Friends Forever

I felt pretty disappointed with myself the other day when I started to reflect on a particular friendship. The said friend had done some very kind favours for me in the past and the more I reflected, the more I realised that I had not been treating them recently with the respect that they deserved, taking into consideration what they had done for me.

Both our outlooks on life have undergone some dramatic changes and this in turn has caused quite a bit of trouble. Yet I am shocked that I, someone who not too long ago wrote a blog criticising the British public for THEIR bad memory, has committed the same mistake. (Refer to blog entitled "Anyone Remember the Millennium Dome?"- 22nd December 2005.)

During times of difficulty, especially in friendships, it becomes easy to forget all the good times we share with one-another, and instead place a heavy emphasis on all the bad times. This does not just have to apply to friendships, but other scenarios too. However it is during the testing times in life that we should hold tight those happy memories and fight whatever or whoever has the nerve to challenge us and our friendships.

Although I think in my case I have been very late in realising all this, and may even be on the verge of losing a friend, I've decided to fight for my friendship. Hey, fighting is what I do best ;-)

The Point of No Return?

A while back I was watching a so-called "documentary" entitled "Religion- The Root of all Evil?" I only watched part of the first episode simply as I'm not patient enough to take the sort of insults that were being thrown at religion by the presenter, Richard Dawkins. It's a flaw- I'll work on it.

Perhaps the biggest criticism I had of the program was that Dawkins was simply unable to distinguish between religion and the personal choices made by humans. For example, one of the most prominent arguments that stood out against religion in the program was that it is the cause of many conflicts. And yet there was I, a Muslim, and Hannah, a Christian, able to sit next to each other in peace watching TV. It isn't religion that is the cause of conflict; it's the people themselves, and blaming religion is simply shifting the blame onto something else. Therefore the program had no basis whatsoever. In my opinion, the root of evil is not the essence of religion, but rather its misinterpretation followed by incorporating said misinterpretations into peoples lives- WHICH IS NOT ESSENTIALLY THE RELIGION ITSELF.

And here comes the biggy: If it is the people who cause conflict, it is the people, and only the people, who can stop it. I know it's naive to wish that the world can return to that time where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived in harmony with each other after all that has happened; yet it is a hope that I still harbour. Regardless of all the suffering that both sides have faced, if we don't forgive each other now, then we'll be stuck in this circle of revenge forever.

http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/rootofevil1.html

You Know You're a '90's Kid if...

Another cut and paste job... Couldn't resist:

You know you're a 90's kid if...

You can sing the rap to "The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air"

You've worn shorts and felt stylish

You yearned to be part of the Baby-Sitters club

You used to love playing with your MY Little Pet Shop

You remember when it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons

You wore a ponytail on the side of your head and had fluffed bangs

You remember reading "Goosebumps"

You know the profound meaning of "Wax on, wax off"

You have pondered why Smurfette was the only female smurf

You took plastic cartoon lunch boxes to school.

You remember the craze, then the banning of slap bracelets and slam books

You still get the urge to say "NOT" after (almost) every sentence...Not...

You knew that Kimberly, the pink ranger, and Tommy, the green Ranger were meant to be together.

You remember "I've fallen and I can't get up"

You remember going to the skating rink before there were inline skates

You wore socks over leggings scrunched down

You remember boom boxes v.s. CD players

You knew what it meant to say "Care Bear Stare"

You remember New Kids on The Block when they were cool

You knew all the characters names and their life stories on "Saved By The Bell"

You played and or collected "Pogs"

You used to pretend to be a MIGHTY MORPHIN Power Ranger

You owned a Skip

You had at least one GigaPet or Nano and brought it everywhere - Tamagotchi ring a bell?

You watched the ORIGINAL Care Bears, My Little Pony, and Ninja Turtles

Yikes pencils and erasers were the shit

You remember when the new Beanie Babies were always sold out

You used to wear those stick on earings, not only on your ears, but at the corners of your eyes

You've gotten creeped out by "Are You Afraid of the Dark?"

You thought it would be so cool to be Alex Mack

You know the Macarena by heart.

"Talk to the hand" ... enough said

You thought Brain woud finally take over the world

2 words ... SPICE GIRLS

You can remember dance tunes such as "Mr. Vain"...

You remember watching Live and Kicking

You read "Shout," "Miss" and occassionally "J17!"

Olny srmat poelpe cna

I Cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch atCmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, teh olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.The rset cna be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos nto raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrodas a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

Eid Mubarak!

To all the Muslims out there, a belated:

Eid Mubarak!

I'm very sorry for the late "mubaraki" but been pretty snowed under... Hope you all had a great time

Supersize This

Almost time to go back to uni now, so wanted to squeeze in a blog before the essaylessness celebrations begin. Unfortunately though it looks like I might be paying extra attention to what I eat during these festive times... (The Muslim festival of Eid-Al-Adha's approaching too.)

I watched Supersize Me the other day and must say I've pretty much been put off McDonalds... Yup, even the HALAL ones in Pakistan! I'd already stopped eating from McDonalds in England since my uncle worked in a fast food place, and was nice enough to share some of his stories with me. But what I saw in Supersize Me has put me off for life- So congrats to its creators.

Although there was an absurd bit of the movie where Morgan Spurlock forced himself to eat a whole Supersize meal in one sitting with me shouting at the screen "eat the rest later!" a lot of the film was uncomfortably familiar.

And then someone emailed me this:

Try These Shoes on for Size

My mum watched this Indian film last night and was telling me about it. I hate most Indian films, but must say that this one sounded pretty interesting. (Ignoring all the songs and melodramatic love stories aspect of it )

So, it was about a guy who was approached by the "God of Death," (for my sake I'm just going to say Death.) The guy was told that he had just days to live and that he should choose where he wanted to die. When Death returned and saw the man sitting in the hallway of a hospital he questioned him as to why he had chosen that particular spot to die. In response to this the man lost his temper and argued with death for his ignorance about life and all that it brings: love, relationships, emotions etc etc.

As a challenge the man said to Death just to experience what life was like. And so to do this Death possessed the man's body and lived as him, in his life for four days. To Death's own surprise he started to find himself growing more and more attached to life, experiencing feelings such as love, pain blah blah blah. When the time came that he had to leave the man's body, he told him everything that he had began to feel. The man of course felt that he had won. But then Death replied: He said that it didn't matter how much longer he gave the man to live, that the man would never be satisfied. His work in this world would never end, and he would never want to leave it.

Interesting. Firstly the man had valued and was grateful enough for his life to have even wished for Death to have experienced it. Yet at the same time, as Death was to teach him, he had lived life in too much of a permanent sense. He had attached himself to a world that in its very nature is temporary, and had forgotten that Death was running up behind him. He had been short-sighted.

Many world religions don't see death as a full-stop in life, but rather a comma in our journey. Especially for Muslims it's more an experience we'll just have to go through, and therefore are constantly preparing ourselves for throughout our lives. We prepare ourselves for the life after death.

This is where the man was going wrong in his life. While Death learnt the value and appeal of life, the man had to learn the value of Death. His life was temporary, and as far as he, or any of us know, what comes after this life is pretty much permanent...

"Wherever ye are, death will find you out, even if ye are in towers built up strong and high!" If some good befalls them, they say, "This is from Allah"; but if evil, they say, "This is from thee" (O Prophet). Say: "All things are from Allah." But what hath come to these people, that they fail to understand a single fact? Whatever good, (O man!) happens to thee, is from Allah; but whatever evil happens to thee, is from thy (own) soul. And We have sent thee (Muhammad) as a messenger to (instruct) mankind. And enough is Allah for a witness." (The Qur'an, Surah 4 Ayat 78-79.)

(For those of you who are curious as to why the man had chosen the hospital to die in, it was because he had built it in his mother's memory.)