Amreeka, it was all about food & love!!

Before visiting any place, I google about that place and make so many assumptions about it. Never do I find my expectations coming true. Every place has its own peculiarities and culture and google and its images doesn't help much in coping up with the challenges you might face there or the fun time you gonna have. So was mine. It was my dream going to Houston, not because I like that place, but because my most beloved and most precious ones live there. Those people in my life who are my blood yet I had only spent days with them that I could count on fingers. Three of my nieces and one nephew and their parents. 

After becoming a mom, I am almost always starving and cooking has become a real challenge for me. Food is not that big trouble but my sleep has significantly reduced and its quality is pretty bad. The purpose of going there was to stock up on food and sleep so that I can cover up for 1.5 year of sleep and food. Luckily, I got both in over abundance plus one thing more in bonus: the Love!

Coming to the food, after being there for 2 weeks, I have realized that "You can only enjoy and appreciate food when you have an empty stomach". In there, I never really had an empty stomach. It was always full with all kinds of junk food, drinks, sweets and what not. American especially Texans care only about food in their life. Eating out multiple times a day is quite normal but food is so spicy- burning hot as hell. Although I liked it but initially it was a challenge to adapt to the food.  

The second thing is sleep. I guess when you have a stomach that is full and mind free of worries, the only thing you want to do is to bed down. I have had best of my sleeps there. The amazing thing was that Ebrahiem and I had the challenge of jet lag for only 2 days. Me and my son are otherwise insomniac. 

Talking about the bonus part, I was impressed with the love that I got from everybody especially from crazy babloo (Eaman), Mamoo M.. (Mahrukh) and R.. Bhai (Manahil also named brother MAC- Manahil Asad Chaudhry). I could not imagine how they could have so much love for me when they only saw me four years ago for only 7 days.  I would never have gone there if I did not have repeated assertions from babloo, threatening calls at middle of the night whether or not I am coming. 

How can I forget fitting into the backseats of car with four of us and one little Ebrahiem, singing and dancing in the car and then their father scolding us, sitting in the most garbage full car of my nephew and site seeing with him and his mommy, the sudden calls to come to a certain restaurant, being forced to eat all the heavy spicy food, fights with babloo and mahrukh for who will I sleep with, fights with Manahil for going out with my nephew, babloo hitting me with apples and stick because I decided not to sleep with her on my last day in Houston, Manahil bothering Ebrahiem and Ebrahiem choosing midnight to take his revenge by beating her up, babloo causing Ebrahiem to start to hate cola by filling him up with too much of it, writing crazy things on bhai's white board, fights between the cousins and all my nieces standing up against my nephew, babloo doing crazy things in the restaurants and saying: "I have no idea how that happened", babloo preparing bowl of ice cream with lots of whipped cream and oreo biscuits for herself; the bowl was enough for the whole family, babloo hiding whipped cream in the closet to eat it all, encountering and witnessing a jinn in a supermarket, babloo leading a prayer session for me with her sisters and aunt that I may find a job in Amreeka and stay with them forever, Ebrahiem learning lots of things there especially one little monkey rhyme and falling off on the bed, Ebrahiem seeking forgiveness from his sins saying Toba Toba all the time while he actually meant Tablet Tablet (the samsung one to play), babloo's cute questions about heaven and her prayers that she may get a house full of nutella, and she making the graph of her good deeds vs. bad deeds and her good deeds were always more than the bad ones, watching movies together and Mahrukh making parental settings on almost every scene, Manahil only letting us watch the beginning and end of the movie because she thinks its too long otherwise and because she has watched the movie already, singing songs at 4:00 am, all five of us, doing puppet show at night, acting and copying some funny relatives and making a performance show all the time, dropping and picking up babloo mahrukh from school, babloo and Manahil faking illness to stay at home, and finally the best one from Mahrukh by coming back from school early by faking illness and able to reach to the airport to drop me and Ebrahiem off. The puzzle was then solved why only Manahil and Eaman were crying when they were leaving for school and not Mahrukh who did that only at the airport!!!

From the diary of a proud phoppo and khala! 

My 1.5 year old techie

I am a complete chaos right now. Everyday my boy wakes up .. oh no, let me rephrase it, every time he sees me, he says "Taib", that means give me the tablet so that he can play the videos. Right now, he is playing youtube videos on both tablet and my smartphone but that's not enough. He often looks into my laptop screen and tries to use it as a touch screen as he has not developed a sense yet how does a laptop work (its not a touch screen).

Now in the last couple of days, I have witnessed the following:

1) Recently, my friends on skype were a bit surprise that I put the most weirdo photo as my skype display photo. How that happened was, I am an eye witness. He took a photo from my whatsApp and then edited it somehow and put it as my profile photo. Its a photo of several triangles in it.

2) He has created a youtube playlist for himself

3) Everyday, I receive a number of emails through my youtube account. Apparently my son has found a way to talk to his cohorts and he posts on their comments something like... asdkjsakfhafshsakf and I get similar messages like 7(&w(eJSDA

4) I have stopped finding unread emails in my inbox, its not because people have stopped sending me emails, but my emails have been scrutinized before I get access to them.

5) I have got miraculously subscribed to several cartoon channels

6) My dropbox which is connected to both tablet and phone gets weird photos of cartoons everyday. These are the screenshots he captures!!!!!

7) Over these months I learnt so many shortcuts for these smart devices through my son.

8) Now this one is a bit dangerous, he has started sharing my videos and photos (luckily at the moment only with dad but don't know who he would share in future)

9) His reply to emails through my inbox, his messages to my friends, taking random photos are relatively the simple ones.

10) Most importantly he only does the crazy stuff with my devices. He is not interested in others property at the moment.

11) He knows and finds out all the secret places where I hide "his" devices as if he is a sniffing dog.

"Wanna make me happy, give me nice food"

The title of the post tells, if I'd ever be famous, what proverb people would be using about me. Yes, I love food. and it is one of the reasons why I think life is so beautiful. I am particularly happy because I am born in Pakistan where food is simply not delicious but scrumptious. We Pakistanis do not eat food to live but we live to eat food. Everyday, the challenge of the person who is responsible for cooking in the house is to figure out what to cook today? I am sure no other culture or country find this so challenging. Food is one of the reasons as to why if I'd be given another life, I would love to be born in Pakistan. I don't know how the rest of the world recognize us, but I recognize my country because of the variety of delicious food. 

Below are the points where you can see how important is food for us:

1) We go to the wedding parties only to eat food. The purpose is partially to socialize but this too is food socialization. The reason is not at all to celebrate with the bride and groom. In the wedding parties, even the strangers help each other in filling the table with all the food served around. If the food isn't good, the party is considered a failure. If the food is good, even the most lousy party is considered a success. 

2) The long breaks on Friday for the people out for work is strategically arranged to have this and that particular food in this or that restaurant/ street. 

3) If a mother takes her children to some relatives and tells, Oh my child is too small to eat then it is a psychological obligation on the child to eat as much as and as fast as they can. 

4) Only those relatives are loving who serve us nice food, others we just keep normal relationship with. 

5) We receive a food platter everynow and then from the neighborhood in the name of "niaz" (food served for religious purpose). I don't know why but the biryani of niaz is always more delicious than the normal biryani. 

The best of the foods: So here I list the best of the best foods we have. You may add to the list if I skip something. If I make a real list, then it will reach infinity. 

1) Biryani- somehow I am a biryani ambassador. I make biryani out of anything from meat, chicken, fish, chickpeas, vegetable, to the versions that are relatively little known like daal biryani, kebap biryani, 

2) Haleem- A mix of meat with lentils and lots of herbs for garnishing and requires hours to cook. It is commonly made in the first Islamic month but with the more easier versions to cook through the packet haleem masalah, now it can be made any day any time

3) Kebaps- which kebaps we do not have? I know kebaps are very common in all the middle eastern countries but as we like to put daal in everything, our kebaps are commonly made with daal. 

4) Chola chat, dahi baray, pakoray etc. - Yes we are lentils eating nation. Here too, we like to make lentils cake, lentils snacks, lentils cookies and are widely cooked during Ramadan. We don't care how much it messes up with our digestive system during Ramadan but we think a Ramadan without such lentil snacks is not a real Pakistani Ramadan. 

5) Vegetables- We want to overcook everything. For meat and stuff, it might make sense, but we do want to cook vegetables so much so that the real color is gone. And it is hell spicy. But it is really really nice. and we want to garnish it with more spices.

6) Street food - This is a separate category in itself, although it is some variations of all mentioned above but it has its own taste. Whenever we plan to go to Pakistan for holidays, we vow each other for each as much as and as many times as possible. This is the basic motivation for going back. Irony is that the more unhygienic it is, the more delicious it is. As a home-made food can never taste the same no matter how much energy you put it. Aah, so much to say about it, I promise I will try my best to write a separate blog about it. 

Spices- We don't cook food but we cook spices and put little food in it. We use all kinds of spices in any kind of food like red chilies, green chilies, black pepper, white pepper, hot spices, you name it. That is the special thing about our food and it can go as extrme as it looks some people cook food in the spices. Benefit is that even if the food is spoiled, it can never taste or smell bad because any stingy thing can easily hide behind the spices. That is the main reason why street food never gets rotten (Yes a later messed up stomach is another issue).

 Once, my father (who was the best cook of his time :) made haleem. He made a platter of haleem for our neighbor and garnished it with lots of spices and said, these people will die out of spices. After making the platter, he left the room. I was really little at that time (may be 5 or 6). I repeated the sentence and added even more spices on top. I have no clue how the neighbor survived that haleem and I don't care. He was my worst enemy of mine at that age.

So which food do you like and your specific reasons for liking it. Looking forward to hear that from you all !!!

Who will get a job in future?

I want to give you a good and a bad news at the same time. First comes the good news. You don't need to be scared of your nerdy colleague who is sitting right in front of you with his thick eye glasses. He is NO MORE your competitor. In other words, his skills are being replaced with respect to time. But the bad news is NOW you have to compete with another thing which is the technology. Yes the smartphone you are carrying in your pant pockets, the laptop hanging on your back, the copy machine right next to you and the printer all of them are gonna eat away your job and not only yours but also your competitors, your partners, colleagues everybody's. So this is the age when human doesn't need to be afraid of each other. The machine that the men created by himself is going to eat them. 

The statistics provide us thought-provoking findings. At the time of ever increasing productivity, Brynjolfsson & McAfee (2012) tell us that between May 2007 to October 2009, the unemployment jumped by more than 5.7 which is the largest ever increase in the postwar period. During late 1960's, in the vogue of ever increasing technology, some economists and political scientists "foresaw" less working hours per week. They expected that these machines would "complement" their skills and "work for them"- hence less work per person per week. Even some predicted that by the time we would reach 2000's, work hours per week would be 30 hours and long vacations per year. But how the situation is like? Everyone knows. During my maternity period, I used to read how other co-mothers had to join their work immediately after delivery so where is the minimum legal period of maternity? And those who are lucky enough to retain their jobs are even working 70 hours per week. Employed people are increasingly getting "burnouts" and they have no family life whatsoever. Where is the machine that was going to work for me? I think technology is at its best at the moment innit?

While there are many ideas floating around as to where these jobs are and how long this would continue, the most popular one is the "end of work" argument, so the technological progress is not too little but too much. And the economists could not see it prior to 1970's. This is particularly important for the third world countries who will face more crisis but how we are going to see it from the "Knowledge Economy" prospect. 

The fact is that there are jobs in the market and these jobs are with ever highest salaries but there are not much capable persons to fill them up. These high profile jobs are those where humans are required to be ahead of machines and not to work parallel with them. Yes, this is the fact of today that you are no longer required to work parallel to machine. If you do so, soon you will be replaced with a machine who will better work in parallel with the other machine (your ex-colleague). However, there are areas where machines can't compete with humans and they can never do that. Machines are good with routine tasks but they cannot handle the non-routine tasks. That is where you punch-in. We already see a greatest restructuring in the economy. The banker's job which was considered the most high-profile job sometime ago, but now banking is not absorbing as many people as it used to do. Between January 2007 to January 2014, the gap between the jobs of computer programmers, consultants and likes and bankers has only been increasing. That is why they say that "computer programmers are in demand but bankers are not". 

Although these superior skills are somehow available in developed world but for the developing countries, the answer is No in general. So what will happen in future? The money is already floating into a fixed sector of economy into a limited number of people so do we expect more people falling below the poverty line in the developing countries in future?

There are some open questions in this regard:

1- How can we distribute the superior skills through out the economy- skills in which humans work ahead of technology and not in parallel?

2- Do we need a social restructuring again where one person is the sole bread runner of the house and companies not using the slogan such as "we are equal opportunity employers"? 

3- Are we able to design fiscal policies where work load is distributed appropriately so that the money circulates throughout the economy?

These are tough questions of today but I am sure twenty years ahead, we will not have at least this one as a challenge

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ― Rumi

The words in the title by Rumi are so deep in the meaning and perhaps I did not understand them the way they should be. I would still take the courage to write something about it as I found the words very very touching.

When the pain rips one apart, not physically but spiritually, there are open wounds. One is exposed to the loss, abuse or bully and in most cases, this exposure is accompanied with loneliness. People you trusted or loved are proved to be selfish and the pain multiplies. There is no place of refuge, just darkness around. Under such times of distress, one questions the purpose of his/ her existence.

During the stability stage, when most of the things are turning out as per expectations, we make choices regarding people to hangout with, people to live with and people to trust. During the instability stage, when things don't turnout as per expectations, we feel betrayed because our choices are proved to be wrong and our love and care is not reciprocated. This is the time when we corner ourselves, detach from world and clad in depression and anxiety. Some strong people still manage to drive their life pretending to be normal but its not a joke and such people are also burning deep inside.

This wound and grief composes an important stage of one's life. Because of the way God Has created a human, the man chooses to live than to die and he makes tough decisions. He becomes a reservoir of energy and there is only one source left that can provide him with energy and that source is the Ultimate Truth- Almighty who is always by his side no matter what. The person who absorbs the light from the ultimate source is then a completely different human. 

But one has to think how he came out of trial. If the answer is getting closer to the creator, it means that the "light" has indeed entered through but if unfortunately, the trial made him further away from the creator, it means that the open place of wound was not a reservoir of light from the ultimate source, it became the reservoir of negativities. 

In any difficult situation where one has open wounds, do not forget that the light is there, its up to the human what he opts for the light or chooses to stay in darkness. 

My best friend is google!

Information Technology (IT) is a really big revolution ever on the face of earth. Things, relationship, businesses, social interactions, tasks and what not ... everything has changed. IT has wiped away the traditional ways to conduct tasks (home or work), changed the way to interact with friends, even the relationships. With very cheap ways of communication, nobody is really alone at any point in time. Soon, I assume that everybody would be chipped and would be able to tracked anytime anywhere. There won't be any Bermuda triangle or incidences like MH370 would ever be possible to happen (unless a doomsday happen and all the systems are crashed in one go). 

But is technology an integral part of your life? The recent research shows that the learning ability of humans is suffering because they don't keep things in their heads rather rely on so called "Wikipedia". They know they can always revert back to their friend "Wiki" and ask it again. At the same time, any sort of information is accessible and freely available and we humans can't keep everything into our heads so we over-tired our brains by exposing it to excessive amount of information (that is not needed by the way). For example, getting the biographical records of my favorite movie stars of soccer players (I am not a journalist by the way). 

Then comes the "blues". How am I tackling with routine troubles, or some big accidents of my life? Because I know that I come across system crash or software not working or not knowing the program code and I can easily find a solution online therefore I have started to think that my "Psychological" problems can also be solved by my friend "Google" or "wikiehow", I have turned my face away from the real problem solvers (a closed person) and trust my device more. I know telling google won't cost google's time and google is not gonna share my stupid queries with others. I can access my 24/7 online friend for all my troubles. But where are the "Relations" in all this. I have left them far away, so far that I cannot reach there. No airline, no ferry can take me there. I use my facebook to brag about myself and all my "network" know me as the 'happiest' person on earth. 

Just like the paperless world, my relationships are mass-less, body-less, blood-less. My friend ehow tells me how to tackle a difficult person, my husband google tells me how to look beautiful, my sister edrive keeps all my secret stories and my teacher google scholar gives me insights on my work. 

I am living a perfect "humanless" life because all my social needs are met through the wires! 

First Mother's day without You

Yesterday was the first mother's day without you and from this one, I will not be able to celebrate any mother's day :( Its sad but its a reality of life. I am somewhere between denial and anger, guilt and sadness. The flood of these emotions is growing deep inside my heart but we all have to spend our calculated moments in this life. And I am doing that.

I cannot send you any gifts and we cannot pamper you with delicious food, your favorite gift items or long phone calls. This mother's day was the saddest mother's day I have ever had. For me and my siblings, mother's day was a very special day. We would start arranging for her gifts months before this day and my mother, just like a little baby, would often inquire us: "How are you gonna surprise me this year?" In our family, mother's day was like Christmas or Eid.

While there are people who are blessed with this beautiful gift of Almighty and to enjoy it (of course temporarily), many of those are not aware of what can happen in case this gift is taken away. Yes, this can give those people chills or goosebumps just for imagining it, the reality is far more than that. Back in 2009, I had a lecture in the morning, and before that, I was talking to two twin sisters who were my friends. Somehow, they used past tense when they talked about their mum and I asked them where she is right now. They told me that she has passed away. I don't know what happened to me but my eyes started to shed tears with my heart full of emotions. Soon, my other classmates started to notice me, so my friends consoled me and I had to stop crying. I don't know why I was crying, missing my mum as she was far away, realizing that she is getting older and may leave me some day or simply feeling pity about my friends who had lost their mother already. But when I myself had to face this reality, I reacted in a completely different way. Emotions are not discrete, they are on a continuum and the "right" kind of emotions do not always come at the right time. A loss is responded with sadness, active grieving, denial, anger, guilt, shock, terror, melancholy or acceptance (we typically call patience). I can easily see that my subconscious mind has still not accepted this loss and that's why I see my mother in my dream multiple times as soon as I fall asleep and I discuss my day-to-day things with her. This can be said as the result of not being at her funeral, or simply tied up with my new-mother busy schedule along side my work but I believe that I am following a very long cycle of facing the loss. And I have my whole life to grieve about her.

Anyways, I was talking about how oblivious many people are about their parents. They either ignore them, downright disrespect them or delegate their responsibilities onto a third party by assuming that "others" are responsible for respecting and taking care of their parents. If you are falling under either of the category, you may need to correct your ways. First and foremost, no matter how educated or well-mannered you are, you must not disrespect your parents for they being naive.  Once they were appreciating your innocent acts so just enjoy every phase of life. Second, if they ask for extra attention, you can kindly ask them to expect a little less but do not ignore them.  Ignoring them is not a lesser crime that disrespecting them. Hence, give them their due share of time but that should not come at the cost of teasing them or violating the rights of others.Third, No one but "You" are responsible for their care. This responsibility cannot be delegated to the other person because you owe them the sleepless nights and not the third party.

This mother's day, I just want to pay a tribute to my sweetest mom in the world. I love you, you are the best in the world! Although, we used to have occasional disagreements but you were the one closest to me than anyone else around. When you left me, my life is a lot under disappointments; as if you took away my pleasures along with you. Things and people I used to enjoy do not give me any happiness anymore. There is hardly any night I do not dream of you. Losing you is such a big loss that I cannot put it into tears, only a heart that is melting but who can see the heart- its inside.