The week so far:
Exam – Tuesday
Final Project Draft Submission – Tuesday
Exam – Wednesday
Final Project Submission – Wednesday
2 days. 9 hours of sleep in total. 2 more final presentations to go.
I’d better graduate this semester.
What fond memories I shall leave from university with. Spending hours in class, spending time on the steps waiting for the delivery guy from one of the cheaper places in the area to come deliver food so 5 starving students can finally eat their first meal of the day (known to happen at 7 PM somedays) and wondering why some teachers enjoy taking out the frustration of their working lives out on a class of innocents.
Oh well. Life is strange. The more I think about love and relationships the more I am sure I am not ready for one. The last time I truly believed that, self-assured in my own realizations, I met someone new. I highly doubt thats going to happen this time. However, yesterday I read in The Friday Times that a swan in Germany has fallen in love with a plastic peddling boat.
Told you life was strange.
Yesterday, my class was ‘forcibly’ volunteering at our university graduation (we’d been tempted with extra course credit and whatnot)
..and surprisingly, I actually enjoyed the entire event – despite whining throughout the looong trip to get there that we should just go have a nice lunch instead.
The day in a nutshell:
CQ’s place: Playing The Apprentice game on her supercool new laptop (which has Windows Vista!) and laughing hysterically at the Donald Trump quotes and how they mirrored exact lines I’ve heard being said to me..
With M and CQ: Trying to find a Western Union branch – supposedly near the Nirala branch close to CQ’s house.
No Western Union branch. Head to Zamzama, where WU guy starts flirting with CQ. Find all this very hilarious.
Find out Western Union branch was actually next to the old Nirala near CQ’s place. Karachiites really need to start telling directions using streetnames instead of landmarks.
Get to graduation. Get yelled at by instructor for being so late. Find spots. Wonder at what the graduating batch must be feeling.
Graduation ceremony’s actually nice. Find my eyes welling up at the sight of a proud father taking a picture of his daughter. Realize how different he looks from the rest of the ‘whole’ families (mom, dad, brothers, sisters, in-laws) and then how my graduation ceremony will be exactly like that.
Listen to CQ’s theory of ‘The Science of Birds’ which she claims will win her a Nobel Prize in 10 years. To her credit, she hadn’t eaten the entire day, it was rather hot and she was trying to find a way to one-up all the medal-winning graduates. Theory soon discarded after she claims the birds are ‘burger birds’ and hence do not follow the science of birds.
M comes running up to inform us that there is a Western Union at the venue. No one says ‘so if we’d just come here we would never have been late.’ Instead, CQ and I try and confirm whether the couples who were together all through uni are still together or not.
Free food! Wearing a shiny yellow volunteer badge is worth it because of the mouth watering gulab jamuns.
We all realize we’re actually quite excited about graduating next year. I advise people to find corporate sponsors to sponsor the medals for electives they’ve aced this year. Life goes back to normal..or whatever it is that we like to call it.
Yesterday, I sat in class openmouthed, reeling in shock and anger, as a teacher (a graduate from one of Pakistan’s top business schools) calmly stated “the only people who become journalists are those who don’t get jobs anywhere else..unlike other professions they don’t do it so they can strive for excellence in their field..”
It is comments like these that make me feel even more pissed off/despondent about the state of journalism in Pakistan. Sure, there are people who are complete disgraces to the profession. But for each one of those disgraces, there are countless brilliant people who have made amazing strides in journalism in Pakistan. Isn’t it the same for every profession? There are bad bankers, but that doesn’t make banking a bad (albeit extremely boring) career choice..and so on.
I wish someone at the business school he went to, or any of the journalists he meets, had enlightened him to the fact that the monthly pay of most freelance journalists in the country is probably equal to what a beggar standing near Teen Talwar makes in a week. Or that the reason people become journalists isn’t because they can’t get jobs anywhere else – its because they’re ready to put their degrees aside and work for a print media organization at menial pay because they want to learn, to become good, better, greater writers – to be able to be what they’ve dreamed of their whole life – a journalist.
Anyway, that feels good now that I’ve gotten it out of my system. I’m happy (so far) with the courses I’m taking this semester (the assignment for Brand Management is to watch TV! – yay!) but I realize that as the days pass by, the comfort zone of being a student is slipping away, replaced by the unknown factor (which has been known to have many a soon-to-be graduating student collapse into nervous exhaustion) yet I am oddly calm about everything. I’ve applied for one position with an organization that I love working with, and if that doesn’t work out I’m going to take some time off and travel and see the world with completely different eyes, in a place where noone knows my name. 
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am extremely happy to announce
..that after 2 attempts – 1 which was aborted halfway, and 1 which I failed at – to pass Calculus
- the 3rd time has been the charm.
I have finally passed Calculus! YAY for me!
The end of the semester is upon us, and as any business student will tell you, this IS the time when it will dawn upon you that all end-of-term projects, assignments and presentations actually do have deadlines that are quite near – like tomorrow, or in 6 hours?
Anyway, so as M, CQ and I commenced work on a project for Media Planning, seated in a crowded lab, with shouts emanating from the lab next door, where a CS tournament was underway (which any CS player will tell you, is rowdy, to say the least), I opened the Gallup Pakistan website, and chanced upon their Archives page, which makes for some great comic relief. I know I really shouldn’t make fun of market research, my Dad works in the same field and hence I have spent a considerable amount of my life looking at surveys and transcribed interviews and what not..but a caffeine starved student has little entertainment..
While some of these are outdated, please see the rather interesting findings presented:
52% of Pakistanis believe in “Taveez Ganda”, 44% in Black Magic
NO surprise there. Just ask my extended family in Punjab.
Only 16% of Pakistanis believe wealth comes from hard work
Duh! What happened to the rest of us realists?!
Channa Dal is a favorite in Pakistani cuisine
My own informal survey with CQ and M proved otherwise, but okay..
Pakora is the Number One snack during Iftar at Ramadan
So what’s Number Two?
Only 13% Pakistanis eat on a dinner table
Yep, because dinner tables are actually a place to keep school/college textbooks, laundry and other random things. However, my cat does actually eat on the dinner table. The rest of the population balance their plates on their knees and watch Star Plus and Geo.
And my own personal favorite:
37% of Pakistanis complain of forgetfulness. But only 17% of Pakistanis keep written notes.
University is a weird place. At any given day, you can see students cussing out teachers, the administration, their friends or themselves. We eat food that can only be considered a sanctuary for food poisoning, and try to catch up on our sleep in the a) library b) computer lab c) common room d) garden e) bathroom f) classroom..you get the point. University has this way of making you so insanely busy that you tend to forget both important and unimportant things. I used to believe I was pretty good at juggling everything – I usually do have a lot of free time on my hands (along with ballpoint ink and chipped nailpolish) but what really surprised me was when I had no idea it was Shab-e-Barat until our neighbours sent over a truckload of food and then lit enough firecrackers to deafen the entire block. I still didn’t know what was going on until I complained to my dad about the noise, and he looked strangely at me and said ‘Its Shab-e-Barat.’ While I’m not a very religious person, I atleast can keep track of things like these – I even used to fast not so long ago.
A few weeks ago, I told myself that I needed to get insanely busy so that I could concentrate on sorting my life (and the sorry state of my head) out but even with the madness all around me, I’m still in a vegetative state. The good news is that I’ve been through this before, and one day I will wake up and not want to throw myself off the roof or eat a million sleeping pills.
I must have the most horrible schedule for the next semester starting from tomorrow. Classes begin at 8 am on two days straight. Classes till 6 [or was it 6:30?] on Saturday. Sigh. Its okay though. Not like I have anything to save my time for.
A 3.4 GPA isn’t such a bad thing.
I thought last night that if I get that, I’d be over the moon and would call up everyone and go get a cake from Cake Craft. But here I am,starving, with stinging red eyes, blow dried hair [yes, again] and all I can feel is overwhelming sadness. Or nothingness. Same thing.
Aah. Most of my exams are over. I actually passed in Accounting, though don’t have an A+ now, I might get an A though. Its okay. You only get what you give. Thats Cobain, right? Lapse in memory. Need sleep. Need euphoria. Need inspiration. Need lots of money so I can buy everyone a piece of the sky. Yes, it is on sale. Wonder how Atlas feels about that.
