Crow's Nest...

I have journeyed across a whole continent, overnight, and am now in New york for my interview. I took a red eye flight out of San Jose into JFK. This time around the check in was complicated because the air line tagged me and thus i had to undergo special security checks. It cost me an extra 5 minutes but nothing much. The flight itself was very uncomfortable on Jet Blue . The check in clerk changed my seat from the exit row to the one in front of it. Jet Blue is a paranoid airline and thus their actions. I had to spend my whole journey crammed in a seat that had minimum leg space and did not recline. It was horrible. And since my boarding pass was tagged i could not complain. Otherwise the journey went well. We landed in New york early in the morning and were welcomed by wind chill temperatures of 19 degrees Fahrenheit. I took the Air train out to the Howard Beach Station and then the A train to 168th street. After this it took me 2 block walk to my very pleasant hosts, FC and AJ. I h...

I am going for my interview at the Brookdale University Hospital on the 31st of this month. I have just received the email from the coordinator. Let us see what happens on this interview. The weather in Brooklyn is very very cold and i will be carrying with me some extra clothing to prevent myself from sheer freezing. the forecast for the week though is better and on the interview day it is supposed to be sunny and not runny. The weather here in Santa Clara has been unusually dry and i haven't seen the better part of rain for quite some time. But there is hope in the air and rain on its way. The preparation for the exam is going good i guess. Today was a better day where i was able to accomplish more and do better on the tests. But overall the exam requires some honest time to sit and study. I am trying to do that and will continue to do so inshaAllah. I have my exam scheduled for the 8th and 9th of February 2007. The hope spring is eternal.

Adil Najam at Pakistaniat.com has posted about nominating Abdul Sattar Edhi for the Noble peace award. I think it is a valiant thought and deserves our whole hearted help and acknowledgment. I say this not because i think i should do this as a proud Pakistani but i say this because i should do this as a proud human being. In this world be-thralled with innumerable examples of human evil handedness and human suffering Edhi is a hope as were Mother Teressa or Nelson Mandela. Adil deserves to be helped and he requires us to leave our own testimonials on the website. I would urge all to help towards this noble cause and help him come up with a fitting testimonial that he can submit to the committee that decides about the Noble Peace award.

To reconstitute political life in a state presupposes a good man, whereas to have recourse to violence in order to make oneself prince in a republic supposes a bad man. Hence very rarely will there be found a good man ready to use bad methods in order to make himself prince, though with a good end in view. Nor will any reasonable man blame him for taking any action, however extraordinary, which may be of service in the organizing of a kingdom or constituting of a republic. It is a sound maxim that reprehensible actions may be justified by their effects, and that when the effect is good, it always justifies the action. For it is the man who uses violence to spoil things, not the man who uses it to mend them, that is blameworthy. A prince should therefore disregard the reproach of being thought cruel where it enables him to keep his subjects united and loyal. For he who quells disorder by a very few single examples will in the end be more merciful than he who from too great lenienc...

Pakistan is going through an energy crisis yet again . The spokesman for the Water and Power Development Authority was quoted as saying that the power shortage was to the tune of around 1,000 Megawatts of electricity. This is a huge shortage, almost 10 percent of what the whole country uses. The local power companies are making up for this deficit by load shedding . And the most apparent victims of this process are those who are from the less influential parts of the country. I am supposing that conditions are bleak in my hometown, Jhang . Although load shedding was going on for the past 4 months now but it must have increased to a more unbearable level. In other news oil prices have been reduced for the consumers in Pakistan. the slash came in the wake of plunging oil prices in the international market. The relief given to the Pakistani consumer is little yet much awaited. One interesting thing to note is that oil companies are earning endless profits not only in developing...

Blogger servers were down yesterday and that prevented me from posting. Even today the page is loading very slowly. They say their engineers are at work let us see what they can do. US is in the grip of a very cold current of air streaming down from Alaska. The Mid West is all frozen and even the West is experiencing temperatures below freezing. Here in Santa Clara new record lows were set this week and over the weekend. But it rained last night and that has brought up the temperature to a bearable level. I have my interview in New York in two week's time and projected weather shows temperatures below freezing. I will have to get ready to brace myself with snow and chill. I hope this chill doesn't affect the environment inside and take away the cordial warmth.

Motor Trend has named the redesigned Toyota Camry as its car of the year. The Toyota Camry bested a field of 27 competitors, comprising six models from the U.S., 10 from Japan, five from Korea, four from Germany, one from the U.K., and one from Sweden. To be eligible for Car of the Year, a vehicle must be totally new or redesigned, and released in the 12 months prior to January 1, 2007 (cars with modifications such as new engines or that are variants of existing models are not eligible). This year's field of contenders for Car of the Year included:Chevrolet Aveo, Chrysler Sebring, Dodge Caliber, Honda Fit, Hyundai Elantra, Hyundai Entourage, Infiniti G35, Jaguar XK, Jeep Compass, Kia Optima, Kia Rondo, Kia Sedona, Lexus ES 350, Lexus LS 460, Mercedes Benz S-Class, Nissan Altima, Nissan Sentra, Nissan Versa, Porsche Cayman, Saturn Aura, Saturn Sky Redline, Suzuki SX4, Toyota Camry, Toyota Yaris, Volvo C70 T5, Volkswagen EOS, and Volkswagen Rabbit The question is if they are right in...

Did the Media ever have you wind of this news? I believe not. MOSCOW, Jan 12: The Russia’s foreign ministry said on Friday a raid by US troops on an Iranian government office in northern Iraq was unacceptable and a violation of international rules.“It is absolutely unacceptable for troops to storm the consular offices of a foreign state on the territory of another state,” the ministry said in a statement posted on its website www.mid.ru.“This is a flagrant violation of the Vienna convention on consular relations. It is also not clear how this fits in with American statements that Washington respects the sovereignty of Iraq,” it said.US forces were on Friday holding five Iranians they detained during the raid on the Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil, in Iraq’s Kurdish north.—Reuters

The pre-match to match ratio (so to speak) from California is pretty good. This year around two of my teachers cum friends and i set out to apply for the residency in Medicine. As it turns out this is the end of the interviewing season and most of the programmes are wrapping up. Both of my friends have been offered pre-matches in their respective fields and they have chosen to take the pre-match offers. This is good news for both of them and MashaAllah for the achievement. The other day Fawad was telling me a quote from someone he doesn't know. It goes, Do not envy anyone for if one knew the secret histories of those that we envy one would realize the immense sorrow and despondency that pervades their lives one would be happy to be what one is. For all i know he has made it up all by himself. Anyhow the point is that we might want to look t people and say they have got everything as compared to us who have nothing. I know both doctors pretty well and i know they have had their shar...

There are times when making your blog public is exactly not the greatest of all the ideas, in the world. One of my friends has considerably sized down his blogging activity just because all that he writes, is sometimes, not fit for public knowledge. Similar problem has made me decrease the number of posts that i post on this blog. There is a way out of this problem and that is to write anonymous blogs. But then that i think doesn't suit my style. Speaking in principal one should try and carry as little as possible of the information that has to be kept under censor. An open person is a lighter and a better person. Having said this i do not want to undermine the fact that during the course of this life each and everyone of us picks up dust of facts, figures, opinions and stereotypes that has to be kept and not shed. These are to be shared not at will but at discretion _ user's discretion. Therefore I always make it a point to ask my novice bloggers to keep themselves anonymous s...

Life is too short to be worrying about all the unhappy things that happen to us. there is no reason for us to be shortsighted and spend the little time that we have in being angry over things that matter little on the grand cosmological scale. There is already a lot of hatred on the planet to kill everyone a hundred times over. One should add a little love of his own to the mix. Days months and years rush past us and suddenly we realize we don't have any of those things we wanted or we so badly worried about. Should this be a concern for depressing thoughts. I gather not! We do not matter to the cosmos and on the same token we should care least about it. One is here to live the life as ordained and one will die living it. Do you dare do different?

Keith Ellison , the first ever Muslim Congressman, will be taking his oath on a copy of Quran. This is unlike the tradition where all congressmen take oath on the bible. The copy of the Quran to be used is one from the collection of nation's third president Thomas Jefferson . Jefferson sold the copy to the congressional library as part of his collection of books. I am amazed both at the fact that a Muslim is taking oath in the congress but also on the fact that Thomas Jefferson kept a copy of the Quran in his collection. And i must admit that America is undoubtedly the greatest nation of the present era just because it had the luck to have leaders like him. It tels us that he was open to all and any idea and he was tolerant of all religions. If i go and tell this to a layman Pakistani he would probably not believe me thinking that i am trying to be overtly generous towards a nation that has been killing its brethren in cold blood. These are the kind of differences that we n...

The changeover from the previous year to the new year has been pretty busy for the Muslims all over the world. There was Eid-ul-azha on the last day of the yer 2006 and there was Saddam Hussein's execution. Both events being poles apart in their dimensions yet made to relate by some cunning cleverness of the few. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant who committed atrocities and thus got what he deserved. But the point to note is that he never committed these atrocities in the name of Islam and thus his execution should never be looked in the religious light. He is done and dusted with now. Eid-ul-azha is a joyous occasion that we Muslims celebrate in memory of the Prophets of God and their sacrifice to God. It has been celebrated extensively ll over the Muslim world and thus is done and dusted. While the Muslim world was celebrating their festival the rest of the world was drunk to the joys of the new year. there were countdowns going on and there were resolutions being made for the new yea...