Happy 33rd Habibi

In the history of this blog, a lot of people have gotten shout outs for their birthdays, however this one is a unique one. This one goes out to the most patient, caring and thoughtful man that has ever walked on this planet. Happiest Birthday dearest hubooter kabooter! May you get all you ever ask for, because you deserve it all, if not more. I truly hope that our little one follows your footsteps and turns out to be a man just like you are. Here's wishing unlimited more years filled with colors, smiles, family, fun things a.k.a football and a hot beverage in close proximity because a promised cuppa tea has glued us together forever. HIP HIP, HORAY! 

Spills

When I was a little kid, I remember telling my mom that I want some of the soft-drink all other siblings of mine were drinking. It was coke. Generally my mom avoided giving me such a highly sugared drink at a tender age of 7 or 8, but that day I was cranky 'cause I had just woken up from my sleep. So mom decided to let me have a little bit. She poured it in a glass and came over to my bed to hand it to me. I had promised that i'll go back to sleep after drinking my coke. My mom must have looked away for like 10 seconds in which i managed to fall asleep with the glass of coke in my hand, however all the coke had spilled onto the bed. I woke up moments after the spill and bursted into tears because I had spilled my share of coke and there wasn't more left that i could request from my mother. To a kid, apparently, thats scarring. I can still access the feeling I felt in that moment. I felt extreme loss caused by myself and that I was so helpless to not be able to turn time back & prevent the spill.

Last night a similar spilling happened, not of coke but of something more valuable & irreplaceable. Something we cant just buy with money, something that we had worked very hard to obtain but we spilled it. And I immediately remembered the spill from 20 years ago. It's as if I was prepared 20 years ago for an exam I had to take last night. I may have dealt with this spill more gracefully & I'm sure this is preparing me for whats yet to come.

Me and I.

It happened again.

I laughed out loud and was surprised by the sound of my own voice.

It’s as if I had never heard myself before.

Is this my voice?

Is it you, ‘Me’?

I feel good about this.

I think ‘Me’ and I will become best friends forever.

Same old pair of eyes with renewed vision!

Reading some of my old posts in which I have whined about the noisiness in my house back in 2009 (probably caused by my younger twin sisters) I realized how a person is never EVER at peace with what s/he has! Back then I would complain about all that noisiness and today sitting in my quiet house all by myself, in my mind I’m appreciating the passive company of the noises of people I love running as the background music of my day! While I say this today, tomorrow hopefully when I have my own kids, I would probably go back to craving stillness and quiet. This proves that our untamed minds are never at peace IN THE MOMENT. So maybe we need all this education, skills, money, comfort, success to somehow run into enough life experiences to finally realize that all we truly need to get ourselves is to live in the moment lovingly! To love our surroundings however they are, because it will not stay this way forever! To love the noise, love the silence, love the incompleteness, love the cracks, and love the spills, because it will all go away sooner than we think it will.

So here’s to today, to this moment, to 11:08 am on a Monday morning, which I don’t want to alter! I want to sit through this morning and appreciate it exactly how it is, in all its perfection and all its flaws. I am living you 8^th Feb 2016, I am alive in this very moment to the full capacity of my consciousness and I am content!

Set of goals

Considering today is 8^th January already, I feel if I don’t keep a track of this year, it will slip away in the blink of an eye. I want to achieve a lot this year and my maximum concentration will be on expanding my knowledge and skill base. One of the skills I had never thought I’d want to acquire is learning Dutch. However, as the circumstances unfolded themselves I realized I need to excel this language like a hunter needs to hunt his animal; with fearlessness and aggression.

For some reason I feel like life is slipping by too fast, when I was 13 I remember I wanted to grow older so fast and so badly, if it were up to me I’d use a magic wand then and made myself 20 something. Now that I am 25, I feel its passing by really quickly. I want for it to stop for a while, just till I can plan how I want my 25^th year to turn out. But sadly, no matter how controlling I am, I can’t control time, nature, space, happenings and catastrophes.

My wish-list this year:

Get more organized
Learn as much Dutch as possible.
Get enrolled in a Master’s Program
Manage new house perfectly well
Keep a positive outlook on life no matter what
DON’T GET INFLUENCED BY WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK! (Train your mind)

I think these are very do-able set of goals and I truly hope I have the courage to stand up and work these things out for myself.

Happy New Year 2014

Reflection - YEAR 2013

Like million others, I’m sitting down today to reflect upon the happenings of the year 2013. I can safely say, this year has been a year of changes; I have undergone mental, physical, geographical and life-style changes. This is the third time that I have undergone such a major change in my life. The first time was in 2007 whereby I had re-learnt how to live and revised my way of living after the demise of my mother. I had to inculcate new qualities within my being, had to accept new roles and responsibilities in order to get by. After 4 years of sharpening my then newly acquired tactics of life, I decided to undergo a geographical change and moved to Dubai where I started a new life. I learnt how to live without the people I loved the most, how to cope with situations on my own, and basically, how to begin again, slowly and steadily! Now that I look back, it seems that moving to Dubai was a preparatory lesson given to me for the changes I had to undergo in 2013. Here’s a quick look of my year.

January 2013

First month of a fresh year handed me a list of fresh new priorities alongside managing the old ones. Without doubt it can be said that this month was all about planning and research. There were hours and hours of skype session cutting the distance between me and my soon-to-be. Our hot topic of discussions were “Court marriage in Dubai” and our “Nikkah Ceremony”. We had to find out the legal requirements that we had to take care of, it may sound very simple at the moment, but it was anything but simple. We had to coordinate shopping agendas, schedule dates for blood test, halls, flights and much more. Alongside coordination, I was managing previous plannings' implementation also. I visited Karachi this month to take care of all the shopping that needed to be done for the upcoming event. Needless to say I had an amazing time in Karachi with friends and family alongside shopping.

Feb 2013

This was the month of my Nikah with my then very-soon-to-be. By second week of Feb I had taken holidays from work to sort out things that had to be done for the event. My google history shows contacting all kinds of photographers, beauticians and hotels in Dubai to get this event sorted. By now, my soon-to-be had also landed in Dubai. We both were running around like mad cows and I guess all the running around paid off ‘cause the event itself was a job well done! 

March 2013

I was told a long time ago that I would have to take the Dutch language exam in order to complete the process of my marriage. This is the month when I had to start taking my Dutch course seriously. So I started from the very basic and moved my way up. Slowly and painfully.

April 2013

Dutch can’t go this slowly! My test was due in May, so I had to take it very seriously! Alongside my day job which was keeping me in Dubai, I had online night classes with my official to-be on skype. So, after full day at work I’d come home exhausted (because I’d hardly slept the night before) have my cup of tea with spinney’s cookie (which was my fav) then I’d have  a little nap followed by a family dinner in which I’d tell everyone how exhausting my days are. And then I’d hop online and suffer through the newness of all the Dutch sounds. Study sessions would last till around 2 to 3 in the morning, it was quite challenging to manage full time work, sleep deprivation and a long distance relationship at the same time.

May 2013

First half of this month was terrible. All the sleeplessness and over-exertion gave me a skin condition. It took me a while to notice that something was happening to me, and then when I did, it freaked me out. Everytime I look back on situations, I wish I was a calmer and not a fanatic about things. Even though, honestly, the white spots on my skin as a condition of the disease were seriously freaky. The thing is, I had no choice but to let time heal it for me. I had to let go of it and concentrate on the exam that was coming up. Boy, that was a huge challenge for me.

Turns out, no matter how much fuss I make out of every situation, I do end up as a winner. Aced my Dutch test and never touched the Dutch books again. Meanwhile, skin white spots healed on their own as the doctor promised. End of may was a start of a happy me again.

P.S. I was gona go to Malaysia in May, had to cancel the ticket thanks to Dutch. Oh the sacrifices!

June 2013

I was given a heart attack that the wedding will be in August. Most of the month went fighting for it to be after august.

July 2013

July was fun. Sisters had come to Dubai so every day after work I used to take them all around Dubai and have fun. From thrilling rides at Sega Republic to indulgence in gourmet food experiences; we got it all covered. A fun month for sure.

August 2013

August was exciting. I travelled to Hong Kong and China for work. Loved every bit of it. Travelling teaches you a lot of thing that nothing else can teach. Also, it’s a lot of fun exploring new cities, especially when all the expenses are paid for! :P I was in Kowloon, it’s  a busy and beautiful city. You will always find people running around, everyone is busy getting by it seemed.

September 2013

It was that time of the year that I packed my bag and got ready to travel to my home country for one last time. (its not really the LAST time im sure, but the last time as a single person). September was about shopping for wedding, meeting old friends and basically wrapping up my life in Pakistan. I think I had very less time there, so wasn’t able to do all I had planned to do. But I’m glad I got to visit. Sadly, my one and only wish of visiting my mom’s grave didn’t come true due to instable political conditions in the country

October 2013

So much happened in Oct, I can write 2000 words on it if I go in the paragraph form, so I will just give pointers, this is how the month unfolded:

Hyperventilation.
Meeting all members of immediate family.
More Hyperventilation.
Implementation of wedding planning.
Last day at Dubai office.
Continued hyperventilation.
Eid season.
Family Gatherings.
Anxiety and fear of the unknown.
End of an era.
New beginning.
And Finally…
THE WEDDING!!!

Nope, the month hasn’t ended yet:

Conquering new territories on the honeymoon:
Banyan Trees, RAK, UAE.
Etihad Jumeirah Toweres, ABU DHABI, UAE.

November 2013

A month of farewell. It’s time to leave and bid farewell to the family, farewell to Dubai, farewell to being single, farewell to the old life. Farewell to skyscrapers, farewell to the excitement of Dubai. Yes, this is the month in which I moved to Amsterdam! This marks as an adaptation period for me, mental adaptation to a new (and so loving) family. Physical adaptation to a cold country, style adaptation to wearing scarves, jackets and boots (small thing but influences). To be honest, I’m still adapting.

Dec 2013

December marks the end of the year however for me, nothing about December seems to be an end. It’s still the very start of my new life. I spent December trying to settle down in Amsterdam. It’s a starter’s month for me. I got my library pass made so I have something to do around here. From casual walks to hard-core interviews with local companies; I indulged in everything that feel a tad more at home in this land of The Dutch.

So this was The Year 2013; THE HAPPENING YEAR!

"The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence." - Edward Thomas

If you could see me now..