January Jovialities and Jinxes

Nearly a month into the new year, and boy has it been eventful! The year began the same way last year ended, with conflict and injustice, killing and destruction. Closer to home, my brother had been arrested, daily protests were happening outside the Israeli embassy, and university life was beginning to pick up; not in the learning department where I'm sleeping in practically every lecture, but socially. Although I still believe alot of Imperial is full of unsociable computer geeks, I've made loads more friends because of the ongoing middle-east conflict, as well as joining some new societies.

I've been meaning to write a long blog post, but with everything that's been happening, I haven't only not been able to find the time, but my mood keeps changing, and paragraphs that I'd written one day didn't reflect the views I had on another. Instead I'll write a list of everything that I've witnessed or been part of since 2009 began, causing the changes in how I felt:

My brother going to court for possessing a harmful 'weapon', attending daily protests outside the Israeli embassy, getting stopped and searched twice, my Leicester interview for medicine, some very moving rallies at Trafalgar Square for Gaza, missing my first deadline, playing 8 player halo 3 offline for the first time, Obama's inauguration, debating the non-existence of the sun, debating the innocence of Dr. Harold Shipman, getting both a Harry Hill joke book and the complete Fawlty Towers, a politics and philosophy society debate about Israel, watching Yes Man, my Queen Mary interview (or Bart's as they like to call it), winning the Imperial Quran competition, losing and then finding my glasses in the mud IN THE DARK, looking through my old Pokemon cards, and just now, finally getting a place at QM for medicine!!!! Alhamdulillah.


So it's been a rollercoaster ride, and at the moment, the feeling hasn't sunken in yet. Accepting congratulations for winning the Quran competition was one thing, but for this, something that I've dreamt about and prayed for, for years and years...

I was thinking that the interviewers would see through my friendly-guy invisibilty cloak and notice my controversial persona; for example I don't believe Obama will be good, just because he's black. In all honesty I don't believe that "Black History Month" should exist; I know black people suffered alot in the past, and we should avoid anything like that happening again, but what if there was a "White History Month"? It would be condemned as racist! Choosing to side with controversy can invoke a good debate sometimes, but thankfully I managed to avoid it in my interviews.

So yeah, I'm extremely happy, and I do hope to pass my biochemistry first year and then quit, and I have a deadline on Friday, so no relaxing just yet!