The day has finally come to depart. Now that the jumping about fit has ended, a calm exhilaration has taken over. This is going to be fantastic, I can feel it in my bones.

See you all after the sixth. Au vior! :)

I should be packing right about now. Now that I finally have a means of escape for a few days, I've got a fresh case of the lethargies. I believe that the moment I enter that airport alone and wave goodbye to my family will be the absolute high point of my vacation. Nothing beats what's in my head. I also believe that should we always get everything we desired instantaneously, our heads would explode. Maybe it's a good thing that there's always something out there that you could never quite get and never really forgot.

Ever had one of those days where, by the end of it, you're beginning to wonder if you're being a PMS-y bitch, the world's collectively turned into a PMS-y bitch, or a bit of both?

People who are sick of Harry Potter and all the fuss about the books should skip this post. Also, this post contains spoilers, so look away if you don't want to be spoiled.

Theory #1: Snape is not the bad guy. Before you start pelting me with eggs, hear me out. DD asks for Snape as he and Harry are returning from the cave. I believe he does not not only because Snape is an accomplished potion maker (a very valid point by Sidrah), but also because Snape is a legilimus (sp?). DD knew about Draco all along, but did nothing to stop him and does not want him to become a murderer under duress of his parents being killed by Voldemort. DD is weak, but fearless in the face of the most feared werewolf of the age and several Death Eaters. Snape appears at last, and DD starts pleading. Pleading? Is this not the biggest clue that something is very, very off, especially since this is the person who complacently told Harry in the first book that death, to the well organized mind, is the next great adventure, and also, just as calmly, told Voldemort that there are things worse than death in this world? Why, oh why, would DD beg Snape to spare his life? Impossible and an insult to the man's memory to even consider it. Therefore, DD is pleading with Snape to do something else. He could either A) be asking him to do something they have previously spoken about or B) Snape could be reading his mind. In either case, DD can only be asking Snape to kill him. It is entirely possible that Snape, in the moment he looks down at DD in the tower, is reading his mind and gaining a summarized version of the theory of Horcruxes and Harry under the cloak and so on, and that DD is asking Snape to kill him. Note, in the concerned passage, that only when DD says "Severus, please", does Snape lift his wand and do the deed. Personally, I feel it more likely that DD is asking Snape to carry out what he has read in DD's mind (or decided previously, but we'll get to that in a minute), and Snape, his face full of (self)loathing and (self)contempt, finally does so. Why? Let's examine the two possibilities:

a) An extremely weakened Dumbledore, Snape and an invisible and immobile Harry, take on several death eaters, Draco Malfoy and a renownedly sadistic Werewolf. Do not forget the unbreakable curse would also immediately kill Snape, should he not assist Draco as promised, which would leave a fatally weak DD and a helpless Harry, should the cloak come off or one of the Death Eaters accidentally feel him on the floor. The result is not too hard to imagine.

b) Snape kills Dumbledore, thus cementing, in the eyes of the Death Eaters that he's fully committed to the Dark Lord. With one flick of his wand, Snape has put himself in a prime position to be the Dark Lord's most major confidante. As a spy, one can do better than that. Dumbledore, therefore, shrewdly, has placed Voldemort in the company of two wizards close to him who would help Harry, the first being Snape and the second being Wormtail who still owes Harry his life. Also, by having Snape do the deed, Dumbledore may want to preserve Draco's innocence (what little is left of it, after all, he is no murderer yet and does not seem to want to be, if not for the threat on his parents' life if he refuses).

Of course, we also know that Hargid overheard Snape and Dumbledore arguing. Snape may have, if he is smart, told Dumbledore at this point about having made the unbreakable promise to kill him if Draco fails to do so. If nothing else, Snape is very shrewd and has no lack of appreciation for the seriousness of his double role in this war.

Mind you, from the very beginning, DD insists that Harry is more important than he himself. This is why he does not let Harry drink the potion in the cave, nor cut his hand to give blood outside the cave. It is, after all, a fact that none but the Chosen One can vanquish Voldy for good and wise and powerful as DD may be, he is not the one and he knows it.

*phew* Alright, it's pretty late, so more odd theories will be expounded at a later date. If you have any contradictions, feel free to email.

The curse of a very short attention span: losing interest in things that you should focus your mind on like a laserbeam, such as exams, projects and reports. Thanks to the evil authorities of Saudi, which do not recognize an 18-year old woman as an independent entity minus a man attached to give her an identity, my good friend cannot meet me in happyplacedubai for more than a few days. Tragic, but there you go. However, this does not deter me from being determined to leave as soon as is humanly possible and have a great time regardless of UAE-government approved company.

One may wonder why I speak only of the mundane these days. This is because I am shamed into writing something, anything by all the nice people who come by and leave comments, but have absolutely nothing worth writing about, and so end up with a a post about nothing. Hopefully, this will change once the new semester begins and I actually have something to do.

Recently, I was slightly mortified to discover that my mum's oh-so-at-peace with the idea of me going off wandering in a different country all by myself because she doesn't think I would do anything worth worrying about. She has a point, since I have yet to come home high on anything besides sugar and salty air and am not likely to be found in the middle of scandalous situations. This is worrying since I'm supposedly responsible now (kindly contain your disbelieving snorts) and have left my days of sowing wild oats behind. Tragic, really.

I do hate it when an interesting pastime like blogging becomes a chore, ripe with "musts" and "have to"s. To quote someone much smarter than I:

All day I read the latest in the Harry Potter series (see gleeful reaction below) at full speed, desperate to finish before some idiot could spoil it for me. Once finished, I realized the concluding chapter in J. K. Rowling's tale would only be released after approximately two more years. Bleh. Oh, and for those who still have not bought the book or for whatever reason do not have the book in hand, the following links should help you out before some jackass goes and tells you who dies and how:

Read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince online. (not working anymore)

Download Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. (not working anymore)

Additionally, we now know that Hell has officially frozen over when my little sister, her equally chirpy friends and my old school chum combined do not meet as many people they know as I, the terribly (and happily) antisocial one, do when we go to see Black Fish. Choti choti khushiyaan. :)

Now, however, it's time to start soaking up useless coding techniques like a sponge for my final tomorrow.

Woo-hoo!
Originally uploaded by Mishaone.

I knew the result of mixing me with weddings can only be bad, but this is ridiculous. The non-stop chatter, forced mixing with people I do not know nor have ever seen before in my life on top of four hours of non-stop programming gave me a migraine the size of Balochistan. Therefore, at one a.m. I retired to get my much needed beauty sleep. Fast forward five hours later and I'm still basically tossing and turning, wondering how one goes about shutting off one's brain. Must be an acquired skill. Eventually, a PanadolExtra came to the rescue, but not before I was sure I was delusional thanks to the pain and felt an earthquake.

Punctuality is one of those pain in the ass virtues people have that get in the way of having fun. I happen to own the trademark on that particular pain in the ass virtue. Never, in my life, have I been late if I could help it. I would rather be early and look like an idiot while waiting for others to show than be late for an appointment, class, anything. It was, then, a big deal when I found myself running late for my class this afternoon. And not just minorly late, mind you, an entire half hour late. It was another one of those brilliantly cloudy afternoons, completely unexpected when you would have been expecting the sun to be shining on you in full force and the sweat to be flowing as you wait for the bus to arrive. Before I knew it, I had been standing out there staring at the people frolicking in the waves and dodging the odd gust of wind blowing sand in my face for nearly twenty minutes. I didn't really need to check my watch to know that this was a bad, bad sign. I was, after months of a perfect attendance, going to be spectacularly late for class. And it felt good. Rebellion is liberating somehow, like a step right out of the rat race for a minute to smell some flowers growing by the track.

The bus arrived, of course, it always does eventually. I got on, paid up and stared out the window as the world flew by in a blur of colors and shapes. I arrived at my stop and, with deliberate leisure, got a can of coke from the gas station. Stopping to contemplate why an empty playground filled with swings and slides should strike me as so very sad, I walked on in that curious mixture of knowing where I was going and that I had to get there inevitably, but exactly when did not matter. Freedom tastes like rebellion that's been left out in the sun too long, an odd but at the time appropriate thought.

I finally got to my university, can of coke in one hand, bag swinging in the other. I make no eye contact here, not with anyone. The can had served its purpose and so was gently deposited on a wall nearby. I walked into the lab where my class was in full force. I was... late. Everyone turned to stare at the new arrival. The teacher looked at me, the clock, then back at me and frowned slightly as he gestured towards an empty seat. I sat down and got to work. I couldn't help checking the automated attendance records for one last peek at my perfect record (thus far). Attendance had not been entered for the day.

Even as the class typed on furiously to complete their work, I sat back and logged on to various websites for no reason. At the end of the day, I have two lines of generic, utterly half-hearted code while the others proudly displayed whole programs and algorithms to the teacher. I sat back and watched as the teacher graded each assignment. The very second the clock struck six, the class of twenty dispersed in their own directions like a puff of smoke. I couldn't resist sneaking a peek at the attendance sheet for the day. A row of perfect blue "P"s, and right at the bottom, yet another accursed bold, blue "P".

I just realized I'm surrounded by the oddest people possible, which makes life pretty interesting. I have nothing to complain about, compared to some people, and even if I do, I need to get over it because today I have been inspired to laugh again.

Special thanks to uncle A, who used to live next door to me and recently moved into the next building. Upon loitering on our roof, neighborhood friends and I saw a rotund man in a towel emerge from the next building's balcony, hands on hips, staring at the waves as intensely as the sea captains of yore must have done as they sailed across the Atlantic. Towel-clad uncle turns to the side and recognizes us and starts happily waving and gesturing that he has moved to this apartment. In between saying frantic prayers that the towel stays on despite uncle A's frenzied gestures and trying to choke back the laughter, we managed to wave hello back before Auntie A emerged and dragged him back indoors.

Additionally, it's always fun to watch males drooling over unattainable women. Today was a rare day when I had the dubious pleasure of watching males of two different species making asses of themselves after females of their respective species. First off, it seems Angelina Jolie, frequent star of Pakistani men's fantasies, has been spotted entering the Karachi Marriott, which immediately prompted a frenzy of young males who heard the news to go hunting for fathers, friends, friends of fathers and fathers of friends for press cards which can be used to gain entrance into the Marriott and get within touching distance of miss Jolie. On a much smaller scale, my brother found a gorgeous Siamese wandering outside my building today and brought her indoors to meet my cat, Sheru. Sheru, being about as sexually active as a castrated monk immediately went ballistic, resorting to frantic, ragged yowling, dodging five people in a row and hiding behind doors to get access to the room where the poor Siamese was being fed. He was last seen trying to create an alternative entrance to said room of forbidden pleasures by scratching a hole through a balcony netting. Needless to say, poor Siamese was but a brief visitor and was promptly taken back to the neighboring house where her owners reside.

Last, but not least, when asked to write their views about the relationship between screenplays and movies after having watched the Prisoner of Azkaban and read the screenplay, students still copied off whole paragraphs from the Internet, ripped off entire movie and book reviews and used Word's AutoSummary feature and insisted on their work being original until confronted with the URLs of the exact websites each paragraph was ripped off from.

Truly, one of these days, the world will amuse me to death.

At what point is it finally okay to say "bus, dammit"? When everyone is still looking to you pleadingly, or when they got what they wanted and left again?

I love Karachi, it's in my bones. Like most things, this has a good side and a bad side. Today, I'm severely feeling the negative side. That odd feeling of unease as if grains of sand have gotten into your joints and you can't do anything about getting them out. Today also marks the week which will (hopefully) culminate in the end of my summer courses. There is only so much programming one can be forced to endure before going mad and wanting to lock yourself up in a padded cell. Anything to break the mundanity of it all.

Since I can't think of anything else to write about at the moment, I'll just post a few links worth checking out:

First up, there's a very interesting series going on at the Karachi Metroblog called "Why Karachi Rocks". The Karachi Metrobloggers have put up many reasons about why we love our hometown and more are on the way.

Secondly, a great website through which you can send attachments of upto 1 Gigabyte to an email address of your choice: YouSendIt. Upon putting it to the test today, I found it attached a large file (81 Mb) in about twenty minutes and promptly sent an email to the recieving party about the link from which they can download the attachment. A warning, though, I've been informed that the website is not accessible in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

My mum, having seen a couple of good shows on one of the new channels showing, Aag (Today), was over the moon about the fact that said channel aired an interview with someone I assumed was a homosexual male and the level of acceptance he recieved in our society. Since I only started watching when I was grabbed by an excited mum and told to go switch it on, I came across much innuendo instead of actually stating what the issue was so that anyone tuning in late wouldn't be completely at sea.

It was interesting to note, however, that apart from the hostess of the simplistically named "Huma's show" never actually mentioning the topic of discussion by name in the fifteen minutes that I watched, my mum also asked me to go watch on "the other room's TV" instead of inviting me to watch it with her and dad. Our desperation to hide our hypocrisy and prejudices will be the death of us, honestly. However, I do supppose that actually adressing an issue like Homosexuality and attempting to educate the public about it instead of pretending it does not exist is definitely a positive step.

It's amazing how a nation who simple cannot get to a class or appointment on time can turn off the electricity for loadshedding at precisely the right time every single day. I imagine KESC hire some sadistic person for the post of "Conservation Engineer" whose sole job is to watch the clock and go to a large black lever and pull it right on time for the loadshedding to begin, grin and go back to sleep for an hour or so, leaving it up to the helpline operators to ignore, mislead and otherwise placate the unfortunate people who call in to find out when the electricity will be back.

It is now two a.m. and by all counts one should be asleep. Only the insomniacs wander about aimlessly at this hour, and if there are two things I cannot get enough of, it is sleep and food.

I find myself in my balcony, watching the other mad people still patrolling the beach. They arrive every evening in their painted vans with frazzled speakers, but today they are mercifully quiet. There's something calming about the sea, I'm positive of it. It's the people, these noisy people, that encourage each other to ignore the natural calming spell the waves cast on you.

As I watch these people, I notice that the waves are completely enveloped in darkness, hidden to the naked eye. I recall a night when my dad took me driving right to the edge of the seaside (or so I though, because it took ages of driving along the beach to get there) to a pier that led right into the middle of the waves. My dad picked me up and deposited me on the wall and then climbed up himself to sit beside me. It was dark and I was a bit afraid of the darkness and the ominous sounds of the waves splashing ferociously somewhere in the pitch darkness below my feet. My dad then pointed out the waves. Once I had seen them, I couldn't imagine how I could not have noticed them before. The frosty white tips of each wave as it came down towards us was glowing a solid neon green! My mouth hung open as I looked at my father for an explanation behind this phenomena, one of those sensible, solid reasons he would always have handy which involved measurements and formulae to dole out to me when I was expecting mermaids and elves. He smiled and looked up at the sky instead, obviously wanting me to follow suit. Puzzled, I lay back and looked up as well and saw their infinite beams of light, all coming straight to my eyes, the entire universe converging in the iris of one person who looked up. I went home with the waves roaring in my ears and the universe in my eyes.

I don't know why I remember that, or if it even happened exactly that way or if I wished it did. The curse of having a horrible memory is that things pop right out and make you wonder if you're going insane via the route of an overactive imagination or if you actually had a decent life once. At this point, I don't suppose it matters either way.

There is something inherently disturbing about cleaning out a dead person's things from a closet. Being of a quiet and broody nature myself, my family was surprised when I resolutely gathered up my odds and ends and moved into the then recently empty room previously inhabited by my now deceased aunt. At the time, I was indeed very affected by her death, since all I could think about was the many, many arguments we'd had over the years, followed by days of not talking and how I would always make a face when she was to give me rides anywhere. In retrospect, had I known she would be gone soon, would I have treated her differently? I pored over her things, the endless, endless clutter and wondered if I would still have slammed the door as hard or complained as vociferously, had I known?

I stumbled across old photos. One of me, one of my siblings, and several dozen of my cousins, who didn't even live in the same city.

I found old poems she'd put up on the inside of her closet door, each ringing of bitterness and cynicism. A naive little child has scrawled at the bottom (uncomprehendingly) "V. V. V. V. Good!". A distant memory reminds me that the naive child was myself, fond of reading anything in front of my face, and equally fond of comprehending nothing of reality or motives.

I found pens by the score. Reciepts, memories of each major purchase. Keychains, little lego toys that I thought were lost years ago. Shampoo bottles, perfumes, various knick knacks. All of this was important to a living, breathing person not too long ago and is now being tossed out as rubbish by another to make room for life.

Cleaning out the remnants of a life that was lived is disturbing, like an autopsy of the mind, of memories, while the owner is unable to protest.

Class got off early yesterday, and I decided to attempt to connect to the Internet using the labs at the university and see if I would have any better luck than I had with my home connection. The only plus side was that I could access Orkut, albiet very, very slowly. Whilst awaiting the familiar "Orkut Home" page to load, I overheard two young men using a PC just behind me talking, their conversation, to my surprise, going something like this:

Person1: Nahi yaar, that is pleasurism!

Person2: Nahi nahi, I will show you what pleasurism really is.

Person1: What makes you an expert, have you ever done it?

Person2: Just wait, I'll show you how its done right now.

Surprised and, I must admit, very curious, I turned around to see what on earth the pair was upto in an almost deserted lab. I was disappointed/relieved to find that both were staring intently at a report they had opened up on the PC. It then hit me, as their conversation continued, that they had been talking about "plagarism", with a Pakistani pronounciation style which had resulted in it sounding exactly like "pleasurism".