The Good Stuff

As I mentioned in my earlier post, that I am planning to make a looong post about all the good stuff that happened since I came to US, here it is.

Though the tone of my writing, or my talking (or my walking!) these days wouldn't have a trace of happiness these days. I am very very stressed these days. My studies are so bad, that I might get thrown of the university, and thence out of the Fulbright program, and my lifelong dream is on the verge of shattering just like that. Note: if you have obvious advice, just shut up. So where was I? Yeah the good stuff. So, since I had to write it... hahahaha.. I like how it has gone 'I wanna share the good stuff that happened to me because the world is such a wonderful place' to 'since I had to write it' - anyway, so, I am writing it. I thought of making it reallly long, but now I will only just bullet it. There you go:

Mathew Wise
This was the salesman at the Best Buy mobile in Cameron Village. We had gone there around evening to ask him for mobile. They were about to close the shops, yet he took so much of his time to help us with the kind of mobile we needed, and the connection, etc etc. His job, you'd say. He later told us where we could find a vegetarian place to eat (we only needed a toiled to use, he suggested we go to a restaurant - and we wanted to go to a vegetarian one, so we could pretend we're gonna order something) - then he helped us find the direction of Mecca on multiple devices he had. Then he looked up sunset time for us. Then he looked up directions to the mosque for us (the last one without asking, also we were out of his shop, gone, also, he printed those, and gave them to our friends, to give them to us, when we really had planned or already had offered prayers on the roadside). He later stayed in touch on email giving suggestions on which mobile to buy, this was part of his job. But the help above was great.

Waleed Raza / Zohaib Qazi
Inkay baray main kia bataon? Yeh tou ab yaar he ban gaye hain. In kay baray main baad main likhon ga :D

Andrew Sleeth
This guy works in the Graduate Admissions Office. More on him later. Why? Cause I feel too lazy to write. Meh.

Rana Salman / Danish
Hahahahahaha...

Muhammad Shahid
Later Gator. Lazy Mazy. Hazy. Dazy. Crazy? Maybe.

Nazrul Islam
One night I was coming home from Danish's place (at this time I used to call it Danish's place, now I call Rana's place, cause Danish hardly lives in it) and it was the middle of the night. 11 pm? Something like that. And I was bringing my laptop. And I was scared. So I hid it under my shawl and was very very aware of my surroundings. And while I was coming, on a road, I stopped to let a car pass. And the car driver stopped, and I looked at him, and he looked at him. And he had a beard and a cap, and presumably was wearing a kurta. This was my First encounter with someone looking like that in US! Can't tell you how happy I was to come across him. He stopped his car. I went up to him, introduced myself. He introduced himself. I got into the, dropped me home. I had nothing to offer him. We talked. He told me about the masjid, the people there, the work of dawat. I was so happy to meet him! He told me he could pick me up for fajr prayers and isha prayers. He still does. I met Muhammad Shahid (above) through him. I am really glad I ran to him! Boy! He was Nazrul Islam :)

Darryl
There's one bus that goes from my home to where my classes are, and back, and on Fridays goes to masjid. I was so happy to discover that! I board this bus, and the driver looks at me and says 'Assalam O Alykum' and I raise my eyebrow, say Walikum Salam... and I ask him, where did you learn that, and he says, Malcolm X. I was so happy! How wish everyone reads that book! Anyway. He remembers my name. He knows where I live, so when I forget to signal him to stop the bus, he stops it when it reaches my house, or asks me before where I wanna go. Sometimes, I am going on foot, and he knows where I am going, he honks at me, stops the bus at the next stop and waits for me to board it. Yeah, he's that nice! And he's that nice to a lot of people. He's just a great person!

Druman
My neighbour. When I went to ask him if I could use his internet and pay half the monthly bill for it, since I was new and needed time setting things up, he said I could use it for free.

David
Gave me a free bookshelf!

Birthday!
On my birthday night. First I was pissed at people's blindly following the new cool trend on being the first one to wish the birthday boy, by sending a text message at 12:01 am. They want to show they're being very mindful, and very caring. The idiots don't realize that at this time, in their time zone, it's not even my birthday yet! I am ten hours behind their time! So what they're essentially proving is that they're juts following habits, and not being considerate and mindful? hahaha... And since I am not the one who hides when he's pissed, what happened when it actually was 12:01 am, in my time zone? I was a lonely piece of shit! And I was sitting there, lying actually. Feeling it's a different night than any other, trying to convince myself it wasn't. Trying to pass the time without thinking much about it. And three four people show up at my house with balloons, and how I greet them when they haven't even knocked on my door: "Where the heck where you all!" - they come, we eat, and they tell we're going jet skiing the next day. They didn't even let me pay for it.

Chicken are decent people

Here's another question I have. How come when it's us, it's an abortion, and when it's a chicken, it's an omelet? Are we so much better than chickens all of a sudden? When did this happen; that we passed chickens in goodness? Name six ways we're better than chickens... See, nobody can do it! You know why? 'Cause chickens are decent people. You don't see chickens hanging around in drug gangs, do you? No. You don't see a chicken strapping some guy to a chair and hooking up his nuts to a car battery, do you? When's the last chicken you heard about came home from work and beat the shit out of his hen, huh? Doesn't happen... 'cause chickens are decent people.

— George Carlin

Temptation

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

— Leonardo

Bad Habits

I know bad habits wait on us forever. They don't ever go away. They will always be there, just around the corner, lurking and looking for an opening. If you're addicted to food or alcohol or cigarettes or even the wrong person in your life, if you've got a bad habit of any kind, I don't think it just "disappears." If you stop setting goals for your future, if you start living in the moment again, that's when those bad haits will push their way back into your life. 

Phillips, Bill. Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength. HarperCollins, 1999. (ISBN 0-06-019339-5)

The case of good stories

Since I have come to US, all that I have ever wanted to talk about it is negative stuff. Why is that? I don't know. I haven't been really happy since I came here. I wasn't happy in Karachi either though. I was miserable there. Though I have had my moments of misery here as well, but at least I am doing one thing that I like, and when I was in Karachi, perhaps I wasn't doing anything that I like.

And so, to counter all that negative talk, I made a list of all the positive stuff that I wanted to talk. All the great great things that happened to me. And the since became so long, that I kept waiting for a good chunk of time to write it. And in that time, I also had to be happy, so it actually shows that good things happened. If you write about good things when you're in a shitty mood, then you just make it look shitty, as you will soon know.

Now - an hour or more ago - I tried to sleep. I am So cranky. Just dying with sleep. But can't fall asleep. This is my curse. No matter how sleepy or tired I am, I can't fall asleep unless I am happy. And I had called my mother earlier to talk to her. And she said she keeps wanting to talk but worries that she might disturb me (this she thinks when here I am on fall break; this she worries when I am sleeping in on a Sunday evening till 3 pm) so I told her to feel free to call me up anytime, and don't think about waking me up. And we settled that she would call me at 9 am (My time). And I went to bed, to sleep, but couldn't. Then after trying, I came online, more miserable than before. And like I said, wasn't ready to start on that blog post yet. So I kept wasting some time online. Started looking for a nice, clean calendar app that I can use to log all my workouts in a nice way, instead of blogging about them like a loser. Who the hell blogs their workouts? (I know, blogging about workouts is not that bad, specially if you're excited about the plan you're following, your fitness journey, and what not, but now I just am in a mood when anything in the world just looks lame and stupid)

And what happens? She calls. And she has asked my grumpy sister to make the skype call, who couldn't help but use her natural gift, pissed me off even more. I just told them to call me at nine am, though I am awake now. I told them I was about to sleep. Bye bye.

Where's my post about 'happy' things? Heck if I know about it.

Sleep Issues

Some tips I came across regarding sleeping better. Since I am having huge issues with sleep these days, here I am sharing these tips I learned in this video.

Not everyone needs 8.0 hours of sleep.

There's an epidemic of sleep deprivation going on. If you have trouble concentrating and feel sleepy all the time, that's a good sign you might be getting less sleep than you need.

1. Stop all caffeine consumption. Not even first thing in the morning. It has a long half-life, but it stays in your body. And even if you go to bed early, you will have trouble getting back to sleep if you happen to get up at sometime. 
2. You need to workout every day. 
3. No big meals before bed time. If you want a big dinner, have it 2-3 hours before bed time. Your last meal should be small. 
4. Avoid getting stressed before bed time. Stop thinking about things that mess you up. Don't think about things that you needed to do but couldn't. Just don't do the things that raise your blood pressue. 
5. Meditate before bedtime. Control your thoughts. Remember Allah. Most of us don't have control over what your brains do. But we can do murakba. 
6. Get rid of your alarm clock. If an alarm clock is waking you up, you're sleep deprived. If you wanna sleep better, you need to sleep longer. 
7. Avoid screen time before bed time. This is a tough one. 

US

Everybody asks me how do I like it here. Well, what can I say? It's really beautiful. I posed some pictures of my house on facebook, and people did see that it's beautiful. Raleigh is rates is one of the most beautiful places in US, so you can see where I am coming from.

The weather is always good. So far, I have only seen the end of summer and the beginning of fall here, and I am loving it. The nights, and the mornings, have began to get colder. It rains often. It's just the right kind of whether here. Just the right amount of romantic, just the right amount of practical, just the right amount of enthralling, and just the right amount of convenient. I have started taking late night strolls in the cold nights now. Winds are great at that time. Soft winds are great in morning too, specially after a hearty breakfast and a cold shower.

But do I like it here? Well, like you know, I like the whether. I like the beauty. I like the liberty of living alone. The freedom of being a student, on scholarship. I love that part. I like that people are so professional here, everybody's on time, everything's clean. Everything's managed seemingly well. I like that here.

But the culture didn't appeal to me much. This is the same culture which, because of its freedom, and it's open values pulled me in so much when I went to LUMS, so much so that it transformed me for good. Then I started studying it. And I studies it more and more, I discovered the not-so-great dimensions of it. And now, it's the real thing. Here I am in America, experiencing first hand what was simulated by desi Americans at LUMS. To be honest, there haven't been any shocks per se. The amount of blogs I read about American lifestyle, the amount of movies/tv shows I had watched in the earlier days, it's just like that. Most people say real life is never like what's it shown on tv, specially for the observer who doesn't belong to that culture. Well, I would say to those people, their exposure to this medium of expression hasn't been diverse enough, or hasn't been completed with other medium, such as books, blogs, comedians. Though I do agree news have a way distorting reality to a spicy fiction. Anyway, in short, there were no shocks. It's the same I had experienced in LUMS. It's the same I experienced while hanging out among the upper-middle class in Karachi, Karachi being the 7th largest city of the world, the influence of the greatest super on its culture being very dominant.

So there were no surprises, but there were many things that I didn't like over my own country, that I liked being done in my country's way more than I like them here. The way my mindset has changed over last two-three years leaves me with ideas and beliefs, that my friends have started seeing me as a mystic person. Though I would say that's not true, because my opinions always have arguments behind them, they have stories behind them, contemplation behind them, and might I say, study behind them. And it is this mindset that makes me see these things, and feel against them, the same way I felt against them when I was back home. So being an anomaly is not a news for me. I am used to it in that sense.

So what are those things? It's the same everybody's talking about... yada yada yada. Distant lives. People not knowing their neighbours though living there for so many years. There is story about that one too! Commercialism, materialism, no direction in lives. No meaning, no purpose. Or shallow purposes. Here I see, really good rats, strong rats, fast rats, healthy rats, who run like Jaguars, but why? because they're in a rat race. To what? I don't know! They don't know either. It makes them 'happy' they say. Staying distracted, engaged, makes them 'happy' they say. Okay.

Some things that I would like to talk about is the way Pakistans act and think when they come here. That's very very interesting, and well, I am gonna dedicate a whole post to it :D

AND. I am gonna dedicate a whole post to the few stories I have had so far since I have come here. I will only put up the interesting ones, and a few boring ones too, Heck it's my blog!