Crow's Nest...

This post is mainly for all the Toyota owners out there.  I recently got an oil change for my car.  I didn't go to my Toyota dealer mainly because he didn't offer synthetic oil for my car.  Seems like kind of strange but yes he told me that he doesn't have synthetic base motor oil and if I wanted one I had to provide it for him.  So I ditched him and opted for Vroom instead.  They cost me less and almost did or claim to do all those things that my Maplewood Toyota Dealer would have done.  There was one exception though.  Since my car is a 2009 model the dealer at Vroom hadn't seen very many of these and didn't have the make and model in the system.  they didn't reset my odometer.  As I had gotten my oil change at about 4000 miles the maintenance required indicator that reminds us of oil changes started blinking two days ago when my car completed 4500 miles.  That kind of pissed me off.  So I went to my Vroom people and asked them ...

I have always believed that media has a far greater role in shaping a society today than it ever had in the past. It can make people believe in things that don't exist or that might exist. It can make us dream for the good or the worse. But why is it that media has become so influential in my world? I think it so because all that we see on the television screen today seems very plausible. All the cars, clothes, houses and women seem plausible existence to the viewers of today as compared to those of yester years. The world has shrunk into a true global village and all that happens in the developed world is actually felt by the viewer in the developing world. With all the live streams and audio video content on the air we can actually feel our presence in the center of any situation. This changes things a lot from a layman's perspective. Earlier when we saw huge cars, seamless roads, large casinos, colourful vibrant beach fronts on the TV screen we could not associate ou...

Eid Mubarak to everyone who visits or stumbles onto this blog. While i am writing this eid wish i am told that another suicide bombing in NWFP has left 50 people dead while they were saying their eid prayers. This is heinous, to say the least.

The weather here at my place is very unpredictable. It is more like crazy than anything. One day it is freezing cold an the next it is hot and humid as hell. Maybe its to do with the proximity with the ocean. Whenever the ocean air current flows towards the land mass it brings hot humid weather with it. On the other hand whenever the air currents flow towards the ocean from the land mass the weather becomes dry and cold. See... there you have it... a scientist in making. hah!

This will be my concluding post from the land of Hollywood, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and Silicon Valley. I am leaving California and with it United States of America. This tour had its ups and downs and with them their ebb and flows. For the past three days I have been visiting southern California and its most famous attractions namely Disneyland Resort and Universal Studios Theme Parks and Hollywood. It has been a ride full of adventures and fun and will need a complete post dedicated to it once I am done with leaving the country and arriving in Pakistan. Till then Adios!

Why wouldn't blogger let me blog? This is a million dollar question that i was asking myself yesterday at around same time. The ever efficient blogger bots had realized that my blog looked like a spam blog and thus decided to deny me any opportunity to publish any new posts until such time that my blog was reviewed by a team of teaming humans and cleared of any probability of being spam. Outrageous. The bots are pathetic. I don't see why any such thing should have happened. Incompetence can account for much but then again the guys were quick to give me my access back. I wanted to write about so many things yesterday. I wanted to write about the situation in our capital Islamabad. I wanted to comment on the plight of religion in our country. I wanted to post about our upcoming visit to the Disney Land. I wanted to write much more. But nigh! I shall not. And thus you shall not.

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.

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.

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?

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...

It is eid here tomorrow and day after tomorrow. Somehow there are enough Pathans here to dispute moon sightings in this developed society. Therefore once again the Muslim population here has been made to celebrate the eid day on two different days. some of us will celebrate the occasion tomorrow while others who feel a bit tied up in work and a little easy going can do so on Sunday. In some ways it is a good thing since the number of mosques here is limited and if the whole Muslim population were to come to say prayers there would have to be more than 2 sessions of the same prayer. Last time i said my eid here i was amazed at the number of people that had actually turned up to say their prayers. the MCA in the area is quite active and has a closely knit network. The beauty of this land is that it permits everyone and anyone to do anything and everything. All interactions are encouraged rather than prevented. Mind is given an opportunity to take a free flight. Were it not for t...

What is it it that makes us leave our country and live in another, as second class citizens, for the better part of our lives? I think there are many things. There is the money factor, which needs to be addressed, by everyone. Then for some there is limited exposure in their homeland and they want to enhance their exposure according to their abilities. The availability of reliable social amenities in a developed society is another factor that plays some role. Some come here because they find this society safer than their own. One important factor that i understand to be of paramount importance in driving people to developed countries is their inability to relate themselves to the cultures of their parent society. Pakistanis for most part of it come to other countries because they, at times, abhor their own culture and society. They look down upon their values and thus try and colour their lives with the values of a foreign land. Many a men i have met who site the reason for lea...

I have the step 3 videos with me now. I will start watching them from tomorrow. I hope to complete my Step 3 prep by January and take the exam begin February right before i leave for Pakistan. The long weekend has come to an end. Christmas is all closed here. No shops open not even the 24/7 stores. There are a lot of lights and decorations outside the homes. It is just as if Pakistanis celebrate the independence day. The weather has been nice. There has been no rain over the weekend and clouds have been scarce with ample sunshine in the valley. Tomorrow doesn't look nice though. There is a storm coming this way and bringing lots of rain with it. The bay area will be drenched by afternoon tomorrow.

My result just arrived. I have passed the exam and thus i am finally certified. I can now boast of two medical degrees, MBBS and MD. My next target is a state licence for practice. I have already started the preparations and will be taking my exam inshaAllah in January or February. It has been a long journey but worthwhile, i guess. Today is the party day. I have prepared myself a nice juicy burger and some samosas and will be getting to them once i am finished with the post. It is raining outside and the weather is absolutely marvellous, although many might not agree with me but i like this kind of weather. At least for the time being i do.

As indecisive as i am i can't get to decide which watch should i buy for myself. I have narrowed down my choices to two watches (it has been a long long search). One is Kenneth Cole Reaction . This is a all stainless steel analog watch with three hands and a date function. It is simple very elegant and i like it for its sheer simplicity. It is silver and has a metallic strap. Is water resistant. It comes with life time warranty for manufacturing defects. No wear and tear covered. It is cheaper than the other choice. The other choice is Wenger Swiss Military watch. It is a round dial. Leather strap. Has elegant date function. Analog chronograph. It has a black dial and luminescent hands. It has a 30 minute chrono function. I have no idea about the warranty though. It is water resistant to 100 meters. UPDATE: Since there were numerous number of suggestions to confuse me i resorted to my own invaluable opinion and have finally bought the watch number two. I like it.

I am in exceptionally good mood today. Well i am in a good mood today. The reason is hitherto unknown. Let tomorrow be an even better day. And day after tomorrow even better. The philosophy of life is complex and can not be put into words using a vocabulary as limited as mine. And therefore my philosophy of life is a function of feeling. I say in a feeling what a philosopher would have said in words or a poet in verse. Thomas Stearns Eliot would express his feelings thus, I Because I do not hope to turn again Because I do not hope Because I do not hope to turn Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope I no longer strive to strive towards such things (Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?) Why should I mourn The vanished power of the usual reign? Because I do not hope to know The infirm glory of the positive hour Because I do not think Because I know I shall not know The one veritable transitory power Because I cannot drink There, where trees flower, and springs flow...