And so summer school commences. Contrary to all perceptions, math and physics does not, in any way, make for even a half-interesting summer. One interesting thing did happen recently, though. Back in the seventh grade, my best friend was a christian girl whose aunt was in charge of the secondary division. As a result, any trouble we got into, my friend was blamed for because I was, as far as her aunt was concerned, a polite little angel that only spoke when spoken to and her neice, whom she had known since infanthood, was a little devil on wheels who would instigate trouble. Anyhow, around the end of the year, I transferred schools and she migrated to Canada.

Recently, through a friend, I got back in touch with seventh grade best friend, which was sort of odd. I don't know about the rest of you, but I have trouble talking to people who I haven't seen in a good long time. "How've you been" just doesn't seem to cover it and any personal questions I ask seem intrusive, even to me. After years of being out of their lives, who am I to ask for information they're not volunteering on their own? Anyhow, once back in communication, my old friend started excitedly naming all these places and people and events and I just nodded along, figuratively speaking, because I realized after the first few minutes that I did not know what she was talking about.

I always hated my first school. When I was ready to get admitted into the first grade, my parents took me to CJM and St. Joesph's for the admission tests and I cleared both so the choice was mine. As with any child, I made the choice based on the school grounds. Whatever else you may say, St. Joesph's has an amazingly huge compount at its disposal, ideal for children to run around in, and so the choice was made. Now let it be clear, I detested the place from the beginning. All the other girls were overachievers, so much so that I would fall squarely in the 30th position, if not lower, in a class of sixty girls when report day would come around. What's the worst thing to be in a school full of overachivers? Absolutely ordinary, that's what. Add that to the fact that in the first grade, I had incomplete notes throughout the year because, according to the teacher, I had neat but very slow handwriting. In the second grade, I speeded up and was awarded with a remark in my report card about how my writing was illegible at worst and just plan tiny at best. One very large downside to being in an all girls' school is that if you should be a tomboy who prefers the company of and makes friends with boys much faster than with girls, you're doomed. As for the authority figures, most of them were nuns, which did teach me to curb my expletives and gain an appreciation of the beauty of churches, even the small ones in that area. I often joke about having blocked off that part of my memory, but it seemed, as my old friend went on and on about people, places and events I must have been a part of alongside her, but could not remember for the life of me, I had actually managed to physically block that part of my life spent while subconsciously ticking off the days on prison wall. My only lasting memories of that place are the churches, the huge statue of Jesus and the angels next to the school which I asked Christian friends about as I stared in awe, the canteen lady who would overcharge, and the one-armed math teacher who made me sit in the class and do my math homework while everyone else got to go outside and play. Little wonder that I got horrible grades and almost flunked out. Oddly, once I changed schools, I got top grades and (for once in my life), finished a math exam before anyone else, had it graded before my eyes and walked out of the exam room with a 92%.

Why am I going on about all this? Because if anyone else ever has a habitually unachieving, misfit kid, don't plop him/her into the most reputed schools, but plop him/her into a place they can do well and actually gain some damn confidence.

So I'm moving again. For someone who doesn't like change and drags her heels at the very idea, I move quite a lot. I remember every place I ever lived in and today, when I pass by the site of my childhood home, which has since been demolished to build something and then abandoned halfway, I feel responsible for its sad state. At the time, though, I was around eight and hardly in a position to object to moving and urgent arguments about how my pet for one day, a sick kitten named "Happy", had been buried in the garden of that particular house fell upon deaf ears.

No dead cats in the backyard this time, but I'll miss this place.

I just saw Star Wars Episode III yesterday and, dare I say it, it is fantastic! So good, in fact, that it blows away my bitterness at the joke that were *cringe* episode I and II. It's not easy, expectations are high because this is it! This is where Annakin Skywalker completes the journey to become (arguably) the most famous fictional villain in history, Darth Vader!

1. Fight sequences are killer (no pun intended).

2. Everything ties up very nicely to Episode IV.

3. Annakin's glowy evil eyes as he glances back after ruthlessly murdering creatures who would probably be killed off by evolution anyway (See above).

4. The betrayal of the Jedi. The tragic music swells as the camera zooms out to see tons of Jedis being outnumbered and killed off *sob*.

5. Watching that idiot Christensen getting his just desserts for murdering every bit of dialogue given to him. Try butchering lines when you're limbless!

6. The sequence where Vader's infamous black mask is fitted onto Annakin's head. A moment of silence for the death of Annakin Skywalker and then... the deep, heavy breathing signifying the first breaths of the Darth Vader we know and love to imitiate (well, I do anyway!).

7. The final fight between Annakin and Obi-Wan!

There's really only one major negative point in the whole movie and it's called Hayden Christensen. His protrayal of Annakin Skywalker is, sadly, horrible. Everytime this guy says a line after he's gone over to the dark side makes me want to either slap him or laugh in his face. Some examples: "You turned her against meeeeeh!", "I should have known the Jedi were plotting to take overrr!" (heavy American accent, hence the severe rolling of R's in every scene), and pretty much every dialogue in the last confrontation between Annakin and Kenobi. Through most of the movie, Annakin only needs to look alternatingly grave and lighthearted and speak in a serious manner. While this, too, is done in such a severely wooden fashion that it would shame a door to see it, it can be ignored. It is, however, when Annakin's inner rage makes me yell out every sentence that Christensen completely bombs and ends up sounding like a three year old throwing a tantrum instead of a truly powerful Jedi on the verge of becoming the most evil dark lord ever known. Bad casting!

If you should ever be wandering about Pakistan in a carefree manner befitting one with Summer Vacations, be warned. A lush green patch of wild grass that seems to be begging to accomodate your feet upon it can only grow on the side of the road because of a rich nutrient source of fertilizer, most likely an overflowing gutter, as I have learned recently. Around here, apparently, if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, your neighbour may have problems with their sewerage system.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are the mother of a sleep-loving (euphemism for lazy) daughter who will not get out of bed before she has had her daily ten hours of sleep. Imagine also that you have to get her and your other, equally talented in the art of sleep offspring, to Sindhlab to get a blood test and the labs close in an hour. To top it off, it's a sunday, the one day when the lazy and non-lazy alike can sleep in on the grounds of "It's a sunday, for god's sakes, let me sleep!", come hell or high water.

Anyhow, personally I don't mind sharing my blood for a good cause. It's just the extraction part I don't like. I'll admit it: the sight of blood makes me queasy, which is a lot better than fainting everytime someone takes a few CCs out of you, like a certain person I know does, but it still doesn't make me a big fan of medical tests beyond the "stick out your tongue" variety. This trip, therefore, in addition to ruining by sunday morning sleep in session, was not one I was looking forward to at all, and neither were me siblings, probably for the same reasons.

What's a mum to do? First, she probably thought, let's tackle the smallest one. Easy enough, all you have to do is turn off the AC and fans and close the door and leave. Five minutes later, sweating and muttering about barbarians who deprive their children of Air Conditioning, little sister emerges from the room.

Next, it's my little brother's turn who is so unaffected by heat or any of his other senses while sleeping that he could sleep through several friends wrestling on the floor while Tiesto blares on his stereo and his sister place his own smelly socks near his face. Not an easy task, but Mum has several tricks up her sleeve, mind you. She goes to the kitchen and tells the housekeeper to go tell off the cleaning lady aka the Maasi, who just happens to be cleaning out brother's room, on how she did not clean the bathrooms properly. Within three minutes a full on war has erupted with the Maasi yelling in a thick accent about how the Housekeeper isn't "the boss of me" and the Housekeeper yelling right back about how the Maasi is a "lazy, good for nothing woman who has to be supervised for hours every morning". As both scream on at each other, looking dangerously close to swatting each other with a jharoo, little brother jumps up and leaves his room, complaining to a smiling mum about the two and goes off in a rage to visit the loo.

And now remains the biggest challenge, the elder daughter with the dangerous ability to adjust to the change in temperature and go right back to sleep several times before throwing in the towel and finally leaving the bed. Unfortunately, Mum has a plan. Opening up her closet and taking out all the new clothes that have yet to be given to the tailor and laying them on sleeping daughter's bed, she summons my aunt and both sit down at opposite sides of me and begin to loudly discuss exactly which one would suit whose complexion better, followed by an in-depth debate on what the best age is for getting daughters married and rounding off with a detailed gossiping session about the latest married couples and how they met and how the rishta was finalized and who was having what problems with what bahu. This is more than eldest daughter can take and she attempts to put a cork in either the discussion or her own life by rolling out the bed with a great deal of force and plopping down on the floor, wrapped in a quilt and much resembling one of those chicken rolls at Khadda Market. Mum has no mercy and continues animated discussion of eligible young men for eldest daughter and what each candidate does for a living, has studies and what they wore on the first day of grade school. Eldest daughter admits defeat and retires to the bathroom to change.

All three children meet in the corridor as they grab the keys and practically run out the door in anticipation of the peace and quiet of a blood testing session ay Sindhlab.

Some twelve odd years ago, a teenage boy awoke from his slumber early one saturday morning and ambled into his kitchen for breakfast. Distracted by sounds of life from the living room, he frowned and walked cautiously towards the source of the noise, only to discover his ten year old cousin visiting from Karachi was still playing his Gameboy. Grudgingly, he admitted what, to his young cousin who was in awe of his "coolness" was a supreme compliment, that she was crazier about videogames than any boy he's ever met.

Yesterday, a teenage boy stumbled in from a late night trip to a friend's birthday at his farm and heard furious clicking noises from the room across the hall from his own. Tiptoeing towards the source of the hushed noise, he sneaked a peek inside to find his twenty-two year old sister still at her game of Age of Empires 2. Not so grudgingly, he told his sister to get some sleep before her eyeballs popped out of their sockets from exhaustion.

My univeristy and its hectic schedule had nearly made me give up videogames. Once you go off something cold turkey, after a week or two, you just don't get the old itch when you have some time free anymore, which is precisely what was happening these last couple of days. Now that I finally have a week or two to myself, I would eye my games, noncommitedly make a mental note to install them and have a session. And then, I would do something else.

The woman who would sneak into her parent's room at five a.m. on a sunday morning to plug in her Atari and play as quietly as possible, the woman who sat with T during the exams and finished off Resident Evil 1, 2 and 3 in succession, the woman who would head straight for the CD stands at Sunday Bazaar while sis would go off to look at all the interesting jewellery available, was the woman who simply did not "feel like" playing a videogame.

Yesterday, though, I decided to install Age of Empires 2 at last. When I finally got around to clicking on that familiar old icon with the badly drawn knight's helmet, it all came back in a rush. An overdose of reality is about as bad as an overdose of fantasy.

I don't know how many of your residing in Karachi have been to Funland, but if you haven't, I would suggest you head on over there as soon as possible, preferably on a weekday with a fair sized group of friends, some of whom should be moderately burly and unshaven young men. Anyhow, today was a class trip to visit the aforementioned land of fun and, having nothing better to do, I went along.

After a late start, we finally arrived at Funland and rushed into the first ride we saw: the bumper cars. You wouldn't think it, but slamming into people you've spent three years with is actually helps you settle all your scores in a more lighthearted manner than any other I've experienced. One lone bumper car had someone we did not know in it, a man and his three year old kid, who probably felt left out because nobody would slam into him, either because they were too busy pouncing on each other or because it just aint nice to bump a car with a kid in it. Additionally, being on the passenger side of such a vehicle is terrible, mainly because you have to take all the hits and the most you can do is impotently yell at the driver to "watch out!", "go faster!" or yell "aaarrrrghh!" when a you get sidelined by another car, much like the Karachi driving experience.

After being awarded not so subtle hints from the rest of the crowd that we had hogged the bumper cars quite enough, we set off to the next ride in line, an unnamed but stomach churning ride that first whizzes the occupants around clockwise, then anti-clockwise. Now, I have a pretty strong stomach for these rides but this one I can't really go on more than twice at most. By the time the second ride is done, I stumble out of the little compartment and could swear I can see little birdies flying in circles around my head, Tom and Jerry style, and the world seems to be spinning around a la Huma's blog title. What better way to get rid of a severe case of the dizzies than by a ride in the awe-inspiring pirate ship?

Better men and women than I have balked and/or puked at such a proposition, but I am not to be deterred, and neither are my companions. I, being a veteran of no less than 9 rides in the past on the monstrosity that is called the pirate ship, have gotten everyone excited about this ride on the way over and nothing is going to stop them from experiencing it first hand. On the first go, I'm sitting on the very last seats with a bar that has no catch mechanism holding me down, or rather, I am holding it down while restraining myself from taking flight by holding on to the bottom of the next bench with my feet. Thankfully, the ship does not swing to the very dangerous yet adrenaline-inspiring position of being at a perfect ninety degree angle with the ground, at which point you're on top of the world, bathed in utter silence and only when you look straight down can you see signs of life. Not to worry, though, I stay in my seat for a second round, which friends join in. This time, the operator of the beast is not so kind. We not only see the precarious nirvana-inducing right angle position, but go on to repeat it several times, causing even the most brave of us to yell "enough, enough!". I'm so very glad common sense told me not to try and take any pictures of that scene because honestly, if I let go, it would be either the camera or me. Someday, perhaps, I shall get to take a picture, if the management installs some seat belts of something more substantial than a flimsy rod that flips open at the slightest pressure to keep us safely within the seats.

Next up, a ride with many bad memories attached to it, at least for me: the Hully Gully. If you have ever flicked a coin to make it spin on the table and then watched its final moments before settling, you can see the movement of this ride, which is basically a disc that has halves rising and falling in turn while spinning like a top. On a previous trip, being full of ourselves, my friends and I had taunted the operator of this ride by calling the speed "boring" and insisting the ride was a kiddie ride. Big mistake, do not piss off an operator while you're still on the ride. He turned it up to full steam and grinned as our heads swung to one side and the speed would not let us lift it up. Needless to say, everyone had several painful muscle aches in the same side of their necks the next day. This time, though, I resolved to behave, even when, after being seated and buckled up for ten minutes, the operator had not started the ride yet. A tip to those who give the Hully Gully a go: let the lighter person sit on the inside of the two person seat, because inevitably, the person on the inside will be thrown up against the person on the outside, which can be significantly uncomfortable if you happen to be the lightweight sitting on the outer seat. Once the ride was over, though, I resolved to avoid all further circular rides. Fortunately, what caught our eye next was the extremely overpriced Rollercoaster.

Now we Karachiites don't get a chance to see a rollercoater very often, mostly because a roller coaster, unlike a Ferris wheel, loses its element of fun when scaled down. Therefore, if one has to have a roller coaster, it should be as large as possible, with many twists and turns and loop-the-loops. Unfortunately, none of the amusement parks in Karachi are willing to spend enough to ensure we get a decent rollercoaster, which is why most Karachiites have to make do without. This is why, when we do see one, even a small one such as this one, we cannot resist the urge to have a go on it, even when it's ridiculously overpriced. This particular rollercoaster's round was finished even before it began, although there were some mildly scary bits in the middle, mostly consisting of looking down at three stories of thin metal tracks and remembering all the horror stories of Pakistani construction and the cutting of corners involved. Far too much money for far too short a ride is my conclusion, bah!

That being done, and the dizziness increasing, we decided to take it easy for a while and check out the first bowling alley in Karachi, situated within Funland. A building at the far end of the park was the promised location and once we entered, we saw why. I had been expecting a shoddy makeshift bowling alley that the masses would have used carelessly, but it was actually quite clean and spacious. Also, in line with my initial predictions about how bowling would not catch on in Pakistan, there was nobody there. I still insist that any sport in which one has to go through the trouble of changing one's shoes to play is just not going to catch on. We are a very laid back and lazy nation, one who does not enjoy being ordered to change our shoes or various other articles of clothing just to participate. Also grossly overpriced at Rs. 75 for just one game (one player). Why on earth would anyone come to Funland to pay that much to bowl against themselves?! Instead, we enjoyed the foosball, popularized as Joey and Chandler's sport of choice in Friends. Another game that will not really catch on in Pakistan since we are the land that appreciates metal sticks with meat wrapped around them being rotated, not little armless, plactic men. About twenty minutes, and a heated game of foosball later, we made our way to what I euphemistically call the dining area to order some Pani Puri. My defense is that I was starving by now, my stomach having quietened down enough to express its emptiness, and there was nothing much else available.

That being done, I have now returned home and am about done typing and ready for some sleep. Farewell, O reader of infinite patience!

Alright, enough with the self-involved pity party. After about a week and a half of finals and projects, I have now gotten about fifteen hours of sleep, which does wonders for the sour temperament.

So today marks the first day of the grand old summer "holidays". I was planning to start confronting relatives for an Internship in a bank somewhere, but it turns out a couple of courses I have to take are being offered this summer, so that plan's shot to hell. Turns out I'm not the only one woefully inadequate with phsyics and maths, I'll be spending my summer in good company.

The good news is that all this should keep me busy enough to not spend my salary as soon as it hits my palm this summer and allow me to save up for a Playstation 2 and leave a good chunk over for some games as well. Let's face reality here, my PC is hardly a lean, mean gaming machine and rather than buy a new PC altogether, I'm going to go for a PS2.

Also, I have bartered a deal with mum that I shall visit le gym at the club if I am taken out for practice sessions for my driving and then get to take the car myself when I'm done. Sadly, the UTS buses that I would have to take have no Air Condioning anymore and the windows are sealed tight and cannot possibly be opened.

I still sort of miss my classmates (or rather, ex-classmates) since they're all from far flung areas of the city and it's highly unlikely I'll ever bump into any of them ever again, unless a meeting is set up.

I think at birth you should recieve a certificate from God letting you know whether you're going to be great at something, below average at everything or just doomed to a lifetime of mediocrity. It would save so much time and worry if we had something like that at birth that guarunteed success or failure without the heartbreak of taking a chance on something different and finding out later on that everyone thinks you were horribly talentless but were too nice to say it.

I am one of the few people in this part of the world who actually find their mum's presence much more reassuring/comforting than their dad's. My understanding of God is similar to how I see my dad. Everyone says he's around and he knows everything and that he's there to watch over me if I ever get into trouble, all I have to do is ask, but the more tangible and visible force that does all that has always been my mum, and I don't even need to ask, not really.

More recently, I realized that I may have to step into her shoes someday soon. Parents won't be around forever. It was while watching my mum lying in the ICU with an oxygen mask on and with a cue card in hand that said "I can't talk, but you should keep talking. Tell me what's new." in her hand that I realized there's no such thing as a weaker sex.

The fact of the matter is, though, that words are horribly inadequate to express how important my mum is to me, which is why I wan't posting about mother's day at all. This here is just a clumsy effort to express all of the ways in which my mum is the better half of me and she deserves much more than just one stupid day to share with all the mothers in the world.

I have graduated from cow to cash cow. The beginning of this month marked my first paycheck! This is a bit of a landmark for me since it's the first time in about 22 years someone has paid me to do something they asked me to do. Yay!

Since little brother was extra nice on my birthday this year, I decided to get him something nice for him on his birthday, which incidentally is in a couple of days. First thought: a new guitar. Many years ago, I decided to take up the guitar, as most people do at that age. I went out and bought the cheapest one they had, asking specifically for one that would be best suited to a complete beginner. Fast forward a couple of years and the poor thing lay discarded in a corner. This was about the time little brother got the urge to learn to play what, according to me, is a chick magnet more than an instrument. Unfortunately, he didn't really like the solid brown wooden look the guitar had. It just didn't really say "future rock star with multiple groupies" to him. Also unfortunately, he had the cash in hand to implement his latest whim. A few hours later, I walk in to find my poor guitar mutilated. According to witnesses, it was first spray painted black, then, for effect, had a newspaper rubbed on the wet paint for a more grunge look. The end result was more seared flesh from spontaneous combustion than grunge, but that didn't stop little brother from dedicatedly practicing on it. Now I have seen many an ordinary pimply youth transformed into the sole objects of female attention within a 100 meter radius with a simple strum of the guitar, so what better gift for a kid with a libido at its peak than one such chick-magnet, I ask you?

Now I'm the first to admit I know absolutely nothing about guitars. Hence, I invite my friend T, second in command of many an odd mission of mine, and pretty handy guy with a guitar to come along with me on my secret mission to get my brother a guitar that was not only functional, but also "damned pretty". As my financial agent and chauffeur, I also asked along A, another childhood co-conspirator. The three of us went off to "Karachi Electronics", a shop on the second floor of main Khadda Market and, T assured us, a good variety of instruments to choose from. Once upstairs, I leave T to look around and find some options for me to approve while I fiddle with a drum set. I play an imaginary set on the drums for display before realizing that the drum set is right next to the huge display window from which everyone crossing main Khadda Market can see me making an ass of myself. I retreat to see what T has come up with. T hands me a guitar that's not so pretty (green and black, ick!) but, he assures me, a good buy. Upon asking for the price, I am forced to agree that it is, in fact, goodbye. I then take T aside and tell him to stay within his frigging price limit, not go over by a couple of thousand. He goes off to inspect the guitar line-up once again while A and I browse through the ones hanging on the wall off the side. One of them catches my eye and I ask the salesman how much it is. He ventures a price that is affordable, but heck, I want to save some of my first paycheck too. After some haggling, he reduced the price a bit and throws in an extra set of strings and a couple of picks. T insists of choosing the picks and ends up selecting one with a multitude of colors that, if nothing else, convince me that he will never, ever get himself any female groupies. For the millionth time, I make a mental note to kick his ass once we're not standing in a place that is so absurdly public. A steps in, mutters to me to give him the money and take the guitar to the car with T while he "haggles" a bit more. The raising of eyebrows on the word "haggle" gives me confidence, for some off reason and I take T back to the car with guitar in tow.

Five minutes later, A is seen exiting the shop and heading towards the car with a swagger that would impress John Wayne and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He gets into the car and casually exhales some smoke. "So? Did you get him to reduce the price some more?". I can't contain myself. The swagger has convinced me that this guy has pulled off a miracle and has returned with a big wad of money left over. "No, he said it was a reasonable price", he replied, and launches into the long story the salesman told him about his wife and kids and how they must be fed and how the shop would make no profit and so on and so forth. I mentally resolve to follow up on the urge to bind him to a chair and shave his head. I silently reflect on the lesson learned: men absolutely suck at shopping, even for guitars.

Odd things happen to me on the bus. Maybe it's the fact that you have to compose an intricate balance between letting your mind wander and yet remain involved enough in your surroundings to be able to respond to anything that comes up, from a conducter asking for the ticket price to some random oddball (yawn) staring/leering at your from his section of the bus. The truth is, the ordinary female in Pakistan gets stared at by men everywhere she goes and in any mode of transportation, so the reaction to being stared at by some random idiot is just to induce a big mental yawn.

Anyway, returning to the bus, this was the first time in a long while that I had travelled in the smaller buses, and I took a seat and studied my surroundings. Disappointingly enough, there was no bad poetry on the walls involving a tragic love affair and an ode to the sajan who has gone away forevermore. It was then that my eye strayed to the driver of this particular vehicle and I was shocked (in a good way) to discover that the driver was a woman wrapped in a chaddar. Since nobody else seemed to have any reactions to this, I assumed that a woman driving these buses was an ordinary occurrance, but that was before I noticed the almost unnatural quiet. Nobody in the bus was talking. No women whispering to one another, no children pushing and giggling at their own inability to retain their seat as the bus twisted and turned through the narrow streets, no men conversing spiritedly about "the match" or anything else. Absolute silence except for the sounds of the bus itself. Then it struck me that the conductor, who was a man, was also silent. Definitely odd, since the conductors are the single most noisy beings within a bus, constantly arguing with people, cajoling and enticing people to board the bus and loudly announcing the bus' next few destinations in a singsong manner.

It was at this point that I shifted my attention entirely to the dynamic created by a woman working "above" the man in a position like this. Conductors usually do all the manual labour while the bus driver is the silent "boss", which is why I assume the driver is "above" the conductor on the food chain. The woman silently resumed her shifting of gears, all the while adjusting her chaddar on her head to hide her face from those at the back of the bus. The conductor seemed to be incapable of looking at her, addressing her or even making eye contact, preferring, instead, to smack his palm on the side of the bus once to stop, twice to go and several times to indicate that she should slow down to pick someone up. I had just about given up on him acknowledging the woman when she hit the accelerator and zoomed pass another bus with a vigour that would have made her opposite sex counterparts proud. The conducter, now hanging out of the doors, whistled and mock saluted good naturedly at the overtaken bus and then turned towards the front of the bus and nodded, just once. There was nobody there to nod to except one rear view side mirror placed for the convenience of the driver. Maybe just being acknowledged is enough for a female bus driver.

So here I was, checking my email on a quiet tuesday morning after getting plenty of sleep (which is a very good thing) when drama worthy of an Indian movie pops up in front of me, quite literally, in the form of an MSN Messenger alert. I'm too shocked to do anything but stare at it with my mouth hanging open. It informs me that my recently deceased aunt has just logged in to her MSN messenger. Common sense would tell me that it's someone else who knows the password, for whatever reason, logging in at some location, but at that moment when you see that proclamation of someone you know logging in from beyond the grave, all you can do is stare at it with your heart suddenly pounding.

Once I snapped out of the initial shock, I demanded to know who the hell was on the other end and what exactly they were upto. The reply was something about a Hotmail Network Admin logging in and that the account was about to close, after which I didn't care enough to bother arguing and blocked and deleted.

While looking about for information for a report, I came across this link to the original text based Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy game, often said to be one of the most difficult games to end ever. Most of your are probably not interested, but just in case. :)

Mum and aunt have decided to focus their energies on me. This can't be good, I mutter to myself as I pass by them. They are seated at the dining table, discussing the latest scandalous behaviour spanning their two expansive family trees, when I happen to pass by. Conversation trails off as they examine my slovenly gait and mentally tsk tsk to themselves. On one otherwise normal day, aunt is talking and, as I slouch past, she does a double take.

Having recovered from the apparent shock of my complexion, she explains to me that I have gotten far too dark for my own good, whatever this means, and I must be thrown into a vat of bleach or some other such "beauty treatment" must be applied immediately to correct this or I shall never get married. I fail to see the dire threat in the last bit and mutter noncommitedly as I walk away. Apparently my lack of fair and lovely-ness has given my mother and aunt a new mission in life: gorification! Only someone who is about to be married and has to be prepped can begin to comprehend the horror of such a process. In essence, as many layers as possible of skin that has been tanned must come off, one way or another, to reveal the lighter skin underneath. Understandably, I'm not very enthusiastic about the idea of having layers of skin come off since I posess enough of an imagination to know how exactly such results could be achieved. At the end of it all, and with no real improvements that I can see, I can only envy men and the "tall, dark and handsome" description they are stuck with instead of "ismart, gori and subservient", which is what the women get stuck with.