year later, on a conference trip to Seattle, I stumbled upon a copy of the Guardian Weekly in a newsstand. Reading it felt like meeting a dear old friend.
We have been subscribers since then. The moment our copy enters the house competition starts between the three of us: my wife and I who want to read it and our eight-month-old daughter who wants to tear it and eat it. We are both amazed at how often the Weekly has an article regarding an issue that we have been discussing recently over an afternoon coffee or tea. When I read the Guardian Weekly, I feel that I have an extended family of like-minded people around the world, and I am now able to meet some of them in this column. I would really like to meet Oliver Burkeman and thank him for his useful tips.
Thank you, Guardian Weekly team, for making our lives more meaningful and enjoyable.
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