The Chocolate Connoisseur

There's nothing better than a good friend, except a good friend with chocolate.
- Linda Grayson, The Pickwick Papers   

A lot of time got wasted in the last few days especially after I got done with two of my three tests. I have the last test on December 15th and I am yet to start with it's preparation. InshAllah I will begin that tomorrow. After a lot of patience and as a big blessing from Allah I scored more than four points above the class average in one of those two tests. I am yet to receive the scores of the other test. It was complicated. It's only Allah's will. The one I have on 15th needs a lot of help from Allah. Though my projects were better than all other teams in the class, I didn't do well in the first test. I badly need to clear the averages to get a decent grade. Alhamdulilllah in one of the three courses I hold a fair chance to get an A.

It's an equivalent of -4 degree Centigrade here right now. Though the actual temperature is 1 degree, it's chilling cold outside. In the evening I had been to Wal-mart and it just ended up in one of those days I will remember for long. We always drag the cart right upto the bust stand and this time we exceeded out limits of shopping. I even went for grape juice, frozen french fries and a packet of M&M chocolate this time apart from the regular supplies of milk, shrimp flavored noodles, bread and rice. I kind of enjoy a lot when I go to Wal-mart, Super Target or Tom Thumb. They talk about some part of future to me!

I have a project presentation to make in the class that starts at 11:30 am. I have finished my part of the work on Sunday but was spending some time complementing my team mates. We are a team of seven and I was int he documentation group. For this final deliverable I created a Vision Document and Softgoal Interdependency Graphs. Though this wasn't much work compared to what my other team mates did, they were always there to encourage me with whatever I was doing. Alhamdulillah I learnt a lot being with these people. They are all elder to me in both working experience and age. I am yet to meet people in two of my courses who do not have any work experience and are of my age! It's an ocean of big sharks here with only my roommates and me as small fish. Only that these sharks are very friendly, caring and helpful!

The forecast for the next 24 hours shows a low of -2 degrees Centigrade. I am sure it's going to feel like -6 at least. A couple of degrees below this and it's going to snow I guess. In the evening when I spoke to my cousin he said he asked me if I was willing to come to Houston with him this weekend. My heart jumped with happiness. InshAllah I will meet my uncle and aunt there again. I am waiting for weekend to come. After tomorrow's presentation there isn't much I have to do. I have a small project to submit on 13th which I am sure my team mates will manage. I will only have a spend a couple of hours after it I suppose. The test on 15th is still a matter of concern. InshAllah I will work harder than before and score above average. If I get to do that, a fish will become as good as a shark!

There is no measure of how much Allah has helped me learn in the last 4 months. It all started with my cousin's marriage where for the first time I drove late nights all alone. My parents were leaving just after all the ceremonies were getting over and I wanted to stay till everybody had left for their homes. Then came my first experience of flying. It was a journey of more than 33 hours. Then it was staying away from my parents. If it was not for those wonderful people I met after coming here, I am sure things would have been very difficult. Allah helped me everywhere. I know things could have gone either ways. Allah wanted it to be easy for me. And so it has always been. Alhamdulillah. Learning has no limits. InshAllah.

Oh Allah! They are Ruining My Country

Where there's a will, there's a weapon.

-Yuri Orlov, Lord of War 

They have made an Afghanistan of my country. I remember that day when I was returning after a semester exam and the news of a bomb blast in Mecca Masjid in the old city region of Hyderabad reached me. My first reaction was to refuse to believe in that. That seemed impossible. But that was the truth. Months later there were series of blasts across Hyderabad. There were blasts in Ajmer, Ahmedabad, Bangalore and the list keeps updating. It's more than easy to people in India - anybody can build a bomb, get a gun or cause an explosion of any size in any part of any city. The only thing that can control this is intelligence. I wonder what they really do. Of course it's Allah who knows everything.

Just a year back I remember telling my father how India is the best choice for multi-national companies to setup their offices because we are the safest country. It all changed. Life is loosing it value and numbers only help build statistics. Politicians battle for power, policemen keep fattening up their pockets and pot bellies, innocents die everyday and the country suffers. Every mall, theatre and building has metal detectors and security personell at the entrance checking the visitors. I never believed them to be of any help. Even a kid can sneak in a bomb or a gun. There is no way to check who carries what in trains and busses.

It seems pointless to talk about all this; it won't many any difference. Those involved don't understand. Understanding anything won't make a difference to those who suffer. They have made a joke out of it. The news channels sensationalize everything. They want to be the best channel. They want to make money. And what do they do - they blame my religion. I simply don't get the logic in calling Pakistani Terrorists as 'Pakistani Islamic Terrorists'. Why do they bring in my religion?

Oh, Divine Chocolate!

All I really need is love, but a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt!

- Lucy Van Pelt, Peanuts 

This is my 471st post of this blog. It's three years now since I started writing. Though this blog was started much later than November 2005, there was a post on my other blog, Flowing Emotions, which, if I recollect correctly, was posted by me on November 14th, 2005. In a few months I had deleted that post but continued my then newly discovered obsession towards writing. When I started writing I had little imagination that one day I would be writing sitting in a country thousands of miles away from my home. It definitely feels something pretty different, but it's not in my humble means to explain it in words.

It's 3:14 am in the morning now with an empty bowl lying just beside me on a book. I had chocolate cookie ice cream a while ago listening to some music. I had spent a few hours in the evening studying for a test I have on Tuesday and the preparation continued until a couple of hours back. I only have a topic more to cover but that doesn't give me any confidence. No matter what level of effort I put here for tests, I don't achieve any good. It hurts, it frustrates and the only thing I tell myself is that I will give in a little more the next time. This is that next time now which I had thought about after the last test. InshAllah I will go past class averages this time. It's Allah's will. SubhanAllah.

It was 'cool' to see my father asking me "wassup?" in an e-mail he wrote to me yesterday. I replied to that mail but not to the question yet. I will do that later in the day today inshAllah. Though I am a kind of used to staying away from my parents, I will never get used to staying without them. I don't want to get used to such things. For years I have been considered extremely sensitive, sentimental, emotional and weak. I wonder how I could endure staying away from my parents. This time I surprise myself!

There are no measurable details of how much I am learning here. Those subjects I read back in my engineering make sense now. And each of the courses here teach me more than enough that I can straight away start working in the industry. The other day I cut fish, marinated it, fried it and mixed it with a vegetable curry to make a delicious dish out of it. I have learnt how to cook chicken is more than one way, cook mutton, chopped mutton, seviyon ka meetha, khatti daal, vegetable curries and even burgers. I can now prepare burgers better than what we get at McDonalds. Mustard sauce, mayonnaise, tomato ketchup and a hope to make all this taste well between the buns with either hash browns or some veg-patty make good burgers. Alhamdulillah.

I seem to have a crisis with my sleep here. back in India though my timings were all weired, they were in my control - I used to decide how many hours to sleep. Alhamdulillah. But now, though falling asleep seems to be a problem, waking up too is turning out to be a problem. The remperature in the nights is floating around an equivalent of -1 degree centigrade making sleep inside my silky blanket even more enjoyable. Alhamdulillah. The problem is, I am spending more than eight hours in this indulgence. InshAllah I will make myself better soon. Something else I enjoyed here a few days back - driving. I drove my cousin's car - I need a little more practice before I am as confident as I was on Hyderabad's roads. InshAllah.

Egoistic Superior Complex Attitude

It never occurred to me to call 911 or my physician. As foolish as it may appear, you are, in a sense, a prisoner of the pain, which was intolerable. You're thinking, what could I do to relieve myself of it. If it becomes intense enough, you're perfectly willing to accept cardiac arrest as a possible way of getting rid of the pain.

- Dr. Michael DeBakey heart surgery pioneer, on his own pain attack from a damaged aorta

I got done with my evening class 30 minutes back and here I am sitting in the lobby of Student Union feeling more lonely than ever. I just hope nobody I know spots me here and thinks of giving me any company. I want to stay alone. I called up my father a while ago but he didn't talk much for he was getting late to work. I spoke to my grandmother then. Two minutes of talk never makes any difference. Everybody is busy everywhere. I have a meeting to attend with my team members in 15 minutes and I have a document to read before I go.

I wish I could go back to my apartment right away, have my dinner and sleep. I don't have to cook today. The chicken I prepared yesterday is still left relieving me and my room mates of today's cooking. Most of my classmates here are busy registering for their courses. I remember the day we were registering for Fall '08 - everybody was worried. Alhamdulillah I never tried to move things fast and I got the courses I wanted to have. Even this time inshAllah things will go well when I go for registration tomorrow.

It's 8:50 pm now and dark outside. The other day I was surprised when all the clocks automatically went back an hour. Later I was talk something like this happens twice every year to readjust time and synchronize it with convenience of daylight. It was amusing but seemed logical. I wish my father could have spent more time talking to me when I called him. I wish he remembered I was living alone here and unlike him I have nobody around to sit and talk to. Five minutes left for the meeting - I have to prepare for it.

Sleep

The wise man will love; all others will desire.
- Afranius

I never thought I would ever get so keen on learning Java even when it is not a part of my study here. The other day we were working on a homework that is supposed to create a GUI to implement a few features of a system and I got to meet NetBeans and Eclipse. For a while I thought Visual Studio could have been so much fun if I had to work on that. I had scored 100% in it's lab exam back in my engineering and it had surprised me. My final semester was of course surprising too - I had scored around 81%! But now, putting my head into Java seems imperative given that every other person here seems to be a master in it. I have always played favorites in learning anything I came across. This time I have to think of what's going to make getting a job easier in the months to come. Allah knows everything.

5 am I started with the second chapter of the book I chose to let me start with Java. I have studied Java before in my engineering but coming to UT Dallas made me start believe that Osmania University is nowhere close to being a good university - they need to know what's going in the industry. Osmania University is just a name - it's all hollow inside. UTD at times makes me go nuts. Even after giving 100% it makes me wonder if that could be enough. Half of what is taught is in the industry right now. The other half is what the professor is researching. There are so many concepts that have not been properly documented in books available in the market. And a large part of this is not even known to the industry. Alhamdulillah there is something like IEEE that helps so much. Being students here enables us to download all its documents free of charge.

Right now the temperature outside is 8 degrees Centigrade but MSN says it feels like 4 degrees Centigrade. The minimum for the day is expected to be 2 degrees Centigrade. It's windy, horribly extreme and nowhere close to any form of harsh weather I have seen before. The coolness runs through the bones and shakes every nerve inside the body. I was in a hurry to attend my morning class and forgot to take my jacket along - I could understand my day had started with a big mistake. Alhamdulillah I am back in my apartment now and it's very good here. Alhamdulillah. Soon I might be seeing snow fall. It's going to be my first experience. I just hope Allah gives me enough strength to bear this cold. I wonder how my friend is doing in Chicago.

Moonlit

Always be a poet, even in prose.  

- Charles Baudelaire, "My Heart Laid Bare", Intimate Journals, 1864

I wonder why the sky looks more open and wide here than the one I remember back in Hyderabad. Perhaps because it's a flat land with not many hills or maybe it's some phenomenon those into the study of light can explain. For me, it's vast and pleasing. I used to stare at the moonlit sky standing in the balcony of my house back home and think of how lovely a poem would be if I could put the bliss in words. I could never do that. I remember the occasional visits I paid to my house's terrace where I would only stare at the few visible stars that always seemed to be moving yet stay in the same place all through my visit. The lights on the land always reminded me that I am a part of civilization. I love mankind. Allah created it. SubhanAllah.

I start liking every other person I meet here. They are all so good to me, helpful and kind. Every Friday seems like a blessing when I go for the Juma prayers and look at those few guys working for the Muslim Student Association. There are a few of them who make me want to learn so much from them. MashAllah, they are of the best people I know here. Today one of the guys told us a few stories about men who could recite the shahada just before dying and a few who couldn't. He explained what it means when Allah guides us from darkness to light and how nobody could ever know who has been guided until the moment of death arrives. I don't want to go to hell. I want to dye reciting the shahada. Alhamdulillah. InshAllah.

I have a Sikh friend here who came over to my apartment over a cup of tea sometime back. He happens to be from Jammu but has stayed for sometime in Hyderabad. I met him because he was my room mate's neighbor in Jammu and they both are good friends. I like this guy a lot. We had lots of fun. He liked tea so much that he had a second cup too. He is graduating this semester and was a bit upset with the recession. Texas is alhamdulillah going strong with jobs still available but he is from Electrical and Electronics engineering so was a little worried. He is finishing his Masters in just 18 months which end in December. When I told him I plan for the same too he asked me if I had a girl friend. He is finishing it in 18 months because he wants to get married soon.

I said I have no girlfriend. I wanted to tell him how much I hate that very idea of getting into such an unaccepted relationship. We got busy with other discussions then. I remember some days back he explained me why is it necessary that we finish our education soon. He said the same thing today to my other room mates. He told how important and wonderful it is to settle down soon. I agree with every word of his on this. Alhamdulillah my parents taught me enough that I understand why it is necessary for a good Muslim to get married at the earliest. I don't understand those guys who want to stay single for long and enjoy their lives. I say it's not enjoying; it's sinful. I am blessed that my parents agree with me.

The other day a guy told me I need not give him so much respect by using aap (a respectable tone of 'you' in Urdu) for him. I was too busy in discussing with him our assignment where I have to test 'od.c' using Xsuds in UNIX. I made a good friend of this guy and also had a talk on phone with him a couple of hours back. I was the same. I cannot change myself even if I change my language or my accent. I see that North Indians use tuu (casual 'you' in Hindi) for almost everybody. I don't mind being referred that way - two of my room mates talk to me using tuu even when I use aap for them always. I am drawn that way. That's what my parents taught me. Alhamdulillah. I will to it always inshAllah and with everybody inshAllah. It's my tehzeeb (etiquette).

Allah Knows

If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

- Winnie The Pooh, A. A. Milne

The other day when I had a video conference with my father I told him he lost few more hair and that he was looking more bald. My brother started laughing standing behind him and my father showed him the kind of anger which always makes us laugh. Thursday morning when it was evening in India he was about to go to bed when my brother started a conference. Mamma spoke first but my father was sitting beside her and waving his hand at me showing his teeth. Few days back when mamma asked me how she was looking through the camera, I told her she was looking like my mamma. She started laughing. I could see happiness in her voice, in her smile and also in her eyes. I even finally told my brother how much I love him. He said he knows it.

Around 8 pm I called my sister in Austin. The moment we shared greetings I asked her if she was busy. I have made this a practice now. It's always so nice to talk to her. When we last met I took her younger son in my arms and kissed him. How much I wish I could do that again. I love children and I had somebody so close to me after so many months. She told me she was on her way to a restaurant with her husband and children. I still remember her husband asking me to come over to Austin someday. I told her I wanted to come this weekend but have a project to finish. InshAllah someday very soon I will go and meet her. I talk to her every Saturday alhamdullillah. But from now on inshAllah I will call her on Wednesdays or Thursdays too. She is the closest to me here. She has been like a teacher to me right from my childhood.

It's weekend now and it's three days of "nothing much to do". I have to spend some time with my team mates to finish a home work in the course OOAD. They live in a nearby apartment and most probably I will join them tomorrow. I was worried about this particular course I took but on Monday when I spoke for some time to the professor it was like a relief to me. I could convince her that the home work she gave was out of scope of the course-work of the subject. She even got convinced that she should cancel the next homework. I realized how powerful the use of "I agree" could be. I used it with sympathy and she was pleased with me. I went on to ask her about the other courses she takes in UTD. She seemed to be pleased at least. I care about my grades and I want to deserve them. InshAllah. Alhamdulillah.