I just wanted to thank you. Coz you’ve done so much for me. So much that sometimes it seems tragic to my cold eyes. These tears are a living testament to that. I know you have a special liking for me. Well I like you too. That is why we are always together. You have always been there for me. You were there when I was a little kid. You were there when I was a messed up druggie teenager. And you are still there as I start my practical life. I know you’ll be there even when I’m on my deathbed. You stood by me when everyone else left. You noticed when no one else knew that I existed. I wish I could just rip open my heart for the world to see how much you dwell in it. How much space you occupy in this bleeding pump!
Everything reminds me of you. I can feel you humming along each time I’m singing. You are ringing with each and every strum. I don’t expect others to know about us. How close we are. Its a secret affair. The world will never understand and its not supposed to.
Oh and I also wanted to apologize. I have always been so rude to you. You knocked at my door and I always tried to avoid you. I’m very sorry for my behavior. I truly am. From this day onwards, I promise that I’ll embrace you with open arms. I’ll love you like you love me. I’ll never leave your side like you’ve never left mine. I’ll always keep the door open for you. Til my very last breath! And thats a promise!!!
Dude! Its not a process flow that you can define in terms of steps and diagrams. Its your damn life. But you still want to systemize and streamline it. So you exactly know what to do, where to go next and probably you don’t ever want to be lost for words. Don’t we all hate confusion and uncertainty, heh? Well I know one thing for sure; you are frustrated over a certain turn of events. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t read this. Maybe you are frustrated over the lack of control that you have over your life. But do not worry. Guess what! its your lucky day coz we'll cure all your pains. We'll take out your brain, clean it and put it back in its place. Yes sir, we'll do it for free.
So anyways I’ll share with you my personal failures at streamlining and controlling my life. This might feed your sadist soul and make you happy. If it doesn’t, you probably need to watch a few videos of hunger and famine. Just kidding =P
When I started my first job, I planned to do a lot of things. I made a schedule for myself. The schedule would ensure that I don’t become a workaholic. It would give me ample time to do all the things that I love to do. I was also supposed to join a gym, store my refrigerator with healthy food, veggies, get an internet connection, get a new set of strings for my guitar and resume blogging… And guess what I couldn’t do a single one of these things. NOT A SINGLE DAMN THING =(
Then… I realized…. *Huge Mega Realization Dawns on Me* =O
You see, for something as impulse as life, any set of rules is likely to become obsolete as soon as it is created. So stop stuffing your head with all the things that you want to do. Just flow with the flow. Free fall for a little while and patterns will emerge. Colors will realign themselves to form a picture. It will be a fine painting, Trust me! With the perfect mix of abstraction, pain, happiness, madness and mediocrity, its going to be a perfect life for you and me. And don’t worry its in unlimited supply. =D
So Live on my enemy!!! And yes there is probably one thing I’ll manage to do from now on, that is Blogging =P I hope So =/ So read on as well =P
Our social relations have different levels, dimensions and meanings. When you say that somebody is your friend, it implies that a certain level of intimacy and trust exists between you and that person. Similarly an acquaintance is somebody, you just know. A colleague is somebody at your office and nothing more. So on and so forth. We use these terms in our everyday lives because we want to filter and quantify our relations with other people. To put it in simpler terms, we want it to be known to the world, who is who and which is which.
But an alarming new trend has emerged. Perhaps it started emerging with the advent of our famous industrial (material greedy) revolution. Yes! We have a new kind of relation; “A Contact”. And like any new born who comes into this world, we have been treating this new term in our everyday lingo with a great deal of curiosity and interest. Anyways a contact is a person who can help you in some way or the other. People have contacts in governments, private organizations, schools, universities, barber shops (seriously they do, so that while they get a haircut, they can feel special about the whole experience) and God knows where. You need a job, you need contacts. You need to file your tax returns, you need contacts. You need to get an abortion, well guess what, you need contacts.
As we can see, a contact has and will always have a materialistic connotation attached to it. The problem is that these days you need solid contacts to run your life smoothly. This gives out a very strong message to the likes of me who don’t believe in such kind of “material” social indulgence. The message is very clear. We are doomed and bound to get nowhere. On the other hand, the society at large is in a way patronizing such kind of networking. Because the benefits of having more and more contacts is shown to outweigh the costs by a great margin.
Speaking of costs, the biggest cost to the society is in terms of lost values. What happened to the good old days, when you would meet people because you really wanted to meet them? Where you could be straight forward about your choices of keeping people at different levels of interaction on the basis of a clear cut criteria in your mind which was not based on materialism but rather on your personality and compatibility with the other person. And what happened to our hatred for the word “Hypocricy”? Isn’t it hypocrisy that’s going all around us? As a matter of fact, I see the very definition of the word “society” changing in the next few years. It will most probably become something like “Society is defined as a network of contacts, interconnected via links of personal interest”.
So I’m going end this article with a little exercise for you. Next time when you log on to your facebook. Put your status to something like “I’m a human being, not a contact. If you don’t agree, then please disappear from my life”.
On a second thought, don't put up such a status. You don’t want to lose all your valuable contacts now, do you? =)
Some lessons that I’ve learnt from life (the hard way of course)
Can’t get it all dude! You just can’t get it all…
Every opportunity that you avail means more misery for you because it means forgoing countless opportunities and incurring infinite opportunity cost, considering that had you availed those alternate opportunities, your life would have taken a completely different path altogether and you would have had an entirely different set of choices at every step of your life…. and if you are “farigh” enough to think about all this, then probably you lack purpose in your life!
Optimism always hurts more then pessimism.
“A friend in need” is someone who is investing in you because you might be of some future “use”.
“A friend indeed” is a myth.
And last but not the least, whenever you get something super good in life, don’t forget to read the small warning label on the other side of it which says, “Caution! Strings Attached”
BTW I’m back in Lahore (my hometown) and I’m Super Ultra Mega Happy =D =D =D
After being rejected from almost every place that I applied to, I’m quite sure that there is something very wrong with the recruitment system in our country. I know many would brand me as a jealous smug who’s rattling and crying about not getting a job while almost everyone else did. Brand me, criticize me, hold whatever you want to hold against me BUT this is a reality that you can’t deny because you know it, its right there at your face. The recruitment system for 99% of the companies is not fair. Period!
You know what? I got rejections from companies I considered myself too good for. Yes I did! They say, one shouldn’t be arrogant but one should know his/her worth. I know my worth. I know what I can do for the firm that I work for, given a chance. The irony is that I compromised on my worth and still did not get an offer letter. This is just painful. No seriously it is. It is painful to know that people who can’t match you in skill and aptitude got really nice jobs because they had references and contacts. And its painful to think that by the time you do get a job, you probably might have to work under “such” people. Not fair I tell you. Definitely not fair.
Now let me share with you the more painful bit. I was surprised and shocked to know the brilliant ways, in which most of these brilliant HR people shortlist candidates from a pool of CVs. Some sift through graduate directories alphabetically, making sure that somebody who’s unfortunate enough to have his name start from a “Z”, never gets an interview call. And others just select CVs randomly and then filter people out from a randomly selected pool. Dude you are gambling on people’s careers, you Idiot!
And finally the most “politically correct” and “self righteous” kind of recruitment personnel are those who shortlist people on the basis of GPA. The thing is that different universities have different grading plans. My university has one of the most ruthless grading plans and not to mention one of the most difficult entry tests in the country for any business school. But these so called HR “professionals” just don’t know the difference. Ms. HR Professional, its not that difficult to understand, trust me its not a rocket science. Repeat after me slowly, “DIFFERENTUNIVERSITIESHAVEDIFFERENTGRADINGPLANS”. Yes repeat it again, You probably might understand it in a few years time. Or maybe not. *bangs head on the wall*
So anyways in many interviews I have faced this question, why is your GPA so low? Dude!!! Give me a break. My 2.9 is still better than a 3.5 from XYZ University where you get an A on 80%. I got my B- on 83%. Arghhh!!!
To tell you the truth. I think, there is no criteria in this country. Except for a select few who are lucky enough to be selected on the basis of merit, most people are hopeless without contacts and references. And maybe even money. Anyways I pity all you poor companies and recruiters. You would have been way better if you had selected people on the basis of fair criteria but you did not. I pity you.
And for the record, You don’t reject me. I reject you and your disvalue system. Down you go!!!
Holy shit! It’s a Sunday, was my first thought when I woke up this morning errrr I mean afternoon. To tell you the truth, I absolutely hate Sundays. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them. Coz they have this strange feel to them which makes me feel extremely lazy and lethargic. Uninspiring; they kill my creativity. Destroy me and put me to the ground… Now wait, do not judge! I’m not a workaholic and I certainly do enjoy holidays. But holidays are way more fun if you know that everybody else is working and you are the only one chilling out. I know you what are thinking. You think I’m a sadist. But trust me everyone is, in one way or the other. Now you think I’m cynical. Don’t you have a PhD in passing judgments?
So anyways I decided to come up with a few things that one could to do in order to make Sundays better. I’m not a tyrant so I won’t force you to follow my advice, but trust me you’ll be miserable if you don’t. I hope so, so that you realize how right I was… STOPJUDGINGME!!!
Follow these steps
1.Wake up as early as possible. Preferably around 6:00Am.
2.Try to find a part time job, on which you only have to work on Sundays.
3.Don’t go for a very heavy breakfast. I’d say don’t have breakfast at all. Stay hungry. Those poor people of Africa can do that. Why can’t you? It’s not that difficult I tell you.
4.If you had breakfast, then skip lunch.
5.If you don’t feel like skipping lunch, then again think about the poor people of Africa we talked about in step 3. Imagine a poor hungry African kid, and you’ll probably feel a lot better.
6.Spend your Sunday evening like any other weekday and your day is made. *cheers*
7.End your Sunday like any other normal day of the week.
Oh and if imagining somebody worse off (like the poor hungry African kid in step 5), makes you feel better then probably you actually are a sadist. But don’t worry; there is nothing wrong with it. Being sadist doesn’t necessarily make you a bad person. Don’t judge yourself. =)
