February Frivolities and Failures

This month was definitely a month dedicated to my friends; with practically no work done, I spent most of my free time in the library cafe chatting to my buddies and learning more about them. Whilst I was supposed to be revising for a Biological Chemistry module exam, I found myself mostly staring at a computer screen hoping that my friends wouldn't beat my "How fast can you type the alphabet?" score of 5 point something seconds. I guess I failed the exam, and my record beaten.

Sitting the exam didn't feel normal; I wasn't worried, I wasn't relaxed, and at the back of my mind there was the thought of something not turning out right with my place at Bart's, so I did put in effort in the sense that I didn't just draw cartoons like I know a few people did the year before. I was fishing for marks throughout the exam; anything that sounded biochemistry-like I put in, making up a few enzymes and pathways as I went along. The exam was three hours long, but bearing in mind that nobody could leave during the last half hour, I got up and left early, watching my classmates sweating it out as I nonchalantly walked past. My friends afterwards said I should've done something daring, like set my paper alight and walk off, or rip it up and demand another one, or just get out my textbook and watch as my examiners would fail to see the obviousness; I guess it's shifty behaviour they're looking out for. But I did find a facebook group I could rely on for ideas during the summer exams.


I remember recently getting a few missed calls and after trying to call back, a text message saying something like, "Where are you??! There's blood everywhere!" I didn't know what to think, was someone giving birth? Did someone have an accident? Or did they kill someone and I was supposedly an accomplice? My phonecalls were finally answered with apologies saying it was a wrong number, and after a bit of "Are you sure everything is OK?" they told me it just a cat that had gotten into an accident. Phew, kinda.

One highlight of this month was getting more pets; this time three gerbils. For a couple of days, one didn't have a name because my sister couldn't make her mind up, but in the end settled for 'Fleur' (yes, from Harry Potter, and also meaning 'flower' in French), my other sister chose 'Toffee' as a pretty cool name for hers, whilst my brother first chose 'Bubbles', then 'Bubbles Thunderfire', insisting that animals should have surnames too, and after 24 hours renamed his 'Bubbles Thunderfur Fatine'. So with the names sorted, and with cats in the house, where were we going to keep them? My room. For most of the day, and all night, I've got a couple of very curious cats sitting outside my room, and although the gerbils are absolutely adorable and relatively well-behaved, I wonder how long I can bear sitting on a sawdusty carpet.


Now having made the friends I've made and gotten to know more about, I really have to say that I will miss Imperial when I leave at the end of the year inshaallah. I've made such friends that just lift my mood when I see them for the first time that day, or make me feel like sharing my life with them, or make me just want to please them and see happy. And I guess friends are what make me most 'happy', just being around someone I 'admire'; not in the sense of 'me being down here and them being up there', but more of just enjoying being in their presence and appreciating the aura that comes with them being there. One friend (called Faith... yes, a guy) I made was simply a result of me asking if I could sit opposite him in the library cafe, we got talking, and after me giving him the content of my iPod for him to copy to his laptop, he got up and a minute later he brought me a hot chocolate! Something random like that I thought I only would do came as a complete surprise to me, and even though some people may see it as 'sudden', I think surprises are what make people the most happy :). Ah, friends...

"True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable."

Thoughts, Emotions and Whatnot

As with everything in life, the snow had to end at some point; and apart from the remnants of the two Queen's lawn snowmen rebelliously refusing to melt away, all signs of the cataclysmically calamitous weather we've had have all but gone. I was thinking, imagine what it would be like to be the last snowflake in Britain; how would it be spending your final moments with the knowledge that you are the last of your kind? It's difficult to assign human thoughts to inanimate or unintelligent things, but are humans the only creations to have such complex processes such as thought and emotion? Sure, we have intellect, and we have instinct; something that animals also possess. So does that mean animals also have the capability of feeling emotion, since they have brains, or do they run just on instinct?? I think animals do feel emotion to some extent, a mother antelope protecting her young surely must have some sort of emotional 'connection' with her offspring. Actually, a video called Altruism in Nature I watched gave quite a fascinating insight into the extent some animals would go to help others, essentially debunking the whole 'survival of the fittest' theory.


But do things actually need brains to 'know' what they're doing? Bacteria and viruses for example, no brains, but they can find their way around someone's body just fine. For the moments I've been awake during biochemistry lectures, I've learnt that bacteria have mini-compasses on them, and they can detect how many of them there are in the area. But are they thinking, "I really want to mess this person's life up and make them ill for a few weeks!", or is it just randomness? Same with snowflakes, no brains, no strands of DNA coding for any type of 'behaviour', is it thinking, "Let's see how many road accidents I can cause today!"... probably not. But plants apparently do have emotions; I don't know how the scientists measured it, but they had people shouting at the plants... yes, science gone crazy! So I guess you don't have to have a brain to feel something, and we know that all creation worships Allah in their own way, and there is the incident of the tree trunk crying when the Prophet (pbuh) didn't lean on it any more, so maybe things like snowflakes do have some level of consciousness. But I don't think it really matters anyway; it's not like I'm going to throw snow any less aggressively, avoid walking on grass or not use anti-bacterial soap ever again.

It's funny how when Valentine's day or an anniversary comes up every year, everyone suddenly feels the urge to buy their loved ones gifts, and then forget about them the rest of the year. Well, everyone except Algerian guys; they manage to get away with it by saying, "Every day is our anniversary in my eyes." Does a society like this really need a day for people to remember to appreciate their loved ones? Probably. Even though I don't personally approve of Valentine's day, maybe society has reached such a level that everyone is so busy that they need a specific day to remind them of the special people in their lives. But as with most festivals, it's become extremely commercialised, and the whole feeling of uniqueness between you and your partner has probably gone by the time you realise everyone else is doing the same. What I'd probably do (apart from use the Algerian excuse :P) is choose a random day every year, and make that a personal 'Valentine's day' for my other half... and that way we can not only feel unique, but we can also choose a day that won't fall in the middle of monsoon season :)

And then we have the media and its role in promoting Valentine's day. For some reason, all the scientific studies that have anything vaguely 'love' related in them are released around February time, and all the websites have various tips on how to spend your day together, with voting on which chat-up line is best, to advertising outrageously-priced gimmicks gifts that people intoxicated by the atmosphere buy without thinking if its recipient will actually like it or not! One of the news stories a few days ago was of the going-on-display of a love letter written by Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, which contained, "henceforth my heart will be dedicated to you alone" and, "For my part, I will out-do you, if this be possible, rather than reciprocate, in loyalty of heart and my desire to please you"... nice and flowing. But it's funny, because the article also mentions that Henry eventually had her beheaded at the Tower of London in 1536 and subsequently married another four women... so really, his eloquence neither helped her out nor reflected his 'everlasting' feelings towards her, which somehow brings me to include this:

"I am not Rimbaud to tell you great words; I am not Verlaine to tell you poems; I am just myself to tell you that I love you."

Snow Joke!

February will probably be remembered for being the happiest month of 2009. People have had days off from work, families have spent more time together, stress-busting exercise has been widespread, and people who enjoy complaining about everything have had the chance to moan their frozen heads off... so everyone's happy! Why?


That's why. This picture was taken at Imperial by a friend who has 'biochemistry' listed as one of his interests on his Facebook page, so I'm guessing he was one of the 40 or so people who actually attended lectures. When the buses finally decided to start working again and I attended uni two days later, I found the remnants of two massive snowmen on the Queen's lawn; so either the library was closed, or all the geeks decided to take a break and 'chillax' for once... literally.

So with more snow forecast for next week, I can only imagine more people will bring up the issue of "etiquette of snowballing". It's ridiculous! There's actually a BBC website article on it, where it mentions lots of people have called 999 because they've been caught in the middle of snowfights. Don't go out, simple! They actually got a criminal lawyer to comment, where she tries to put into legal terms the action of throwing a snowball. And then we get the politicians, exploiting any photo-opportunity of them looking like 'normal' people having fun. But with any weather, there are always people who somehow find themselves down in the dumps. Sure, it's cold, but look outside!


But with snow comes physical injury, like when I slid down a hill and whacked my leg on a lamp-post :S Or before, when my schoolfriend got hit in the head with a snowball that had a large stone in it, causing snow to effectively being banned by the headmaster. So I expect the emergency services to be at full stretch at this time of year, meaning that they'll need their employees to come into work somehow. Which brings me to the story of a radiographer guy who walked 18 miles to get to the hospital he worked at. He lives in Ashford in Kent, 54 miles from Guy's Hospital, and the whole journey took more than 8 hours! I commend him for not just staying at home that day, but why does he live so far in the first place?? Anyway, I think I'll finish with a quote I found with the word 'snow' in it; quite inspiring.

Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.