So another year and another travelogue to be initiated. I don't know how, but the last 3/4 years have seen me bounce around the globe with no real reason. And since it's a new year with so many new resolutions (that mostly won't be kept), it is also the right time to pack my bags and fly away.
This time it's to Raleigh, NC, and it is work related. Duration is still not clear to me, but I think it can be anything from a month to 6 months! I really do hope it's the first. Because I think a month would be enough for me to get some substantial work done and exhaustively see the surrounding areas so that I'm able to write-off another city from my checklist.
I'm sure that I've mentioned more then once that I love travelling, it's just the idea of living out of a bag that really fascinates me. Not really too many worries (apart from the meeting of the mandatory deadlines), and no real plans. And the instant ability to just walk away in no direction with no destination. Just being there in the moment.
But as the years pass me by, this urge to pack up and leave, though still there, does diminish in intensity, and I won't be totally surprised if it's gone completely in the next 5 years. But again I won't be surprised if it's rejuvinated and alive then, I guess then I'd know that the nomad in me won't die before me.
But yes, it is a wonderful feeling to be able to get these oppurtunities where everything around me changes (for the good or bad is irrelevant here), and what this does is that at the end of the day when I come back to all those I love, it's like I'm getting together with them after ages of agonizing seperation, and it's the first date all over again!
So here's to this wonderful plan called life, and to all of us living it day by day, finding ingenious methods of evolution with every passing moment.
It's like swimming off into the ocean, I mean from the beach it looks so amazing, all mixed up with the sun and sparkling with energy and a promise of ever lasting youth, and then you begin to swim away. The water around your body tugs and pulls and pushes you, giving you a complete curtain of safety...finally the limbs begin to tire and the breath starts to get irregular. You start contemplating the return to the shore. And slowly you turn back, this time not swimming with all the energy you have, but with the experience of a man who's tested the waters many times over the years. Conserving all the energy you have, making the most distance with the minimum effort. And finally, after an eternity, you reach the shore, and for a moment you just feel the sand under you feet, and the air in you lungs, still standing waist deep in the water. And suddenly the beach is the surest thing you've seen and you fall in love with it all over again. It's the love you have for your home, for where you belong too, for the beach is all that and more, it's also your portal to the unknown, a way to escape whenever things get too well defined.
So my little trips, they're just that, they're the swim off into the ocean to taste the unknown every now and then, but it's the beach I am coming back to, Allah willing!
Let me leave you here with the song I hum everytime I swim away...
Have fun!
I'm ... I'm ...
All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go
I'm standin' here outside your door
I hate to wake you up to say goodbye
But the dawn is breakin', it's early morn
The taxi's waitin', he's blowin' his horn
Already I'm so lonesome I could die
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go
I'm ...
There's so many times I've let you down
So many times I've played around
I'll tell you now, they don't mean a thing
Every place I go, I think of you
Every song I sing, I sing for you
When I come back I'll wear your wedding ring
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go
Now the time has come to leave you
One more time, oh, let me kiss you
And close your eyes and I'll be on my way
Dream about the days to come
When I won't have to leave alone
About the times that I won't have to say ...
Oh, kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you'll wait for me
Hold me like you'll never let me go
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go
And I'm leaving on a jet plane
I don't know when I'll be back again
Oh, babe, I hate to go
But I'm leaving on a jet plane
(Ah ah ah ah)
Leaving on a jet plane
(Ah ah ah ah)
Leaving on a jet plane
(Ah ah ah ah)
Leaving on a jet plane
(Ah ah ah ah)
Leaving on a jet plane
(Ah ah ah ah)
Leaving on a jet plane
(Ah ah ah ah)
Leaving on a jet plane
(Ah ah ah ah)
Leaving on a jet plane
(Ah ah ah ah)
(Leaving) On a jet plane
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Friday, January 13, 2006
WHOOSH...was that Eid that just passed us by?
Hmm...so Eid was a breeze. Well it just seems like yesterday when I was sitting in my cubicle, packing up, readying myself to leave my workplace for three whole days! Eid-ul-Adha break. Leaving work, the three days seemed like a while, time enough to get through the qurbaani, mingle with the family, sit with some friends, and get some alone time, where I can just lie down and indulge myself in the latest addiction (namely Scrubs) on my laptop.
Or so I thought!
Well the first day of my mini vacation started really early, Eid was the next day and I still hadn't gone out to get me a goat. So Mr. Fraz got up early, had nothing for breakfast, not even the obligatory cup of tea, and away he went. Well the whole day was spent in the goat market, from goat seller to goat seller, trying to find a nicely sized goat at a good price. Did I not say that a barely year old goat this year cost about the same as a fair sized car installment. Well come evening, and the task was accomplished. I had finally found a goat I liked and was driving home with it in the back seat of my car. Well for the inexperienced at goat buying, lemme just say that driving alone in the car with a goat freaking out in your back seat is quite the experience. But apart from a couple of goat sneezes on my neck apart, the ride was fairly smooth. I just had to pull over twice to drive some sense in my goat (to the laughing out loud pleasure of little girls in cars passing by)!
By the time I got home, I was so exhausted that the getting of goat food was left to my father, and I headed down to my bed, but sleep was never on the cards. See when you exhaust yourself beyond recovery, the human body refuses to go to sleep. So I moved around in a full blown zombie mode.
Before I knew it, it was 7 am the next day and the alarm to get up for Eid prayers had gone off. So forcing myself to the shower, and then into my newly stitched Eid clothes, I was standing in the mosque, going through the Eid prayers (and I only went into rukuh once, when I should've stayed up in qayyam). After the Eid prayers it was the obligatory hugging Eid mubaraks to all the people I could see and didn't know. Which was then followed by the butcher hunt for the qurbaani.
But as soon as the butcher arrived (who by the way was in more demand than the latest Angeline Jolie movie), all sense of time and taking it easy evaporated. I didn't even know it and the qurbaani was done, meat divisioned and about 20 members of the family over at our place. And well do I have to say it...guess not.
Again bed time came early morning, and the next day (the same day as a matter of fact) I was off to visit my inlaws. Needless to say I came back late late at night, and well before I knew it, my alarm clock was going off and it was 7 am.
Time to get up, get a shower and race off to work.
So even though I did make time for family, a brief visit to some friends in between, and for the goat, the alone time with my favorite sit-com on my notebook...well that's just a sweet sweet dream, a dream I look forward to, and a dream that perhaps is the driving force behind my going on thorugh the day!
But hey, just spoke to my program manager and I'm off to home early today, but guess what, to my aunt's place, where hopefully with all the madness I'll find time to watch some cricket and enjoy Pakistan cashing in on the good start...
Eid mubarak everyone!
Or so I thought!
Well the first day of my mini vacation started really early, Eid was the next day and I still hadn't gone out to get me a goat. So Mr. Fraz got up early, had nothing for breakfast, not even the obligatory cup of tea, and away he went. Well the whole day was spent in the goat market, from goat seller to goat seller, trying to find a nicely sized goat at a good price. Did I not say that a barely year old goat this year cost about the same as a fair sized car installment. Well come evening, and the task was accomplished. I had finally found a goat I liked and was driving home with it in the back seat of my car. Well for the inexperienced at goat buying, lemme just say that driving alone in the car with a goat freaking out in your back seat is quite the experience. But apart from a couple of goat sneezes on my neck apart, the ride was fairly smooth. I just had to pull over twice to drive some sense in my goat (to the laughing out loud pleasure of little girls in cars passing by)!
By the time I got home, I was so exhausted that the getting of goat food was left to my father, and I headed down to my bed, but sleep was never on the cards. See when you exhaust yourself beyond recovery, the human body refuses to go to sleep. So I moved around in a full blown zombie mode.
Before I knew it, it was 7 am the next day and the alarm to get up for Eid prayers had gone off. So forcing myself to the shower, and then into my newly stitched Eid clothes, I was standing in the mosque, going through the Eid prayers (and I only went into rukuh once, when I should've stayed up in qayyam). After the Eid prayers it was the obligatory hugging Eid mubaraks to all the people I could see and didn't know. Which was then followed by the butcher hunt for the qurbaani.
But as soon as the butcher arrived (who by the way was in more demand than the latest Angeline Jolie movie), all sense of time and taking it easy evaporated. I didn't even know it and the qurbaani was done, meat divisioned and about 20 members of the family over at our place. And well do I have to say it...guess not.
Again bed time came early morning, and the next day (the same day as a matter of fact) I was off to visit my inlaws. Needless to say I came back late late at night, and well before I knew it, my alarm clock was going off and it was 7 am.
Time to get up, get a shower and race off to work.
So even though I did make time for family, a brief visit to some friends in between, and for the goat, the alone time with my favorite sit-com on my notebook...well that's just a sweet sweet dream, a dream I look forward to, and a dream that perhaps is the driving force behind my going on thorugh the day!
But hey, just spoke to my program manager and I'm off to home early today, but guess what, to my aunt's place, where hopefully with all the madness I'll find time to watch some cricket and enjoy Pakistan cashing in on the good start...
Eid mubarak everyone!
Friday, January 06, 2006
Paradoxes
Would I be totally out of line if I say that my life is nothing but an intricately weaved paradox, day in and out? Really! All attempted resolutions to any and all problems I might be facing at that time eventually contradict another belief, another resolution, another solution.
Every attempt to alleviate the state of being is, well a paradox in its simplest form. In effect we just contradict our own better sense to end in a situation that might, just might, result in a quick laugh, a heightened feeling of existence.
Similarly every decision I make feels to me like a colossal contradiction to my purpose of being, or whatever the seers thought up most recently.
I mean we've built up this fluid society which induces life in phases. Childhood - where you do without thinking at the expense of some serious damage, and a thrashing from an adult here and there. Student life - where you now start out at the montessary level, and depending upon how much external factors effect you, continue to college / university or no level at all. This is followed by a more ambiguously defined phase called practical life. This is where lives in general differed between men and women in societies like ours, but now that difference is fading, like it did in the West, before disappearing altogether. Mind you, I have nothing against or for this change. It's just inevitable in my books, something that would happen sooner or later.
This phase of life is where the paradox of life goes to its maximum level, where literally every step and breath introduces you to a completely new set of contradictions in their own terms. But we tudge along, learning, delearning, falling, getting up, getting bruised and being run over every now and then. This is where we lose any and all perspective we ever possessed in the relatively pure realms of childhood and student life.
We begin to get driven by an ever consuming hunger to grow and prosper, into what, we really don't know. I mean growing into an entrepreneur is really knowing what you're going into, that's more of being in some state, rather then a state of being. We set goals for ourselves which are examined in every interview we ever give, and well, sad as it is, these goals are usually more meaningless then a rerun of Beavus and Butthead.
The next phase, Post Retirement Life is still quite unclear to me. I've seen quite a few variations in this (perhaps to add to my own confusions). I've seen sage like retirees who're there full of wisdom and truth, who smile these little smiles every time you appear in front of them in pursuit of the latest bout of madness.
And then I've seen people in this phase of life who get so mad that you can't make sense of a thing they say. Or there's the type who becomes so uncertain that they don't even know what they're uncertain about.
Now see where I started from and where I ended up...
tsk...tsk...tsk
Every attempt to alleviate the state of being is, well a paradox in its simplest form. In effect we just contradict our own better sense to end in a situation that might, just might, result in a quick laugh, a heightened feeling of existence.
Similarly every decision I make feels to me like a colossal contradiction to my purpose of being, or whatever the seers thought up most recently.
I mean we've built up this fluid society which induces life in phases. Childhood - where you do without thinking at the expense of some serious damage, and a thrashing from an adult here and there. Student life - where you now start out at the montessary level, and depending upon how much external factors effect you, continue to college / university or no level at all. This is followed by a more ambiguously defined phase called practical life. This is where lives in general differed between men and women in societies like ours, but now that difference is fading, like it did in the West, before disappearing altogether. Mind you, I have nothing against or for this change. It's just inevitable in my books, something that would happen sooner or later.
This phase of life is where the paradox of life goes to its maximum level, where literally every step and breath introduces you to a completely new set of contradictions in their own terms. But we tudge along, learning, delearning, falling, getting up, getting bruised and being run over every now and then. This is where we lose any and all perspective we ever possessed in the relatively pure realms of childhood and student life.
We begin to get driven by an ever consuming hunger to grow and prosper, into what, we really don't know. I mean growing into an entrepreneur is really knowing what you're going into, that's more of being in some state, rather then a state of being. We set goals for ourselves which are examined in every interview we ever give, and well, sad as it is, these goals are usually more meaningless then a rerun of Beavus and Butthead.
The next phase, Post Retirement Life is still quite unclear to me. I've seen quite a few variations in this (perhaps to add to my own confusions). I've seen sage like retirees who're there full of wisdom and truth, who smile these little smiles every time you appear in front of them in pursuit of the latest bout of madness.
And then I've seen people in this phase of life who get so mad that you can't make sense of a thing they say. Or there's the type who becomes so uncertain that they don't even know what they're uncertain about.
Now see where I started from and where I ended up...
tsk...tsk...tsk
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