Dec 13, 2008. Saturday.
It's cold. Freezing kind. And they say this is just the beginning of Islamabad winters. sighs. Orientation's tomorrow and classes start only a day after. I never imagined time would fly this fast. I know I'm very redundant, all my blog entries consist of the sentence "time flies". But there's little I can do about it. It does fly, exponentially, when you want things to slow down a bit. Sometimes I wish time could be regulated like the speed of a blender in a food factory. Slow through the times of joy and fast through the times of downs and lows. I don't have access to the internet and it truly feels like I've been kicked out of everyone's life. When mom and I initally got here on Thursday, we immediately got to the arduous task of sorting out our knick knacks. We dusted, wiped, washed and cleaned every crook and nook we saw. The result? We ached all over by 9ish and we hit the bed immediately. The house felt so strange. It didn't feel very much like home. It was cold. Too cold. Empty. Too empty. I went into a bout of depression instantly. I got an sms from a friend in Bangladesh telling me how she wasn't feeling too good about things. That was a trigger. All this time, I was trying to be as expressionless as possible, especially in front of my mom and now I felt even worse. I tried to busy myself in things. I folded all my clothes, counted them, placed them in my closet. Then I sorted my shoes out. I dusted each and every piece of furniture in my room. When I felt like crying, I vigorously scrubbed the metallic handles to my side drawers and study table. I really wanted to talk to someone, call up anyone of my close friends and cry my ass off. I missed my brother, my dad, my house, Saudi...everything. I tried to be positive. I calmed myself by telling myself that thank Allah you're not in a hostel, you have your mom with you, you have a whole house to yourself, every facility you wanted. After a dose of self-assurance, things would be okay, but then I would be down in the dumps again. I'd stand by my living curtain-less living room window and stare out into the distance. The sound of a plane flying overhead would want me to just reach out and grab a wheel and beg the pilot to drop me to Saudi. Yesterday and today I went out with my mom to the nearest marketplace to get ourselves a bit of grocery items. We prayed asr and then made our way through our "new" neighborhood streets to the so-called "I-8 Markaz". It was a nice experience, carrying grocery on our way back without any car to carry our load. Something we had never done back in Saudi. We'd always go with my dad to the nearest Giant Stores, Panda, or Carrefour, buy whatever we required, load it in our car and head off home. Here, I was learning new things. On our way back, we lost our way through the shortcut, so we decided to walk and just see where the streets led us to. On our way, we came across such pretty houses and lawns. We liked someone's garage, someone's windows, someone's lawns, someone's gates. Today I busied myself in ironing out my clothes for the next 4-5 days. It felt weird ironing along the "shalwaar's" creases instead of lightly ironing jeans and wearing western outfits daily. I matched my scarves with each outfit, then I chose the shoes. I craved internet so much, but there was nothing I could do about it. My landline wasn't installed yet either, so I was heavily depending on my cellphone to get in touch with everyone. I had put in 500 rupees just 2-3 days ago. The next thing I knew was that I just had 185 rupees left today. Once you get to Pakistan, you become so stingy and so conscience about the way you spend. I miss the lack of concern I had when I only came to vacation here. Today I just decided to try to occupy myself with my laptop. A laptop without internet is like a body without a soul. Anyways, I just opened up notepad and jotted down my randomest and saddest thoughts and rants, it does feel better. I'm nervous about tomorrow, excited too. I just don't know. One thing that's been really good about moving into my house is that I've knocked some regularity into myself, especially in regards to my prayers. Alhamdullilah, I feel very good when I pray. I prayed zuhr on the terrace today in the afternoon, with the sun and the cool breeze, it becomes really a cool place to pray. Changing tracks, I haven't visited wikipedia in ages. I am just listening to Singh is King songs, and I remembered how I'd read up the synopsis on wikipedia instead of wasting 2-3 hours of life on a movie. Now I don't think I'll ever get the chance to sit down and watch movies as much as I used too. Well, actually, I was never too big on movies, so that's a plus. Oh, I must mention, I went through my books. They look very interesting. Hope the interest remains for five long years and beyond, insh'Allah. Alhamdullilah, I feel a little better after venting out now. I don't know when I will get the internet and when this will become public. But anyways, lets cut it here.
Dec 15, 2008. Monday.
Orientation was a blur. It came and passed away even before I could say "Shifa College of Medicine". I was surprised to know that there were so many people from Lahore and from Saudi! There was just one girl from Saudi, Kashaf. Surprisingly, she turned out to be friends with some of my good friends, so it was cool. The rest of the Saudi lot was from Minarat and Paki Intl School :P schools I didn't want to really associate with honestly speaking. I have a total of 100 people in my class. During orientation, they started with the recitation of the Quran. It felt a little weird in the sense that I had never started school mornings with a religious start, but it was cool. I met up with Hadeeqa the first thing in the orientation, so I was glad that I wasn't going to be hanging out alone the whole time. It was a relief seriously! She and I had met up on facebook about a month ago and seeing her in person was cool too! :) Then I saw Ayla from a distance! She seemed to be so talkative online, but she appeared to be so reserved and quiet! I didn't get to sit with her 'cause she had come in late, but later I did manage to have a short talk with her. Then I went for a college tour and it was amazing to see how much they had, a lot more than I expected. I liked the Anatomy Museum and Forensic Medicine Dept, the most. Today was my first day of college, officially speaking that is. I was ten minutes late to my first lecture, but thank God that wasn't much of a biggie. We started with the foundation module, which comprises of Medical Ethics, Communication Skills and Evidence-Based Medicine, very fancy terms, I know :P ummmm, I made a lot of friends today and it was really nice 'cause approaching people is THE hardest part when you're starting off in a new place. My friends are called Sahla, Ayla, Hadeeqa, Khadija, Maliha, Kashaf, Anam, Zainab, and Sabeena. We luckily got two breaks today- one for 30 minutes and another for 45 minutes. We roamed around the lobby and around the college/hospital premises & enjoyed the doses of sunlight in the extreme isloo winter. During my first break, I was too queasy to eat anything, but then by the second break I just bought myself a shawarma, which Kashaf and I constantly compared with the Shawarmas back home, in Saudi. My shawarma had too much of chaat masala and here I'm thinking about what kind of an idiot puts chaat masala in a shawarma? Anyways.... I was expecting ragging to be totally inevitable, but when I read a sign that read "RAGGING IS INEXCUSABLE", my joy was so ineffable. A bunch of second year girls approached us, but to our pleasant surprise, they were there to introduce themselves to us and to tell us never to hesitate if we needed their help. Later as we exited the college lobby and went out to stand by the main college entrance, we got 'news" that there was a minute amount of ragging going on near the stairs leading to the basement [that's where our foundation sessions were being held], Sahla and I totally freaked out and decided to sneak away to the nearest alternative route to the basement. Luckily for us, we found another set of stairs leading to the basement. lol. It was fun. They then showed us "Patch Adams", which was part of the foundation module. It was such an amazing movie. Had I watched it in private, I'd have shed a few tears, but I couldn't afford being a sissy by crying in public on the first day of college. I simply loved that movie. Our lecturers [I don't even know all their names yet. =/] then gave us a few questions to reflect over about the movie for homework. Now that I'm done with it, I'm happily spending time here on notepad trying to write blog entries, which will become public very later. My college timings till Dec 27 are going to from 8:00 to 4:00, which is too hectic. I miss school dismissal at 1:30. sighs. They dismissed us early at around 3:40 today. My driver was supposed to arrive at 4, so I just walked around with Sahla and talked about stuff as we toured the Shifa premises. The weather was good, not too cold, it was sunny instead. It felt nice walking with such pride with my labcoat flapping in the breeze.lol. Reminds me of what Emad, a friend from school told me about starting medical school, and I quote "Initially you will feel all special about being called a "doctor saab", but later the bouts of depression are too much. You become disillusioned and wonder why you chose this way to be doomed? But nonetheless, it's a great field". Friendssssss reminds me! A guy in my class has the "WEIRDEST" hair-do. Okay, maybe "weird' isn't the word, it's unique, lets show some respect. lol. His hairstyle reminds me of Edward Cullen from Twilight and I can so imagine all my friends dying to see him now. haha. Especially Anam, Naseeha, and Hibah. Oh let me take this opportunity to make my hatred for Edward public. :) I'm not insane, I am just too human for the whole "vampire experience" :P...Changing tracks, we got all our cargo from Saudi just yesterday...We unpacked all the boxes and adding the few bits and bobs here and there gave my house a truly different feel, but Pakistan still doesn't feel home, my heart's still in Saudi....I don't even feel like eating junk food here, although back in Saudi I was an addict! Here everything tastes like rubber especially junk food. I just don't find the same "charm" in it anymore. Sighs. I know I am obsessed with Saudi. I'm in LOVE with Saudi Arabia. lol. I've spent the best years of my life in there and I just can't let go of them too easily, as it is pretty obvious by each and every post of mine. Okay enough. Tata.
Yada Mada's. =]---- basically things that I forgot or were too random to mention in my entry.
*. They gave us a whole reflective essay to write, which is due on a Friday [alien, since Fridays were always off for us, sighs]. Blukhies.
*. I just changed the time on my laptop, it initially read "6:24 P.M" and I just changed it to "8:24 P.M" *halo* painful process of moving ahead, I tell you.
*. Oh, did I tell you how much I missed my auditorium from back in Rahima and Mrs. Read's assemblies when I attended my college orientation? Sighs. Those assemblies were THE shit. Enough said.
It's cold. Freezing kind. And they say this is just the beginning of Islamabad winters. sighs. Orientation's tomorrow and classes start only a day after. I never imagined time would fly this fast. I know I'm very redundant, all my blog entries consist of the sentence "time flies". But there's little I can do about it. It does fly, exponentially, when you want things to slow down a bit. Sometimes I wish time could be regulated like the speed of a blender in a food factory. Slow through the times of joy and fast through the times of downs and lows. I don't have access to the internet and it truly feels like I've been kicked out of everyone's life. When mom and I initally got here on Thursday, we immediately got to the arduous task of sorting out our knick knacks. We dusted, wiped, washed and cleaned every crook and nook we saw. The result? We ached all over by 9ish and we hit the bed immediately. The house felt so strange. It didn't feel very much like home. It was cold. Too cold. Empty. Too empty. I went into a bout of depression instantly. I got an sms from a friend in Bangladesh telling me how she wasn't feeling too good about things. That was a trigger. All this time, I was trying to be as expressionless as possible, especially in front of my mom and now I felt even worse. I tried to busy myself in things. I folded all my clothes, counted them, placed them in my closet. Then I sorted my shoes out. I dusted each and every piece of furniture in my room. When I felt like crying, I vigorously scrubbed the metallic handles to my side drawers and study table. I really wanted to talk to someone, call up anyone of my close friends and cry my ass off. I missed my brother, my dad, my house, Saudi...everything. I tried to be positive. I calmed myself by telling myself that thank Allah you're not in a hostel, you have your mom with you, you have a whole house to yourself, every facility you wanted. After a dose of self-assurance, things would be okay, but then I would be down in the dumps again. I'd stand by my living curtain-less living room window and stare out into the distance. The sound of a plane flying overhead would want me to just reach out and grab a wheel and beg the pilot to drop me to Saudi. Yesterday and today I went out with my mom to the nearest marketplace to get ourselves a bit of grocery items. We prayed asr and then made our way through our "new" neighborhood streets to the so-called "I-8 Markaz". It was a nice experience, carrying grocery on our way back without any car to carry our load. Something we had never done back in Saudi. We'd always go with my dad to the nearest Giant Stores, Panda, or Carrefour, buy whatever we required, load it in our car and head off home. Here, I was learning new things. On our way back, we lost our way through the shortcut, so we decided to walk and just see where the streets led us to. On our way, we came across such pretty houses and lawns. We liked someone's garage, someone's windows, someone's lawns, someone's gates. Today I busied myself in ironing out my clothes for the next 4-5 days. It felt weird ironing along the "shalwaar's" creases instead of lightly ironing jeans and wearing western outfits daily. I matched my scarves with each outfit, then I chose the shoes. I craved internet so much, but there was nothing I could do about it. My landline wasn't installed yet either, so I was heavily depending on my cellphone to get in touch with everyone. I had put in 500 rupees just 2-3 days ago. The next thing I knew was that I just had 185 rupees left today. Once you get to Pakistan, you become so stingy and so conscience about the way you spend. I miss the lack of concern I had when I only came to vacation here. Today I just decided to try to occupy myself with my laptop. A laptop without internet is like a body without a soul. Anyways, I just opened up notepad and jotted down my randomest and saddest thoughts and rants, it does feel better. I'm nervous about tomorrow, excited too. I just don't know. One thing that's been really good about moving into my house is that I've knocked some regularity into myself, especially in regards to my prayers. Alhamdullilah, I feel very good when I pray. I prayed zuhr on the terrace today in the afternoon, with the sun and the cool breeze, it becomes really a cool place to pray. Changing tracks, I haven't visited wikipedia in ages. I am just listening to Singh is King songs, and I remembered how I'd read up the synopsis on wikipedia instead of wasting 2-3 hours of life on a movie. Now I don't think I'll ever get the chance to sit down and watch movies as much as I used too. Well, actually, I was never too big on movies, so that's a plus. Oh, I must mention, I went through my books. They look very interesting. Hope the interest remains for five long years and beyond, insh'Allah. Alhamdullilah, I feel a little better after venting out now. I don't know when I will get the internet and when this will become public. But anyways, lets cut it here.
Dec 15, 2008. Monday.
Orientation was a blur. It came and passed away even before I could say "Shifa College of Medicine". I was surprised to know that there were so many people from Lahore and from Saudi! There was just one girl from Saudi, Kashaf. Surprisingly, she turned out to be friends with some of my good friends, so it was cool. The rest of the Saudi lot was from Minarat and Paki Intl School :P schools I didn't want to really associate with honestly speaking. I have a total of 100 people in my class. During orientation, they started with the recitation of the Quran. It felt a little weird in the sense that I had never started school mornings with a religious start, but it was cool. I met up with Hadeeqa the first thing in the orientation, so I was glad that I wasn't going to be hanging out alone the whole time. It was a relief seriously! She and I had met up on facebook about a month ago and seeing her in person was cool too! :) Then I saw Ayla from a distance! She seemed to be so talkative online, but she appeared to be so reserved and quiet! I didn't get to sit with her 'cause she had come in late, but later I did manage to have a short talk with her. Then I went for a college tour and it was amazing to see how much they had, a lot more than I expected. I liked the Anatomy Museum and Forensic Medicine Dept, the most. Today was my first day of college, officially speaking that is. I was ten minutes late to my first lecture, but thank God that wasn't much of a biggie. We started with the foundation module, which comprises of Medical Ethics, Communication Skills and Evidence-Based Medicine, very fancy terms, I know :P ummmm, I made a lot of friends today and it was really nice 'cause approaching people is THE hardest part when you're starting off in a new place. My friends are called Sahla, Ayla, Hadeeqa, Khadija, Maliha, Kashaf, Anam, Zainab, and Sabeena. We luckily got two breaks today- one for 30 minutes and another for 45 minutes. We roamed around the lobby and around the college/hospital premises & enjoyed the doses of sunlight in the extreme isloo winter. During my first break, I was too queasy to eat anything, but then by the second break I just bought myself a shawarma, which Kashaf and I constantly compared with the Shawarmas back home, in Saudi. My shawarma had too much of chaat masala and here I'm thinking about what kind of an idiot puts chaat masala in a shawarma? Anyways.... I was expecting ragging to be totally inevitable, but when I read a sign that read "RAGGING IS INEXCUSABLE", my joy was so ineffable. A bunch of second year girls approached us, but to our pleasant surprise, they were there to introduce themselves to us and to tell us never to hesitate if we needed their help. Later as we exited the college lobby and went out to stand by the main college entrance, we got 'news" that there was a minute amount of ragging going on near the stairs leading to the basement [that's where our foundation sessions were being held], Sahla and I totally freaked out and decided to sneak away to the nearest alternative route to the basement. Luckily for us, we found another set of stairs leading to the basement. lol. It was fun. They then showed us "Patch Adams", which was part of the foundation module. It was such an amazing movie. Had I watched it in private, I'd have shed a few tears, but I couldn't afford being a sissy by crying in public on the first day of college. I simply loved that movie. Our lecturers [I don't even know all their names yet. =/] then gave us a few questions to reflect over about the movie for homework. Now that I'm done with it, I'm happily spending time here on notepad trying to write blog entries, which will become public very later. My college timings till Dec 27 are going to from 8:00 to 4:00, which is too hectic. I miss school dismissal at 1:30. sighs. They dismissed us early at around 3:40 today. My driver was supposed to arrive at 4, so I just walked around with Sahla and talked about stuff as we toured the Shifa premises. The weather was good, not too cold, it was sunny instead. It felt nice walking with such pride with my labcoat flapping in the breeze.lol. Reminds me of what Emad, a friend from school told me about starting medical school, and I quote "Initially you will feel all special about being called a "doctor saab", but later the bouts of depression are too much. You become disillusioned and wonder why you chose this way to be doomed? But nonetheless, it's a great field". Friendssssss reminds me! A guy in my class has the "WEIRDEST" hair-do. Okay, maybe "weird' isn't the word, it's unique, lets show some respect. lol. His hairstyle reminds me of Edward Cullen from Twilight and I can so imagine all my friends dying to see him now. haha. Especially Anam, Naseeha, and Hibah. Oh let me take this opportunity to make my hatred for Edward public. :) I'm not insane, I am just too human for the whole "vampire experience" :P...Changing tracks, we got all our cargo from Saudi just yesterday...We unpacked all the boxes and adding the few bits and bobs here and there gave my house a truly different feel, but Pakistan still doesn't feel home, my heart's still in Saudi....I don't even feel like eating junk food here, although back in Saudi I was an addict! Here everything tastes like rubber especially junk food. I just don't find the same "charm" in it anymore. Sighs. I know I am obsessed with Saudi. I'm in LOVE with Saudi Arabia. lol. I've spent the best years of my life in there and I just can't let go of them too easily, as it is pretty obvious by each and every post of mine. Okay enough. Tata.
Yada Mada's. =]---- basically things that I forgot or were too random to mention in my entry.
*. They gave us a whole reflective essay to write, which is due on a Friday [alien, since Fridays were always off for us, sighs]. Blukhies.
*. I just changed the time on my laptop, it initially read "6:24 P.M" and I just changed it to "8:24 P.M" *halo* painful process of moving ahead, I tell you.
*. Oh, did I tell you how much I missed my auditorium from back in Rahima and Mrs. Read's assemblies when I attended my college orientation? Sighs. Those assemblies were THE shit. Enough said.
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