pathetic! Elvis!

so it's been ages since i blogged. like 6 months. what have i been doing, u ask? nothing really.

ok, so last weekend we went to the craziest coolest wedding! it was jeff's friend's from waterloo. he used to have this dali-esque moustache (it was all curled up at the ends, look left). but then he got rid of it and found a lovely lady (on lava life - i'm telling you girls and boys, the internet is how people meet! stop being in denial!) and they got married.

so anyways, the wedding was southern + Elvis themed (they got engaged in Graceland). there was a golden elvis head adorning every table as the centrepiece and one at the front where the ceremony took place. check this out - the minister talked ONLY about Elvis, the King, and no other king! and then at the end, as the couple walked back down the aisle, he sang an Elvis song - and he was really good!
it was a pretty fun wedding.

a really wierd part though - it was in the Valhalla inn in etobicoke, and there was this little looking sportsbar down the hall from the bathrooms. but then we went to take a look and you turned the corner and it was the HUGE club, PACKED with forty somethings, dancing on a full dancefloor to a cover band singing britney, everything but the girl, that SOS song...it was soooooo surreal. there was a disco ball and those fake fire light things hanging over the dancefloor. it was like stepping back into a bad eighties movie. i wish i had pics.

now we know where to go in the coke when we're bored on a saturday night.

We've arrived! well....almost...

so we're in india...but in dehli, stranded at the airport as opposed to in lucknow sleeping in our beds like we should be right now...

so our flights were uneventful - two 7.5 hour flights on air canada with a stopover in zurich for like an hour. the food on the plane was pretty good (we've decided to quit the veganism while we're away instead of trying to scrape for food - which is good since i ate something at least on the plane and now we've been in this bottomless pit w.r.t. food airport for manymany hours!) the food on the flights was mostly indian and surprisingly edibile. we watched the new pride and prejudice (not as good as the a&e/BBC special - myra, borrow it from our house - under the first floor tv in the cd case!)...some really lame-o indian movie played (shaadi #1: so dumb! and with so many women in bathingsuits dancing around even i was shocked!)

basically we read and slept - then we got to dehli at 9.30pm - our flight to lucknow wasn't until 6 am at the domestic airport nearby which myra and saba and jazib reported to be totally ghetto. so we hung around the dehli airport for hours (no food) and then finally took this really underpowered bus to this domestic airport at 3:30am and hung around until 4:30 when we found out our flight was cancelled - and so was the next one at 7am and apparently it's been days (reports vary from 3 to 15 days!) since our airline has flown to lucknow even but they failed to tell us earlier! so now we're booked for the 1pm, we're hanging out in the business lounge which has like 5 teenage boys to serve like 5 people and they still don't do anything fast or efficiently.

other complaints i have: the bathrooms (naturally), and everyone is so pushy! no wonder my dad is always vying to get to the front of the line - everyone in india pushes and buds and there is barely the concept of a queue. also the woman who gives u toilet paper in the bathroom wanted my new red shiny bracelets for a tip! i think not!

anyways, i was excited for a bit, but having to spend so many hours in airplanes and airports makes one ponder whether this journey is really worth the effort - i know when i have bought lots of good stuff tomorrow i will not be so cranky ; )

also, the tea made with just milk, sugar and tea bag was really yummy.

ok, more interesting stuff as the journey progresses...!
some scary old indian couple came up and are talking to me in gujrati apparently - must flee!

We've arrived! well....almost...

so we're in india...but in dehli, stranded at the airport as opposed to in lucknow sleeping in our beds like we should be right now...

so our flights were uneventful - two 7.5 hour flights on air canada with a stopover in zurich for like an hour. the food on the plane was pretty good (we've decided to quit the veganism while we're away instead of trying to scrape for food - which is good since i ate something at least on the plane and now we've been in this bottomless pit w.r.t. food airport for manymany hours!) the food on the flights was mostly indian and surprisingly edibile. we watched the new pride and prejudice (not as good as the a&e/BBC special - myra, borrow it from our house - under the first floor tv in the cd case!)...some really lame-o indian movie played (shaadi #1: so dumb! and with so many women in bathingsuits dancing around even i was shocked!)

basically we read and slept - then we got to dehli at 9.30pm - our flight to lucknow wasn't until 6 am at the domestic airport nearby which myra and saba and jazib reported to be totally ghetto. so we hung around the dehli airport for hours (no food) and then finally took this really underpowered bus to this domestic airport at 3:30am and hung around until 4:30 when we found out our flight was cancelled - and so was the next one at 7am and apparently it's been days (reports vary from 3 to 15 days!) since our airline has flown to lucknow even but they failed to tell us earlier! so now we're booked for the 1pm, we're hanging out in the business lounge which has like 5 teenage boys to serve like 5 people and they still don't do anything fast or efficiently.

other complaints i have: the bathrooms (naturally), and everyone is so pushy! no wonder my dad is always vying to get to the front of the line - everyone in india pushes and buds and there is barely the concept of a queue.

anyways, i was excited for a bit, but having to spend so many hours in airplanes and airports makes one ponder whether this journey is really worth the effort - i know when i have bought lots of good stuff tomorrow i will not be so cranky ; )

also, the tea made with just milk, sugar and tea bag was really yummy.

ok, more interesting stuff as the journey progresses...!

HIV/AIDS and african-american youth

i am doing this qualitative research study at the moment on lung transplant recipients and their lived experiences. anyways, i was reading this qualitative research journal today, trying to understand how other people analyze and categorize their data and i started reading this paper about african-american youth that purposely get infected with hiv. it was very disturbing, since it chronicled the lives of six inner city youth that have loved ones with AIDS, live in such poverty and gang-ridden areas that it's hard to digest for someone who has never ever exerienced it. the kind of lives they lead are so terrible, with no childhood, no hope of escape, no nothing.

anyways, that got me wondering about hiv/aids in african-american youth and i read this interesting report by Dr. Cathy Cohen from University of Chicago last year. you can check it out here. it basically goes over all the stats, and the risk factors for contracting the virus that are prominent in black youth today. it's scary, because the problem is so daunting, as are many social problems that rack our society, and especially the US's. and some of those social problems plaguing black america are the risk factors for getting hiv/aids.

one interesting thing mentioned in the report mentioned this dude kanye west and how cool he is for bringing up homophobia in hip hop and how uncool that is. yay kanye! whoever you are!

those women...

(in case you didn't notice how smart and un-lazy i am, i changed the title from uppercase to lowercase letters...this is what one year of computer engineering gets you...)

ok, i really need to do some work, so this is the last one for today...man, once you start blogging...

anyways, when i was freaking out that i didn't have a thing to blog about (which obviously was NOT the case) i came up with a recent conversation i had with my cousin the other day. she mentioned these friends that are the type of women who are high maintenance and beautiful and make girls like us feel slightly insecure...

so in elaboration - these are women who blow dry their hair to make it straight, curled out and under in all the right places, and to make it shiny and soft and beautiful! they do NOT dry their hair for the same practical and dull reason i do: to get the wet out so my hair doesn't freeze to my head. these are women who go to the store for the purpose of buying makeup to accentuate their cheekbones and lovely eyes with long dark lashes. they do not buy makeup only when they find it on sale and with sparkles in it. these are the women who KNOW how to use a blush brush and how to apply things like foundation and concealer and other skin colour cosmetics. these are women who get their streaks done in fancy salons by other fancy women. they do not get together with their cousins with box hair dye for a hair colouring party, or force their husbands to reapply the bright pink to their frizzled bleached ends.

ok, so i go to school to get my grad photos done. and i remember on my way out - i should take a brush and my trusty clear lip gloss. i am quite proud when i'm in the washroom before the pics and i brush my windblown hair into some semblance of order. yay - i am going to be presentable in my grad photos! i go and wait outside the room and this girl in my class emerges. she is wearing her contacts, has a 1 inch layer of makeup mask on her face, pearl earrings, and her hair is straightened and freshly streaked ("i just got it done today before my photos!"). i am like, "oh u look nice." she returns the compliment and i acidly reply that i look the same except my hair is brushed.

so these women, who look go out of their way to look done up and womanly, can at times make simple girls like me and my cousin feel insecure. not that we don't like to get dressed up and made up for special occasions - and i may say, we look pretty FINE when we do make an effort (although perhaps not as practised an effort as others). so why feel insecure? we chose the simple life, just as those girls chose the more-complicated-than-i-can-handle path. and perhaps isn't the reason we don't chose that other path is because we feel good enough about ourselves without all the makeup and accessories? and in a way are more secure about our natural selves than those other women? i guess when it comes down to it, i think all women should present themselves in a manner that makes them feel good about themselves. and frankly, i love it when i do on the rare occassion get all dolled up and people don't recognize me and wow and stammer on about how good i CAN look if i try. and it's my own fault if i let those pretty-all-the-time girls get me down since i know that they can never look any better than their daily facades, and i can look a million times better when i try. i guess it all comes back to my own laziness....

so why haven't i posted?

um, i wasn't going to write about everything in the last blog. so back to the original question. yes, i haven't written in ages, and over the last week, when a blanket of almost calm has descended on my life since i am done interviews, found out where i'll be for residency, done nasty surgery and on elective, i have been pondering about writing on my blog again. and frankly, it filled me with fear! funny, huh? i couldn't think of anything to write. my mind whent blank when i tried to decide on a topic. what do people write on blogs? i asked myself. i examined omar's and winky's and shawn's blogs... all three have a totally different style, and preoccupation in their blogs:

omar - random events that occur in his life and his take on them
shawn - random events / ideas/ happenings in the world that shawn finds interest in and comments on
winky - her random life!
oh, i just realized that i have a husband and he also has a blog. i guess that's about music, and his musical development. Go jeff! : )

but overall, the blog is really the person's diary and everything they comment on is important to them and their lives in some way.
(on wikipedia, blog is defined and explored: "Often blogs focus on a particular "area of interest", such as Washington, D.C.'s political goings-on (boring. and depressing). Some blogs discuss personal experiences. (like my brothers', etc...)")

so i started thinking, what's important to me? what's happening in my life? and i realized (not for the first time) that i do not like to think deeply about things or at least, to really express my deep feelings. why? well, frankly, i am so lazy it is unbelievable. thinking too much and too hard is hard work! of course, this disgusting laziness is not my fault - i blame my heritage. has anyone seen our family!!?? we love to be lazy!

and i think i am lazy with thinking sometimes because i have to think a lot with respect to school, etc. like over xmas, i had no school to worry about and i was blogging and thinking a lot - admittedly, my blogs are quite shallow and silly and as jeff says, are written as if by a preschool-aged child.

so it all comes out: i am lazy and shallow and not too bright. rarely, this worries me, but not too much. i like it when i can save deep thinking to the newest harlequin plot or johnny depp's latest fashion faux pas (did anyone see his in the toronto star yesterday...; ) )!

and don't worry, my next blog is going to be deep...

all the money and time in the world

today ends my months of silence. why haven't i blogged before this? i was going crazy blogging over xmas since there was nothing else to do but think of new years resolutions, exercise and meditate. it was actually a dream come true. at one of my interviews in january, this dude asked me, "if you had all the time and money in the world, what would u do with your life?"

of course, then i started thinking about winning the lottery and ditching all of medicine and reading harlequins all day. along with blogging, meditating and kathy smith. but i couldn't say that!! so i just went with the meditation and said i would totally get devoted to meditation and go to tibet and hang out there (i didn't say with the dalai lama at least!.. because silly, he's in india! although, maybe i also said i would like to go to india....) and then i said i would go to massachusets and hang out with jon kabat-zinn and learn more meditation and mindfulness.

and then i realized i was getting carried away in my vision of heaven on earth through meditation (which went on and on i swear). so i said, "oh, but of course you can't meditate for your whole life. at least i couldn't. (which is not true, and not true, since isn't that what monks do? and i'd love to be a crazy monk - at least for a bit...!) so then i would get back to what i want to do in my life which is psychiatry (of course...) and come and do residency." it was such a pathetic ending to the answer because it was obviously a lie! and the dude was like "oh, good answer." in a quiet, matter-of-fact confirmation which i couldn't tell if he actually ate it up or not. maybe he did, b.c that's what he wanted to do and would have said the same thing, many eons ago...

New Year's Resolutions continued

so i couldn't figure out how to type after the pics of all those powerful abs and walls of chest.
so i continue...

my next new years resolution is to:

3 - continue to live mindfully and practice meditation
4 - continue to work on and expand my use of mindfulness and my meditation practice
5 - read more about mindfulness, meditation, and buddhism (the root of these practices)

what i'm trying to convey is that, after an 8 week course, i am not yet living a wholly complete and full life although i can meditate and think mindfully - or at least be aware of the concept mindfulness. i have a long way to go to learning how to be fully aware moment to moment and using this practice to most effectively manage stress and appreciate all of my life. and there is much to appreciate i know.

ok, so what else? i'm sure i'll think of something...

New Year's Resolutions

ok, so since i was reading winky's blog and i noticed that she has made some new years resolutions (including paying attention to her guts ; ) very mindful of u winky!), i thought, oops, i forgot about that essential part of beginning a new year full of promise, etc!

so i made some up for myself. although my first two resolutions have been the same for many a year. and between years as well. every time i write a list of things to be done in the near future - that usually includes mounds of school work/studying, school paperwork, random paperwork required in life (e.g. bill paying, which i never really do b/c that's what jeff is for ; ), on top of cooking and groceries and vacuuming... husbands ARE useful! ), things to buy, people to call, and so on - i always include my usual two new year's resolutions:

1 - do exercise - kathy smith, etc.
2 - write my novel already!

so once again i've written these into my list. i'm pretty good about the exercise i must say. not as regular as i should be, but regular enough that i am not totally jiggly. and over the holidays i was a very good girl and did tons of exercise - almost every day!!!! miracle! and i did kathy smith's abs almost every day - frankly, my abs are getting so strong, i'm afraid i will soon end up looking like usher or 50 cent!

(these dudes crack me up - they are so silly! but what abs! they've been very diligent with kathy...)

(winky and kitty - don't get too excited about usher...)

Mindfulness and Meditation

yesterday i had a nice conversation with winky about meditation and mindfulness in every day life. She has written an excellent account of our talk, which included issues we all need to deal with (even if issues vary somewhat from person to person, they are all about having stresses in our lives). take a look on her blog.

She started her mindfulness practice by doing the body scan cd. as she says, it's hard! and as my teacher always says - "it's simple, but it's hard." and it's true. lying around breathing for 45 minutes - sounds like no big deal, but it requires alot of focus, concentration and practice to learn to pay attention to each moment! Moment to moment awareness. this teaches us to relax, and take time to pay attention to our minds and our bodies. it also provides practice for being mindful during all moments of life.

in the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) 8 week program, you have to practice your meditation every day!! difficult - but it pays off. it gets so that u want and feel the need to meditate!

i started to really read Full Catastrophe Living - just the intro, but it really summarizes the whole idea of mindfulness in everyday life, and what meditation can bring to one's life expereince.

I'm so inspired - again! EVERYONE should be doing this!

an example of the beauty of mindfulness and meditation - in mid November, our apartment flooded and we had to move out. this was a very stressful week i can tell u! because on top of having to move totally unexpectedly, having our stuff immersed in sewagey water, having to ask for rent back from our landlords and having the craziest desi movers (wanted extra money, threatened to not unpack our stuff from their van, and called the police who showed up at our home!), i was doing internal medicine and was applying for residency. AND i was attending MBSR! (this in itself is another stress: one 2.5 hour class a week, and around one hour of mandatory meditation every day - i did end up missing one class, and i'm sure some home meditation.)

stress galore. and yet, through the whole experience, I did not cry even once. I came close when one of our picture frames that my brother gave me broke, but at no other time. and on top of that, I don't think i even felt immensely stressed or troubled, i just put aside what i could, and dealt with what had to be done. no crying, no bitterness, no breakdown. i can only say that i don't think the old seema would have managed so well. i truly believe that meditation played a major role then and in a noticeable attitude shift that i've experienced..


check out National Geographic, March 2005 issue. actually the website doesn't give u the whole article about 'what's in your mind' (it does however give u this cool Buddhist monk dude's pic!) - but there's a paragraph about Richard Davidson's work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (where diego is!). his group has shown that more pessimistic, negative people (as i once was, and continue to battle against!) have more neuronal activity in the right prefrontal cortex of the brain. more positive people, and especially skilled meditators, have more activity on the left. also, they took a group of people, put them in the 8 week MBSR course, and afterwards, their patterns were increasingly on the left.

yes, i am more on the left than the right, in more ways that one...

the mighty boosh - naboo

jeff's favourite character on the show is naboo, the shaman. i cannot understand most of what he says. but he is pretty funny. "i'll have to turn my back to u - let that be a lesson"

the mighty boosh

"easy does it, margaret."

this is such a wicked show! it's by these two english dudes - julian barratt and noel fielding. they play howard moon and vince noir. in the first season they are zoo keepers at the zooniverse, and they hang out, chatting to animals, and such.

the show first started in theatre, then as a radio show on the bbc. we've been watching the tv series and enjoying it immensely. here's the official website and more info on wikipedia.

they are doing a 2006 tour but unfortunately it's only in the UK. poor us over here in cold canada...

Bridge

ok, so i've been trying to decide what my interests are for my application. bridge is one of them. i was looking at wikipedia and found a great page on bridge (Contract bridge is actually the full name of the game we play).

i think that we should all read it and learn some more rules on bidding! so that we can play by the book the next time the cousins meet!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_bridge