What is a lame blog entry?

Look here: http://blogs.cricinfo.com/tourdiaries/archives/2006/01/nine_hundred_se.php#more

Building skyscraping sandcastles in the air based on (author-acknoledged) rumors.

In and Out

From Herald's Annual 2005 issue:

In Out Comment
iPod Nano Conversation First prize. Anyone having a doubt, visit London please.

Rape Karo Kari True. Though somehow the "eastern" rapes appear more institutionalized than western ones. Somehow perpetrator being drunk (in the latter case) is seemed more "acceptable" than their eastern counterpart victims of "values and traditions." Methinks: Both causes are the same. Drinking, in cultures where it is acceptable, is as traditional as values and honour in others.

Kamran Akmal Adam Gilchirst. Nice. But let's not get carried away. Remember Dhoni, the "new Adam Gilchirst" as christened by Indian media.

Social Pages Journalism Out: High-brow herald, In: Cheeky herald.
Aaj TV Geo TV See above (Geo is an indirect rival, since its owned by the Jang group, a competitor of the Dawn Group of which Herald is a part).

Orphaned patients

Amongst the worst sights that one can go through, is seeing a patient all alone with no visitors during visiting hours. No one to put the food in his mouth. No one to check if his forehead is a little hot and a post-op fever might be coming. No one to sit next to him and do the small-talk. I saw one yesterday.

He was in the ward directly opposite Abu's. The guy had recently come from Bangladesh. He was young. In his 20's. He had complained of back pain for a long time but had been treated with painkillers earlier. Apparently, only recently he showed a specialist who diagnosed severe back problems (pardon the un-medical language) and had a 9-hour operation done the day before. He had a mask for breathing and just slept all day. There were people that he worked and probably lived with who came to see him for a while and told us that he had no one here. Everyone deserves people to be with them. We need to have a system where firstly, anyone who is needed to attend to a patient should be able to afford the expenses to come to him, and secondly, information be sent to loved ones of a patient as soon as possible. I wonder if those who cared for this guy even knew what was up with him.

'd also like to talk about surgeons here. The most respectable of people ever. (Airline Pilots come second). The first thought in your head when you see one, especially after the effect his work has had on patients, is (apart from love and respect for his work) the desire to do something worthwhile with your life.

Dads are strength

Some co-incidences are just plain spooky. At an aunt's place while on my way home for Abu's surgery, as I lay down to sleep with all sorts of thoughts of good times with him, the last words my eyes read were: "Dads are strength. They are like a big tall oak tree that sways and bends but never breaks... " A picture frame on a table next to the bed. A gift from a loving child definitely.

I'm just thankful and grateful that he's recovering fine. Seeing him stand and walk normally again did put a lot of stength in us, and I know I'm speaking for the rest of the household too.

Taking stock of things.

You've come all the way, having taken a risk, burning boats behind you, huffing and puffing half-way through when you suddenly are confronted with various pathways. You know this might be the last journey of its sort you would take and the gravity of the situation dawns on you. Which path do you take? Each path has its own guide(s), some of them being the most interesting poeople you have ever met, and leads to different places. How do you decide which to take?

There are paths closer to what you once were. Or what you would have become if you kept going on previous paths. But then the point of this journey was not to continue being what you were. But to be able to realize the dreams. Some of those paths pointed to realization of those dreams. And then it wasn't as if those dreams were dead. They were still there and kept coming back.

In the end it was all about whether I was ready to believe in the dreams. I had the baggage to take that path and I could see making use of myself at the end of the journey. After five days of distress and dilemma, the full-unit option had been finally chosen. "IT and Development." Here comes the saviour.

On another end, I've been trying to relate the trend of increasing Pakistani marriages with the natural calamities hitting the country. I know there's nothing in common between the two, since the former relate to exorbitant expenditures while the latter is suffering of the worst kind, but still at some level, are people getting married to get on with (their versions of living) life as soon as possible? A sort of race with nature?