Monday, February 23, 2009

Not again ....

I hate dentists. I hate the helpless way I have to sit in their wired chairs laden with all sorts of technology while they push and pull their metallic tools into and out of my mouth.I hate not knowing when to expect pain and one of my biggest fears while sitting in that chair is "What if the dentist drops his tool into my eye ?" ( I know I should have grown out of this fear years ago !!). But the dissappoinment that comes with all this resentment towards dentist is that I have had an abnormally great number of visits to the dentist in my life.

As a child my milk teeth never fell out on their own and had to be extracted by the dentist to make space for the permanent teeth !.Then when I turned 12 , my parents and I decided that I needed braces which I had on for two years,requiring trips to the dentist every month.Ups and downs followed the time till yesterday when I made an appointment with the dentist because my parents thought that my teeth were inclining backwards. So there I went to the dentist ( not my usual one), impressed by how young he looked, sat in his chair trying to relax myself by saying

" Hey its just a check up , what could probably go bad " when he said to me...

"You might need braces again !" and if that wasn't enough, he went on to say

"Well your wisdom teeth have n't erupted yet, and the bad part is there is no space for them to erupt so you'll need an X-ray to determine its position ...and then we might have to surgically remove it !!!"

The surgery part made my goosebumps rise to the size of ping pong balls !!!(or so it seemed) so I'm praying to God that my X-ray does not show any wisdom teeth at all,there exist people whose DNA doesn't code for it !.I hope I'm a part of that exceptional minority. And besides that I still am deciding wether or not to put on braces again. On one side is the incentive of having a better facial profile once its removed but theres obviously the burden of having it on for 18 months....not to mention the frequent trips to dentists for 18 more months ...AGAIN . Should n't I just love dentists now ?? .....:)

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Shopping for clothes - The Pakistani way !

Day before yesterday,it was Sunday.A day my family mostly spends in one of the following four ways, 1 - Having friends or relatives over at our place for tea, dinner or lunch 2- Going to meet our friends and relatives 3 - Shopping or 4- Recreational activities. Since my grandma who lives with us will be leaving Pakistan to visit my uncles and her sister in a few days , she had to buy presents for all of them.And what better present can there be from Pakistan for Pakistanis living abroad besides Clothes and fabric.


If only I could have them all

Pakistan has a huge textile industry and as a result the markets are flooded with clothes.A special attraction is unstitched fabric.All the possible types of fabrics imaginable are available with varieties in colour and design. This is really fun for people like my neighbour 'Sara' who mix and match different kind of fabrics and then stitch or stick different embellishments or sequins on it to make their own trends and style. Lawn (a kind of fabric) is a favourite in the subcontinent beacuse its really comfortable in the hot and humid summers of this region.And then ofcourse there are different qualities and prices,ranging all the way from Rs 20 per yard to Rs 500 per yard.And did I mention that clothes can be purchased all the way from the roadside and bonets of parked cars to elaborately furnished boutiques !




But the problem that accompanies all this charm and variety is the undecisiveness faced by shoppers like my mom and grandma who take hours to decide.Questions like "Will the green chiffon look better with white lawn ? " or "Will the purple cotton look better than the red one?" are just a few of the random questions fired at me while I am pretending to be really interested, lost in some other thoughts !. It may sound like a lot of effort but it really is fun to be sitting with a rack full of fabric in front of you trying to imagine the way you'd look in that fabric once its stitched.
My mom - just can't decide !
So that was what I did this Sunday.A hectic and yet funfilled day dedicated to my ammi (mom) and naani (grandma) !

Friday, February 6, 2009

In the line of friends


We at Dow Medical College are approaching the end of our third semester with flying speeds.The syllabus seems to be growing every second and our teachers seem to be in an illusion that there are 336 hours in a day instead of 24 (Thats the only conclusion I can reach after looking at the homework piling up). But besides all the work and studies its the time of the year when we get to decide and choose a clinical group for ourselves. A group of around 10 - 14 people who'll go for ward duties (in the hospital) togethor. Seems like an easy task ? Yup, it did to me too.But Only when my friends and I sat togethor to decide who the 14 people would be did the problems become visible.


We are a group of ten friends who agreed to say togethor but then each one of us or rather most of us had some other friends which the others friends werent friends with or even had problems with.Some wanted'A' to be in the group others wanted 'B'. When everything would seem to be decided there would arise another problem because 'D' would have a problem with 'E' being in the group and bingo ..confusion again.So it was all a chaos.Believe it or not, we had arguments, misunderstandings, tears, and even heated up conversations at 1 am !!!.


All I wanted was there to be a minimum number of people in the group i.e 10 so that while in the wards, teachers could give us better attention and co ordinating could be made easier but that meant splitting the group beacuse as a rule every group should have 25% boys. While all ten of us are girls......Problem again.But finally we decided to keep a max of 14 people in the group, compromise with our studies in the ward but still be togethor !!!! I hope it wont have any serious implications on our studies but the good thing is that I've got my pack of friends with me !!!!!