Life's Experiences

A list of gems I've collected over the years

1. Have a firm handshake.
2. Look people in the eye.
3. Sing in the shower.
4. Own a great stereo system.
5. If in a fight, hit first and hit hard.
6. Keep secrets.
7. Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday.
8. Always accept an outstretched hand.
9. Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
10. Whistle.
11. Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out.
12. Lend only those books you never care to see again.
13. Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all that they have.
14. When playing games with children, let them win.
15. Give people a second chance, but not a third.
16. Be romantic.
17. Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-and-death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems.
18. Don't allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It's there for our convenience, not the caller's.
19. Be a good loser.
20. Be a good winner.
21. Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.
22. When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go.
23. Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.
24. Keep it simple stupid.
25. Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
26. Live your life so that your epitaph could read, No Regrets
27. Be bold because when you look back on life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the one's you did.
28. Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.
29. Visit friends and relatives when they are in hospital; you need only stay a few minutes.
30. Begin each day with some of your favorite music.
31. Once in a while, take the scenic route.
32. Keep a note pad and pencil on your bed-side table. Million-dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 a.m.
33. Show respect for everyone who works for a living, regardless of how trivial their job.
34. Send your loved ones flowers. Think of a reason later.
35. Become someone's hero.
36. Marry only for love.
37. Count your blessings.
38. Compliment the meal when you're a guest in someone's home.
39. Wave at the children on a school bus.
40. 80 per cent of the success in any job is based on your ability to deal with people.
41. Don't expect life to be fair.

3D where were you all my life?

Im on a bus on my way from Oxford to London as I write and marvel at the technology around me. Im doing 100 km on the M40 (which is the pseudo cool British term for motorway into London) and there’s WIFI all around me as well as any car who stupidly tries to drive close enough to risk a high speed death in order to check their facebook. But the technology around is phenomenal. Two technological wonders that have changed the face of the western world, firstly the GPS in my phone that can direct you anywhere in the world given you have an address. And secondly, and for this I would personally like to shake the hand of the guy who invented the dishwasher. Back home we call it the ‘maasi’ but a maasi seems to be unknown commodity amongst the natives. Except maybe if you employ the Polish. Or you’re the Queen.
Here I would like to raise my hand for a two-fingered salute to Lollywood, Nishat Cinema, the Mandvivalas, Cineplex and anyone else who’s had a hand in denying the Pakistani public from the 3 Dimensional movie experience. I went to see Avatar and the minute you wear those rayban wayfarer wannabe glasses, and im not making this up, you’re transported into this realm of larger-than-life-things-popping-out-and-coming at you world. If cougars are your thing then you’d be salivating and squirming uncomfortably at Jane Fonda being close enough to touch. Almost.
See, people in their private time like to pick their noses, get rid of excess body hair or play with their snakes optimistically called monty python. That’s fine, I prefer to watch movies and especially after a hard days work nothing like watching a pirate copy of movie playing in a cinema not near you or anytime in the foreseeable future. That was then. Now I make it a point to watch anything that comes out to make up for lost time. And I had this notion in my head that regardless of how crap the movie was it would always be better in a cinema. After the all, the big screen, surround sound and the sweet popcorn made it an experience. Until I went to see ‘What happened to the Morgans”. It was so bad that peopled walk out half way through. I sat it out but it was as enjoyable as having sex with a porcupine. Note to self, read a review next time. Another myth busted.

Snowmen fall from heaven... unassembled.

My first large scale contact with snow happened about two weeks ago, apart from the fact a few years ago I tried to sit in my deep freezer back home trying to get some sort of relief from the heat. It was too dark inside; I now see why the fad never caught on. That and trying to make sure my mum never found out. She never understood how a torch got there next to her frozen qeema.
When it snows it falls from the skies like slow motion rain. Looking up n the sky, its like staring up in a 3 dimensional planetarium with white flecks coming down at you. I could almost make out the star wars font and theme songs playing in my head. And after a while when your eyes start freezing, you try playing upside down space invaders with the snowflakes. Instead of small lasery bits you have your breath to blow them out of the sky. In the end, no matter what the analogy god always wins. And of course there’s always point in someone’s life that you want to catch a snowflake on your tongue. Especially people from Karachi that have read about this powdery stuff in books and seen them only in deep freezers.
You will not believe how the people react to snow. One flake of snow and the entire nation will come to a stand still. The schools will shutdown, offices closed, public transport delayed and general mayhem and chaos. It’s a sort of mini vacation we all look forward to in our daily lives. In Karachi, it’s either rain or a strike depending on the season, here it’s snow. I mean the panic is phenomenal. Al Qaeda should seriously invest in snow machines. The government actually had the army on standby in a worst-case scenario! Haha what a joke. Seeing the so called “proficient” army in action in peace keeping efforts (invasion for oil) in the rest of the world (Iraq) it would be July before they get here, and they would need 10,000 so called troops for backup and everything would fall apart when a regiment would be caught trying to melt a snowman with a blowtorch.

To Cook or not to Cook, that is the question.

Living on its own has its perks, no one to answer to, come and go as you please and potentially walk around in your undies. Like everything else in this world it’s a double-edged sword. You have to clean up after your self, gotta walk in the snow to get groceries and really understand the meaning behind domestic help. If you grew up in a labour cheap country as I did, you really wish you brought some along for the ride. Brings new meaning to the term ‘old habits die hard’ when you walk in to your house expecting a warm cooked meal ready for you and instead get a pile of messy dishes in the sink. I read somewhere that you can keep your dirty dishes in the fridge if you don’t want to stink up the kitchen, not that I ever do it or advocating it but knowledge is power you know.
I like to cook, and consider myself a fairly decent one considering my lack of experience in this department but I don’t like to cook everyday. Day in day out. Two or three times a week is fine but not every fucking day. Wouldn’t it be lovely to have an unlimited supply of things in life like cigarettes and petrol. Or Charlize Theron. Or common sense. Case in point I was at Selfridges picking a gift for my niece when I happened to come across a section with clinical looking bottles everywhere. I forget the name but they were selling ahem scorpions dipped in chocolate, worm flavoured gin and vodka and a variety of other insects all farm bred mind you dipped in a variety of sweets. The best was bar b q flavoured worms and tea leaves picked by specially trained monkeys. Looking at it did not make me the least bit hungry, but in fact it did make me sleep better at night. For if you can sell that to people, then my future in advertising is secure.

Typical...stereotypical that is...

I left the country to study and people congratulated me on it. I thought it was because I was on my path to higher education. Hardly the case. In retrospect it seems some of them were cheering me for leaving all the mess behind and moving on. It seems Bombs and Pakistan go hand in hand these days.
Typical...stereotypical that is...
I fit the bill for the ultimate terrorist these days. And it scares me. Not in the keeps-me-up-all-night way but in the stay-away-from-anything-remotely Islamic-for-fear-of-gitmo-bay. Like societies in university and although juma is customary in a mosque an Arab friend of mine wont go near one even if you kept a sheesha in there…allow me to explain, I am in my twenties, a student from Pakistan, Muslim and the icing on the cake * drum roll* a Pashtun(of which I’m very proud although not like the Nazis’ of the Aryan race but more along the lines of turtle loving his shell. The turtle did nothing to shape it, or ask to be born with it but just happy because it makes him tough as nails or slow, hey the analogy finally fits!!)
If they can shoot a Brazilian in the back for carrying a backpack (Brazilians gave us the carnival and the hot women with bronze skin and cute girls with dreamy accents called Paula who could turn me into a bumbling idiot) they will take me down before I can say Chinatown. Because I am a Muslim (as opposed to Brazilians we gave new meanings to the words suicide, bomb and whipping women. Even though I have never set foot inside a maderssa, I don’t want to be dragged out like Mclovin from superbad. Cool as it might be I could potentially be held for x amount of time with no formal charge. Yes ladies and gentlemen, the pioneers of human rights(USofA and UK) can now hold you for terrorism, without charging you or granting bail but for “interrogation” for up to 90 and 26 days respectively. I think its called the Patriot* act in America and the internment* act in the UK (*don’t quote me on this)

On another note, China executed a British man for drug smuggling. The details at this point are sketchy but china just showed Britain the finger. And the queen’s got her panties in a twist because they executed one of her subjects. What a bunch of fucking hypocrites.