Odd Habit

Everyone has strange habits right? The ones people laugh at, and make fun of, or tell you that you’re being paranoid. 

I have one too. It’s more of a silly fear, rather. You see, when I’m sitting in the car and there is traffic, I have to lock the doors. Why? Because I’m scared that someone will open the door and get in, or that they will carjack me. 

I reckon it is the result of too many drama/criminal TV shows where the bad guy gets in the backseat with a gun. In any case, I am not taking any chances.

Much to my chagrin, the other day my sister and her friend left me alone in the backseat of the car and left the doors open. Please don't ask how I spent those 15 minutes alone ready to strike when a person came in close proximity to the car. To make matters worse, it was night time.

Sounds like I am being irrational right? I figure that it's better to be safe than sorry.


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Parking … A Rant

So I have a bone to pick with all you male drivers out there. Do you deliberately park in the wrong way to infuriate all drivers? Do you think you are the only people who can park in those parking spaces? I mean, if it’s a side parking, do you HAVE to park parallel? Do you know your car takes up to four parking spaces when you parallel park in a side parking space? Yes, four cars may have parked there had you not been selfish and insensitive. You are not royalty. The road does not belong to you, no matter what you may think.

I got to work today and found, not one, or two or even three, but five cars parallel parked in side parking spaces. Oh and while we are on the subject, do you think that blocking the entrance to a parking lot will get you a lot of praise from fellow drivers? I think it is common courtesy for you to not do that. Have you no manners?

Also, what is with men STANDING in the parking spaces and ‘reserving’ them? The other day I was visiting my cousin and we were looking for a parking under his building. Upon finding a parking space, we saw that a man was standing there and he shooed us away!!! How old are you again?

And, sorry to bust your bubble, but parking in the MIDDLE of two side parking spaces does not make you look ‘cool.’

So please, next time you park, make sure you park in between the lines. You may make fun of the way women drive (and I don’t blame you, as you can see here) but at least we know how to park our cars!

I think this post just broke the record for the most use of  the words ‘park’ and ‘parking.’

But seriously, I refuse to rant on my blog and look what male parking drove me to (no pun intended!).

Bittersweet Farewell

Alan Alda said the best things said come last; people will talk for hours saying nothing much and then linger at the door with words that come with a rush from the heart. I guess this explains why it takes a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye.

I recently found out that one of my best friends is going abroad to pursue higher education. And all I keep thinking is what am I going to do without her? She assures me that it wouldn’t be any different, what with the internet making you accessible no matter where you are in the world. But, there is something comforting about being in the same country as your friend, even if you don’t meet on a regular basis. There is a sort of relief in knowing that they are there and you can arrange to meet them anytime anywhere.

I also think it is the law of scarcity. You suddenly realize you won’t be seeing that particular person for a long time, your time with them is limited now, and that they won’t be just a phone-call away anymore. 

And so the dreaded hour is here; it’s time to say good-bye. Come to think of it, why are good-byes called so, anyway? What is so good about them? They should be called ‘sad-byes’ or ‘hard-byes.’

But, as with everything in this world, there is always a positive side, a silver lining. But we focus so much on the negative aspect that we fail to see the good. Bidding farewell may be hard but at least I am lucky enough to have someone to say goodbye to. 

I know, I know, it still doesn’t make it easier. I guess my only consolation at this point is that with each passing day, I will be one day further from the last time I saw her and one day closer to the next time I will.

For now though, I have deleted the word ‘good-bye’ from my dictionary, and refuse to utter it. Instead, I have replaced it with ‘until next time.’

Adieu, my dear friend, until we meet again. 

A man's feelings are always purest and most glowing in the hour of meeting and of farewell.

– ­­Jean Paul Richter

The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.

– ­­Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook­­

Dedication: Lubna M. Bagsair, my goofball of a friend, partner-in-crime, and fellow food junkie who is moving away temporarily. You will be terribly missed!
 

We went for bowling and Lubna had no socks. Being the gracious person that I am, I lent her one of mine. Now we are sock buddies, like Harry Potter and Dobby!

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Comfort in Food

What do you do when you are upset? And by upset, I mean, angry, sad, disappointed, worried, distressed or just plain confused. Some people cook when they are upset; some clean. I, however, eat.

Yes, that’s right. I need deadly carbs to settle down. I know that being a writer, I should technically write when I am upset. I used to when I was still into writing diaries. This was before someone read my diary, my personal thoughts. And I never wrote a journal anymore.

Then, I got so totally out of practice that now if I write when I’m upset, it just comes out rude, and rant-like. And, I refuse to rant on my blog, which is more of a social commentary. 

So anyway, I have been thinking about it and I think I want to bake when I’m upset. How did I come up with that? Baking, or making desserts, is my second favorite thing to do (the first one being writing!). Yes, it is more than likely that I will be eating the baked goods and ultimately drowning my sorrows in sugary delights, bringing me right back to square one, which was that I turn to food when I’m feeling emotionally unwell.

Does that mean I’m forever destined to eat through to good mental health? Isn’t that what all the signs are pointing to? 

So be it. Who can fight with fate anyway?

P.S. Making M&M's pancakes with chocolate sauce after work! 

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The Morbid Truth

Suicides in the U.A.E are increasing at an alarming rate. Just pick up a newspaper and open to the local news page and you will see what I am talking about. In today’s paper, there is news about four people who killed themselves, not counting the one that happened last night at around 7 p.m.

 

Yesterday, I had decided that I would skip gym for a day as I was feeling a bit under the weather. When I went for my aerobics class at 9 a.m. today, my trainer beckoned me to the window to “show me something.”

“Last night during the 7 p.m. aerobics class,” she said, “I heard a loud noise outside the window. When I opened it I saw that a man had jumped from a higher floor.” She pointed to the place where the man had fallen to his death. 

She said she screamed and the other women rushed to see what had happened. “I immediately called the police,” my trainer continued. “I was so shaky that I couldn’t continue the class. I was afraid to sleep. I am still afraid.”

According to her, the man had been suffering from psychological problems. His wife and child were devastated. All that’s left is faded blood splattered on the wall which tells the story of a man and his drastic decision.

Why do people decide to take their own lives? Do they think it would solve all their troubles? I don’t pretend to understand what goes on in their minds in the split second before they pull the trigger, but if you think about it, it is a rash choice. They choose to end their life just because there are a few hurdles in their way. And what do they leave behind: A distraught family who now, not only has to deal with the troubles because of which they are gone, but also with the heartbreak of their death. 

They leave their loved ones behind worse than when they were alive. They wipe that smile off their child’s face for a long time. They leave a mother behind who now has to explain to her son/daughter why their father wasn’t strong enough to face his problems.

Death is NEVER a solution. Repeat after me: Death is never the answer. No one said life was easy, they just promised it’d be worth it. But they don’t wait around till the ‘worth it’ part to find out.

Choosing to end life is the biggest mistake one can make. Death is a natural process. You don’t induce it, force it to happen before it’s time. There is enough sorrow in the world without people forcing it in their lives.

Everyday, in some part of the world, people are killed and murdered. What wouldn’t they give to live another day. And here we are, faced with temporary troubles, and we choose to take the easy way out.

I know that I may sound extremely harsh and judgmental now. You may say I don’t understand. Like I said, I won’t pretend that I do. But they are taking the road of least conflict. Is that the example that they want to set for their children? 

It isn’t life if it is without hardships. You fall down. But the important thing is that you get right back on your feet and dust yourself off. Isn’t that how you learn to ride a bicycle? There is no healing without wounds and no success without a little failure. At the end of the day, the people who love you will be there for you no matter what. And in this life and world, that is all that matters.

 Don't look away
Don't run away
It's only life
Don't lose your faith
Don't run away
It’s only life

Don't be so afraid of facing everyday
Just take your time, it's only life

Same Life, Different You

Persona: the mask you present to the world. The word resulted from the theater-verse where people had to put on masks to portray different characters during the various acts of the play. According to Carl Jung, a person has a lot of different masks. They are different with every person in your life to the extent that when you are alone, you are not the person that everyone thinks you are. 

Think of it this way. You have a lot of different people in your life. The involvement of these people depends on how much they know about you. I always told my mother that she did not know the real me, because she didn’t know my favorite color. But, do you really know anyone completely? You only know them because of the side they choose to show you, or the information they share with you. You are different when you hang out with friends, different at work, with family. 

So how do you completely get to know someone? There are a lot of different ways: talk to the friends, family, boss; it is like completing a puzzle.

However, there is something else I am going to explore today: The idea that you can get a glimpse in someone’s life from their work. I am talking about artists, or the creative minds: The writers, painters, poets, dancers, songwriters, etc. 

I don’t quite know how to explain it but let me illustrate it using myself as an example. One of my professors always used to tell me, “You have a humorous side to you. When you write, you come off as funny and sarcastic, something that people might not see when they look at you, or meet you.” I always thought she had it wrong, until I joined my job and my friend would laugh at whatever I wrote. 

I guess when I write about real life things, like the rest of my blog entries, I tend to be light-hearted. It’s only when I’m writing fiction that I come off as extremely dark. All I keep thinking about stormy weather, lightning, dark night, inky blackness, never-ending despair, tears, heartbreak. Ironically, when I was in high school, I used to write colorful stories. I guess somewhere along the way I grew up and realized that happy endings rarely exist so why bother even making them up? 

I know of someone who went through heartbreak and when I read what they write, I can hear the bitterness behind the words. I can see the subtle hint of resentment they carry within them. I can read the animosity towards love, and the sound of lost hope. 

What I have hinted at so far is that if a person uses yellow colors or chirpy words, they are internally happy; this is a no-brainer. But sometimes, it’s quite hard to deduce.

Emily Dickinson, the morbid American poet, whose poems included verses about illness, death and disease, wrote poems like “Because I could not stop for Death,  He kindly stopped for me,” “I felt a funeral in my brain,” and “I heard a fly buzz when I died.” Needless to say, she led a life of recluse. But can we say for sure that she was suicidal? Maybe her fascination with death was mere obsession, or a subject of curiosity, something that made her wonder: What comes next?

I guess this was all a roundabout way of saying that most of the time your work shows your inner workings. It shows if you’re internally messed up, or twisted in some way. This is why a creative mind is the easiest to read, because no matter how hard you try, you cannot stop a little bit of you seeping in your creative mind. Creativity results from the subconscious and this is why the best ideas come to you when you are almost asleep. That is when you're entering the world of dreams, which, according to Sigmund Freud, are the content of your subconscious. This is also the reason why I always sleep with a notepad next to me (after losing a few good ideas because I did not note them down, and waking up blank the next day). 

Guess it gives 'reading between the lines' a whole new meaning, huh?

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The Art of Falling

What is it about falling down that makes you forget the actual fall? One minute you’re standing up and the next you’re on the floor. I never remember what leads to a fall. I feel like I black out from the moment it happens to right before I hit the floor. And then, no matter how hard I try, it never comes back to me. 

Ever had one of those dreams where you are falling from a height and you suddenly wake up? According to psychologists, these are classified as one of the most common dreams. The others are being chased, naked in public and flying. But what happens when these dreams become a reality? 

I was never the one to fall but that changed the day I fell through an open door. Yes! An OPEN door! There was nothing to trip on. All I remember is being on the ground and people rushing towards me to help me up, while my friends stood in one corner and laughed their heads off. Another time, I fell in the gym. What do I remember from that fall? Hands reaching down to me, concerned faces asking if I was okay. I felt like crying, and I had no idea why.

And again, I was walking on the road, and the next thing I know, I am lying face down on the asphalt. As always, there was nothing in my way to aid the fall and I didn’t slip either. Moreover, I didn’t have my friends to make fun of me and I wished I did; someone to make light of the situation. There was a lone stranger standing on the pavement lazily taking in, what must have seemed to him, a tragic fall. 

It seemed like eternity as I picked myself up and dusted myself off. Why does time stretch itself out in embarrassing situations? Good lessons do seem to come out of terrible situations though, because I realized that the best thing to do to recover from a fall is to laugh it off, otherwise, it’s just sad.

P.S. I am not clumsy at all, just in case you're wondering! 


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