The weather over the past few days has been too amazing to just sit indoors and write a long blog-post, but I have to mention it... last weekend was just wicked! Friday evening saw Imperial ISoc-ers play LSE at an 11-a-side footy match, and we won 6-3 (I guess me scoring a hat-trick helped)! The next day I went with a couple of friends to BodyWorlds; just a load of corpses artistically arranged to make us 'ooh' and 'aah', then going on a stomach-wrenching ride (AFTER Pizza Express!) as well as bumper cars. It doesn't take much to amuse me; as long as I'm with company I enjoy, doing something (like jumping through fountains :P), I'm happy. But Sunday was the cherry on the cake for me: competition! Imperial's marrow society organised a fun run, with a choice of 3km or 8km to compete in, with a superhero costume theme, and as our family has a history of winning fancy-dress competitions, we weren't about to disappoint; I went as Turbo Snail :)
The massive golden shell strapped onto my back plus the helmet delicately balanced on my head and the throat-strangling cape didn't really give me a great running advantage over my competitors, but I thought that fourth place (out of 35!) was pretty good for a snail wearing insultation material and a brown paint-spray smelling overall on a hot day. 14 minutes 30 seconds was my time over 8K, which I think is impossible because just the day before I managed 5K in half an hour! So someone must've made a mistake somewhere, or maybe the cardboard-tube exhaust pipes protruding from my shell did actually work! But I did win the prize for the best costume (thanks to my legend of a mum): a dinner for two at a top London restaurant!
After the race I just chilled with my friends in Hyde Park, sword-fighting with sticks, and relaxing in the sound of the gushing water of the Princess Diana memorial fountain, with the thought of a million deadlines coming up not bugging me at all. This week so far has also been legendary, with the Queen's Lawn full of happiness and relaxation, frisbee players, and the water-fight I organised over Facebook :) I'm trying to get sticks for our Friday Night Project tomorrow, so we can just sword-fight the night away... ^_^
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."
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."
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.
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!
Sometimes, I just don't understand; people... how can human beings deny others what they themselves enjoy? Injustice just doesn't make sense. Ignorance and hypocrisy are prevailing in a world where people seem to be more interested in how much their favourite celebrities are eating, than whether or not others are eating at all. Over these past few days, more than 400 people have been killed in Palestine, and what is the response from the world's 'leading' nation? "The United States strongly condemns the repeated rocket and mortar attacks against Israel and holds Hamas responsible for breaking the cease-fire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," This is coming from a country that hasn't felt any regret in supplying Israel with money and military supplies, used to impose the tyrannical rule it has over Gaza and the West Bank. Ever since the state of Israel was 'established', it's come under intense criticism by its neighbouring countries, most of which have quietened down now because of the biased nature of the states supporting it, and them, for the moment. For some reason, Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister of Israel, a WOMAN, and a mother of two children, says there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and rejects calls for ceasefire. Some people are just fuelled by... actually I don't know why they do it. Even after watching the BBC reports, which are extremely vague and watered-down, you can tell that conditions aren't even fit for animals to live in.
I don't understand how people need 'meetings' to decide what statement to put out to the press on the issue. I don't understand why someone doesn't invade Israel like they did with Iraq and Afghanistan. I really don't understand how a human being can inflict so much pain and suffering on another, and then try and justify it by saying it's out of self-defence. The realities of life I probably hate most are the little things people don't pay attention to; for instance not saying 'please' or 'thank you'; from that stems all of the problems the world faces; corruption, jealousy, greed and conflict. Sometimes I wonder what life would be without emotion; no hate, fear, anger, guilt, sadness... that way people would probably stop wanting each other's destruction, but without emotion we also wouldn't have compassion, optimism, empathy, happiness and love. Maybe all the negative emotions have come from having too many positive emotions towards one certain group and not another; and from that 'ingroups' and 'outgroups' have formed. So I think no matter how many people get killed, or how many cities are destroyed, we have to take things on a personal level; treat people around you equally, and be courteous and kind, because we are the leaders of the future... "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
It's been exactly a year since that fateful day when my two friends and I thought that our lives had been cut short because of our over-ambitious senses of adventure. This year has taught me alot about the fragility of life, the ease at which it can be damaged, and the effort required to save it. I've had more medical attention than a car-crash victim, more paranoid thoughts than Michael Scofield, and more bad luck than a turkey on Christmas eve. But in a way I'm glad that everything I've been through this year has happened. Not only am I able to talk about it (most of it) during my medical interview coming up, but it has left a positive impact on my personality and character. The mental trauma I was left with after that mountain took its time to tighten its vice on my livelihood, and after the legs cramps had finally worn off, I found myself unable to sleep properly, think logically, my mood would often go to extremes of euphoria and depression, my thoughts would be racing, the boundary between fiction and reality had started to break down, and I'd "see" things in films, TV, newspapers and books... anywhere, to justify the weird thoughts that had materialised in my mind... hidden meanings. The only comparison I can draw this with is a scene from Doctor Who, when he hears two words; he suddenly can understand different languages, he draws reference from everything and in his mind the meaning is clear as crystal...
The mental state I was in was in a way felt new and exciting; to this day I could swear that I understood different languages; just for a bit of fun I changed the language of the Spongebob DVD I was watching to lots of different languages and I knew what they were saying, it was weird. But in a way all languages were materialised in the brain so there must be some area that's hardly accessed but stores language recognition abilities. Most of the time I felt afraid, and I became even more afraid when I was admitted to hospital, being exposed to patients who had schizophrenia, drug abuse problems, people I thought were possessed. Everyone I bumped into were slurring their speech and half-asleep, probably due to the medication they were on, the whole atmosphere of the ward felt away from the outside world; the doors were always locked, some patients would just pace up and down, down and up the corridors for hours; even I resorted to this in an attempt to just feel something. It felt like the streets in a GTA game where people wouldn't talk to you and just carry on in their pre-programmed course of walking in circles. The nights spent there were sleepless; I was afraid of the people there, some waking me up asking for cigarettes or drugs, others just curious as to what I was doing.
When I moved wards after a few days, the first night spent there completely freaked me out; it was like living in a subway, the stench of urine and the type of people I wouldn't dream of mixing with were all around me. This was a nightmare, and after a few winks of sleep I woke up to find a naked, obese, old man standing next to my bed. I was told (by quite a decent, seemingly-sane neighbour) that's what he usually did and he didn't mean any harm, so I left him to go back to his pornographic magazines and talking to himself. Whatever happened, I was determined not to spend another night in this bad dream, and sure enough, I managed to convince the doctor that I was sane enough to go home (even though I wasn't).
I remember one patient who completely frightened me; it was as if I was talking to a devil or an evil spirit or something. I managed to get into a situation where I was playing scrabble with her, and all the words she managed to make on the board were all murder-related or just freaky, and everytime she spoke to me she stared blank-faced and spoke coldly, no emotion apart from a hint of aggression. Even after leaving hospital, things got worse for me, but finally after around 8 months of treatment and therapy, I'm better, stronger, and I appreciate so much now. It's only when it's taken away from you do you truly appreciate it, and for some people, all they're clinging onto is their lives and their good health, and it's being taken away from them. For instance the airstrikes today on Gaza that killed more than 200 people; they've been deprived from electricity, food, freedom, medical care and finally their lives are being taken away, and what is the response from the world? Nothing. The price of life differs depending on who you are and where you're from. If you happen to be a tourist in Mumbai, you get a minute's silence. If you happen to be an American/Western citizen, you get lots of outrage, a minute's silence, and a memorial piece of art. If you fall into any other category, you'd be lucky to get mentioned on the news as a figure, and then forgotten. What I've learnt is that life shapes itself around you sometimes in ways that you don't want or expect, but accept it, be happy with it, and move on. It may improve, it may not, but just remember there are always people worse off than you.
The weather over the past few days has been too amazing to just sit indoors and write a long blog-post, but I have to mention it... last weekend was just wicked! Friday evening saw Imperial ISoc-ers play LSE at an 11-a-side footy match, and we won 6-3 (I guess me scoring a hat-trick helped)! The next day I went with a couple of friends to BodyWorlds; just a load of corpses artistically arranged to make us 'ooh' and 'aah', then going on a stomach-wrenching ride (AFTER Pizza Express!) as well as bumper cars. It doesn't take much to amuse me; as long as I'm with company I enjoy, doing something (like jumping through fountains :P), I'm happy. But Sunday was the cherry on the cake for me: competition! Imperial's marrow society organised a fun run, with a choice of 3km or 8km to compete in, with a superhero costume theme, and as our family has a history of winning fancy-dress competitions, we weren't about to disappoint; I went as Turbo Snail :)
After the race I just chilled with my friends in Hyde Park, sword-fighting with sticks, and relaxing in the sound of the gushing water of the Princess Diana memorial fountain, with the thought of a million deadlines coming up not bugging me at all. This week so far has also been legendary, with the Queen's Lawn full of happiness and relaxation, frisbee players, and the water-fight I organised over Facebook :) I'm trying to get sticks for our Friday Night Project tomorrow, so we can just sword-fight the night away... ^_^
